Hello Philip,
Thanks for your feedback on this one. Glad you enjoyed it.
Best wishes, Mike
--- Alkuperäinen viesti ---
Hi Mike, I've been off on my own poetry jag recently and sadly neglecting
THE WORKS, but this has been a lovely poem to come to. It worked for me
through circus imagery. I'm probably off-beam, but that's how it worked and
very strongly for me, the flames, the balancing, the "stage", the fan of
feathers, the beautiful girl, the colours. I guess we need an "in" to a
culture, and this was mine.
>From: Mike Horwood <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: New sub: Self-Portrait - Bob
>Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 09:08:38 +0200
>
>Hi Bob,
> Thanks for your comments and suggestions on this one. There´s been
>a great deal of concensus in the feedback I´ve had and based on it I think
>I´m going to rewrite the second stanza completely - I just don´t know how
>yet! I especially like your suggestion of using Flaubert´s 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
>Flaubert´s 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
> >Flaubert´s comment about his heroine.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >Mike
>
>
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