03-12-2017, 03:55 AM
Powder, I find your comments quite interesting. You are showing me a point of view that's quite different from mine.
I am going to answer your remarks, since I feel that you are missing some things.
“These are the good times” – thirty years ago,
while visiting friends, I had that thought.
I thought about writing those lines this way:
"These are the good times" -- I had that thought
thirty years ago while visiting friends.
But I find that construction less interesting than breaking it up a bit. Really, there's nothing so unusual about the construction that I use, especially if you remove the commas.
How did I know the good times wouldn’t last?
This is a rhetorical question, the purpose of which is to convey that I understand, today, that my 30-year-old thought created a psychological boundary.
In just five words I wiped away my future.
This must come after the question because it rests on the understanding that a boundary was created.
Not that the young Caleb actually knew [that he was creating a boundary for himself],
but he did:
I like "but he did" because it sets up an interesting contradiction: The young Caleb didn't know on the surface, but understood at an unconscious level what he was doing.
he looked down a bright and sunny
road so far that he saw the end, and by
anticipating brought it to him sooner.
I don't see anything wrong with those lines; they are fairly direct. The "it" in the final line refers to the "end" in the line above. Your rewrite of the lines puts the speaker in explanatory mode, which is not as lyrical as the way I've written it. The speaker in a poem should never take the tone of a teacher or an explainer.
Human thoughts can be chaotic and will jump from one aspect of an issue to another, and I am trying to capture the unfurling of thoughts in those stanzas. Perhaps if you read the poem a little more, you'll begin to understand what I'm trying to do.
I'll agree with you in one respect: the language has a somewhat clunky quality to it. I'm trying to fix that.
Thanks again.
I am going to answer your remarks, since I feel that you are missing some things.
“These are the good times” – thirty years ago,
while visiting friends, I had that thought.
I thought about writing those lines this way:
"These are the good times" -- I had that thought
thirty years ago while visiting friends.
But I find that construction less interesting than breaking it up a bit. Really, there's nothing so unusual about the construction that I use, especially if you remove the commas.
How did I know the good times wouldn’t last?
This is a rhetorical question, the purpose of which is to convey that I understand, today, that my 30-year-old thought created a psychological boundary.
In just five words I wiped away my future.
This must come after the question because it rests on the understanding that a boundary was created.
Not that the young Caleb actually knew [that he was creating a boundary for himself],
but he did:
I like "but he did" because it sets up an interesting contradiction: The young Caleb didn't know on the surface, but understood at an unconscious level what he was doing.
he looked down a bright and sunny
road so far that he saw the end, and by
anticipating brought it to him sooner.
I don't see anything wrong with those lines; they are fairly direct. The "it" in the final line refers to the "end" in the line above. Your rewrite of the lines puts the speaker in explanatory mode, which is not as lyrical as the way I've written it. The speaker in a poem should never take the tone of a teacher or an explainer.
Human thoughts can be chaotic and will jump from one aspect of an issue to another, and I am trying to capture the unfurling of thoughts in those stanzas. Perhaps if you read the poem a little more, you'll begin to understand what I'm trying to do.
I'll agree with you in one respect: the language has a somewhat clunky quality to it. I'm trying to fix that.
Thanks again.