----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2007 10:34 AM
Subject: Re: Revised "The Sign" - one line dropped from section 5
> Whew: an epic piece of remembering what can't & won't be remembered,
> Frederick, or is that 'shouldn't'? Suggestions of some kind of acceptance
> distort into loss, & the casual cynicism bites. Or if you feel I'm wrong
> that it's cynical, it moves in that direction even as it tries to reach
> something warmer?
>
> Tough & gripping, anyway. The narrative moves sharp.
>
> Doug
Thanks, Doug --- your intuition is dead-on: I don't see it as cynical yet
know that it will seem so --- There's a particularly desperate search for
"something warmer" plus a firm refusal of religious versions thereof. Was
in Chicago last week for the memorial service of a good friend. Those
emotions went into it, as well as feelings attendant upon returning to my
home town. Neighborhoods that in my day were grim, nameless,
factories/warehouses/workers now have quaint pseudo-historical names,
Starbucks and boutiques, bright colors, in the same lowering brick
three-story buildings. With the same seamless gray sky over them, and the
same penetrating damp cold. Only a little of this shows in the poem, but
the poem came out of it. Theme of the Past, personal and other.
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