Hi Rebecca,
some works on the list are good, some are excellent. I usually do not write
back to the ones I do not like, why should I, unless written by someone who
is dear to me, but in that case a b/c is preferable. Or I do not comment if
many people have already talked of the poem in question, and my words could
be redundant, unless the poem is extremely good, then I want to let that
person know that I also appreciate his/her writing. While if I have to
review a movie I do not like, there I do write all what I think, but I am
paid for it (a misery) and I feel it is my duty. Poetryetc. is a pleasure
(sometimes), and I therefore feel free to comment as I wish, and drop the
task of having to fight my ideas through if I do not agree with what was
written, which happens very seldom.
What I praise in Jon Corelis is the oneiric state he is able to reach, and I
liked the "vanished dews" and also the brevity of loving words, which hide
some naive aliveness and/or intensity of feeling. I also like "vipers", I
used to walk in the woods on my own, very long lonely walks, and if you do
not attack or step on them they shy away, yes, you have to be careful, one
of the main rules is to stop chatting while walking, to pay attention to the
surrounding world, because it is not your place, but someone else's.
Moreover you have to wear good shoes, long trousers, and if you walk out of
the path, you have to use a stick and make sure there are no snakes in the
bushes. That's the way it is. I have a high respect for adders, and in our
mountains, since people killed all the wild birds, vipers are disappearing,
with the inevitable development of rats and mice. Our green party (this is a
nightmare....) some years ago rented a helicopter and let small vipers in
plastic bags fall on the wilder parts of the valleys, when people ventured
in the woods, they found suffocated animals hanging from the trees still in
their bags... this is one of the many reasons why I do not join any parties.
In my number 10 I do write of vipers, in Italian they are female, while the
serpent is male. In my work the viper symbolizes summer heat with burning
rocks, in cold regions, and for people who have a low pressure, as I do, the
warmth of summer is a blessing.
Still foxy teeth gives me the idea of a cunning lady, but I do understand
what you mean, that it upsets the romantic trend of the poem. Whatever, I do
not like "smarties".
Well all for the best in this wonderful world, and care, anny
From: "seiferle" <[log in to unmask]>
> Well, I don't know, I wonder if it is possible to say a critical word
here. I've noted that generally the response to poems on poetryetc is
> either silence or else a favorable pat on the back with perhaps a small
suggestion for change. But I question this poem. Surely it is full of that
worn-out language that made Pound and the Modernists necessary in the first
place, by which I mean those hand-me-downs of Tennyson et al
> "an ember of green," "vanished dews," "liquor distilled," "love's brief
words." All somewhat expected. For instance can dew be anything other than
what vanishes? is liquor ever other than distilled, and, well, while love
might have long words, one might wonder then if it were love. The way each
noun has its chaperone. So those "tiny fox teeth" surprise because they are
fresh and unexpected. So my interest picked up, only to run aground on
(pardon the mixed metaphors, it's contagious)"I wonder if the milk of her
breasts is the milk of adders." This seems to me ridiculous. Not to say that
I don't know about lactation and that breasts are sometimes full of milk but
why should they be in this encounter and, really, to wonder if it's the milk
of adders. This all seems that predictable male romanticism in which the
feminine is exalted and dreaded. On the other hand, it reminded me of story
about how bad English majors are because you'll have two guys in underwear
sitting around ta!
> lking about the possibility of canning and marketing breast milk. Maternal
attachment and vipers! Well, not to cause offense, and I have tried at least
to be funny in these remarks but had to say something,
>
> Best,
>
> Rebecca
>
> Rebecca Seiferle
> www.thedrunkenboat.com
>
>
> The lady
> >
> >
> > The lady's eyes are an ember of green. Would she take
> > any comfort remembering vanished dews? Would she care
> > for a draught of this liquor distilled from cobweb and moon?
> > Will she bite off love's brief words with her tiny fox teeth?
> > Is she parched for the skeletal clatter of lunar rain?
> > I wonder if she feels I should decipher
> > the angular pitch of the chamber where she dreams
> > of a house with many faces like a crystal. Shall we review
> > the erotics of the knife's edge? the network
> > of eternity that howls in the nerves? the memoirs
> > of a pool rippled by a slain magnolia at midnight?
> >
> > Perhaps she will recall the ghosts
> > that crackled in her hair when she shattered the bowl of
dawn,
> > the sinews of wild colts that sang on the mountain in the
dawn,
> > the lone hyacinth that crumbled under her hand
> > in the mist of dawn.
> >
> > I wonder if the milk of her breasts is the milk of adders,
> > or if the flint of her ecstasy chips
> > the cherried enamel from the basin of her smoldering trance.
> >
> > Or perhaps she'd prefer to yield
> > the meteor of her exhaustion to the black sky of night.
> >
> >
> >
> > ==================================================
> >
> > Jon Corelis [log in to unmask]
> > http://www.geocities.com/joncpoetics
> >
|