Helen Hagemann wrote:
>
> wherever they hang
> for Stephanie
>
> she landscapes four dresses on the wall
> chooses black to colour art
>
> black, the darker side of pale
> black, the unlovely colour of roads,
>
> traffic hazards, flashing lights, dead-end
> signs. somewhere a woman sleeps
>
> while the mood calls her runaway, wife.
> somewhere ladies hang on lamp-posts,
>
> flee a hooting owl, some drive up lonely highways
> find the river closed. some make it to the station,
>
> coach, or midnight plane. others leave before
> the egg is born, raised by brutal hands.
>
> some artists wall a movement
> others move them while they hang
>
> Helen Hagemann . crits welcome!
>
> ps in my copy 'for Stephanie', runaway and wife are in italics.
>
>
I can accept "the darker side of pale / black" - diction is loose, but
it reminds me of some rock-and-roll phrase (r&r is not my specialty),
and works. But "roads, traffic hazards, flashing lights, dead-end
signs" aren't black, and the lines force us to read them as such. Could
you contrast those yellows, reds, and greens to black? Or blacken them
with another line or stanza? "brutal hands" seems a little rhetorical -
the effect of "brutal hands" raising an egg is rather funny. But "find
the river closed" - that line - is excellent, and the last stanza is
both funky and complex, an effect I like.
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