12-08-2013, 03:21 PM
I wanted to do a full line-by-line, but then I got overwhelmed by the presumptuousness of it, so I'm only doing up til the part where I started to feel ridiculous 
Breakout
This puts me in mind of a prison. There's a place or thing that's going to hold a character in the poem, either the narrator, another figure(s), or both.
The carvery lunch at Grandad’s RSL
There's a simple meal at a standard cafeteria, hosted by a veteran's association. The public are invited, and the narrator has joined, most likely.
is all we can afford these days, a treat
Grandad is, perhaps, fostering the narrator. All we can afford is soldier's fare.
for battlers. There’s a smell of yesterday
Perhaps this is overwritten to accommodate the pentameters? Perhaps, "for battlers. The smell of yesterday" is an improvement?
piped across the floor, where vets hum foreign songs
The verb tenses are hard to assess. Consider, "Yesterday's smell / pipes across the floor, where vets humming foreign songs". Vets humming foreign songs is a brilliant tension. It's an affinity for NOT the homeland. OR, problematically, the songs are foreign only to the narrator. In which case I can't parse it out . . .
and drink about the war.
The density is starting to frustrate me . . . So, a smell is coming out of a ventilation duct into a room full of vets remembering long-gone war memories. They're drinking to forget the war or toasting their escapades or drinking otherwise? Also, the Grandad character has gone missing. You've lost your escort, so I'm thinking you and your nuclear family are receiving veterans benefits while your Grandad is elsewhere? The next line is a pallet cleanser, but the same confusions pile up . . .
But the carpark today has a busload of
photo-collectors,
I'm not familiar with this idiom. I know "tourists," and I'd understand, "photograph takers" or "foreign jerks." At an extreme, "photo collectors" would be objects that collect light for energy. That's a completely idiotic edit, as the line is clearly not meant to be read that way, but I thought it was an interesting notion, that the people scaring away the vet could be read that way . . .
clicking their Nikons and
smiling inscrutably. And he coughs and checks,
the old man, balks and walks away.
I need to learn forms better. I get anapest anapest anapest spondee / dactyl trochee trochee trochee . . . iamb? So, scrap my scansion, it's pretty self-taught. Uhm . . . Why the word "But"? We've got a veteran hating tourists with cameras, with maybe the thought that they're Asian--"Nikons"? When I "listen out" I understand that there's a veteran who's inhospitable to photo-collectors. When I "listen in" I get questions like, "is he coughing as a balk? Is it cancer? What does it mean to 'check' here? Walks away from the Nikons? From the narrator? From the RSL?
Okay. I'm chickening out. Sorry if I overstepped. I'm still learning . . .
I spent hours on that edit . . . I'm going to fall back some and bite off things that're more chewable . . .
Breakout
This puts me in mind of a prison. There's a place or thing that's going to hold a character in the poem, either the narrator, another figure(s), or both.
The carvery lunch at Grandad’s RSL
There's a simple meal at a standard cafeteria, hosted by a veteran's association. The public are invited, and the narrator has joined, most likely.
is all we can afford these days, a treat
Grandad is, perhaps, fostering the narrator. All we can afford is soldier's fare.
for battlers. There’s a smell of yesterday
Perhaps this is overwritten to accommodate the pentameters? Perhaps, "for battlers. The smell of yesterday" is an improvement?
piped across the floor, where vets hum foreign songs
The verb tenses are hard to assess. Consider, "Yesterday's smell / pipes across the floor, where vets humming foreign songs". Vets humming foreign songs is a brilliant tension. It's an affinity for NOT the homeland. OR, problematically, the songs are foreign only to the narrator. In which case I can't parse it out . . .
and drink about the war.
The density is starting to frustrate me . . . So, a smell is coming out of a ventilation duct into a room full of vets remembering long-gone war memories. They're drinking to forget the war or toasting their escapades or drinking otherwise? Also, the Grandad character has gone missing. You've lost your escort, so I'm thinking you and your nuclear family are receiving veterans benefits while your Grandad is elsewhere? The next line is a pallet cleanser, but the same confusions pile up . . .
But the carpark today has a busload of
photo-collectors,
I'm not familiar with this idiom. I know "tourists," and I'd understand, "photograph takers" or "foreign jerks." At an extreme, "photo collectors" would be objects that collect light for energy. That's a completely idiotic edit, as the line is clearly not meant to be read that way, but I thought it was an interesting notion, that the people scaring away the vet could be read that way . . .
clicking their Nikons and
smiling inscrutably. And he coughs and checks,
the old man, balks and walks away.
I need to learn forms better. I get anapest anapest anapest spondee / dactyl trochee trochee trochee . . . iamb? So, scrap my scansion, it's pretty self-taught. Uhm . . . Why the word "But"? We've got a veteran hating tourists with cameras, with maybe the thought that they're Asian--"Nikons"? When I "listen out" I understand that there's a veteran who's inhospitable to photo-collectors. When I "listen in" I get questions like, "is he coughing as a balk? Is it cancer? What does it mean to 'check' here? Walks away from the Nikons? From the narrator? From the RSL?Okay. I'm chickening out. Sorry if I overstepped. I'm still learning . . .
I spent hours on that edit . . . I'm going to fall back some and bite off things that're more chewable . . .