> Hello Mary,
My first comment concerns punctuation. It´s a choice the poet has, of course, whether to use it or not but I notice that despite dispensing with it you nevertheless use capital letters to indicate the start of a new sentence and this seems inconsistent to me. I feel that if the poet feels sentence structures are important enough to be indicated in this way then full punctuation should be used. In addition, I think that by leaving punctuation out you have created some unclearness in how you want lines to be read. For example, you begin line 3 with a capital `H´ indicating a new sentence. That would have to mean the imperative voice, yet such an exhortation to the reader seems out of place here. I believe the line should really be read as a subordinate clause, as if there was a comma at the end of line 2. That would mean that `hear´ should be written with a lower case `h´. The same applies to the start of line 19. Would it be a good idea to punctuate throughout?
There were some aspects of diction that I wondered about: `cinematheque´ seems an unnessarily `odd´ word and the phrase `the force of blade´ sounds a bit awkward to my ear. The word `sod´ may be used as an uncountable but in this context I think countable would be more usual and in either case I want to put the article before it when I read. I wonder if including the word `coffin´ is overworking the idea a little. In the last line you have `a its´ and I guess this was where you hadn´t decided which to use and then forgot to erase the reject. I think I´d favour `a´. The final stanza was definitely my favourite part of the poem.
I hope these comments are useful. I would like to add the usual disclaimer that these are just my own opinions and I could have missed your point and be quite wrong, so please bin any of this that seems wide of the mark.
Best wishes, Mike
> Lähettäjä: Maryann Hazen Stearns <[log in to unmask]>
> Päiväys: 2004/02/02 ma PM 04:59:16 GMT+02:00
> Vastaanottaja: [log in to unmask]
> Aihe: The Poem With No Title
>
> Hello there friends,
>
> here's a new one for c&c:
>
> ~*~
>
> The Poem With No Title
>
> I see the curved edge of the shovel
> as if memory were a personal cinematheque
> Hear the dry ground protest against
> the force of blade
> the metallic snack of shale
> that jars arms
> sets teeth on edge
>
> I can still feel the spine protest
> as foot levers sod
> over and over until the hole opens
> wide enough and the thought
> that it would never
> could never
> be deep enough never deep enough
> to hold this pain
>
> I see feet walk the path
> toward a crooked gray house
> with porch steps worn down in the center
> See the hand pull the screen door
> hear the screech of hinges
> like the lid of a coffin
> reluctant to open
>
> The feet plod up stairs
> enter a bedroom
> The back feels a quilted mattress
> The bones fall into place
> Through the open window
> the song of an oriole
> shares the holes of my ears
> with the tears
> creeping from my eyes
> and the sound of the bird
> changes to the ocean
> trapped inside a its shell
>
>
> ~*~
>
> Cheerwell, Mary :O)
>
>
> =====
> Good Cheer & Be Well,
> Maryann Hazen Stearns
>
> "Under The Limbo Stick" http://www.geocities.com/Faerhart/
>
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