Hi Arthur,
I guess sometimes with a poem, as it gets written and revised, a form is 
imposed or a form emerges. Free-form poems sort of create their own shapes 
whereas other poems fit into patterns and shapes that are already known. I 
get the impression that this is a poem that’s shaping itself – and I can see 
a progression of thoughts/feelings/perceptions that are following each other 
through to the end. But there seems to be an as yet unresolved tussle 
between two (loose) forms.
One is a kind of Gerald Manley Hopkins sprung rhythm line and the other is 
an Anglo-Saxon line of two connecting but separate alliterative parts that 
echo each other. The blend of classical music and jazz, I guess, depends of 
the composer’s craft, the performers skill, and the listener’s ear. I’m 
sometimes finding, with this poem, that my eyes, my mouth, and my ears get 
confused. Some phrases seem to windhover, other bits seem to work with a 
double-whammy.
I’ll show my bias a little and say I think the two part line parts of this 
poem work more easily than the short lines or the longer phrasings (the 
short lines seem to make me want to rush into the next line...). The 
Anglo-Saxon poets had a useful template to work with – dramatic passages and 
reflective asides could both be used as their poems progressed – and 
sometimes phrases that were saying almost the same things could sit easily 
alongside each other. I’m wondering, therefore, if it might be interesting 
to play a little so each line becomes a line of two (almost equal) halves…
I guess such reformatting might mean a phrase or two becomes redundant – or 
it might throw up a blank half-line where another phrase is needed – but I 
feel it might help draw out of the piece a shape or pattern that’s almost 
there. (& when I'm talking about a half-line I'm not just thinking of where 
the commas are, I'm thinking of where the pauses are - they needn't be in 
the same places...)
Other people have highlighted phrases that may be over effulgent, and you 
yourself have said there's bits that you're reconsidering, so I'm just 
suggesting an over-all pattern the poem might use.
Bob







>From: arthur seeley <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New Sub: Rivock
>Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2003 21:20:18 +0100
>
>Rivock Edge looms over Keighley, my hometown. It is the edge of Rombald’s
>Moor which butts onto Keighley Moor and Ilkley Moor. There are some 250 cup
>and ring marked stones in the area, together with various stone circles,
>cairns and barrows. Some less than half a mile from my home.
>The purpose of the markings has not really been explained or understood.
>They mostly date from the Bronze Age when the moors were forests.
>
>Rivock.
>
>End of the name,
>the consonantal voiceless velar stop
>hard as an axe in wet oak,
>or a clout on chert, flint, bronze
>as it cut a cup, etched its enveloping ring
>into gritstone edge, standing stone, grim henge,
>outcrops of boulder, or earth-sunk rock,
>deep in the bosks of alder, brakes of hazel,
>groves of shade and leaf-light,
>all hacked and hewn,
>charred or shaped to use,
>the small gods’ realms ransacked,
>melted away.
>Beyond the scarp, lost woodlands
>melted away
>into bog, peat, slop, bracken fronds,
>gorse, ling, cotton grasses,
>and sheep-cropped putting-green swatches of lawn.
>
>Cup and ring stones stand and stay,
>scattered over the moorland’s miles,
>indissoluble, splashed with lichen,
>polysemous  petroglyphs.
>
>Patient peck aligned the stars
>as bear and bison, wolf and stag,
>peacock and antelope, perhaps;
>
>or selves placed in the knit of kith and clan
>the knots of kin defined the tabooed nots of kin,
>that might mar the stock;
>
>or buried in piled cairns and barrows
>to be released from the womblith;
>life loosed by the opening of cunts
>cut into the laps of earth’s heart;
>.
>or votive back bent and intent
>whose calloused fingers traced the glyphs of a first art;
>mark-making, calling to order,
>adoration, atonement  and appeasement
>of a lesser god, an older god,
>tabulated here, carved into time.
>
>I came upon one rock
>looming, wet and grey, out of  the mist,
>arching out of the sodden moor,
>hump-backed, bright with running rain,
>its gallery of pocks and grooves,
>ladders and serpents, shining in harsh relief,
>set strange in the diffuse wet silver light
>of a day lost to low cloud.
>
>Rain pattered on my hood, a sharp tattoo.
>I spread my arms, hands palm-down,
>fingers spread and dipped my shoulder to a dance;
>spun, turn on turn, unravelled ages;
>found and followed the patterns of the stars
>printed on a forest floor;
>muttered my first guttural chorus
>to that paddled strophe.


_________________________________________________________________
On the move? Get Hotmail on your mobile phone http://www.msn.co.uk/mobile