03-16-2020, 12:50 AM
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Hi dale,
clearly I'm not the best to critique this piece (which I'm reading as the ruminations of a relatively new divorcée, not a widower), so take what follows with as large a pinch of salt as needed ...
(I'm not sure what ideas are updated here, both works share elements of timidity, apathy, inertia, prevarication - what am I missing? I'm also really intrigued by why N is reading Prufrock again at this time. I'd like to know what he gets out of it, that it is something in itself, and not simply a justification for the 'form' of the piece.)
Our N is a fancy man and would use "libation"
But wouldn't he use it correctly? Using it to refer to a beverage is generally ironic, and what irony there is here, as far as I can see, rests on the play between 'healthy' green tea and a 'large belly' - but they are too far apart for it to work.
You've also the problem of had its sway / of me. If 'sway' as in 'influence' then surely this should be 'swayed / me' ?
What's missing, for me, is some elaboration, however discursive, on the circumstances in which N lost his wife before rushing to the inevitable wife/strife rhyme. Perhaps not a phrase a 'fancy man' might use, but maybe the rhyming slang 'trouble and strife' might be employed?
Yes, you heard, I lost my wife
the ball unchained, the troubling strife
mislaid, or so the gossips gabbled,
yet here is peace amidst the rubble
that long war's ruin
too well it sat with me
I think, and now
I try to let it be and drink
my tea, my emerald green and tasteless tea.
no longer tempest, teacup tossed,
no longer I no longer at a loss.
but drawn down to the dregs, the leaves
and crumbs of nothing
less than this most welcome peace
Though I feel unfulfilled
Best, Knot
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