04-12-2018, 09:00 AM
I'll think about revising properly; probably end up more mine than yours, but maybe as a piece of fun, tho' I'm a lazy arse, so...
I think you mentioned there in passing something of major importance, which we do in common speech, and with greater consequences in poetry, because necessarily, it tends to be brief. It is so true that I write with a whole load of lumber in my head, and you read with different lumber. So if, e.g. I were to write about the little croft I used to have in the Orkney Isles ( on top of Scotland) , I would be aware of the seas which impelled giant waves up tall cliffs; the numerous sea-birds; the stone buildings, and Neolithic remains which were everywhere; the locals, and their incomprehensible dialect; their slow conversations about someone's broken rudder; the mobile shop; the bank which came once a week and set up shop in some old lady's cottage; the unlicensed cars the police never found, because the boatman phoned on ahead, and they hid under hay-stacks; and the wild winds and rain, and heather. And a thousand others fragments. It is so easy to assume that others have this picture.
Perhaps the best we can do, is to be as conscious as we can, and decide what major bits and bobs we need to present. Ambiguity has been done to death, I think: it will be there whatever we do, and with all the precision in the world. So I don't see the need to add to it, although I know for others, this is the very stuff of poetry. I am bordering on a rant-fest now so...Pip-pip!
I think you mentioned there in passing something of major importance, which we do in common speech, and with greater consequences in poetry, because necessarily, it tends to be brief. It is so true that I write with a whole load of lumber in my head, and you read with different lumber. So if, e.g. I were to write about the little croft I used to have in the Orkney Isles ( on top of Scotland) , I would be aware of the seas which impelled giant waves up tall cliffs; the numerous sea-birds; the stone buildings, and Neolithic remains which were everywhere; the locals, and their incomprehensible dialect; their slow conversations about someone's broken rudder; the mobile shop; the bank which came once a week and set up shop in some old lady's cottage; the unlicensed cars the police never found, because the boatman phoned on ahead, and they hid under hay-stacks; and the wild winds and rain, and heather. And a thousand others fragments. It is so easy to assume that others have this picture.
Perhaps the best we can do, is to be as conscious as we can, and decide what major bits and bobs we need to present. Ambiguity has been done to death, I think: it will be there whatever we do, and with all the precision in the world. So I don't see the need to add to it, although I know for others, this is the very stuff of poetry. I am bordering on a rant-fest now so...Pip-pip!