to contribute a new poem. But here is the late Max Richards's comments on
the poem I submitted last week, only 9 days ago. Love 'och'! Vale Max.
In the swim
has many of your strengths, including the right words in the right order,
and they don’t depend on lineation.
I hesitate to say it’s blank verse because so many lines end with an
unstressed syllable.
Breaking the pentameter, that was the first heave - Ezra Pound, context
forgotten.
I expect Doug to have more at his command.
I also recall from CKStead, *The New Poetic*, his sense that though ‘free
verse’ came in,
many poets were still really writing ten-syllable lines but setting them
out differently.
I sometimes wonder: If presented with poems typed out as prose, could
readers mark
where the line breaks go/went with much success?
Only if there’s a rhyme pattern perhaps.
Just to be a nuisance, I shall fiddle below with your line-breaks, which
will annoy you the way I used to annoy my poetry-writing students. Maybe
put off noting my interference till after next Wednesday, Bill…
Och, Bill, I’ve interfered below at random, without making definite
improvement, and I confess without counting syllables - at any rate you
will feel I’ve sacrificed the advantages of regular line length. As for
tercets, if that’s the word, quite arbitrary. Ignore!
In the swim
Throw everyone in the pool…they adopt
a stroke almost immediately. Most
freestyle it, face down, propelling from prone,
alternate overarming, scissor kicking,
Australian crawling, ice smooth
repeaters: nose, nipple, knackers,
knee; leaning sideways
to draw unhurried breaths - they barrel
ahead, barely creating a ripple.
More casually, backstrokers reverse
themselves, lean back from supine
positions, thrusting skywards faces,
stomachs, genitals, expecting no
impediments, like so many half-
animated, drifting logs.
Double-arming butterflies launch
themselves from underwater, splay-
grasping air then fresh wet territory,
bound-leggedly threshing, projecting
their exuberance. Now there's us lot:
tentative foragers, parting water in front
of our noses, groping forward, too soon
sweeping backwards to hips, legs frog-kicking,
heads under dipped, emerging,
for a snatched breath, bent-backed,
and a fresh go at it. Maybe this time ...
bw
17.9.16
|