Hi Bob,
Thanks for your comments and suggestions on this one. Thereīs been a great deal of concensus in the feedback Iīve had and based on it I think Iīm going to rewrite the second stanza completely - I just donīt know how yet! I especially like your suggestion of using Flaubertīs comment as a subtitle and will probably incorporate that in the rewrite.
Best wishes, Mike
--- Alkuperäinen viesti ---
Hi Mike,
Try as I might I can't help but read the first few lines as cut-up prose...
It sounds too much like an explanation/introduction for me.
The line beginning "She sits..." and then what follows seems to sound like a
poem!
I enjoy it from there!
But then he final stanza is strange on my ear... it's less like prose than
how it starts (but it could be written without being in short lines, it
sounds more like the poet's comment than it sounds like the poet's poem).
But that might just be because of the way the stanza ends...
For me the words:
"whose portrait enacts
Flaubertīs comment about his heroine."
may be saying something worth saying, but - to me - it feels wooden, it
doesn't flow, it doesn't keep with the life you've woven into the phrases in
the previous descriptive bits of the poem. I sort of feel the gently flowing
descriptive phrases create a rhythm - and I feel I'd like that soft quality
to belong to how it starts and ends as well. (It might be that it's the word
"us" in the last stanza that might give a clue to re-phrasing - because
you've turned from the painter to the picture, to us, and then to the
writer... that's quite a few shifts in where we're looking and reading)
I've also read the later comments about Flaubert (which helped me a great
deal because I was, for all the world, trying to discover a
person-to-person, did they meet and chat, an it-happened-kind-of incident,
between Gauguin & Flaubert! I didn't want the poet to intrude, I wanted to
poem to continue as it had been going on!). If you want us to reflect on the
actual quote it may be helpful to cite Madame Boviary (and point us to
Flaubert's comment - because it's only that we need to consider) - or
include the quote beneath the title of your poem... whaddya think?
Bob
>From: Mike Horwood <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New sub: Self-Portrait
>Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 14:49:54 +0200
>
>Self-Portrait
>
>(Girl with a fan, 1902)
>
>
>Gauguin painted several self-portraits
>but the least known depicts
>a Maori girl with a fan of feathers
>balanced on her thigh.
>She sits on a French carved wood chair
>awkwardly, as if sitting were a balancing trick,
>leaning her body to the left,
>supporting her weight on her left arm,
>gazing beyond an off-stage fire that lights her face
>and the copper in her hair;
>a Maori girl with a classical beauty
>and a white Tahitian skirt, wound and tucked.
>Only the support of her left hand
>prevents her sliding off the canvas,
>a departure that may have its appeal
>to judge by the look of melancholy
>on her finely balanced features.
>
>Gauguin knew what she was seeing
>for he had seen it himself.
>The gap between us and the girl,
>between her and Arcadia,
>between Polynesia and France
>is in the eye of a girl whose portrait enacts
>Flaubertīs comment about his heroine.
>
>
>
>
>Mike
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