01-04-2012, 08:15 PM
I would wish for clarification of parts of a poem which are gibberish to me....not clarification of what a poem 'means'.....that is for me to ponder on.
Mark used the word 'median' in one of his poems. - I had only known this word in is relation to 'average, mean etc.' but this didn't help my understanding of his verse. So, I looked it up in my dictionary - it went on at some length about about all kinds of medians - but, nowhere did it say it was a traffic island in the middle of the road! I needed that information from the horse's mouth.
My reference to 'layers' follows from me reading a Don Paterson's poem 'Imperial' - and being bowled over by the last two lines....
the night we lay down on the flag of surrender
and woke on the flag of Japan
and realising after several reads that the flag of Japan is a white sheet with a red circle in the middle - the aftermath of the girl's loss of virginity and not just 'the flag of Japan'...doh, I am slow!
Mark used the word 'median' in one of his poems. - I had only known this word in is relation to 'average, mean etc.' but this didn't help my understanding of his verse. So, I looked it up in my dictionary - it went on at some length about about all kinds of medians - but, nowhere did it say it was a traffic island in the middle of the road! I needed that information from the horse's mouth.
My reference to 'layers' follows from me reading a Don Paterson's poem 'Imperial' - and being bowled over by the last two lines....
the night we lay down on the flag of surrender
and woke on the flag of Japan
and realising after several reads that the flag of Japan is a white sheet with a red circle in the middle - the aftermath of the girl's loss of virginity and not just 'the flag of Japan'...doh, I am slow!