Matt,


Thanks for your thoughtful criticism and I'm glad you found something in it.

Colin


----- Original Message -----
From: "Merritt, Matt - Leic. Mercury" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, July 26, 2004 2:58 PM
Subject: Re: newsub/wedding


> Hi Colin,
> I thought this was a bit overlong, and too prose-like in places, but
others
> have pointed out better than I could where changes might help. The thing
is,
> I enjoyed it anyway, as I have all your recent "Chinese" poems, because
the
> subject matter and setting is unusual and it makes me want to go away and
> find out more about it. So my comments may not be that valid, as the poem
> clearly did its job of holding my interest and engaging my sympathy with
the
> subjects!
> Regards,
> Matt
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: The Pennine Poetry Works [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
> Of hui dewar
> Sent: 23 July 2004 20:37
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: newsub/wedding
>
>
> THIS EMAIL HAS BEEN SWEPT FOR VIRUSES BY THE NORTHCLIFFE GROUP MAILSWEEPER
> SERVER.
>
> *   *   =   italics
>
>
>
>   The Wedding
>
> Emma is the sweetest cousin. I'm glad
> she married at last and seems
> happy. The missed wedding's
> on DVD. Security lets me in
> to the gated block. You can see
> for miles from her flat,
> almost as far as the Yangtze
> while inside white leather sofas
> fold round a screen, broad as a car bonnet.
>
> Photographs of bride and groom
> flash forwards from childhood,
> cross paths like planets. Clothes change
> from revolutionary to Western
> when they're twenty. But the wedding's
> traditional. She wears auspicious red
> and the groom outside
> shows a red envelope as her friends
> question him, "How much is in it?"
> She takes a cup of green tea
> to each of her new parents.
> It's perfectly filmed. Not a wobble
> or a dropped shot of someone's feet
> or a child pressing one big, beady,
> out-of-focus eye against the screen.
>
> The view West is a park, big
> as the Gobi. Emma sees me scan it
> and we go. Once there, we pay to get in.
> No litter, graffiti or inauspicious thugs,
> just gardeners for a few jiao an hour
> the philosopher Sun zi in stone robes
> and a virtuous governor from the Qin.
>
> Emma slows half way but I don't mention
> the apple curve of her waist. Come September
> the park will be out of bounds.
> "Nice to see old things kept.
> at your wedding. Weren't they lost?
> How did you know what to do?"
> but she grins and says
> it was managed and the manager knew.
>
> *"Tradition's popular.but still,
> our hearts were in it. We love each other,
> after all", but she pauses,
> "My husband is away too much
> with work and is often drawn
> to the daughter from his first marriage.*
>
> "It's a lot to take on," I reply,
> and we continue round the park's hidden paths in silence
> till she says:
>
> *"You've been here before. You don't remember
> how it was. The old houses are gone,
> but the place where you and I walked
> is this spot - fond times - along
> streets so narrow and crowded
> that we went at a gentle pace,
> past doorways where people sat
> on summer evenings and spooned
> the flesh of melons. Generations
> in a single house. "Mellow"
> you'd said. Eight hundred thousand,
> my family with them, were moved
> to the suburbs, this ground flattened,
> grass unrolled like a carpet
> and these tall trees brought in,
> to be planted and watered
> where they stand now."*
>
> ___________________________
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