[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by Glenn Wright

This results in a line of IP that scans: /— o / o o / — o / o — / o — /. (Trochee, pyrrhic, trochee, iamb, iamb).

I do believe in spondees, but I’m a skeptic when it comes to pyrrhics, so I’d scan the new line as headless with an anapestic substitution in the fourth foot. In any event, it works for me now.

Originally Posted by Matt Q

The concluding line, I find a little ambiguous, because "let" can be present or past tense. Does it mean, "I don't ever let them me know me", or "I didn't ever let them know me"? The latter seems more final, unchangeable, an opportunity missed, one more thing to regret.

Originally Posted by Glenn Wright

I thought about the ambiguity of the verb “let” in the last line and decided that I liked it.

The “ambiguity” never occurred to me in context. “Those I knew” places the N’s friends (and what they could have meant to each other) irretrievably in the past.

[Matt Q]

Hi Glenn,

Yes, the comma definitely fixes the issue of the double negative. Now I read it as meaning, "I am an empty shelf, my life goals are unachieved", and the trophy shelf idea comes across nicely too.

A thought on the bitterness lines: how about something like:

The words don't pass the checkpoint of my tongue,
but bitterness sits heavy in my throat:


"checkpoint" because the tongue is guarded. And I'm suggesting "sits" over "lies" because of the internal rhyme with "bitt(erness)". We still know the words are unsaid.

I guess you could also go with "regrets" instead of "the words", as "regrets" offers assonance with "check". Though it's maybe also more 'telly'.

On the title. Does it need the word "counting"? Maybe just "Another orbit of the sun"? I'd say the poem shows us that he's counting, and how.



Hi Carl,

Originally Posted by Carl Copeland

The “ambiguity” never occurred to me in context. “Those I knew” places the N’s friends (and what they could have meant to each other) irretrievably in the past.

You're right. Those he never let know him are those he no longer knows, presumably the dead, rather than his current friends, which is what I was thinking of. I was reading the sentence in isolation.


best,

Matt

[Roger Slater]

Originally Posted by Glenn Wright

Hi, Matt—

Jim and Roger, you have both shared that you are less than thrilled with the title. My alternative is “Another Completed Orbit of the Sun.” I rejected this mostly for metrical reasons.
Glenn

My problem was that it's a cliche to refer to birthdays as completing another trip around the sun. Google "orbit around the sun" and "birthday" and you'll get zillions of results. I don't know what it brings to the poem to invoke a stale phrase that you don't even pick up on in the body of the poem itself. It contributes nothing, and many readers like myself will hold it against the poem that its title has previously appeared on the front of dozens of different Hallmark birthday cards.

Ultimately, it's just an overfamiliar expression for referring to birthdays. I'd give up on it completely. How about "Another Birthday" as a title? Or any number of other simple titles. Maybe "The Party's Over"? Anything. I just don't see why you should cling to the orbit of the sun idea, since it's unoriginal and it doesn't directly figure in the poem itself.

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Matt—
—————————————————————————————————————————
A thought on the bitterness lines: how about something like:
The words don't pass the checkpoint of my tongue,
but bitterness sits heavy in my throat:
"checkpoint" because the tongue is guarded. And I'm suggesting "sits" over "lies" because of the internal rhyme with "bitt(erness)". We still know the words are unsaid. —Matt Q.
—————————————————————————————————————————-
Your suggestion has the virtue of bringing the personification of the tongue into sharp focus. I’m not sure I want to make it a main focus, though.

—————————————————————————————————————————
On the title. Does it need the word "counting"? Maybe just "Another orbit of the sun"? I'd say the poem shows us that he's counting, and how. —Matt Q.
—————————————————————————————————————————

This is a really good idea. I think I was trying to be too clever by having a title in IP. It could easily be confused as the first line of an untitled 15-line poem, and its length makes it seem like an oversized crown on the head of a dwarfish king. Roger, I chose the cliché deliberately to establish the speakers’s weary, jaded mood.
I’m keeping “lies” instead of “sits” to preserve the double meaning of “lies,” which plays off the double meaning of “spirits” and the ambiguity of verb tense in “let.” I want that thread of irony to stay.

One point that no one seems to have considered is whether the party actually happened, or is merely part of a remembered reverie from which the speaker awakes in S4L1. Several of you noted that the “came” in the opening line suggests a time in the more remote past. Has his celebration come again, or just the recollection of previous celebrations? At the end, I wanted the enjambed “when gone” in S4L1 to signal an awakening to reality, and to act as a kind of “Poof!” as he returns to his lonely existence. In that reading, the “fading spirits” refer less to the speaker’s falling mood and perhaps more to the ghosts of his dead friends, alluded to in the “fewer friends each year” in S3L1.

[David Callin]

Hi Glenn,

I am arriving late at the scene of the poem (which is my wont, more often that not). What a gratifying set of replies you've got here. I have read - or glanced through - them all, but I will just leapfrog over them and let you know my own thoughts on the poem.

Which I like, with (of course) quibbles ...

The first four lines run along very nicely, but L4 does sound, with that word order, like a literal translation from a French original.

I think lines 7-8 are too (as they say) telly. You could lose those and introduce two that build the picture more subtly - or at least limit the self-revealing soliloquy to L8.

I like the use of "tomorrow / and tomorrow and tomorrow".

Ans finally - this is a rather fanciful thought - are you tempted to replace "I never let them know me" with "They don't know me"? It gives you a bit more leeway in that line (not to mention summoning up the never unwelcome ghost of Ray Charles).

Overall, though, it's very nicely done.

Cheers

David

[Roger Slater]

"Roger, I chose the cliché deliberately to establish the speakers’s weary, jaded mood."

But how is the reader to know that? As a general matter, I have found in workshops that many poets tend to think that when they use clichés, it's justified in some way, even though they agree in principle that clichés are to be avoided (just like many poets seem to think that when they use archaisms, it's okay somehow, though they agree it's not generally a good thing). There's always going to be an excuse to use a cliché, and all of us are powerfully attracted to them, but resisting that attraction is big part of the reason we read and write poetry in the first place.

By resisting particulars, you are already keeping the reader at a distance. Clichés only increase that distance. When you tell us non-specific things, and you use clichés to tell us those things, it's hard to get an emotional response from the reader, even with your killer last sentence.

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Roger—
I can tell that you are really bothered by the title. Let me try to lay out my thinking on it. Normally, I try to avoid clichés like the plague. (See what I did there?) Clichés are off-putting because they signal laziness in thinking and make it hard for the reader/listener to take the speaker/writer seriously. But clichés are not radioactive. They can be useful because they often carry a smug, superior tone that can be put into the service of irony. I’m thinking of the title of Tom Robbins’ novel, Another Roadside Attraction. This clearly includes a bored yawn, even though the attraction in question turns out to be (spoiler alert!) the mummified body of Jesus Christ. I’m trying to get something like that bored yawn into my title to serve two ironic functions:
1. to signal that the whole birthday rigmarole is a mildly irksome duty that the speaker must endure for the sake of his well-meaning friends. This is reinforced by calling the activity a “ritual.”
2. at another level, to suggest that the emptiness of the activity, the decrease in the number of participants, and the taunting commemoration of a milestone that marks no real achievement seriously bother the speaker. This is reinforced by reference to “bitterness” “empty,” “withdraw,” “fading,” and the negation words mentioned in post # 36.

The reason I am vigorously defending the title is that it serves as the necessary starting point on the speaker’s short journey of self-discovery.