Yeah, there’s a lot there, Max.
bpNichol has an Intro to a collection of sort fiction in which the book talks to the reader…
It’s an intimacy not too often looked at squarely.
I think that final quatrain is earned …
I had one small suggestion: that 'near where it’s emerged from’ be cut to ‘near where it emerged’ — with also, to me, fits the rhythm of the section better…
Doug
> On May 18, 2016, at 4:23 AM, Andrew Burke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Still digesting it, Max :-)
>
>
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> On 18 May 2016 at 17:06, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> What an interesting poem, Max, fully justifying its four-part structure.
>> The involving/cajoling of readers into the dream sections works really well
>> I think.
>>
>> I accept your imagery of the struggling sparrow but do wonder whether these
>> sprightly, deft-clawed birds do ever become so entangled.
>>
>> I can hear C W-C's voice in that quick rejoinder.
>>
>> Dickins it still is to me, too, having worked there as a teenager after
>> school.
>>
>> Others will know more to say on the Babel section no doubt.
>>
>> Bill
>>
>> On Wednesday, 18 May 2016, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Readers, I Dreamed
>>>
>>> 1. In a Manner of Speaking
>>>
>>> Dear readers, how are you all
>>> enjoying my new poem -
>>> OK so far? - opens well?
>>>
>>> I say all - as if you’re plural,
>>> if not multiple,
>>> however alone you are
>>>
>>> as you read. Alone -
>>> but not lonely?
>>> We keep each other
>>>
>>> kindly company.
>>> Truly, I have trust
>>> in what we can achieve
>>>
>>> together, a sort of
>>> double-jointed, double-
>>> handed enterprise:
>>>
>>> like a sparrow tangled
>>> in a spring-green hedge
>>> a phrase tries to emerge.
>>>
>>> What arrives is like
>>> a simile, trailing twigs
>>> and green debris.
>>>
>>> The hedge continues
>>> briefly trembling,
>>> subsides to stillness.
>>>
>>> The sparrow continues
>>> on its morning tasks
>>> near where it’s emerged from.
>>>
>>> Is it nesting time? -
>>> well concealed. Is some
>>> nest deep inside it home
>>>
>>> for a sparrow family?
>>> Are you still with me?
>>> I like to think so,
>>>
>>> and me with you - surely
>>> you are, in a figurative
>>> manner of speaking?
>>>
>>> 2. In My Doggerel Dream
>>>
>>> I heard word that Chris
>>> Wallace-Crabbe, Melbourne’s
>>> venerable poet and general
>>> all-rounder, had taken up -
>>>
>>> metalwork! Soon after,
>>> Chris turned up with, in tow,
>>> his first major project,
>>> the size of a small car,
>>>
>>> highly-figured brass plates
>>> on all sides. I said to him:
>>> ‘I hear you’ve interested
>>> the Post Office in this,
>>>
>>> Chris. I can’t see the slot.’
>>> ‘Discreetly placed, Max.
>>> Yes, they’ve asked for
>>> a score, or more, one
>>>
>>> at least for every big
>>> town across Australia.’
>>> As if they’d get folk
>>> posting mail again.
>>>
>>> Now I could see the brass
>>> figurations were snails.
>>> What logic was this?
>>> Dream logic, I guess.
>>>
>>> My car was jammed full
>>> with frozen goods from Coles
>>> in North Balwyn
>>> which my wife’s parents
>>>
>>> still call Dickins.
>>> I pressed on Chris
>>> some fresh-baked sponge cake
>>> which he tried to resist
>>>
>>> with a pained grimace.
>>> He took one slice
>>> in a plastic dish,
>>> returning me the rest.
>>>
>>> ‘We creatives must eat,’
>>> each acknowledged each.
>>>
>>> 3. Me and Isaac Babel
>>>
>>> Isaac Babel is available for you
>>> to interview, the jingling words reached me -
>>>
>>> provided I provide a true
>>> (non-spy) interpreter. Strange - I knew,
>>>
>>> as he did not, his waiting fate -
>>> that firing squad ordered by Beria.
>>>
>>> This called for great discretion from me.
>>> My first, anxious visit to the Soviet Union -
>>>
>>> reading and rereading 'Red Cavalry'.
>>> How shocking they still were, those stories:
>>>
>>> lawlessness, hopes smashed, more cruelty
>>> than compassion. What strength! - to have seen
>>>
>>> so much, and written down what those in power
>>> dreaded being known, or didn’t they care?
>>>
>>> We met in Odessa. He insisted
>>> his crim Jews, now gone, were true fiction.
>>>
>>> Exile would be safer, Mr Babel. He nodded.
>>> My family want me in the West with them.
>>>
>>> My work is here. Filming Gorky’s books, you know.
>>> Now I write the truth for later readers, when
>>>
>>> things improve, then Russia can be honest again.
>>> I left him sad. Why waste his time with me? -
>>>
>>> foreign, behaving secretively.
>>> Years passed. Generations. Some reading.
>>>
>>> 4. If I Say
>>>
>>> as in my dream I was about to
>>> (meeting you nowhere in particular,
>>> uncertain of past and future)
>>>
>>> how lucky I have been to know you,
>>> you will hear in what I say
>>> some foreshadowed farewell
>>>
>>> grateful but ominous
>>> acknowledging how some time
>>> sooner maybe than felt before
>>>
>>> that ‘have been’ may change
>>> to ‘was’. Soon maybe second
>>> person ‘you’ will change to third.
>>>
>>> How lucky I was to know her.
>>> It assumes of course the ‘I’
>>> in this survives the ‘you’.
>>>
>>> Yet the farewell might just be
>>> one that gets said last thing
>>> before a going away, some
>>>
>>> ordinary separation kindly
>>> Time may permit to end.
>>> See you soon, I trust.
>>>
>>> When shall we two meet again?
>>> May we both survive this
>>> so uncertain separation.
>>>
>>> In this life, this we prefer,
>>> such return, such reunion.
>>> Don’t distract with notion
>>>
>>> of afterlife, after death...
>>> is death. Yes, you’re hinting
>>> what may one of us suffer
>>>
>>> outliving the other.
>>> If I should say (which I won’t)
>>> ‘let it not be you’ - how cruel
>>>
>>> the unintended under-thought,
>>> to wish either dark
>>> alternative on another.
>>>
>>> So, better not to broach any
>>> of this whether under bright light
>>> face to face or dreaming darkly.
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Andrew
> http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
> Books available through Walleah Press
> http://walleahpress.com.au
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuations 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
Oh, goddamnit, we forgot the silent prayer.
Dwight D, Eisenhower
[at a cabinet meeting]
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