Mountain Sojourn edit 3

[Knot]

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Hi TqB

announce to the reader at the end.

Does rather presuppose that the reader makes it that far

(And can an announcement come at the end of the thing it's announcing? Surely that's a post-script?)

2. Ginsberg or no Ginsberg, I'm puzzled why the character sketches (let's call them) are of no interest. Too sketchy?

'Sketchy', yes, possibly. For me, they are pointless in that they have no effect on the narrator - the exception being the one character who isn't sketched at all, the barista.

What do I care that someone 'brought water' when there's no further mention of water in the piece?

Or that the Russian serfs were aged either 19 or 20, or that there were 19 or 20 Russian serfs?

(Sasha's female! Oops!) I'm no better informed about the narrator or the place by these sketches (except that you clearly have a thing for tattoos )

If I could take myself out of it, all together, I would. The things I observed outside of myself are what's important to me in the poem.

Perhaps that's why there seem to be two separate poems here, the 'inside' elements I identified (for want of a ego-trip) and the 'outside' elements you refer to. I don't see how you could 'take yourself out of it' when you start with 'I drove'. From the point of view of a Ginsbergian Ode to a Place, does it matter how you get there? If not, why not simply begin with the 'character sketches'? I'd start here

in Angel Fire, an angel boy

plump as any cherub

checked our groceries

and shared the story

of his technicolor tattoos

He said: 'each one is ...

(at this point, though, you'd have to share the story of the tatts with the reader, otherwise why mention it at all?)

and alternate verses with descriptions/character sketches of the place itself.

(Just as a by the by, until I researched Sangre de Christo I thought it was a town or similar, not a range of mountains.)

Best, Knot



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