Hello,all. I wasn’t sure whether it was appropriate for me to enter this thread at first, but now, with the critique that has been posted, I think it is. Sorry for taking so long.
Tim, thanks for the huge vote of confidence, which means a lot to me. However, it’s probably a good thing that the rest of the thread balances it out. My feet are light, but still reach the ground. Anyway, you seem to have succeeded in stirring some controversy.
As Alan says, this thread has become an extension of the critique. At the same time, because this poem has been singled out, I think I’ve had the benefit of unusually strong and detailed critique, especially given that, relative to most postings, it’s a long poem. As a result I’ve revised. I think the proper thing to do is to post the revision back at the top of the thread on the Metrical board, which I’ve now done, but by editing so as not to take it back to the top of that board. However, I’ll deal with the critique here, where it occurred.
On general commentary, thanks Alicia and Esther. I know the idea of a “select” area of the board would raise new issues and represent another challenge for the moderators and participants, but thanks for raising it. I leave it to the administrators to consider it.
Esther, I haven’t tried a modern version of this, but it’s an interesting idea. (I’ve tried doing that sort of thing before – taking a poem about the past and doing a modern one on the same theme.) I enjoyed your poem. It reminded me of a song – “Hard Times” – perhaps because that song uses “sup sorrow” in the second line. The idea of taking risks because you have nothing left to lose unrolls into a host of social issues, and you place it neatly in the context of beauty and mortality.
Alan, thanks for your comment on sound. I do find that, in a poem like this, I'm working with four constraints - sense, meter, rhyme, and "sound". By "sound" I mean internal rhyme, assonance, consonance, and something else that seems associated with music and that might be called "resonance". I know that I'm disposed to compromise other constraints in pursuit of "sound".
LOL, I really appreciate the time you must have spent on this and the excellent, frank, and detailed critique you have given. Alan, I also greatly appreciate your incisive review. In view of their lengths and close relationship, I think the best way of dealing with these critiques is to post the revision below with responses inserted as comments.
Woman In The Wind (Revised)
Sheets of rusted corrugated iron
clatter in the gusts against its walls -
the black house mossed with memories of childhood.
It passed like sunsets blushed across the kyles.
{I’ve broken the sentence now. LOL, your conclusion is almost right. This house evokes memories of childhood. That childhood passed in the same way as the sun disappears every evening at sunset. I note your interpretation problem about whether she’s living in this house, but I don’t think that’s implied and, as you say, it’s clarified later, so I’ve left it. This is also scene-setting and “blushed” is a lead-in to the next line.}
A teenaged bride, she wed her next-door neighbor;
one gateway and she crossed her line of blood.
{LOL and Alan, I had three alternatives for this line:
“One gateway and she crossed two lines of blood”,
“One gateway and she crossed her line of blood”, and
“One gateway and she shed her virgin blood”.
I realized that “virgin blood” is heavily used, but mainly in association with sacrifice or violence. Here it is used to suggest that in her teens she was thrown into the world of marital duty and child-bearing. While the other two alternatives provided a metaphorical word-play on “cross”, I thought “virgin blood” was the most strongly related to the theme. In view of the feedback, I’ve changed it.}
Today that field-gate lies unhinged and fallen,
half-sunk in a half a lifetime’s puddled mud
{LOL and Alan, the gate in question is a gate between two fields. I don’t know the exact dimensions, but gates connecting pasture are wide to allow cows through – of the order of 12 to 16 feet. In addition, in the highlands, the fencing between fields often consists of the old dry-stone dyke, which may be only 3 feet high, with a pair of barbed-wire strands above it to stop sheep scrambling over, for a total height of close to 5 feet. Posts are erected at gateways to hold the barbed wire and gates are attached to these. So the posts can be up to 5 feet high and 16 feet apart. In addition, the area is question has few trees, so washing-lines are put up in any expedient place. As long as the clothes are off the ground it’s OK. Because of the lack of suitable locations, each possible location is used, so that washing may be hung on a number of short spans, this being the case here. I've revised to mention "field-gate".
