Well, try that exercise with SNAKE by DH Lawrence - it is truly difficult
to crack his code, BUT it still works as a poem over all. I don't think yr
poem is prosaic, but the four-liners seem forced.
Andrew
On 27 June 2012 15:11, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> thanks, Andrew.
> Yes, about the chopping - and I ask myself what would listeners hear were
> I to read it aloud.
>
> Most is so extremely prosaic that I told myself there was a sort of comedy
> in my pretending it was verse.
> I used to ask poetry students a question I myself would fail -
> if you met this set out as prose, would you be able to find the line
> endings and set it out as verse?
> Oh dear…
>
> On 27/06/2012, at 4:56 PM, Andrew Burke wrote:
>
> > Hey, Max. I too like it a lot, but I wonder about the chopping up into
> tidy
> > quatrains - some of the breaks seem illogical and un-musical. How about
> > trying it with the breaks dictated by sense, not just tradition?
> >
> > But I do like it, honestly.
> >
> > Andrew
> >
> > On 27 June 2012 14:51, Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]
> >wrote:
> >
> >> Ah those memories captured thanks Max
> >> Ps I worked in a grocers -biscuits were loose those days and I had to
> check
> >> the eggs in a bucket of water P
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> On
> >> Behalf Of Max Richards
> >> Sent: 27 June 2012 02:00
> >> To: [log in to unmask]
> >> Subject: snap: butter [with 'bach' in its NZ sense]
> >>
> >> Butter
> >>
> >> When the butter doesn't spread,
> >> but makes my knife drag,
> >> instantly I'm back in Auckland,
> >> seventeen, wielding a spatula
> >>
> >> over bulk butter in cartons.
> >> I'm slicing from each two ounces;
> >> numbered they go to shelves
> >> to see if any carry nasties.
> >>
> >> My first job after high school it was -
> >> at the government bureau
> >> that oversaw dairy exports.
> >> 'temporary junior labourer' -
> >>
> >> nothing could have paid less.
> >> Down on the wharf just along
> >> from the ferry building
> >> chilled cartons of butter
> >>
> >> arrived from every factory
> >> in the North Island, paused
> >> briefly in the big cool store,
> >> were loaded on the cargo ships,
> >>
> >> and sailed away, mostly to Britain,
> >> keeping New Zealand afloat
> >> and Britain's bread buttered.
> >> Where was the guilty factory?
> >>
> >> My boss the Pommy scientist
> >> cast me as assistant sleuth.
> >> We're getting to the bottom of this!
> >> Slice and shift, number and store.
> >>
> >> In my breaks I worked my way
> >> through the three old Pelicans:
> >> A. L. Bacharach,
> >> 'Lives of the Great Composers'.
> >>
> >> Of most I'd never heard a bar.
> >> I'd plodded steadily
> >> as far as Monteverdi.
> >> Ahead lay Bach and more Bachs.
> >>
> >> My boss pounced on the name
> >> Bacharach - a well-known chemist
> >> from his own home town. Read on,
> >> Max, but don't neglect the butter.
> >>
> >> At last, the moment - Eureka!
> >> The dirty-water factory
> >> was way past Tauranga
> >> and even Whakatane,
> >>
> >> almost at East Cape.
> >> Retribution followed.
> >> The lab staff celebrated,
> >> my job was terminated.
> >>
> >> Music-less in an uncle's beach bach,*
> >> I read up Bacharach's Bachs
> >> spending my hard-earned quids
> >> on ice-cream from a clean source.
> >>
> >>
> >> [*bach: New Zealand word for week-end shack]
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Andrew
> > http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
>
--
Andrew
http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
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