Hi Mike,
I really like this poem! It's certainly got a flavour of Peter Didsbury to
it, too! Ruminative, relfective, smiling with what it's discovering beyond
what's mentioned. It seems to be a poem that has an apparent looseness in
it's style - and I think you're giving that impression (but I sense the
control you're showing too!)
But (when you're talking of coffee...) you mention the word coffee twice
(and cafe close inbeteen them) and I wonder if minor adjustments could be
made (to get rid of one of the coffees perhaps).
The first two lines are amazing! Could they perhaps be put in italics or
somehow shown differently? I like the way the poem hints at them near the
end, too!
Bob
>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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