Yes, well like I said Carl, if you don't like it now, you shoulda seen
it in 1980

Not sure where we stand on the narrative thing - I am trying to create
an atmosphere, to make people feel what it felt like to stand on that
frosty jetty at Newhaven in 1980. I'm not really interested in telling a
story thanks. I think if you try and say that all poetry should be
narrative, you do have to junk an awful lot of what I would rather keep,
thanks (I am talking about poetry in general here, not my stuff!)

<<The "of" construction is 'concrete-of-abstract'. The idea isn't that
you must never write that way, but simply that the pattern doesn't quite
deliver an image to the reader. It can fail, at any rate, to do so. The
rose of love, the burning of hate, .... it's weak.>>

Again, I don't think you can construct a rule for ALL poetry just
because of one clumsy "of". You are right though - these days I would
probably turn it into a kenning ("goose-wings") instead of the wings of
geese.

Thanks for these comments - I was gonna say from the bottom of my heart,
but perhaps from my heart's bottom is a better construction.

Cheers again. I continue to tinker

STEVE

-----Original Message-----
From: The Pennine Poetry Works [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Carl Reimann
Sent: 14 May 2003 03:40
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: At NEWHAVEN


Hello! Your poem makes heavy use of what might be called white noise:
adjectives, participles, an awkward "of" construction in L1.

To try to grasp the marrow of the poem, here's a sample removal for the
first strophe:

... cloud
... sky's scroll ... wisps
... wings of ... geese
... marshes: our ... steps
... quays
... buildings ...
We ... town ... creek ...
... yachts.

That's the concrete essence of the poem. The huge bulk of S1, then, is
fluffy stuff. The problem with all those adjectives and participles and
such is not that they break some rule of poetry, but that they aren't a
narrative flow for the reader to latch on to. What the reader must do,
here, is try to keep all the descriptions straight. I recommend more
narrative flow and less noise.

The "of" construction is 'concrete-of-abstract'. The idea isn't that you
must never write that way, but simply that the pattern doesn't quite
deliver an image to the reader. It can fail, at any rate, to do so. The
rose of love, the burning of hate, .... it's weak.

Carl
=================

AT NEWHAVEN

Breaking apart, layered cirrus hexagrams of cloud
Frosted pale blue sky's scroll with feathered wisps
Stirred by the down-beating wings of rising geese
From the frost-crisped marshes: our echoing steps
Resounded, hollow on deserted quays
Empty buildings "Sealink" "Customs", all locked:
We left the straggling town behind, its creek, the Salt-streaked,
laid-up, winter-rusted yachts. ...