Definitely 'enough' Stephen. But I liked the explanation too.....
Doug
On 28-Dec-05, at 5:58 PM, Stephen Vincent wrote:
> Rain lacquered tennis court.
>
> While the eye wanders across a particular space in a particular weather
> (Dolores Park, tennis courts after a night of rain) I find it nice -
> as in
> "blessed" - to have the consciousness surprised by a verb transformed
> into
> an adjective: “lacquered.” The verb made appropriate by the play of
> light -
> early morning, barely breaking through the white and gray clouds - on
> to the
> consecutive thin puddles across the red and green painted courts. The
> adjectivised verb crystallizes and sustains a moment in the
> consciousness.
> It’s a phenomenon that is, at least, the essential foundation of a
> good poem
> - the way particular words give the poem a sense of accuracy with a
> memorable surface, a tensile tough combination of space, motion,
> texture and
> depth: the vague white and gray cloud reflections shifting across the
> water
> over the submerged white, rectangular grid between the red and green
> portions of each court.
>
> We can usually immediately sense when a poet is forcing such
> connections -
> the verbs and/or adjectives appear artificially hyped and crafted, as
> if a
> Thesaurus was at the maker’s elbow. Which is not to say that accurate
> verbs
> do not come from a learned place - they do, most often from ages of
> reading,
> looking, and listening, closely. It’s the good poet, the one with that
> sixth
> sense to know when the accurate verb comes (or bursts) into play, the
> word,or combination of words that emerge to elevate and crystallize a
> particular moment/space in time. It’s a gift that no one can invent.
> At that
> point, it’s all about the art of receiving and putting the given word
> into
> the right place on the line; a sense of rhythm, meter, an on-target
> sense of
> articulation. That, also, essential part: "the making", what many will
> call
> “craft”:
>
> Rain lacquered tennis court.
>
> That’s enough. Like a truncated haiku - or a photograph without an
> extended
> caption - I will leave it there.
>
>
Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
(780) 436 3320
I saw three ships
come sailing in
on Christmas Day
in the morning
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