Quote Unquote
Tue, 06/10/2009 - 19:49 — Clare R
Until I call your name
you speak with glass voice
make my words into blank parchment
The dry trees crackle with
unconscious blossoming
Conscious of sand in eyelashes, rock shifts and creaks
It echoes dust
Will your stone cold bed prevail?
Direct descendent, indirect lineage
Your eager fingers grasp and clutch
life measured in cornstarch coffeespoons
And how to calculate the weight of feathers, weight of gold
You unravel dusty half-deserted sheets
Will your stone cold bed prevail?
Call of frogs and gulls, of meditation bells
It spreads through the sky like locusts
Fate smiling widely beckons
Comments
Clare, I really like this!
Clare, I really like this! its depth is wonderful. I almost feel trapped under the weight of the words. I read it many times.
I do not feel the repetition weakens the piece. The words infact seem to lend a certain stagnent feel to the poem-lots of rocks, dust, weight the preasure of the heavy cold bed.
The overriding decision to let the heavyness 'prevail' or not
...love the call for freedom at the end but its likened to a sky of locusts , somehow unwanted? however fate is welcoming the protagonist to a new future without a stone bed and oppression.
Maybe I interpret it wrongly but I love it!
If you decided to edit the word weight in the third stanza, maybe have weight of feathers (i like that!) and volume of gold-bit of poetic maths there.
maybe have musty sheets instead of dusty in the 3rd verse? so you arent repeating dusty, but not loosing that
stagnent feel.
Good luck with this piece! I think its wonderful. And thank you for your feed back, I welcome it. so if you have any more please send it my way. Thank you.
Hi Clare, I really like the
Hi Clare,
I really like the coldness of this poem, it made me shiver.
I think the images that you've chosen work well, such as,
dry trees crackle
spreads through the sky like locusts
You use strong imagery in your work, which i like alot.
The repitition of 'Will your stone cold bed prevail', but agree with nabila that stone cold is overused.
Nice work
Belinda
I feel very drawn to this
I feel very drawn to this and it is original. Like the tone. When I see poets writing 'under the influence' :-) of other poets or poems, I encourage them to develop their own voice within that. You seem to do that .
Only thing not sure about is the use of coffee spoons - too similar to it...rest is very good and like I said before, original.
I love 'Will your stone cold bed prevail?' because the repetition of this is an echo of Urdu and Persian poetry (ghazals in particular) so that association makes me hear these words in Urdu, believe it or not! (Only thing I would change is stone as this is used often in stone cold)
'weight' - try not to repeat
'make my words into blank parchment' - can you think of something stronger than 'make'
I will read your other work re your comment
I have read your other work
I have read your other work on here and considering your own comment, feel this is a more dense, poetic and thoughtfully constructed piece of work.
Keep posting
Thanks!
Clare R
Thanks for your comments Nabila!
Yes, that 'coffeespoons' line is one of my favourites in the TS Eliot poem, so that might be skewing me towards it... Will look at that again.
That's great that the line about the bed echoes refrains in Urdu and Persian poetry. Your comment made me realise that although I've listened to ghazals, and appreciated them mainly for the sound and the emotion, (as I don't speak any Urdu and only a few words of Farsi) - that I wasn't clear on the structure of this form. For anyone who is looking for some basic information about ghazals, this link might be a good start:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghazal
I'll look at 'stone cold' again. I hadn't noticed the repetition of weight, but had noticed that dust was showing up a couple of times. I'm happy to have repetition when it adds or enhances (hopefully like the refrain) but think these two were an oversight, so thanks for catching them.
I see what you mean about 'make' but as the first word of each line is from the Jung quote, I'm trying to leave all of the first words alone, but agree with you, it's kind of a bland word to use in this line..
thanks again for your detailed feedback. It always gives me energy to approach a piece again when I get feedback from others!
all the best
Clare
some info....
Clare R
An 'Acrostic' is where the first letter of each line spells a word. In this case, the first word of each line makes up a quote by Jung, that I like. Is there a name for this particular form? (or have I just invented one???)
Also have been re-reading 'The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock' by T.S. Eliot recently and you can see the influences of that in this poem.
It's less narrative than most of my writing, something I definitely feel less comfortable with....