As for puddled mud, LOL, the track through the gate has been so trampled by cattle that, instead of being firm and possibly graveled, as it would have been when the gate was first erected, it has been churned into mud with puddles on it. She has now had two children – half her lifetime has passed. When she was a child, the track was maintained. Now the gate has fallen, implying neglect – in fact, her parents are dead and the black house is ruined (the moss foreshadowing the implication of neglect). She can use the gateposts for washing because the gateway is no longer used.}
and only washing-line connects the gate-posts.
Three shirts with arms extended tug and flap -
a man, two boys. She sees three crucifixions
and thinks of all the prayers and benedictions
they've counted on to save them from mishap.
{LOL, the shape of the shirts makes them look like people and their posture, with arms extended along the line to better secure them in the wind, is like that of people being crucified, hence “crucifixions”. This connection reminds her of the extent to which they depend on their religion to protect them from the dangers of going to sea.}
Their row-boat rounds the Cregan to the Sound
{LOL, this line is supposed to allow the reader to infer that the Cregan is a headland.}
of Raasay out of Camastianavaig Bay.
Black cormorants, like mourners, watch them pass
behind Ben Tianavaig then fade away.
At tide-change there’s a hush as waters still.
Red cod in congregations prey and gulp
{LOL, the method of fishing used here is to troll hand-lines at a slow rowing pace. They’re baited with eels. The eels are dead, but they’re being pulled. Sometimes the crofters would skin them to let out the scent.
In relation to the religious symbolism, I’d like to pick up on your comment that the poem has the standard soap opera ending. By that I believe you mean that it finishes with “What will happen next? Tune in next week to find out!” There is that element, but it’s not one of the two main points that are expressed in the last three lines. The first main point is the hopelessness of the woman’s situation, which Esther alludes to in her reference to “working-class mother”. The second is that, while religion is present in every aspect of life in this community, its promises are questionable and do nothing to help her while she’s alive. The religious imagery in the water is there, as Alan indicates, to give the idea that the force of religion permeates every aspect of this place.}
the eels that undulate like blowing rags
as hand-lines search their sanctuaries of kelp.
(LOL, the “blowing rags” simile is an allusion back to the washing on the line.
The hand-lines search in the sense of being trolled through the water.}
Clouds glisten, haloed by a hidden sun.
The brightness weakens to the creak of oars.
{LOL and Alan, the idea I’m trying to get at here is the brightness is under pressure of being ousted by the coming storms and is starting to weaken. Creaking is a sign of weakness. And the oars creak. I’ve changed the wording and picked up an internal rhyme at the same time.}
Then wingless shadows fly across the heather,
{LOL, the feeling of having a cloud shadow sweep over you on moorland is fast and smooth. I see it as more like a bird skimming waves than something running.}
gray waves of swelling rain bring foul weather
as storms begin to sweep the open moors.
{Alan has mentioned the use of storms in the plural. It would be easy to incorporate the singular and I chose plural deliberately. In open island landscapes you can often see more than one patch of rain coming at a time.}
This morning and each morning since she married
she’s borne the water-buckets from the burn
{LOL, this seems primitive, but it could have happened any time last century up to about 1970. That was when fishing from rowing boats for the winter’s supply of salt fish and lack of running water had become rare in the crofting villages of the Scottish highlands. Until then, you could find both situations without too much difficulty.}
to wash away the woad of savage living
expecting neither respite nor return.
{The “return” is appreciation from the family for her labor, as in a “return on investment”. She is taken for granted.}
From unrelenting slime and sweat and smearings,
she keeps the gate and dares the coming squalls,
extracts the wind's last spit-less drying breath;
{Alan, I did make a change, admittedly, not a big one, in response to your last comment – from “unspitted” to “spit-less”. The reason I use this word is that, at the first sign of rain in these communities people would say “It’s spitting. We have to take in the washing.” There may be a cultural difference here. In Scotland, “spitting” is a common word to describe the first drops at the commencement of a rain shower. There’s also an oral connection with “breath”, but I’m not sure that it’s fortunate. (Btw, it’s not intended to refer to fear – the men are not scared spit-less”.)
}
but now both rain and iron rattle on walls.
