Let me fling a new thread out to all y'all. It has to do with immediacy and distance in poems.
Let's focus on the last week's snaps---the 4 July snaps:
Brother Burke's untitled poem;
Sheila Murphy's "snappety" <if you're my age why do you insist on looking old>;
Richard Newman's "A Place To Make Your Wishes All Come True";
cooee's "Passing CEInspire";
and Hal Johnson's "Dead Man's Float."
I first got obsessed with this immediacy and distance thing every time I read Richard Newman's poem. He seemed to be watching a woman and a man walking on the beach, utterly unaware of being watched. He also seemed to be walking the beach himself---that is, Richard the poet seemed to be trying to reveal himsel' thru the two walkers. But I wasn't sure. I kept thinking, "How close does he want us to get to those two people---and to him?" and "Why does he want us to step back with him and view them, consciously, through his eyes?" and "How does he actually give us that feeling---the feeling of slight distance from the viewed subjects?" that is, "What techniques does he use?"
Then I read Hal's "Dead Man's Float." He had me pumping that bike with him and his buddies, waving at his "patriot parents"---and then in the water, face down, holding his breath, "learning to live, practicing death." In Hal's poem, I felt subtly politically philosophized, and the subtlety impressed me. So, I reasoned, Hal made me immediately present with him as a kid, and he backed up, distanced, each time he threw in political bits: "amid newspaper reports of bodies found dismembered, dumped in trashcans" and "grinning at our patriot parents" and "too-old-for-the-war uncle."
Sheila's poem blasted most of my assumptions about bringing immediacy thru concrete nouns and descriptors. Her only such specific was "window." Wow. Yet I knew that she'd made me focus on a face. With abstract nouns, yet! Further fascination.
I'll let you mad dogs tear apart Brother Burke's beautiful poem and cooee's so-controlled passionate poem.
Blessings,
Judy
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