Hi James,
          Thanks for your comments. The start seems to be bothering others as well so I must reconsider that. Glad you liked the rest.


Best wishes,   Mike




--- Alkuperäinen viesti ---
Hi Mike,

I felt that after a rocky beginning that this poem took off and you rounded 
up the cliche reference quite nicely. There's more to this than meets the 
eye, he said in cliche mode. Turning cliche into a bird of an entirely 
different feather closes that circle too by using cliche. Is everything 
cliche I wonder or are we just more sensitive as poets to the state than 
others. I think all this is going on in this poem. A wonderful homage to the 
work of Peter Didsbury who I've dipped into now and again, and an extremely 
good poem in its own right.



bw
James





>From: Mike Horwood <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New sub: Revelation of the smart chair
>Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 12:59:40 +0200
>
>Revelation of the Smart Chair
>after Peter Didsbury
>
>
>Is it a bird or is it a plane?
>Or is it a flying cliché?
>I had thought I might use a more lyrical opening,
>something to suggest the meeting of old lovers
>and the role of memory to hint at my state of mind.
>But the flying cliché will do just as well to say this;
>that the present is a mirror to see again the past,
>gilded in moonlight, it might be,
>or bathed in the glow from burning logs
>if we look at it that way,
>and how things seen like this,
>in a mirror, in a strange light,
>might well take on a new and surprising appearance.
>So I returned to our seaside town,
>wearing its sad, out-of-season aspect,
>the pier shut up, cold rollers crashing on the pebbles
>and the gulls crying desolation to the winds,
>seeing at the same time a pale reflection of its summer self
>and noting that the dismal greyness had been there all along.
>We had coffee in the same tawdry cafe
>where six months earlier we had drunk our last coffees.
>By and large we avoided the past
>and stuck to what I took to be neutral topics.
>You spoke of a poem by Didsbury and how a confusingly complex truth
>might be embodied in a sentient, really smart chair.
>You spoke too of music, beating time with the flat of your hand
>as you rehearsed the familiar tune of a composer
>I had not known you enjoyed.
>And it was not until my homeward train was on its way,
>our meeting receding into a past of its own, that the clouds parted
>and what I had taken for a flying cliché
>showed itself as a bird of a quite different feather.
>So now I know what that silent witness, the smart chair, reveals,
>standing alone in the centre of the room with a warm seat.
>
>
>
>
>Mike
>
>
>
>


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