Hi Sue,
Yeh, it feels tighter... there's plenty of space beyond the words, the
phrases, to enjoy their significances too!
It's interesting, to me, that now the poem seems distant until Grandma and
the hen get's mentioned and then it becomes far more intimate. (The phrase
"Polio was as rampant as vines" is both visual yet distant - they're seen
but they don't touch the narrator, they don't touch me!).
I guess that's what reminiscences do... get more personal as they go along.
So the chicken each saturday feels like its describing one actual chicken! I
guess what make it particular, more intimate, too, is the phrase "at
night..." because that seems to allude to ONE night - whereas if the phrase
were "at nights" or "each night" or "every night" then it feels less
particular, more general. That's subtle!
The notion of thrift being ingrained works for me, too! The word "grain"
sort of links to cornfields, to the ingrained dirt of childrens/adults
hands, and the grainy texture of old black & white photographs of farmers in
the Depression: Dorothea Langue - her Migrant Mother comes to my mind. Ah,
just one word doing so much work!
The title, too, is something I like!
Bob
>From: Sue Scalf <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: revision need your opinion
>Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 07:25:01 EDT
>
>Cocooned by Cornfields
>
>
>and a lack of breezes,
>we wiped sweat,
>used electric fans.
>
>A square of cotton tied
>to the rickety screen door
>kept flies from the house
>as they swarmed from chicken pens
>and hog pens. Grandma's spray can
>pumped the porch to life again
>after the sun went down.
>
>Three blocks from the square,
>Mrs. Partin milked her cow.
>Though the Depressed had ended,
>thrift was ingrained.
>Nothing would be the same.
>Nothing was wasted.
>
>Beauty grew in patches of zinnias,
>morning glories. Fogs rolled in
>to the rasp of jarflies, tree frogs.
>Polio was rampant as vines.
>
>Saturdays Grandma sent a white leghorn
>to a flopping death all over the yard.
>And I, faintly sick, spellbound,
>watched her remove
>gizzard, liver, multicolored guts,
>smelled the stench of burned pinfeathers,
>all forgotten at Sunday's table,
>awash in gravy and greasy fingers.
>
>At night I turned the pillow
>to sleep cool, listening to corn
>rustling like pages in an album,
>while death haunted restless dreams
>in clouds of blood and feathers.
>
>Sue Scalf
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