Interesting. You may well be right. It's a poem that's had other orderings
I tried it out Saturday before last at the wf workshop
The skeet shooter is intended as metaphor only. Maybe I'll stick with
the dog alone.
Yes, it's a man with a yo-yo. Not a real yo-yo you know. More like
capitalists portrayed as wearing top hate.
There's the man's register and there's the poem speaker's register (the I)
The man with a yo yo is showing off. It's a fake register. He's
probably enunciating in Eastuary English
Anyway I'll creep up on it
L
On 26/08/2015, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> This travels through a wide range of tones & kinds of discourse, Lawrence.I
> followed each one, but wasn’t sure how they all sat together. That ‘git’
> felt like it came out of nowhere when it appeared, for example.
>
> The first stanza I read & followed, as syntax, but can’t quite ‘see.’ Then
> suddenly I’m watching a skeet shooter, who speaks in a high manner. And
> maybe near the end, I go back & see that first stanza as a yoyo? But ‘his’
> speech is another register, one that given who he seems to be presented s
> sounds a bit too highfalutin?
>
> So, as a reader, I’m not sure how it all hangs together, although that final
> stanza does reflect backward & begin to bring the rest into a whole.
>
> If that all makes sense…
>
> Doug
>
> On Aug 26, 2015, at 7:14 AM, Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>> I saw a man hold a made thing
>>
>> twined in tough cord which held *him* straight
>>
>> as a prisoner might show itself
>>
>> in restraint. He threw the odd device
>>
>> downwards into the air. It rolled
>>
>> out its tether backwards dropping
>>
>> till *that* jerked hard at its ending,
>>
>> the escapade suddenly dead,
>>
>> as if a trap had been banged wide
>>
>> open unexpectedly beneath
>>
>>
>>
>> yet the round body pulled itself up
>>
>> upwards into a salvation
>>
>> from whence it took the drop again
>>
>>
>>
>> like clay birds all day flying up
>>
>> identical factory products
>>
>> without their own conscious power
>>
>>
>>
>> or a dog fetching a ball more times
>>
>> than it can count, self-persuaded
>>
>> that it's autonomous and free.
>>
>>
>>
>> “This,” said the man, with nonchalance,
>>
>> “reminds me of my staff at work.
>>
>> They do not realise control
>>
>> is beyond their hands. All they want
>>
>> is the string and how it works right here
>>
>> with them dependent on its knots
>>
>> which they cannot retie. Weak minds,
>>
>> each self-aware, they believe; so proud;
>>
>> but hindered by what's possible,
>>
>> planning regime variations
>>
>> while they are first governed, and then
>>
>> let loose, completely, on a leash.
>>
>> What they eat, what they drink, we sell
>>
>> with ease; what they decide, I have
>>
>> suggested to them many ways,
>>
>> as I too am chained entangled
>>
>> stapled by hard steel to constructs
>>
>> I have been offered and agreed
>>
>> to love, to keep the money thick
>>
>> in my wallet, big coins weighing
>>
>> towards the buried iron core
>>
>> of limited understanding...
>>
>> What do I know of final things?
>>
>> I'm sure I am retained. Thus I
>>
>> am not enslaved. I do enslave.”
>>
>>
>>
>> Thus, you, unfriend, who always said
>>
>> the best thing to each one of us
>>
>> to keep us obedient, are now
>>
>> neither a yoyo nor player;
>>
>> a fake; a manipulator
>>
>> who reworks incoherent rage,
>>
>> which might, just, make sense; but doesn't.
>>
>> There is no part original
>>
>> in what you have written or said.
>>
>> There is scant substance to your speech
>>
>> with much meaningful malign intent...
>>
>>
>>
>> You fooled me, yes; and many more,
>>
>> till I grew weary of your moods...
>>
>>
>>
>> Some may come yet and hear utterance
>>
>> that builds up some implications
>>
>> according to what you purport...
>>
>>
>>
>> You are a disappointing git!
>>
>> All your words mean rather little;
>>
>> and, what you say, you've said before
>>
>> twenty years ago; further still.
>>
>> Many were impressed by your talk,
>>
>> but I think them to be trite fools
>>
>> for all they speak in a register
>>
>> reserved for smug theologians;
>>
>> building their own theory coffins
>>
>> while, as with all systemic faith,
>>
>> they malign bodies politic.
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask]
>
> Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation 2
> (UofAPress).
> Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
>
> Done in by creation itself.
>
> I mean the gods. Not us. Well us too.
> The gods moved into books. Who wrote the books?
> We wrote the books. In whose dream, then are we dreaming?
>
> Robert Kroetsch.
>
|