I notice lately others advising you to 'cut' a little. I do not always agree
with them, Colin. This poem though is potentially a cracker but I do feel it
is in a draft state waiting to mature into its selfhood.
I somehow do not feel this is entirely about the story that is superficially
being told, there is something else going on. I will come to that in a
moment.
'Robinson's Sabbatical 'is third person and then the whole poem is first
person. That is disconcerting to start with. Unless it is a told story and
then speech marks would help, with some interjections from yourself. I have
made some comments in the text.
To get back to what this is probably about. The story is about a man who
takes a wrong turn one day and arrives in a dilapidated, dirty, threatening
part of town. One feels the menace and the feeling of being
threatened.Almost there is a Dantesque descent into Hell. The two references
to dreaming makes one wonder if it is in truth a dream. The invocation
'Heaven knows' in the last strophe beckons up the 'Inferno' again. I am
happy to read this level into it. Yesterday I was driving with my brother
around a mesh of streets we only half understood and finished up reversing
out of a dead end. Doors were inched open and curtains twitched. Who was
being menaced us or them?? One last question lingers, Colin. Just who the
hell is Robinson?? Arthur
----- Original Message -----
From: "Colin dewar" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 8:12 PM
Subject: newsub/Sabbatical


> Robinson's Sabbatical
>
>
> I was too confident
> driving that route to work, day after day.
> I took for granted
> the vast distances that armies marched in a month( I do not say this
should not be there but the mind stops here and asks what armies? marching
where?how does that affect the rest of the poem?)
> that I passed with my foot on the pedal
> so carelessly it seemed I dreamt my way
> along the road.
>
> I wasn't paying attention.
> I got distracted
> by a crow that flew straight overhead
> and in that direction
> turned off at the roundabout
> when I shouldn't have,
> and it's not an ordinary day anymore.
> It's not as calming as things are
> when they're dead familiar.( dead is a colloquialism that sits here
uneasily, unless it is a deliberate hint at the true destination of the
driver)
>
> I had forgotten what hazards I roared past,
> much faster to rabbit and robin
> than it seemed to me
> dreaming at the wheel.
> I'd become accustomed to the hedgerows
> with stiff twigs aligned in one direction only,
> see now what I'd missed before,
> the upturned thorns,
> mud caked on the heifer's haunch
> and the ruts on the track
> to the knacker's yard.
>
> If I drive in a straight line( you change tense here, why?and for the rest
of the poem)
> I might get back to where I was,
> to what seems precious now
> and not be diverted and lost,
> the hot car hard behind me,
> making it impossible to stop.
>
> If I could only find my way back
> I would not feel like a lobster
> that finds the water altered ( this is a cracking image it could be better
as ' who finds the water altering.' and end the strophe there missing out
the last three lines of this strophe)
> for the first time,
> so guided in
> to a rough area by night.
>
> Some people live here all their lives,
> in houses with dark windows,
> in doorways with plastic bags,
> blank faces of children staring back,
> syringes by bridges in moonlight,
> the genitals on walls in red paint.
>
> Heaven knows how I came to be here,
> in such a state.
> I will work as a rag man, a bone man,( perhaps this should read 'I could
work here...' it ties in better with the last line)
> a banger of nails
> but I have to get back to my life.
>
>
>
> Colin