I tend to agree with Sheila, Andrew, but mainly about that first stanza, where the sentence seems, well, sententious in a way & doesn’t seem to lead to the rest, Now I don’t have a problem with fragments conjoined, necessarily, but there I feel what Bill felt, a kind of didactic turn the rest of the poem evades…
So, maybe some more fragments found & brought in…?
Doug
On Aug 1, 2015, at 6:19 AM, Andrew Burke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> That's cool, Bill.
>
> What are the asterisks? Something strange there - the last verse has
> italics for the final quote (from an undertaker's TV ad). 'It's a game of
> millimetres' comes from Mark Taylor commenting on the Third Test at
> Egdaston (cricket).
>
> As for reading it in a linear sense, it is just the limitations that
> written language has that has baffled me. I swapped the order around a few
> times - but I tried to go for the 'life' beginning and then its chance
> development - a game of millitmitres - to the final somewhat cynical use of
> an undertaker's commercial slogan.
>
> Clear as mud, hey :-)
>
> Any other thoughts, folks?
>
>
> Andrew
>
> On 1 August 2015 at 20:59, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Andrew, I find it hard to make connections between the stanzas. The
>> opening may get legs but seems to lurch somewhere else in stanza 2, a footy
>> reference? And by the 3rd, the introduction of 'we' makes me wonder: is the
>> poem taking a didactic bent? By the 4th, I didn't know what game was in
>> your sights - life? footy again? both? St first I misread 'complete' as
>> 'compete'. And then those asterisks in the 5th?
>>
>> The reason I didn't reply at first was because I didn't get it. I still
>> don't but you insisted! And my team, Collingwood went down this arvo at the
>> G. Sorry if I have misread everything.
>>
>> Bill
>>
>>> On 31 Jul 2015, at 12:46 am, Andrew Burke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> I'd love some feedback on the following, if you have time.
>>>
>>> .....
>>>
>>> Life is a hit album,
>>>
>>> concept pending.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> As spring dusts off
>>>
>>> the holding yards,
>>>
>>> North stays steady in a storm.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> We plan
>>>
>>> but rarely complete.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> It’s a game of millimetres,
>>>
>>> of a bee’s tit. Where
>>>
>>> you came from
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> takes you to where
>>>
>>> you go: *turn *
>>>
>>> *to us with confidence.*
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> - Andrew Burke
>>>
>>
Douglas Barbour
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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.
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