Ally wrote:
>I think Peter Howard's poetry group have over-active
>minds. I too thought it was "a fairly innocent
>autobiographical poem about wandering around a town
>with not much to do" and even if I'd seen it without
>the last verse I wouldn't have thought otherwise. If
>you read a threat into the man's idle musings I think
>you must be desperately "looking for meaning" where it
>wasn't meant to be.
Which caused me give Peter's poem another, I may say deserved look. And
I find myself bridling a little at the "for god's sake, be sensible" air
- surely poems admit the other, idling up through the synpases, and often
what is found there is unexpected, and, sometimes, violent. I can't see
how it stretches the poem to think that it is concerned with the
predatory: he's "hunting", with feet "killing" him, and as Chris said,
even the masking tape (and for me the "fixings and hooks" at Do-It-All -
which itself suggests the loosing of normal inhibitions) he finds (what?
not goldfish?) tarantulas. All idling about under its apparently
unexceptionable surface.
It's a beautiful evening. I'm hunting down the surreal,
and my feet are killing me. I turn a corner at Do-It-All,
past the masking tape, into an aisle of wall fixings and hooks.
There's a sign: Reptiles/Spiders. I've found what I'm after.
I don't think Peter needs his head read. And yes, it's much better with
the final verse gone.
And while I'm in discursive mode, may I say how much I enjoyed Drew
Milne's poems - perhaps a rather _cold_ brilliance?
Best
Alison
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