>From: Arthur <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: new sub: The Fireworks Code
>Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2002 10:33:47 -0000
>
>
>The Fireworks Code.
>
>
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>A bubble of laughter
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>my ear remembered.
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>I turned
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>and recalled,
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>in the line of her cheek
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>and chin,
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>how I had assailed her once
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>on castle walls
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>while the world passed below;
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>held her hand beside the Avon;
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>moments in a cool arbor.
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>
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>Thought to speak,
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>thought again,
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>drank my coffee quickly
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>and left,
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>letting the crowd dissolve me.
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>
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>Stand well back
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>and NEVER return to a firework
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>after it has been lit,
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>it could explode in your face.
>
Hi Arthur,
I’ve enjoyed reading yr poem but I’m thinking that poems need some coherence
(or need to show why they don’t cohere). I’m saying that because I can
easily link the 1st and 2nd stanzas (tho I do wonder if you’re drinking
coffee beside the Avon or on some later occasion) but I then have to really
leap (change my way of thinking and feeling) to then take on the 3rd stanza.
At first I guessed the 3rd stanza’s a comment on what you were
doing/thinking/feeling when you finished yr coffee and were walking away...
But it could also be what you were thinking when you heard the bubble of
laughter... (But if the laughter is heard in the present moment – and if it
gets changed so it’s written in the present tense - then is the Firework
Code also for the present moment?)
If it’s when you’re drinking yr coffee or even if it’s while you’re walking
away – being dissolved in the crowd (lovely! – and my first thought) then
I’m coming across a new stanza and a sentence that says you must stand still
and watch what happens... (even tho you’re moving away).
I guess it’s also possibly to do with how everything’s in the past tense –
because the poem is recalling a number of past events (and then the last
stanza’s an instruction for the present moment about the dangers that could
happen in a future!).
The last stanza, though, is such a powerful metaphor... and I really want to
feel at ease with how, as a poem, it all works.
Gosh, I guess I'm making it all sound so complicated!
Bob
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