Dingo (after Judith Wright) Edit 2

[just mercedes]

Thanks Todd.

[vagabond]

Just a few changes. I'm stuck with 'piercing' for the moment - I want a word that suggests both the physical act and the quality of sound/light - any suggestions? I've trawled the thesaurus.


Edit 2


Lynchy worked one winter trapping dingoes for bounty. A lazy man, he couldn’t be bothered with the routine of setting, checking, and cleaning traps. He bought unwanted mongrel bitches from the Council Pound instead. When they came on heat he tethered them near the National Park boundaries, with fish hooks embedded in their vulvas and anchored to a branch. When a dingo mounted, his penis was hooked. He usually bled to death. Sometimes, one would leave shredded remnants and escape.




 
Stars pulse                  
light as sound, fine 
crystal-tapped notes.             

High screams rise, rise,
dwindle to a low moan.
Shadows fade to silence.              very concentrated line, makes me see the dingo in the night, slowly stop moving.

Before gods, before language,
wild dogs called from the void            i like those lines, somehow romantic and sad. great contrast to the way the hunter´s cruelty and arrogance is described in the introduction.
to the light, voicing their land, 
dark matter defying                           i am not sure if i can see in what way the dogs are described by dark matter. if i strain for a meaning i´d think of undiscovered nature being seen as something dark and dangerous by some humans. in the same way i am unsure about what "the light" is
the piercing stars.                                 piercing gets me to the opening prose section again.. makes me think of the hook.
but i can´t quite connect the piercing stars to humans, that set up those traps. 





Hello Mercedes!
i like the poem.. but probably fail to get the amount of meaning it has.

Edit 1
 

Lynchy worked one winter trapping dingoes for bounty. A lazy man, he couldn’t be bothered with traps. Dingoes were too smart for him. He bought unwanted mongrel bitches from the Council Pound. When they came on heat he tethered them near the National Park boundaries, with fish hooks embedded in their vulva and anchored to a branch. When a dingo mounted, his penis was hooked. He usually bled to death. Sometimes, one would leave shredded remnants, and escape.

 

 

A flock of stars pulses
light as sound, fine 
crystal-tapped notes.

 
A high scream rises, rises,
falls slowly to a low moan.
Shadows fade to silence.

 

Before gods, before language,
wild dogs called from the void
to the light, voicing their land, 
dark matter defying 
the piercing stars.

 

 
 
First Draft


 
Lynchy worked one winter trapping dingoes for the bounty on their scalps. A lazy man, he couldn’t be bothered with traps. Dingoes were too smart for him. He bought unwanted mongrel bitches from the Council Pound. When they came on heat he tethered them near the National Park boundaries, with fish hooks embedded in their vulva. When a dingo mounted one, his penis was hooked. He usually bled to death. Sometimes, one would leave shredded remnants, and escape.
 
 
Up here, where snowy peaks
range along the sky,
on full moon nights
a flock of stars pulses
light as sound, fine
crystal-tapped notes.
 
In response, from a ridge nearby
a high scream rises, rises,
falls slowly to a low moan,
fades to shadowy echoes,
silence. From another ridge
it sounds again; defiance,
then sorrow, then death.
 
Before gods, before language,
wild dogs called from the void
to the light, voicing the land,
dark matter defying
the piercing stars.
 
 
 

---

I'm not sure why I wanted prose and verse together. Sort of like a quasi-haibun.

Should the prose piece be first, or after the verse, or not at all? Or just keep the prose and cut the verse?

I'd love to know whether you think it works.

[just mercedes]

Hi - and thank you for your read and comments! I understand when a reader feels they 'fail to get the amount of meaning' becuase often I've written with no clear connection to what was on my mind at the time.

I don't know if understanding helps much, with poetry. Anyway. I'd reread Judith Wright's poem 'Trapped Dingo' and it called to mind not only a dingo trapper I'd known, but also my mind went riffing with the eternal balance of light and dark, that she refers to in connection with ancient Greek legends, or life lessons. Good/bad, laws and religions, all grapple with this dichotomy. Even Zoroastra, and the speck of matter in the light (which he called Sophia, or knowledge) that relates to the speck of dark in the light side of the I Ching, and that of light in the dark side, which point to the impossibility of one without the other. And how these concepts all play out in modern physics, with the universe being made up of mostly dark matter, which by its attraction or mass, holds everything together.

And for the brief moment I was writing, in my own mind I was holding all these ideas at once, and illustrating them in the actions of a particular person in a particular time and place. Acknowledging the bleak and cosmic laughter of the multiverse? That we can think we can know anything.

So, have you read 'Trapped Dingo'? It will take you to an entirely different train of thought, I know. That's one of the things I love about poetry. https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/trapped-dingo/

[vagabond]

Hi - and thank you for your read and comments! I understand when a reader feels they 'fail to get the amount of meaning' becuase often I've written with no clear connection to what was on my mind at the time.

