Hi Bob
Yeah, yeah! I'm not going to be making any decisions on this in isolation or
alone.
I guess the root problem is I'm not entirely happy with either poem - the
first maybe lacking depth, the second not ringing quite true. They are both
around 3 years old by now.
You maybe right about pitons - although my ex-husband - on his return from
either the Himalaya or the Alps on the occasion of this particular poem,
certainly carried and used them. Perhaps more for ice? I'm not sure... and
not planning to ask him!
I'm sure you see why I'm avoiding the term 'crabs' given the sexual
connotations of the rest of the line....but there may be something better
than pitons and for the life of me I can't remember what I intended with
"clips".
If you are belaying someone from the top of a climb - which is the
particular memory that I keyed into here, you draw rope in and the pile of
rope does grow. But I'm still sure thickens is wrong, because its more of a
random heaping. And perhaps this not the most obvious situation that occurs
to the reader. Maybe also some metaphorical mileage in the rope depleting (I
certainly came to the end of mine!)
In the end I'm sure one of us or both of us together will suddenly see the
place for one or both of these poems. But in the meantime it helps to get me
thinking about them again.
Thanks
Helen
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Cooper" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, March 12, 2004 1:56 PM
Subject: Re: Two Poems to chose from.
Hi Helen,
I was going to preface my comments with similar things to what Sally's
saying: books is collaborative ventures and, even though poems get chosen on
their merits, what preceeds - and what follows - a poem can make it sing
clearly and in tune or can make it sound awful. Each poem you've posted has
its merits... but is the editor also thinking about context as well as text?
And one thing I'm ruminating over in my own mind at the moment (very
loosely) is realsing that an editor may have a keener, or different, or
sharper, appreciation of readership. I just have an invisible reader who
leans over my shoulder when I'm writing and revising but the editor may have
lots of readers leaning over his or her shoulder when they're looking at a
m/s. My future readership often surprises me but probably pleases the
editors more than surprises them.
And thinking about the poems themselves...
I think I prefer the 2nd one myself. For me there's much more story and the
poetry of the piece is more hidden. I could go on about the way hidden
things are revealed in the poem - the person in the bath, the rope, and the
rest of the gear, in the rucksack - and how the poem alludes to the
relationship is subtle ways as you mention the "things" (no ideas but in
things!).
I think it looks better, too!
I must admit, tho, I can't work out how the rope coil "thickens" as the
leader ascends... and "pitons and clips" (!). In many years of climbing I
only hammered in one piton (and that was in winter, on a bad climb in a
manky gully, abseiling out. Could you modify the line to include words like
carabiners (or crabs), quick-draws (or slings), belay-plates, descenders,
friends (canny things to use - but their name is well used in poems and is
probably a poem in itself!), tri-cams, chalk bags, hexcentrics (hexes), nuts
(which you mention), harnesses...
For me, the first poem is strong, too! It's got hidden things (the eyes
beneath the pads!) too! And I've been grateful for some bombproof belays in
my time! However, there's less focus on the other person in it. The second
poem involves both people, lots of things to muse over, and possibly -
because at its end it infers climbing (only the stairs) and not falling - it
may hint towards the next poem in the book...
So, I'm thinking that neither poem is naff! Is there a chance that both
could be included (with the 2nd one 1st?) and maybe fiddling elsewhere in
the collection to make everything continue to flow? I've spent hours and
hours with my pamphlets trying to get things to fit alongside each other,
flow from the first to the last, and spent good time with the editor of my
last book debating which poems go where (what's on facing pages, etc.) to
make sure it all works as best we can make it work!
Hope you get it sorted!
Bob
>
>on 11/3/04 1:02 pm, Helen Clare at [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>Hi All
>
>Here's a little problem I need some help with.
>I'm trying to decide which of these two poem to put in my collection.
>
>Both the editor and I are agreed that they are too similar in subject
>matter
>to include both but I prefer Anchor Point and he prefers Belay.
>
>It would really help me to know which ones you prefer and if you have time
>to think about it, why.
>
>Thanks
>
>Helen
>
>
>
>
>Anchor Point
>
>At least we're past all that - those days
>when a late return from the rock
>could birth a cry
>that had me on all fours.
>
>These days there's no call
>for the splash of cold water,
>the measuring of steps from the slam
>of Landrover doors to his voice
>
>in the stairwell, finding me
>calm as the chamomile pads
>I kept for my eyes.
>Something has cooled
>
>between us. It's easier, now
>the lie has set like steel,
>fixed so firm you could hang
>a marriage from it.
>
>Only, sometimes I'm woken
>by the whirr
>of rope slipping through metal,
>faster than a hand's reflex.
>
>
>Belay
>
>He's home: I leave him in the bath and go downstairs.
>Everything's still packed. Rucksacks bulge
>with pitons, clips; the metal nuts that wedge in rock.
>
>Only the rope spills from its canvas bag, thick
>and muscular. It kinks as if it can't quite shake
>the memory of the knots that held him.
>
>Grains of other places chafe between damp threads
>of lime and black. Upstairs those grains are loosed
>from skin and hair, eased from the crevices of his nails.
>
>I hear him call me; touch the rope. Pluck its weave.
>Notice how the threads are formed from filaments,
>fine as hair. I could snap the stray ones in my teeth.
>
>I thread it through my fingers, the way I remember -
>feel again his weight in my hands, my hips harnessed,
>see the rope coil thickening by my feet as he ascends
>
>to heights I'd never dare. A slip jars my pelvis,
>a fall forces a pad of air beneath my heel,
>before I adjust the centre of my gravity.
>
>I let it go. Soon it will dry, release its grit to the carpet.
>Later, one of us will vacuum, clean the bath. Now
>I'll climb the stairs.
>
>
>
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