{LOL, thanks for the comment on “rattle”. You’re right. I should have had a preposition like “against” for this to work, and I cut corners for meter. I’ve now tried a fix.}
In headscarf, tallowed boots, and threadbare coat
she wears for milking and when going for peat
she pulls the clothes-pegs, hoping that it brightens;
instead the cowl of gloom draws in and tightens,
and rainspots on the clothes seal her defeat.
{LOL, the “cowl of gloom” likens the darkening sky to a monk’s hood and combines the ideas of the weather closing in with allusion to older forms of religion.
LOL and Alan, I’ve left “seal her defeat”. I just can’t see a reader associating this with the animal. I like “seal” because of its inherent paradox – rain usually infiltrates seals.}
Now serried whitecaps charge the assembled leagues
of shoreline cliffs then crash like cracks of doomsday
{LOL, you raise an interesting point about “cracks”. I wrestled with it, but have decided to stay put. Yes, doomsday has only one crack. And, yes, two crashes that resemble that crack, still resemble one crack, singular. However, I think there is a sense in which the plural is OK – each crash resembles one hypothetical occurrence of the crack of doomsday - and this admits the plural. I think the singular reads less naturally, so I’m prepared to stretch a little here.}
and rise as giant clamshells on the rocks;
{LOL, your interpretation of “clamshell” is right. Breakers on a rocky shore look like clamshells from a distance.}
though bow to blow, four oars can make no headway.
They slash their grounded lines and blisters tear
{LOL, the “grounded lines” are the hand-lines. When they have to row into the wind, the boat slows and the trolled lines fall to the sea-bed and get stuck. They have to cut them to move forward. It must be done fast because each missed oar-stroke means lost headway and the danger of being swung around by the wind.}
from callused hands; and limbs and torsos, wood -
one streaming sinewed beast impelled by fear -
resist the pounded Cregan's beatitude.
{LOL, as noted earlier, the Cregan is a rocky headland and “beatitude” reflects its immunity from the perils around it, while also continuing the allusion to religion.}
No bell, just stony silence from the kirk
where ministers tell all they’re unforgiven
until they die, then say they’ve gone to heaven,
cold comfort as the combers go berserk.
She steps inside and fights to shut the door.
Outside the ravens huddle under haystacks,
and seagulls switchback into battering gales.
{LOL, the wind rose and she let the washing stay out until the rain started, which was when the storm reached her home. She starts bringing in the washing after both “rain and wind” are present. Yes, it’s a gale by the time she gets in the door.}
The iron sheeting flies. She finds some sacks
to caulk the draughty door, then lifts the wash
and squeezes hard to feel if it's still moist
with water hauled before her men-folk rose;
then grasps these family icons to her breast,
damp armfuls of limp empty cloth; and knows,
as surely as the sun will set forever
{LOL, and Alan. I’ve kept this for now. I know both of you don’t like it, but Tim read it the way I intended and it’s so intrinsic that I have difficulty seeing how to change it. “The sun will set forever beyond the kyles” is intended to mean that it’s a constant in her life that the sun will continue forever to set every night in the same place – beyond the kyles (or, as Tim, says, in the west). She can be sure of it. The reason that it’s hard to change is that it’s part of a bracketing effect in that it links back to “passed like sunsets blushed across the kyles” at the start – her childhood has passed, but her life goes on. I’m not sure of the nature of your objection. If I understood that better, maybe I could find a way to address it.}
beyond the kyles, as surely as the kirk
will keep its foregone verdicts under cover,
{LOL, “foregone verdicts” refers back to the lines you liked – “where ministers tell all they’re unforgiven/ until they die then say they’ve gone to heaven”. The verdicts that will be delivered at funerals are kept under cover so that people will keep on going to church and striving for forgiveness. They’re “foregone” because, when the funeral rolls around, the minister will tell the mourners that the deceased’s elevator has gone up, not down, in almost all cases.}
that, whether she must face a widow’s grief,
or they return expecting her relief,
until she dies, one of two hells awaits her.
{LOL, thanks for catching the subjunctive on “smile”. Alan, in response to your initial comment, I’ve revised this.}
Thanks again, all.
Porridginal
[This message has been edited by Porridgeface (edited April 06, 2001).]
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