While totally understanding the history behind your request, as it stands it is the drollest request I have heard in a long time ...............and I am chuckling here. Arthur
-----Original Message-----
From: The Pennine Poetry Works on behalf of grasshopper
Sent: Thu 02/09/2004 19:17
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc:
Subject: Re: Prague In Midsummer (revised)
Dear Bob,
I wonder if the ambiguity at the start is intentional -was it the heat or
the shrine that made you almost cry? I suppose this might not be a question
for people who really love the heat and like to sizzle like kippers until a
grill.
Also I wasn't sure about 'they don't see us' -why would the people looking
down from the Museum not see you? In fact you go on to say that they do see
you, as small people. I'm assuming you mean the distance means the people
below aren't seen as individuals, but I feel perhaps that could be made a
little clearer.Would it really be a general feeling of the people looking
down that they were only seeing the 21st Century ? I could accept it easily
the other way round, if the narrator were looking down,because of his train
of thought, but isn't it a stretch to assume that perception to all the
people looking down from the windows?
I enjoyed the poem, and was intrigued by the description of the 'knicker
sculpture'. Have you got a link to a photo of it?
Kind regards,
grasshopper
>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 (revised)
>Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 13:12:39 +0000
>
>So, here's what's turned out after a lot of work.
>It's still got long lines - and it's still in 4,5,5 lined stanzas
>(And, Oh, how publishers groan when they see how it's been written!)
>(and any further comments also welcome!)
>
>Prague In Midsummer
>
>I almost cry in the thirty-degree heat below the National Museum
>at the shrine of Jan Palach - his dates and small photograph
>almost obscured by flowers - where tourists pause, smile at camcorders
>and speak American with the bronze Wenceslas statue above them
>
>and behind the baseball caps, the Hawaiian shirts, a steel-wire sculpture,
>taller than the saint, of a young woman's legs, her panties below her
>knees,
>and beyond pavements, cooler under the shadows of awnings and trees,
>are the crowded street-cafes where tables wobble beneath pizzas and beer,
>the rock music in shops, dark casino doorways, sweating bouncers outside
>bars,
>
>but way above us, through the Museum's open windows on the top floor,
>there'll still be hushed people who've seen what's displayed, read the
>signs,
>who now look down on the Square - we don't see them, they don't see us
>just the 21st Century the young student died for, such small people moving
>and the long naked legs, the almost lost knickers.
>
>Bob Cooper
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