Bob,

Must grab this minute to explore "specificity" of place. No strong opinions
on this myself but am keen to know your position. Who knows, you might give
me a new perspective on this issue -  at any rate don't take this as hostile
(as black and white e-mail can often seem!). I don't understand how knowing
where the place is helps the reader. Let's put aside the problem of
composite landscapes. Let's put aside those poems of places whose main
object is description. Let's assume that this poem (for the sake of
argument) is an extended metaphor and let's assume that its about the taking
of risks to achieve distant things in life (not pro or anti). How would it
help the reader if I said that it was the walk towards Lochenkit loch as you
proceed in a Northerly direction from the B777 road (or whatever)? If the
reader had been there it might help them to picture that place but how would
that make the metaphor more vivid? Would it not distract from the metaphor
with the memory of accidental details? Or supposing the reader hadn't.
Supposing the reader was from Bundaberg, how would it help them if I said
that it was the walk towards Lochenkit in a Northerly.....etc? The imagery
in the poem is not difficult and the reader does not need to know much IMO.
It is a walk through a beguiling but hazardous landscape to a beautiful
place. Can they not image (sic) into the poem their own walk, one that they
loved from last week or last year? Isn't it often the case that we use our
own experience to identify with the different but similar experience of
others? This is not to say that I would never put names and places in, but I
would have to feel that the reader would understand more as a result. (e.g.
the poem that I wrote about the economic conditions in Shanghai prior to the
collapse at the end of the 90's needs details to put the poem into context
and perhaps I failed to do that enough). I've said what I've got time to
say. Must repeat that this is a friendly, inquisitive, hopefully receptive
probing (rather than confrontation) of your position and don't take it
seriously or feel that you have to respond. As I said it is quite possible
that my position on this issue will change as a result of hearing other
views.

Thanks for the crit and keep it coming,

BW,
Colin


----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Cooper" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2003 1:47 PM
Subject: Re: newsub/walk


> Hi Colin,
> I both really like this poem (what it's about and where it's set, and what
> it's doing...) and, at the same time, I'm not so happy with this poem.
> Maybe it's because I know the person is possible on their own, or with one
> other person, and I'm therefore wondering "who on earth's he talking to
like
> this?" Is it me, am I there too? (If I were walking along with a guy who
> talked in this tone of voice I'd be worried... more than Sammy Coleridge
was
> with Willie Wordsworth when they went wandering up the fells!) So, I hope,
> if I were there, the poet wasn't talking to me like that! (or to anyone
else
> who may be there!).
> OK, I know he's talking to (ahem) the reader who's got to assume they're
> there too (crouching along just out of shot like the man with the
microphone
> when they're shooting the scene for the TV). But, if I'm supposed to be
> there, I'd like to be talked to in a more friendly fashion (more chatty?)
> and not told things that almost sound like cliches: the sound of the
curlew,
> the beckoning loch, the lapping water - make the phrases sound interesting
> to someone you're talking to as if they're there! (I can get along with
the
> ghostliness of a stationary heron, but do reeds haunt too? Amazing notion!
> Or is haunt being used in a less specific, more birdwatchery-phrasery,
> sense).
> I'm also wondering if the piece could be more specific about place? (But I
> do know of people who've wandered landscapes with [more classically
> famous]poems and then criticsised, afterwards, the geographical
> innaccuracies (aah, anoraks every one em!). But where are we? A name of a
> place, somewhere, may help...
> Oh, and sometimes phrases like "spoil of mines" "crystals of quartz"
"grass
> of last year" sound OK with the "of" in the middle but sometimes last
year's
> grass, quartz crystals, sounds far easier to accept.
> Lot of criticsisms here, but given to a poem that's worth them. It's
canny!
> Bob
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >From: Colin dewar <[log in to unmask]>
> >Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
> >To: [log in to unmask]
> >Subject: newsub/walk
> >Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 20:03:53 +0100
> >
> >The track
> >
> >
> >Have we gone far enough on our walk?
> >Shall we sit on a bank of grass
> >and gaze to the beckoning loch?
> >Beware of the storm that blows from the North,
> >how gathers the blindness of night,
> >for lost on the moors is many a life.
> >
> >The track has done well so far.
> >It is made from the spoil of mines,
> >and meanders through hills
> >with crystals of quartz, of iron pyrites
> >and pale copper blue
> >that shine from its back.
> >In our coats we gather such lesser jewels.
> >
> >Do you think we can make it to the lapping water,
> >the haunt of heron and reeds
> >to dip our hands in ambered shallows,
> >to listen to the curlew's lonesome cry?
> >Or shall we rest for a while with the grass of last year,
> >go home with our pockets of quartz and fool's gold?
> >
> >___________________________________________
> >
> >
> >Colin
> >
> >
> >
> >iron pyrites = fool's gold
>
>
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