Hi Helen,
               Pitons & Ropes... (& reading...)
Yeh, I get terrified when I come across readers who know more than I did as
the writrer! Quite a few poets, and poetry readers I know, are or have been
climbers.
In the Alps and further abroad pitons are still used (and usually used for
Aid Climbing as opposed to Free Climbing - where the whole game is played by
different rules! In free climbing nothing's hammered into the rock: in Aid
Climbing the pitons are used to aid the climbing, sometimes people climb
from piton to piton and hardly touch the rock!). In the UK Aid Climbs are
now climbed Free, but an an ice climber may have 3 or 4 because there's less
places to belay safely(or they had when I used to do it!). Now they may
carry less... Pitons have been replaced by bolts - which are left in the
rock for others to use. Bolted climbs are really scarey!!! (Or maybe you
know all this...)
I got the impression that this was a UK based poem - and hence my objections
to pitons.
And, "as he ascends to heights I'd never dare" to me implied he was leading,
belayed from below, and not being top-roped on a climb from above! I
recognise, now, though, how I made that mis-reading... (Maybe climbers from
other parts of the UK would top rope in different ways to how we used to do
it! Maybe the climb was longer than half the length of the rope!)
The rope, when looping itself into a heap, does appear something like a
drunken snake that can't quite remember how to curl itself up. Its heaped
loops feel as clumsy as any description of them, I guess... I guess a
similie might offer a challenge here (the poem's strong enough, long enough,
to cope with one, I think).
I still like the complexities of the poem in question, tho. I sometimes
remember myself reading poetry books on a train, for instance, where I'd go
through the whole book as if they were a tube of Pringles crisps:
crunch-crunch, turn the page, crunch-crunch, crunch-crunch, turn the page,
etc, until I'd got through all of them and hadn't noticed any piece with a
difference to any other (I was looking for a unity that linked them - and
was determined to find it! - more than a diversity within or between them!).
Now I appreciate the way some books help me to read them. I find all kinds
of things help me to read one poem so differently to the one that's gone
before. Learning how many people read poems differently is something I found
difficult to see as a writer... but that might just be me LOL!
Bob


>From: Helen Clare <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Two Poems to chose from (Bob)
>Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 13:49:53 -0000
>
>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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