[Clive Watkins]

Still Life

They switched off all his pipes and organs
five minutes ago while I was getting coffee.
I feel like I've missed the bus.
His stillness draws the room towards him.
He looks like a piece of art in canvas
stretched across a curving frame,
laid out like he has a purpose.
Roughness sculpted into his builder's palms,
fingers bent at just the angle
to look blunt and useful.

He used to push his thumbs into bits of engines
and cheerfully talk me through their working parts.
All his slots and sprockets oil smooth,
muscles and sockets, beating with his
spanner on the bonnet.
I turned his wrist
until a tendon popped
and then I dropped it.
He lay there loose,
like unfinished business.

R A Lorens


For anyone who has experienced the death of a parent, whether in the circumstances described here or in different ones, the subject matter of this poem is likely to be very affecting. I want to focus on its verbal machinery, however, since this is all, as a reader, I have to go on. As I sometimes like to do, I shall think my way through the poem, taking each line and sentence in turn.

The opening makes the general situation immediately apparent: this poem concerns the turning-off of a patient’s life-support system. The phrase “pipes and organs”, though clear enough, momentarily conjured up the image of a musical pipe-organ, an image which, as the poem unfolded, came to seem a distraction. A minor adjustment could easily be found to fend off this connotation. The second line makes the actions of the medical staff towards the speaker, the patient’s relative, seem insensitive, though this turns out not to be central to the poem. In some respects, the third line captures well the feeling of abandonment these occasions provoke, the sense that someone has gone off elsewhere and that we cannot travel with them. On the other hand, the banality of the language, which some readers may find effective, left me not entirely convinced (Note 1). Overall, these first three lines reminded me of the instruction to a pianist about to accompany a singer: “Vamp till ready.” They have the air of being words the poet required in order to crank up the poetic engine rather than being essential to the poem itself. I would suggest cutting them and including the necessary introductory information in a better title.

The poem proper begins with line 3. This in an understated way suggests the power of the corpse to act as a focus for everything in the room, to compel attention. The next line initiates a process in which the dead body is presented as if it were “a piece of art”, first as a painting and then as a sculpture. I found the phrase “a piece of art in canvas” puzzling. Many readers will take “canvas” and “across a curving frame” in the next line to refer to a painting and will assume that “in” was an error and that “on” was meant. After all, the use of “in” would suggest that the art-work was made out of canvas, that it was some kind of construction built up from textile. I think some revision is needed - for instance, “He looks like a painting, stretched on a curved frame”.

I liked “laid out”, which seemed to play on both the undertaker’s and the painter’s sense of “lay out”. This suggested an interesting ambiguity. The dead body as it is laid out looks as if it has a purpose. It does not: it is just dead. The painting of the dead body is laid out as if the painting had a purpose; but since the primary purpose of a painting is presumably to represent its subject, the live man has become an image of himself, his own effigy, as it were. It may be that this was not in the poet’s mind. The fact that the words can sustain this reading is an instance of how a poem can escape from the hand of its maker, a fact which is both the curse of the poet’s art and one of its blessings.

In the next three lines, the body becomes a sculpture. The shift was a little abrupt. I saw no advantage in abandoning regular sentences for sentence-fragments. The poetic material would allow a clear two-part pattern hinging on the conjunction “or” – for instance, adopting provisionally the rewording just suggested:

He looks like a painting
stretched on a curved frame,
laid out as if he has a purpose,
or like a sculpture,
roughness carved into his builder's palms,
fingers bent at just the angle
to look blunt and useful.

Two other small points struck me here. One was the double use of the verb “to look” across a passage of only thirty-eight words. This seemed a flaw in the sonic texture of the verse. The other was “like” in “laid out like he has a purpose” where the correct UK usage would be “as if” (“like” not being a conjunction). I have included this change in the tentative revision above.

The next section moves us into the past, into memories of the dead man’s life. It seems he was not, as we have just been told, a builder but a car mechanic as well (Note 2). While it may have been true as a matter of fact that the man had worked in both occupations, I am not sure whether, from the point of view of poetic design, it is of advantage to mention both: it creates a slight loss of focus.

