I don't know about your not understanding, Chris

You seem to understand many things well enough

and I would hate to dismiss any comment on grounds of _you dont understand
the formal aspects_ - we make them up and change them or they die with us

But I am not sure I am in accord with you in *my understanding of "too
many words"

I enjoyed the crack in AMADEUS where someone, the political boss, puts
down a piece of music on the grounds that it contains too many notes; and
then the other night I heard an interview with the pianist Lang Lang prior
to his playing Liszt where he said something along the lines of Liszt
using a lot of notes and people not liking it!

What?!

But he's world famous so I must be wrong. (I still couldnt get along with
any engagement with FL)

Back to the poem

It's 10 words. Ten monosyllables. Five stressed. Like your

> perhaps the ,and, could go. and maybe, Though???

It seems ok to me. But I'll creep up on it. I'm finding the comments very
useful, getting me outside of myself to see as others see

re _and_ I think a point is that there is the thinness and there is the
poor light and they are independent, the tides being out of sync with the
clock so that there is no interdependence especially when one brings in
the uncertainty of the subjective viewer no matter how hard he is trying
to be objective

if one takes out _and_, the two are run together

similarly, _though_ is doing a lot of work. It's something of a keystone.
In part its meaning is implicit in what follows; but ever so slightly. I'd
hate to lose it.

It's a word I use a lot and I am trying other approaches. I doubt one can
ever outwit our formulaic approaches; we can have a go!

Having said all that, maybe it's not such a good poem. I'll spend some
time with it

*

I heard a bit of a poetry workshop with Ruth Padel. It was pointed out to
me and, as it were, served up for me, listen to this, you'll like this...
I might have listened anyway: that sort of fascination one sometimes feels
when another poor bastard is lying on the ground gasping surrounded by
medics -- fascination with decay and failure.

*She annoys me; but she has some ability.

Very schoolmistressy...

One thing that came up, foregrounded at least for me, though that may have
been may distracted inattention, was worry that this or that verse didnt
mean anything, unquote. This from the student poets rather than her; but
she seemed to support it. And earlier on she had run off a list of various
aspects of versification that I remember from school eng lit

It's all depressing, this concentration on prose meaning

There's a joke about a dog sending a telegram to his mate, let's call him
Mauler (I did once know a now deceased cat called Bruiser); and the
message goes woof woof woof, woof, woof Benjie

The telegraph clerk says you can have an extra woof for the money if you
want. And Benjie says: Why would I? It wouldnt make any sense then.

Cheers Chris


Lawrence

On Fri, December 30, 2011 11:24, Chris Jones wrote:
> On 28/12/2011 11:34 PM, Lawrence Upton wrote:
>
>> Though thin, and in poor light, this makes it clear
>>
>
> Lawrence, maybe my taste here, but this may be a little too many words
> for an opening line??
>
> perhaps the ,and, could go. and maybe, Though???
>
> But I may not understand formal aspects???? cj
>
>


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UNFRAMED GRAPHICS by Lawrence Upton
42 pages; A5 paperback; colour cover
Writers Forum 978 1 84254 277 4
wfuk.org.uk/blog
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