I don't know if understanding helps much, with poetry. Anyway. I'd reread Judith Wright's poem 'Trapped Dingo' and it called to mind not only a dingo trapper I'd known, but also my mind went riffing with the eternal balance of light and dark, that she refers to in connection with ancient Greek legends, or life lessons. Good/bad, laws and religions, all grapple with this dichotomy. Even Zoroastra, and the speck of matter in the light (which he called Sophia, or knowledge) that relates to the speck of dark in the light side of the I Ching, and that of light in the dark side, which point to the impossibility of one without the other. And how these concepts all play out in modern physics, with the universe being  made up of mostly dark matter, which by its attraction or mass, holds everything together.

And for the brief moment I was writing, in my own mind I was holding all these ideas at once, and illustrating them in the actions of a particular person in a particular time and place. Acknowledging the bleak and cosmic laughter of the multiverse? That we can think we can know anything.

So, have you read 'Trapped Dingo'? It will take you to an entirely different train of thought, I know. That's one of the things I love about poetry. https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/trapped-dingo/

hi!
i read judith wright´s poem now. this is probably a disappointing answer: i think i don´t fully get that one either though i like her words. probably i don´t know enough about greek mythology . i find the ending of the first stanza pretty cold (clay eventually stops everyone´s song) in the face of a dying dingo.
but i don´t want to go on about wright´s poem in this thread. thanks for the hints to your poem.

[crow]

What a beautiful moment I've had here.

Try "riddle." It means what you want it to. I think . . .

"Riddle" is like "quiver." Its meanings sound from wholly different sources, but have a curious symmetry. Here, one source is raedels, meaning, to conjecture, and later, to guess at a verbal puzzle. The other is hridder, a bowl with holes in it, used for separating things. So, the symmetry is between a straining tool with holes in it and a verbal puzzle. Both relate to notions of complete incompleteness, things through which a limited amount of illumination may pass.

See: http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=Riddle, particularly the second definition, the "riddle (v1)," ""perforate with many holes," 1817 (implied in riddled), earlier "sift" (early 13c.), from Middle English ridelle "coarse sieve," from late Old English hriddel "sieve," altered by dissimilation from Old English hridder "sieve" (see riddle (n.2))."

I don't know how to crit this, but I'll try, and if my offline efforts yield any fruit, I'll post them. This is excellence itself, and well done.

[just mercedes]

What a beautiful moment I've had here.

Try "riddle." It means what you want it to. I think . . .

"Riddle" is like "quiver." Its meanings sound from wholly different sources, but have a curious symmetry. Here, one source is raedels, meaning, to conjecture, and later, to guess at a verbal puzzle. The other is hridder, a bowl with holes in it, used for separating things. So, the symmetry is between a straining tool with holes in it and a verbal puzzle. Both relate to notions of complete incompleteness, things through which a limited amount of illumination may pass.

See: http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=Riddle, particularly the second definition, the "riddle (v1)," ""perforate with many holes," 1817 (implied in riddled), earlier "sift" (early 13c.), from Middle English ridelle "coarse sieve," from late Old English hriddel "sieve," altered by dissimilation from Old English hridder "sieve" (see riddle (n.2))."

I don't know how to crit this, but I'll try, and if my offline efforts yield any fruit, I'll post them. This is excellence itself, and well done.

Thanks Crow - yes, 'riddled' fits. I'd be happy to read anything you may write.

[RiverNotch]

I think another point to make regarding the prose section is how "the routine of setting, checking, and cleaning traps" is just, relative to the rest of the paragraph, far too, er, smooth, or smooth-sounding, thus not fitting very well with how the rest of the paragraph is all, er, gritty, stoppered, syncopated. I suppose it does inform how much of a routine the whole thing is, but I think perhaps varying the way that whole routine is described might do it for me, perhaps by discussing it in more detail, as you do in the discussion.

Also "riddling" emphasizes the "ing" sound, thus leading the ending of the poem (lol) into the same problems as the aforementioned routine. That said, "piercing" didn't do it any favors, either, and unlike with the prose section I don't think this is as big of a problem. So, on this point, *shrug emoticon*.

PS I didn't realize that this was based on that Judith Wright poem you posted earlier until, say, three reads ago, and with that knowledge this piece shines all the more. I do suggest linking to the piece in the OP, not as a part of the poem, but as a sort of footnote.

[crow]

I'm sure you've considered this, but I think the preferred usage is to say the night sky is riddled. Also, separately, speaking to its usage in physics, dark matter is a misnomer. It should be called "invisible matter." Dark matter is stuff that exerts gravitational influence but that is otherwise undectable. Here's why I'm saying this: I used to think it absorbed light. It doesn't. Fwiw, I think the best guess is that neutrinos have some infinitesimal mass, and that their role as shed energy in the most common chemical transformation in the universe (four protons into two neutrons and two protons) means they're everywhere everywhere everywhere. So, nearly massless particles account for most of the mass in the observable universe. And here's why it matters: the riddled object isn't dark matter, but darkness.