“He used to push his thumbs into bits of engines,” we are told. This seems oddly worded. For instance, did he not also push his fingers into “bits of engines”? And “bits” seems a weak word. It may be that it was meant to suggest that the speaker did not really understand what these “bits” were, but I am not convinced that this is what comes over. While there would be a danger of unbalancing the poem by expanding this passage very much, it would seem possible to make the wording more evocative and precise. In this connexion, “sprocket” in the next line is interesting. It is the only example here of a technical term. In certain circumstances, technical terms, the jargon of particular trades, can be very evocative. I found it odd that more was not made of the opportunity the subject offered in this respect. Again, there seems to me to be a loss of focus here. This is a shame because these two lines are clearly meant to modulate (via “oil smooth”) into a metaphor for the healthy workings of the man’s body, a procedure I find attractive. (By the way, a hyphen is needed in “oil smooth” - thus, “oil-smooth”.)

Once again, in the next three lines, regular syntax is abandoned, to my mind to no poetic advantage, in favour of a sentence-fragment. The passage from “All his slots…” to “…on the bonnet” is really an extension of the sentence beginning “He used to push…” two lines before. Here it is set as prose:

He used to push his thumbs into bits of engines and cheerfully talk me through their working parts, all his slots and sprockets oil-smooth, [his] muscles and sockets, beating with his spanner on the bonnet.

I found the internal rhyme “sprockets / sockets” awkward in its immediate rhythmic context. The later rhyme “popped / “dropped”, on the other hand, worked well. Both come as elements in a series of words dominated by the sound of short “o” – “slots”, “sprockets”, “sockets”, “bonnet”, “popped” and “dropped”. I imagine some would defend rhyming “sprockets” and “sockets” as linking the two sides of the metaphor, but for my taste it drew unnecessary attention to itself.

I was not sure how to take the last part of this sentence. Why was the man “beating with his / spanner on the bonnet”? Spanners are not designed for beating metal; they are for undoing nuts and such like. If that had been my car, I should have been very unhappy at the damage caused. Perhaps we are to imagine his action as an expression of anger or frustration, but in the previous line the man was “cheerfully” talking through the working parts. The implied scene, which goes to the heart of the poem’s procedures, seems imperfectly imagined.

One other aspect of these lines struck me strongly, the line-break in “beating with his / spanner on the bonnet”. This is the most, indeed, the only, extravagant line-break in the whole poem. In every other case, lines turn where the syntax turns. I think this entitles me to wonder what special significance I am to find. I confess I can find none. As I remarked in commenting on Oliver Murray’s poem “What Marks We Leave” on an adjacent thread, my starting point when considering where to end lines in non-metrical verse is to look to syntax for clues. Breaks across units of syntax, because they interrupt the natural forward drive of the sentence, need to be weighed carefully.

The last five lines worked effectively, though they might have been clipped a little. Also, looking back over the poem as far as line 3, the real start, this last passage should be recast in the present tense. A possible revision might be this:

I turn his wrist
till a tendon pops,
then drop it.
He lies there loose,
like unfinished business.

On this wording, and bearing in mind the remarks about line-ends made above, several arrangements are possible. Here, without comment, are four:

I turn his wrist till a tendon pops,
then drop it. He lies there loose
like unfinished business.

I turn his wrist till a tendon pops,
then drop it. He lies there
loose like unfinished business.

I turn his wrist till a tendon
pops, then drop it.
He lies there loose
like unfinished business.

I turn his wrist
till a tendon
pops,
then drop it.
He lies there
loose
like unfinished
business.


In general, I thought the underlying poetic thinking here was strong but that, as it stands, the poem is a few, perhaps minor, revisions short of being the finished thing.

Clive Watkins

…

Note 1

The image of missing the bus put me in mind of the final image in Robert Lowell’s touching poem, which I am quite sure many members will know, about the sale of his father’s house immediately after his death:

For Sale

Poor sheepish plaything,
organized with prodigal animosity,
lived in just a year –
my Father’s cottage a Beverley Farms
was on the market the month he died.
Empty, open, intimate,
its town-house furniture
had an on tiptoe air
of waiting for the mover
on the heels of the undertaker.
Ready, afraid
of living alone till eighty,
Mother mooned in a window,
as if she had stayed on a train
one stop past her destination.

from Life Studies (1959)

…

Note 2

For some powerfully imagined, subtle and impressive poems drawing on a boy’s experience of a childhood spent round and about an engineering works, B. H. Fairchild’s wonderful collection The Art of the Lathe (USA: Alice James Books, 1998; UK: Waywiser Press, 2002) stands out in my mind.

