Insect, I understand your problems completley
One of the reasons I avoid sonneteering is that imposes form and rhyme on
you which is difficult, not impossible difficult to counter. I find I finish
up with someone else's voice. This followed " Incongruiy" where the sonnet
was chosen as part of the " joke" but it worked so well, I thought that it
dragged over into this
I may well reconsider form or else try to improve upon it.
----- Original Message -----
From: "grasshopper" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 6:05 PM
Subject: Re: New sub: Jetsam
> Dear Arthur,
> I'm not sure what to make of this one. The archaic turn of some of the
> language, eg :'They knew no better' ,'so in the deepest bush they bent
their
> search'
> I found distanced me from the horror of the story. It could almost have
> been written tongue-in-cheek as a patiche of a Sunday school tract, -Just
> Say "No" to Unlabelled Bottles, -but that final line is surely intended as
> deeply poignant.
> So I felt my problem was inconsistency of tone in the poem.
> Kind regards
> grasshopper
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Arthur" <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 10:18 AM
> Subject: New sub: Jetsam
>
>
> > Jetsam
> >
> > With money stolen from the school they planned
> > and bought a bottle found along the shore,
> > no label, but grey-heads and common lore
> > thought it a potent whisky from Japan.
> > They knew no better but the lure was there
> > of joys denied them by the solemn church,
> > so in the deepest bush they bent their search
> > for flame-lipped kisses from that liquid fire.
> >
> > The drink was paraquat, the promised kiss
> > was pain and death. One rots in shallow scoop,
> > the other views forever with blind eyes.
> > The first will crown the village pile with his
> > stripped skull and ooze, with rain, down seaward slope,
> > the other leans to learn the sea's long sighs.
> >
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