You say sleepy, Bill, but sleep for me is neither creative nor recreative,
and dreams are mostly dumb fragments.
Yes, that phrase about race gender & class came to me years ago, for another poem,
and in general I concede my dream poems are burdened with waking stuff.
A friend not on the list tells me my pieces are too discursive and have not enough of image,
and he is right.
Thanks for saying ‘jaunty’ and noting dialogue.
Max
On Jun 1, 2016, at 20:08, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> What a sleepy fellow you are these days, Max. I wonder whether the airy
> dismissal of the 'tiresome threesome' came to the narrator mid-dream or was
> an after-construction. Mind you, as Doug says, we all I think still have
> dreams of incompletion of tasks begun with commitment. What is most
> convincing for me with this one and the metalworking Chris Wallace-Crabbe
> in the last is the jaunty tone and frustrations expressed in dialogue.
>
> Bill
>
> On Thursday, 2 June 2016, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> A Poet’s Advice
>>
>> Walter de la Mare
>> is in Melbourne - as
>> sports commentator.
>>
>> Many dislike his voice,
>> ‘posh’, long sentences,
>> but this is cricket
>>
>> with the Poms on tour.
>> Half the team speak that way.
>> He glides toward me,
>>
>> limp handshake. ‘Pleased
>> to meet…’ Yes, he will read
>> my manuscript, ‘but -
>>
>> never expect fame
>> or money from poems!’
>> Do I look so young
>>
>> and hopelessly hopeful?
>> He says he’ll post my packet
>> back, but never does.
>> The Test victory is theirs.
>>
>> A Last Late Lecture
>>
>> The professor who hired me
>> when I was thirty appears
>> forty-five years on, saying:
>> 'Have you kept up?’ Well,
>> I'm lecturing right now -
>> come see, I say, and listen.
>>
>> What bravado!
>> He sits at the back.
>> The half-filled room see
>> I’ve come without notes
>> or textbook. I bend over
>> one in the front row,
>>
>> and what’s this? - stuff
>> I’ve never read, though
>> much mentioned for years
>> for being power-packed:
>> race, gender, class!
>> the tiresome threesome
>>
>> I’ve skirted all this time
>> while others ‘work on them’.
>> Today I can’t just say:
>> here are some poems
>> I’ve enjoyed, let’s share.
>> My mouth is dry. I wake.
>>
>> The Thesis Dream
>>
>> My mid-life opus has dragged me
>> slowly into near-retirement
>> unfinished, untidy, what the heck.
>> Fed up with the long haul,
>>
>> I parcel it off roughly along
>> the guidelines for submission,
>> settling back to wait.
>> Soon the assessors’ reports
>>
>> come my way, restrained
>> but clearly scandalized.
>> No university accepts such
>> stuff. Am I downhearted?
>>
>> Recurring dreams diverge.
>> There’s the turn to dismay,
>> or the blessed relief,
>> resurgence of self-belief.
>>
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