[Fred Longworth]

The Art of the Lathe is indeed a fine collection. About four years ago, I gave a seminar in Hood River, Oregon. I didn't feel particularly social, outside my presentation responsibilities, and so mostly stayed in my hotel room for two days. My excellent companion was the aforementioned Fairchild volume, which I had just acquired.

I am generally not a fan of long poems, however, Fairchild's opening piece "Beauty" was utterly gripping. It is written much as Phillip Levine's work is written, in extended blocks of unstanzaed lines. As with the work of Levine, no stanzas are needed to give the eye a rest, or to pace and space the poem in the absence of other structural divisions.

Fred

[Kathy Gay]

Hello Clive,

Your critiques are amazing to me. I knew it was important to make each word count, but that thought has really been driven home after watching you put these poems under your microscope.

Thank you for taking the time to do this for us.

With much respect and appreciation,

Kathy

[Tim Murphy]

Kathy, I couldn't agree more. I think it's a fine thing that Clive's exhaustive scrutiny is being brought to bear on some of our free verses, and I suspect all of us can profit just as much from these analyses as will the poets fortunate enough to be the subjects of examination.

[VictoriaGaile]

I am particularly taken by Clive's "Vamp until ready" comment, and plan to go look over my own work with as harsh an eye to the beginnings as I'd already learned to apply to the endings.

It's painful to contemplate cutting the beginning of *this* poem, because the "pipes and organs" image was so striking. (In my head, this poem is filed as "Still Life? Oh yes, the pipes and organs one". ) But I find I must agree that cutting them appears to give the poem more cohesion.

I interpreted "beating with his / spanner on the bonnet" as the fellow emphasizing a point or two as he spoke, the way I might slap my hand onto the tabletop. Another, perhaps more likely interpretation would link the beating of the heart (muscle) with the rhythmic, vital use of the spanner, but if so, some clarification would help.

[Fred Longworth]

I will not pretend to offer a critique with the depth and incisiveness of Clive's.

That said, I do notice a theme running through the poem which, on first reading, I only marginally observed.

Still Life

They switched off all his pipes and organs
five minutes ago while I was getting coffee.
<u>I feel like I've missed the bus.</u>
His stillness draws the room towards him.
He looks like a piece of art in canvas
stretched across a curving frame,
<u>laid out like he has a purpose.</u>
Roughness sculpted into his builder's palms,
fingers bent at just the angle
to look blunt and useful.

<u>He used to push his thumbs into bits of enginesM</u>
and cheerfully talk me through their working parts.
All his slots and sprockets oil smooth,
muscles and sockets, beating with his
spanner on the bonnet.
I turned his wrist
until a tendon popped
and then I dropped it.
<u>He lay there loose,
like unfinished business</u>.

I observe a theme of purposiveness vs. non-purposiveness. To my eye, this is revealed most clearly through the underlined lines -- though the poem-as-a-whole and its slightly oxymoronic title align around this well.

In the way that the poem coheres around this theme, as it moves from the present, into the past and back again, and as it twice enters the secondary theme of machines (life-support and then engines) without detracting from the purposiveness/non-purposiveness dimension, I consider the poem to be a success.

Regards,

Fred

[Al Ferber]

RA,
I agree with Fred. This poem succeeds for me for those reasons and for many reasons that others have found fault. From the time I first read this I got a very clear sense of what was being done and appreciated the path you were taking to accomplish your goal. Got to be a steed of an unusual hue to get musical instruments out of pipes and organs in this context. The feeling of a working man's life being stolen (by death) and the deterioration of the vitality comes across like chisled stone. I enjoyed this from title to finish then. Still do. No nits.

Al

Still Life

They switched off all his pipes and organs
five minutes ago while I was getting coffee.
I feel like I've missed the bus.
His stillness draws the room towards him.
He looks like a piece of art in canvas
stretched across a curving frame,
laid out like he has a purpose.
Roughness sculpted into his builder's palms,
fingers bent at just the angle
to look blunt and useful.

He used to push his thumbs into bits of engines
and cheerfully talk me through their working parts.
All his slots and sprockets oil smooth,
muscles and sockets, beating with his
spanner on the bonnet.
I turned his wrist
until a tendon popped
and then I dropped it.
He lay there loose,
like unfinished business.

R A Lorens