Dear Mike,
I don't recognise your name, so if you're new here, welcome and I hope
you'll be staying around.
What I felt about this piece is that it is mostly exposition and (the old
chestnut) telling, rather than showing. I feel you're told me what I should
think, so there's no room for me to form any opinions or feelings of my own-
so it's a bit like being lectured.
Also what you are saying seems all too abstract to me eg Not that this
precludes a sense of the vitality of others
and their living uniqueness...
I feel you should be making me feel that vitality and uniqueness rather than
just informing me about the qualities. As a reader, I'm not being engaged by
this poem, I'm afraid.
Kind regards,
grasshopper
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Horwood" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, October 28, 2002 10:06 AM
Subject: New sub. That Imperfect Contact
That Imperfect Contact
It isnīt a question of having not lived in vain.
Itīs more a distrust of `saints and sinnersī histories
with forward-looking heroes and reactionary tyrants
and journeys into the sunset of a better future.
Not that this precludes a sense of the vitality of others
and their living uniqueness, only that interpretation
must sound the drumbeat of relativity and doubt
about the judgements we betray ourselves into.
And yet beyond ambition and the pride of possession,
after the sleepless doubts before dawn and the funeral meats,
beyond all this, the need for a sense of belonging
that can only be conferred by another being.
But memory and the distances implied by observation
carry us beyond the personal to a surprising recognition.
It isnīt a question of having not lived in vain.
Itīs a question of that imperfect contact by which we find ourselves.
|
