hello Larissa, welcome (or maybe you've been around, I don't know!).
first a mention on formatting: your email came as one big block of
text, & some spaces between words appear wider than others, so I'm not
certain that your enjambments have made it through the web of.. the
web.
now, the poem.
I didn't notice the rhyme scheme until "logs / dogs", well pulled off;
it's because there's no arbitrary metric scheme to interfere with the
building of landscape & tone.
this opens beautifully, the first half is very enjoyable indeed. the
dichotomies are simple but elegantly so: birds/bombs,
explosions/treetops, nozzle flare/star. some good use of language as
well, "cast-iron swamp" conveys something like jammed guns & bodyparts
in mud. the view is shifted quickly but well into the post-war.
but there's the familiar hint of rambling that I feel when reading
most end-rhymed poems: a whole lot of words set on stilts around a
necessity. or maybe it's just that the wording of your insights are
dull; there's a lot of abstract speaking/hearing/imagining going on, &
none of it is really striking enough to warrant that whole middle
section's worth of musing. starting from "Imagine that the epoch...",
the poem picks back up & ends well. (whatsmore, "rain dialogues" is
very nice).
KS
On 11/04/07, Larissa Shmailo <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Comments welcome--thanks- Larissa
> New Life 2
> Variation on a theme by Joseph Brodsky et. al.
> Imagine that the war is over, that peace has reigned,
> That you can look at your face in the mirror again.
> That magpies, not bombs, whistle down upon your head
> That outside the city, homes are not destroyed-instead
> A baroque burst of laurels, palms, magnolia, pine;
> Instead of hot gun fire a white hot Venus shines.
> That war's cast-iron swamp is cold and then
> The boredom is over: Life has to start again.
> Imagine that all of this is true. Imagine, that you speak
> Of yourself, speaking of others, that now you can seek
> The irrelevant, the unneeded, the luxuries, the toys.
> Life begins anew exactly thus: with noise
> With erupting volcanos. and such catastrophes
> A sloop lost below, friends lost beneath the seas .
> Look straight at the tragedies, with the feeling these engender
> That you alone can see them .With the small and tender
> Feeling that, any minute now, you'll turn away
> To home, to the moment, to ask it to stay.
> Imagine that the epoch ends in an idyl. The words that came
> In monologues are rain dialogues now. And the flame,
> That consumed others better than you, greedily, like logs;
> In you it saw little use or warmth, and, like the dogs,
> That's why you were spared, why shrapnel gave you only fear.
> Imagine that the more honest the voice, the less it has tears.
> And when any Polyphemus asks you who it is that speaks.
> "Say, Who, me? No one" like Odysseus the Greek.
>
>
> Larissa Shmailo
> _http://myspace.com/larissaworld_ (http://myspace.com/larissaworld)
> _http://larissashmailo.blogspot.com_ (http://larissashmailo.blogspot.com/)
>
>
>
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>
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