Hi one and all,
Thanks for the comments on this poem. It needed them!
So, some responses I’m glad to make:

First, Ryfkah, the prosey feel… I didn’t realise until you mentioned it, how 
clunky it’d got! I used to write lots of city poems with really long lines 
and, like with ballads that originally had two long lines and not four short 
ones, a strong iambic stress pushes things along. I now see I’d tried to 
resist what the style was demanding too much! I’ve revised a fair bit, 
focusing on the rhythm a lot more!
I think long lines give so much energy to a poem. They’re scarey - cos they 
can give so much opportunity for extra clauses – I find they allow a poem in 
English to become really expansive.

It’s interesting, Sue, that you felt it was almost a prose poem! I’m never 
sure about prose poems… Maybe prose poems are poems without line endings and 
I think I’m so conditioned to think in lines – it’s as if I get a line 
length established by the 3rd line of a poem and intuition demands I 
continue thinking in the way I’ve started. So, because of what you’ve said, 
I’m now struggling towards thinking of poetry without lines. I haven’t yet 
read anything about prose poems that seems to help me grasp what could 
happen with them. As I cheekily said, when I’d got the first draft scribbled 
I felt I had a (long-lined) sonnet in mind.

And the facts I mentioned Christina – about whether he was a saint or a king 
etc. And it’s complicated… because he was initially a prince – have also 
made me think again. Thanks for pointing things out! Now he’s just what it 
says on the plinth, a saint! And it’s surprising, isn’t it, that Jan Palach 
died so many months after the Russian Army re-occupied the country.

And it’s interesting, Catherine, your comment about punctuation – working 
with commas and dashes. I often find it’s the smallest words – and, but, 
then, while, as, when, along with the commas and dashes – that need most 
work to sort out! I find semicolons and colons so rare in contemporary 
poems, and commas and dashes much more common. I wanted (I still want!) to 
use a full stop only at the end of the poem so I’ve got to try and make all 
else make sense within the continuous flow. It’s how to make the 
subdivisions of the sentence clear.  In further drafts I’ve found I’ve used 
more of the small words I’ve mentioned, or changed one for another, but 
there’s still a dash in the last stanza where I’m not altogether sure…

I guess, Sally, the poem’s trying to show how art offers a comment on 
culture. The stone-age Venus (now deleted!), the big bronze saint with his 
weapons and dressed in armour, and the sculpture of just the legs seemed so 
powerful, each one lower down than the other. And I’d so wanted to see the 
spot where Jan Palach died. For me his death was important – it’s a bit like 
“What were you doing when you heard that Kennedy had been shot?” I can 
remember the exact moment when I saw the newspaper billboard, bought the 
paper, and stood stock still in the snow on that grey day in Leeds… It was 
his death that widened the gap to a gulf between Communism and myself so I 
guess I’m struggling with my own beliefs here!

And what you don’t know is that this poem also stands alongside another poem 
I’ve written that mentions Jan Palach – but which is based in Newcastle’s 
Bigg Market, a not dissimilar place to Wenceslas Square!

But why did I know I had to write about this experience? H’m, I think, 
sometimes, poetry that’s just about personal issues, and nothing else, is 
short-sighted. I want to see the bigger world I live in appearing loudly in 
poems as well! If poetry’s always closer to the TV soap Friends that, say, a 
documentary about global issues or some forms of international exploitation, 
then I think I can see one reason why poetry is always seen as being on the 
sidelines…

Hey, I’ve written a lot here. If anyone wants to chat over anything I’ve 
mentioned, that’s OK with me.

The Olympics makes poem writing difficult!

My thanks to you all,

Bob



>From: Bob Cooper <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Prague In Midsummer
>Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 00:47:08 +0000
>
>OK, here's another for some C&C:
>(And I'm hoping the formatting works on your screen. There's lots of long 
>lines - only the last line is shorter!
>
>Prague In Midsummer
>
>I almost cry in the thirty-degree heat below the National Museum
>at the shrine to Jan Palach – his small photograph and dates at our feet,
>and the faded strewn flowers – where tourists pause, smile at camcorders
>and speak American with the statue of Wenceslas in armour behind them
>
>and behind the Bermuda shorts, the Hawaiian shirts, a statue taller than 
>the king,
>a steel-wire sculpture of a young woman’s legs, her panties below her 
>knees,
>and beyond pavements cooler than the heat of where we stand
>are the crowded street cafes where tables wobble under pizzas and beer,
>the shopping arcades, bright-lit casinos, all the baseball hats in bars,
>
>but way above us, through the Museum’s open windows on the top floor
>there’ll still be hushed people who’ve seen the paleolithic hand-sized 
>venus
>who gaze down on the square - we don’t see them, they don’t see us
>just the 21st Century the young student died for, small people moving
>and the long naked legs, the almost lost knickers.
>
>
>
>If I were to read this poem I'd probably mention that Jan Palach died at 
>the spot I mention in 1969.
>I guess a search via Google may tell you more about him - and I might well 
>offer more information in a gloss at a reading as well...
>
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