Helen,

Just piggy-backing in my thoughts here. I was going to say that the poem
comes across as fragments of someone else's experience (? a mosaic of
impressions)which is not far off from the "collage of images" that you'd
hoped for. I did struggle to see the significance of the connections between
them, especially with the appearance of the patient mother pacifying a
drunk, which is not far off what Mike said below, to which presumably you
would say what you said to Mike. Fair enough. Maybe the poem was never meant
to have an introduction and a conclusion. However I wonder if some collages
of images will work better than others. Barn door obvious thing to say, but
presumably some will be better at assembling themselves in other peoples'
minds  and it ought to be possible to say why (suggest/guess why). Isn't it
the case that a reader will attempt to recognise patterns from fragments of
the poem (disregarding  parts that don't quite fit. ) If it  becomes too
obvious to the reader that this is all they are doing (imagining their own
animals and faces in clouds) they may lose confidence in the poem. But if a
single iconic story is unacceptable to you as author (or even unknowable)
wouldn't it be possible to make the poem multi-axial? If so different parts
could have tangible connections that added up to different stories or
different significances and the poem therby hold more on the inside than
appears possible in a grain of sand. Single word switches might be
sufficient to bring this about. Thus at the end of the poem as it stands I
don't have any inkling whether the mother is part of the same family as the
father and son (and am too bitter and twisted to make it up for myself). The
narrator after all does not refer to the son as brother. A switch of one or
two words could create an axis between the family members at the beginning
and at the end. That alone could give the poem one possible orientation in
subjective space. However there are other parts of this rich and interesting
poem where different orientations could be formulated and in the process
lines switch in their significances according to different domains of
meaning. Anything to faciliate the reader in different lines of thinking is
an asset IMO. Just an idea and apologies if this doesn't make sense or is
unhelpful.

BW

Colin




----- Original Message -----
From: "Helen Clare" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, February 16, 2004 6:28 PM
Subject: Re: New Sub - Birthday Tea


Mike
I can't help feeling you are trying to read this far too literally and
poetry doesn't always work like that - especially mine. It's essentially a
collage of images that hopefully resonate against each other - but not in a
way that is predirected. I guess it is one of those things where the reader
finds a significance of their own, or in your case not.
Can't please all of the people all of the time huh!
H


----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Horwood" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, February 16, 2004 10:23 AM
Subject: Re: New Sub - Birthday Tea


> Hello Helen,
              I´m not quite sure what to make of this piece. I take the
incident of the dog attacking the sheep to be the main subject of the poem
and I´m wondering how all the other things have got in. The change from one
element to another can be rather sudden and without any clear reason. For
example, the change from the opening scene at the tea table to `last night´
when the dog killed the sheep comes right out of the blue. The use of the
present tense `waits´ brings the reader into the presence of the dog just as
suddenly, and in the next line we are back at home with mother. I´m not
clear if she is on the phone at the same time as the rest of the family are
having tea. So I find the sequence of events a bit confused and arbitrary.
Also, some of the details included don´t seem to have any function. Is it
significant to the poem that father and son haven´t spoken? or that the
guinea pig is dying? or that mother is blinking more than usual? These were
my thoughts as I was reading and it´s possible, as always, that I´ve
overlooked some vital element that would make everything fall into place.
I was also surprised by the word `chirping´ used about the guinea pig. I´ve
never come across this but I suspect that you probably know it to be the
correct word. If so, it raises an interesting question whether a word that
is technically correct but which is usually associated with quite a differen
t sense, should be used or whether an alternative is needed. Problematic,
that.
I hope these comments are useful.



Best wishes,   Mike



> Lähettäjä: Helen Clare <[log in to unmask]>
> Päiväys: 2004/02/14 la PM 05:40:43 GMT+02:00
> Vastaanottaja: [log in to unmask]
> Aihe: New Sub - Birthday Tea
>
> Birthday Tea
>
> Over vegetable chow mein and chocolate cake
> father and son talk for the first time in months.
> The guinea pig stuffs his head in the crook
> of my arm, dying slowly, chirping muffled
> tempted to eat only by parsley. Last night
> a dog cornered a labouring ewe. Throat torn
> lambs taken. The dog gated, waits to be shot.
> My mother pacifies a drunk over the phone
> with practised patience, blinking even more -
> in her voice the resignation of the herbivore.
>