Hi,
It's been busy of late and I haven't had chance to really get back to my own
poem - cos I've been reading everyone elses! But thanks for all the
comments! They’re helpful and I’m considering all the suggestions…
I feel, now, the start, and the end, may be too clumsy. As you pointed out,
Mike, the first line – and the second – (and particularly the phrase “the
bulk of the man”) may not work to easily for a reader. (I want to establish
the rhythm, but maybe this isn't yet OK).
And, Colin, I consciously chose not to include commas in the last line
(thinking a reader could make sense of where to pause without them being
included). Perhaps it’s just that I’ve noticed quite a few American
academics in essays recently written about poetry have omitted them (but
they were writing essays! And they were thinking of a US readership! I think
I’ll check out a few of each of their poems before I get to the fine art of
further revision…).
I was trying, Trish, to let the rhythm of each line dominate the poem
(thanks for noticing that). Using lots of monosyllabic words and fairly long
lines and using a list in the second stanza – that plays with how the reader
reads… The train trundles ever so slowly up the coastline so what you say
about the sea, Trish, intrigues me. (Maybe you know the interminability of
the journey?).
And, perhaps, Colin, the line you mention about the orchestra isn’t right –
I wanted that image to last far longer than the previous one (and they’d all
increased in length!). Ha, I’ve got four… maybe I ought to stay with the
rule of three.
And thanks Arthur, Sue, and Ann for your readerly comments too. I often
wonder, Ann, how many mobile phone users on trains really appreciate how
many luxuriant daydreams they disturb?
Now, when I get on the train, the suns well in the sky and, when I get home,
it’s still got a while before it slips out of the day. And you wonder, Mike,
what the guy might say if he’s interrupted in his over loud ruminations! And
James wonders much the same. (And Frank, too, is left thinking about the
fate of a Sunderland supporter…) Well, with this season’s performance I
doubt if they’ll have anything but woeful comments to make for at least
another season and a half! Such interruption are so unBritish aren't they?
That’s a good thought to leave the poem with!
Bob
>From: Bob Cooper <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Before Sunrise, I Consider...
>Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 12:10:51 +0000
>
>Before Sunrise, I Consider When Waking
>
>that today on the 7-22 from Gypsy Lane to Newcastle
>I’m going to sit and listen and hear the bulk of the man
>who gets on at Hartlepool, whose breathing’s loud
>as everything he says, whose laugh’s as heavy
>as the scuffed NIKE sports bag he always unzips
>while he coughs and rummages for the flask of tea -
>where each cup’s so sweet, so strong, we all can smell it -
>and his bacon butties, always well wrapped in silver foil
>in his tupperware container with the loudest of lids,
>and his chewed up comments about Sunderland’s midfield,
>the woeful - and he always repeats the word, woeful – defence,
>
>but I won’t let him talk about that. No, I’ll interrupt, ask
>about things we may share, an understanding of cats
>or garden birds, or the smell of sleeping children, and how
>we rarely listen to the way silence can fill us with wonders
>that belong to looking at paintings, or hearing music
>as it replaces the sight of an orchestra in our heads,
>and how at night, so many miles apart, we might stand
>at some open back door gazing at nothing
>but clouds as they hurry overhead, with the empty breeze
>maybe seeping through the fence, and then shapes
>half-seeable in the darkness that seem like us to belong.
>
>Bob Cooper
>
>
>
>
>
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