Bob,
Thanks for taking the time to read my poems and to criticise them.
I'm bowled over. You are a prodigious and thoughtful critic of people's
poetry. No doubt you are right about the length and complexity, but can I
suggest along the way that those poems were not mainly about beaches,
islands and buildings etc ? Pretend it mattered. I meant them as
metaphysical arguments, with the images taking the place of propositions in
a rational argument. In their own way they left a lot to the reader.
Why bother? In part it was a reaction to the modern poetry I read at
the time, but there were earlier influences. Take TS Elliot and co. At best
they wrote long symbolic poems and at worst stupidly obscure ones. They had
few tactile qualities (hence little likelihood of feeling what the poem was
about). Take WC Williams and co. At best they left clear impressions of
things in the world and at worst poetry that was trivial and evasive. Take a
good example of a symbolic poem: In Praise of Limestone, by WH Auden, IMHO
thought of as a descendant of Elliot. Auden is ten times the poet I will
ever be and this is one of his best poems. It's not about Limestone (not
primarily). What purpose does the Limestone serve, if any? It introduces
very few tactile qualities to the poem. So it is hard to feel the feel the
ideas. The poem risks being a two dimensional analogy or it risks being a
prosaic monologue loosely enveloped in a symbolic monologue. Been there done
that. When the idea becomes too complex for its substrate the
phenomenological field of the poem collapses. But that's the very place to
get help from WC Williams and his descendants. They excel in tactile poems.
If ideas can be made tactile then they can be "understood" better than by
any other means. "We do not know things until we feel them in our pulses" or
our skins or eyes. We live through our bodies don't we? I am flattered that
in some of my poems it seems like it is a real person on a real beach,
island or building (however implausibly and with whatever deficiencies or
excesses in my technique). I hoped that it would.
Don't know that this lets me off the hook though. Should I give my
poems the chain saw test? Probably I should and no doubt they would benefit
in the end, perms and all. I do sometimes write short poems, you'll be glad
to hear.
Re distorts dead matter to electronic presence etc:
The distortion is in believing the world to be what it is not, a
dangerous delusion in this case. The ant's raft is in comparison to the
Titanic ship, alluded to earlier which started to suffer a similar fate even
before people were aware of it. A bulldozer is what I imagined would
decisively threaten a group of ants on a floating leaf, but perhaps this is
weak, at least symbolically weak. Could be different and better I guess. As
always.
Thanks for the crit and keep it coming.
Colin
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Cooper [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2002 6:48 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: newsub(building)
>
> Hi Colin,
> I haven't read a wind poem for ages!
> I sense the language is a tad too metaphorical at times (so, so many
> comparisons are made...) and, altho I like the leaps metaphors create in
> poems, I wonder if all the imagary you've got is weighing the poem down...
> Some seem wacky (ants & buldozers!) and some seem exciting (the moon in a
> bowling alley).
> I mean I'm dizzy in trying to get to grips with:
> >distorts dead matter to electronic presence
> >as though the world's elements
> >were there for our whim,
> >
> >the universe made slave
> >and not a bulldozer leaning on an ant's raft."
> (It might be that a poem that's working with three-line stanzas is often
> less giddy - I don't know...)
> I printed it out and used a felt-tip to highlight the essentials of the
> building - and then looked at all the rest - and felt not so much
> bewildered
> by the deluge of imagary as feeling I could discover such bewilderment
> with
> less.
> It's as if you've given the poem a perm too many. Give the poem a shave
> and
> a haircut, I say!
> Bob
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >From: "Dewar Colin [FVPC]" <[log in to unmask]>
> >Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
> >To: [log in to unmask]
> >Subject: newsub(building)
> >Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 11:53:37 -0000
> >
> >At work in this building
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >This building is awash
> >in an autumn wind
> >where branches curl like waves
> >
> >about to fall and surge up,
> >where kaleidoscope clouds
> >pummel the air with their turning
> >
> >where the moon thunders by in its bowling alley,
> >where meteors like missiles
> >zip invisibly in near misses
> >
> >while the dark centre of the galaxy,
> >the ghost hole that crushes and sucks in all that approaches
> >goes on sucking and crushing like a cosmic gullet.
> >
> >Soon this craft will be sunk by time in a stone ocean.
> >Bricks slip from its side, slates loosen.
> >Rain trickles in from a window pane
> >
> >or drips through the ceiling to a plastic pan.
> >It is being worn by the same forces
> >that wedge rocks apart and level mountains
> >
> >but in its sheltering hollow
> >we know none of this,
> >walk obliviously in corridors,
> >
> >labyrinthine as a rabbit's warren,
> >past illuminated pastel walls
> >as bland and featureless as marzipan.
> >
> >They offer us no record of time.
> >The floor of slotted nylon tiles
> >is firm on its boards,
> >
> >shows no sign of lifting in a sailor's wake
> >nor what abyssal currents bear us on.
> >We may not love but we live here.
> >
> >Our roles are given and we need them to know each other,
> >would be lost if we met elsewhere
> >but here we play our part in a process,
> >
> >co-operate like ants,
> >enact titanic ritual to the end.
> >Even as this vessel slowly sinks
> >
> >its warmth is steady in winter,
> >as homeostatic as the human form,
> >a second skin to insulate from all that would terrify and subdue.
> >
> >The waters of the world have not broached its boilers yet.
> >The fluorescent tubes give constant light.
> >We cannot even see the moon
> >
> >until we enter an unlit room
> >and that moon is kind,
> >when watched outside its freezing flight.
> >
> >We cannot feel the wind.
> >So why should we know that this refuge is fleeting
> >as a cave of branches in a battered wood?
> >
> >Cups and plumbing pipe tamed water to our lips,
> >assist customs that we spin out
> >as if endowed with all the time in the world.
> >
> >Cupboards hoard cassettes faithfully in our voice
> >until we come back.
> >E-mail lassos connections in absence,
> >
> >distorts dead matter to electronic presence
> >as though the world's elements
> >were there for our whim,
> >
> >the universe made slave
> >and not a bulldozer leaning on an ant's raft.
> >Right to the end of the day
> >
> >it maintains us in this limbo
> >that is and is not life,
> >familiar as the human face,
> >
> >where we stare at each other bewildered,
> >comforted by substance only,
> >yet knowing exactly what to say.
> >
> >
> >_______________________________
>
>
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