Hi Colin,
Now here's an interesting narrative!
I guess, because it's contrasting two characters, it's got a lot of
short-story features as well as poetry features in it. I keep wondering,
therefore, if it could work as a better narrative in a short-story format. I
don't know. All I do know is the John character comes across so strongly in
a poem that seems to want to say, "Hey, I'm really about Tim!" A story may
allow more freedom of plot, more space and flexibility... and the poetic
elements - the use of images as metaphors for possibly abstract things -
needn't be lost, they can still work.
Once or twice when I've read it I've thought: "Is this stanza about Tim?"
and had to interrupt my reading to reassure myself that I'm still on the
right track.
As a poem, therefore, I feel there's something not yet right...
I think I get confused because each of them get mentioned equally at the
start. So it could be that the first stanza's not setting the tone well
enough! If both of them wern't mentioned there then the whole focus of the
poem might help us see things more clearly from one person's point of view.
And is the word "escape" a euphamism for "being released"? Even if both get
mentioned in the first stanza it might be that we need to see much more of
Tim before we get any images or details about John.
I guess I'm saying I'd try to solve the point of view issue in the first
stanza, then see if that makes for any other differences in what happens
after...
Bob
Who's got no problem with the name of the place: Barlinnie. After all it's
almost as famous as Alcatraz, as famous as Wormwood Scrubs, isn't it? And
it's a great sounding name...
But I'm thinking John and Tim are rather tame names... wouldn't guys in
Barlinnie - even if they turned up with a name like Tim - get some other
sound attached to them? (One-syllable names are just asking for extras...)


>From: hui dewar <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: newsub/containment
>Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2004 15:05:50 +0100
>
>  Containment
>
>It was five o'clock, time for Tim
>to escape Barlinnie, and so
>he left him, prisoner John
>who wept where white walls
>bounced sound and would not soften.
>
>He walked on, glanced sideways
>at lines of men as hard
>and tattooed as snakes,
>glad that he hadn't slipped up
>on his first shift, blabbed on
>about his degree in astrophysics
>and his year at Harvard
>-a job after all was a job-
>
>hadn't after breakfast wrapped cloth
>round his arms to thicken them
>beneath his shirt, that the others
>with their bellies and their baldness
>and naked arms that melted snow
>hadn't heckled his newness. He heard
>his key clunk in the third lock,
>pushed with both hands till
>his elbows cracked and hoped
>that they weren't laughing on CCTV.
>
>He looked up and saw for the first time
>sky-wires from point to point,
>grounding all hope of moonlit flight,
>passed beanstalk walls with primroses
>spaced in boxes along the base
>and came to the turn-style
>barred to the ceiling
>and the hand-scanner with a knob
>for each web of his milk-white fingers.
>
>And the further he went
>from Little John who'd called
>him "Boss" and "Big Man",
>the stranger it seemed that he'd said
>"Life is better in prison", an odd view,
>if true, but the place was predictable,
>in its way was safe. The DT's had gone
>and he'd only hurt his hand when he lashed out.
>
>John knew this from before
>and so he'd held a knife to the throat
>of the woman at the store
>and claimed he'd done it,
>wanting to get caught.
>
>Night had  fallen
>when Tim got his mobile back
>from security and turned into streets
>where a lamp flickered
>on-off, on-off, and someone howled
>through an open window and the wind
>blew over the pages of a dried mag
>and idle gangs under amber
>and a billion stars in darkness,
>watched him pass.
>
>
>
>
>
>Colin

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