That adds something important to that interesting poem, Lawrence. But,.
yeah, the view was intriguingly awry, & the tone, so cool, too.
Doug
On 23-Nov-05, at 2:32 PM, Lawrence Upton wrote:
> Thank you
>
> In case my idiom doesn't stretch that far. the description "looks like
> the back of a bus" is not an unknown way for men to describe women,
> often that they don't even know - with that tone which implies that if
> the women don't attract them then the women have failed
>
> Part of the events leading up to this poem was me wondering what some
> men in the bus might look like to some of the women they were
> commenting on as the bus passed them on the street
>
> Thanks for the encouragement
>
> L
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stephen Vincent <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 5:39 PM
> Subject: Re: snap - The back of a bus
>
>
> I like this, Lawrence. It's spatially taut, solid and smart - the
> way, from
> another perspective, I like Andrew Burke's piece end-up with the
> washing
> machine and the boys. A clarity achieved by stilling both the image
> and the
> poem.
>
> Something I like in Lorca's still lifes and early Charles Simic -
> before he
> began- it seems to me - writing parodies of his work ad infinitum.
>
> Stephen V
> http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
>
>
>
>
>
>> The back of a bus
>>
>> One man, alone; and, behind and around,
>> a jagged curve of five. All are in middle age:
>> we are looking at the back of a bus. Noisy and full.
>>
>> None of them is really smart. But some look clean;
>> and some have costly clothes quite rumpled.
>> Each is at some distance from looking good.
>>
>> The one and the five are not all together.
>> The five, unrulily jolly, sprawling and facetious,
>> one-upping each other spatially and with gesture;
>>
>> the solitary man, like a worm repulsed by heat,
>> recoils from stale clothes borne tobacco smoke
>> in a closed warm container full of bad breath.
>>
>> It's not important. Camaraderie of ritualised aggression
>> keeps the curve constant, and the one apart.
>
>
Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
(780) 436 3320
Shakespeare
Drag yr mouldy old bones
Up these stairs & tell me
What you died of,
I think
I’ve got it
Too.
Sharon Thesen
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