Hi grasshopper,
I'm wondering if this poem could be shorter - just wondering, mind!
At the moment it feels cluttered with details... But I know details are
important, it's just I'm wondering if there's too many. Now and again
therre's phrases that are almost repetitions... and an inversion: a spirit
released.
I've put some phrases in brackets to show where I'm thinking "too much, ah
too much!"
Another thought is the explanation of the etymology of malaria - it might be
alright in the poem OR it might work as a footnote, or as a comment between
the title and the poem.
I guess what I'm aiming for in my siuggestions is enabling a reader to get
some things out of the poem at a first reading, then feel intruiged enough
to read it again and again and find other insights.
At the moment, when I read it, I feel exhausted by the long thoughts of the
narrator in a poem where the actions of the other are brief and much more
easily taken in. (H'm, maybe the narrator's so thrown by him I'm picking up
too much of her confusions.)
Bob


>From: grasshopper <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New sub: Catching
>Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2004 03:31:24 +0100
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>Language warning --   this poem contains a 4-letter word. Please don't
>acroll down if you feel it would offend you.............
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>............Catching
>
>3 am finds him at the fridge again,
>interrogating the milk. He knows there is a moment
>when its sweet turns to stale, (sugar breath to meaty.)
>There will be a glow within the opaque plastic container, (candle-bulby,)
>and a faint buzzing, easily missed within the condenser's
>constant hum. At this instant the change will come as a spirit
>released - this is how fairies have been seen, he explains,
>(the intimidations of decay - the blur of transformation mistaken  -this
>all feels a bit vague... -
>for wings. Each organic thing shedding its small nature, discreet
>and discrete.) Once he saw a lactic sprite at its business,
>and large moth eyes fixed on him accusingly before it fled
>across his shoulder. The next time he will be ready
>to pin it smartly to the wall.
>
>I persuade him to a pill, open the laptop (persuade him to "take" a pill)
>on his long game of Civilisation, pull, push, provide
>a warm drink, and sandwiches of fresh white bread.
>I display the excised crusts for examination. He opens
>the rounds, inspects the cheese with eyes and nose
>for signs of death, then eats.
>
>I feel a presence in the air, a miasma.
>Malaria was blamed on bad air - mala aria -
>from the swamp, not on winged hosts. Contagion
>that insinuates into the lungs, like the back-up
>of a fucked flue. I won't smell it. It will get me, molecule
>by molecule, snuggling into my alveoli. They will find me,
>stiff, cherry-red, blushing at this embarrassment of madness
>--not mine, not mine, but it will finish me (again, there's lots of details
>in this stanza- are all needed?)
>
>just as he captures a whirr of change between
>his palms.
>
>                                          grasshopper

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