Liz:
> Dave - thanks for the poem.
>
> I have read it through several times with pleasure.
>
> specially like the first stanza - and _most_ specially the line-break
between
> stanzas one and two (the heroes/were blue beaten and fell like ice)
>
> I find I lose it a bit in the second stanza - the subject (the statues),
seem
> to misplace their object. (Is that the point!). Is it a case of
> punctuation, a redundant 'that' (the statues that loomed) or an obtuse
reader?
>
> The whole gives me a mesh of quiet anger and grief that I find very
apposite
> to these times
>
Thanks for those words, Liz.
I could be artful and say 'yes, the loss of object is the point' as in a
sense it is, but I was a little uneasy over the syntax in that passage, so
I'll mull on it. I also wonder whether I want an additional line there. The
genesis of the poem is perhaps interesting as the first three and a half
lines woke with me from sleep a few days ago - I showed them to a friend who
suggested there was something 'on' there, so I just spent a few hours
yesterday morning teasing it out.
And, yes indeed, the 'quiet' tone was exactly what I was aiming for.
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
www.paintstuff.20m.com/index.htm
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, October 26, 2001 11:22 AM
Subject: Re: An Untitled Poem
> In a message dated 10/25/01 7:16:52 GMT Daylight Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:
>
> > An illusion of sufficiency adhered
> > to the world; an impression held
> > of great battles lost on the knives
> > that blue heroes shone on waste
> > lands and night's wide. Was it that
> > an answer at last had stitched itself
> > inside? Was it that the taste
> > of days had not this time dribbled
> > away in long leakages of savour?
> > Or that ghostly weather above,
> > smokily balletic as thoughts,
> > had seeded a fresh narrative
> > into the worn yarns of dried, inland
> > sailors? The heroes
> >
> > were blue, beaten, and fell like ice.
> > The sun was singing through them.
> > Their statues, that loomed like sirens
> > above each forgetting daycallen,
> > summoners of tyres, offices, tarmac,
> > hushed and evanesced in whispers,
> > like crowds startled into people.
> > For this breath, at least,
> > the poem emerged
> >
> > from the sky's head, and the thread
> > was spun, as to itself as lilies.
> >
> > David Bircumshaw
> >
> > Leicester, England
> >
> >
> Dave - thanks for the poem.
>
> I have read it through several times with pleasure.
>
> specially like the first stanza - and _most_ specially the line-break
between
> stanzas one and two (the heros/were blue beaten and fell like ice)
>
> I find I lose it a bit in the second stanza - the subject (the statues),
seem
> to misplace their object. (Is that the point!). Is it a case of
> punctuation, a redundant 'that' (the statues that loomed) or an obtuse
reader?
>
> The whole gives me a mesh of quiet anger and grief that I find very
apposite
> to these times
>
> thanks
>
> Liz
>
> ............
>
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