Today the Flood

[serge gurkski]

Haha, Tom:

Great anthropomorphisms here. A favourite of mine. Cannot be improved upon


I read that than I see the rev number but no, Leanne meant the date and I thought it was revision 3.3.13. , so i am impressed and again read: Cannot be improved upon
.I think, ya, high time. lol


thanks for making me grin unvoluntarily. ,-)

[Jae Mc Donnell]

Wow, how about that. What a great read Leanne

Where the clouds become the earth, the ground
swells and expels its savage regrets. Great opening such a sense of buldging and overflow
Windows, shades and summers are trapped
beneath the tempest, waiting
to be born. Maybe for birth instead of to be born

You encourage exploration –
endless questions placing culverts
for forgotten debris to block, Is this about trying move past old hurts?

and the light from your eyes
is a drop in the glass
reflecting on yesterday’s mockingbird mime
and a crystal decanter of sky love the set up of this stanza

I sip again the nectar that
glistens at the corner of the hour.

Behind the curtains, tomorrow’s promise
melts feebly into soda, lime and maybe just me, but when I think of soda I think of powder. Can something melt into powder?
a slag of sorrow. Someone, somewhere,
forgets to press rewind.

Great poem overall. Love the title and the flow of the piece. Great job.

[Leanne]

Popeye, cheers mate -- accuracy isn't something I aim for, but you've got one hell of a good general sense of what's going on and that's better than good enough for me!

Tom, the culverts: I want the idea that they appear to be clearing the way, but in fact their purpose for being placed was to trap. Not entirely sure how to get that across. And how does a window devolve into a slug? Is there a glass shortage in England that I don't know about? Is this some EU environmental imperative?

---

Jae, I did have the powder in mind -- physical impossibility? Probably Many thanks for your insightful comments.

[tectak]

Popeye, cheers mate -- accuracy isn't something I aim for, but you've got one hell of a good general sense of what's going on and that's better than good enough for me!

Tom, the culverts: I want the idea that they appear to be clearing the way, but in fact their purpose for being placed was to trap. Not entirely sure how to get that across. And how does a window devolve into a slug? Is there a glass shortage in England that I don't know about? Is this some EU environmental imperative?

---

Jae, I did have the powder in mind -- physical impossibility? Probably Many thanks for your insightful comments.

I give up with the witticisms....you oz philistines just don't drink enough....soda and lime with a slug of vodka is a tipple much beloved of the upwardly imbecile in blighty...I thought an old cocktail waitress like you would lock onto that one
Culverts....yes...I knew where you were coming from but not how to get there. I just don't see the easy definition of a culvert extending to be a designer blocking device.
Its my engineering background....equivalent to being an old cocktail waitress, I guess.
Best as always,
tectak

[Leanne]

an old cock... oh, yes, the rest of course...

Maybe "culvert" is entirely the wrong idea, I just didn't want something as smelly as a drain. Suggestions?

[serge gurkski]

maybe: sewer

[Leanne]

Yeah, cos sewer doesn't sound as smelly as a drain :p

[billy]

without doing a line by...i read the edit and it works well. though drop in the glass verges on cliche, i think it gets past though, with the continuing mocking bird line.

just to jump in with the 'is it my poem' thing...if ever you've done a homage, or a poem about a poem, or a poem based on a poem or story, or a poem about a person, journey or happenstance, you make a conscious choice. you alter your reality and perceptions to suit the poem you write from something you know or imagine. the world, it's very being tells/shows you what to write... the work is all yours, the influences never are. we have been told what a word is, what a word means, to use them is exactly the same as pondering a suggestion and then using it if we think it fits.


sorry about that leanne good edit

[newsclippings]

Revision 3/3/13

Where the clouds become the earth, the ground
swells and expels its savage regrets.
Windows, shades and summers are trapped
beneath the tempest, waiting
to be born.

this first stanza reminds me of something religious and profound. it's a little vague for me but I still enjoy the pictures you're putting into my head.

You encourage exploration –
endless questions placing culverts
for forgotten debris to block,

I have no idea who you're talking to yet, maybe that's a good thing. Is it god?

and the light from your eyes
is a drop in the glass
reflecting on yesterday’s mockingbird mime
and a crystal decanter of sky

There's a flow here that gets a little awkward between "drop in the glass//reflecting on" -- also are you portraying a red dawn?

I sip again the nectar that
glistens at the corner of the hour.

Behind the curtains, tomorrow’s promise
melts feebly into soda, lime and
a slag of sorrow. Someone, somewhere,
forgets to press rewind.

right here, are you saying life isn't cyclic, that it drags on, sadder and less hopeful than the day before?

[serge gurkski]

"You encourage exploration –
endless questions placing culverts
for forgotten debris to block, "

Is this (and I might be totally wrong here) meant to mean that once you (seriously) try to find about a topic interesting you, you can bin those questions you had before? Just as puzzled as newsclippings, but I like the sound of it.

[Leanne]

I'm sorry I missed these few comments, I hope you don't think me too rude!

I don't mean to be vague, but at the end of the day if that's what it means to you, then that's what it means. We're in a slightly rarefied atmosphere here in a workshop where we get the rare opportunity to actually converse reader-to-writer, but I tend to veer away from offering my own meaning for my poems. I hope that doesn't seem too deliberately vague -- it's just that when the writing is done, I become just another reader myself so I tend to impose a meaning that wasn't necessarily in my head when it all came out.

From The History Boys, one of my favourite films:

Timms: I don't always understand poetry!
Hector: You don't always understand it? Timms, I never understand it. But learn it now, know it now and you will understand it... whenever.

[billy]

it makes no difference what the poet says to me, once i've had my read that view as to what it means is forever etched.

[shemthepenman]

hello
ok so, this is great! I can only really fault a few little things that are hardly worth mentioning (but it IS worth it just to be able to say, ‘this is great’.

The first stanza is the bomb. ‘where the clouds become the earth’ wonderful opening. however, maybe ‘savage regrets’ is a little too easy for such a kick in the head opening.

Goddamn I wish I had written the second. Very Deluzean, flows and breaks in flows and blocks… mmmm yummy.

‘…the light from your eyes / is a drop in the glass’ I understand why ‘a drop in the glass’ and its relevance, but, I don’t know, it sounds a bit… well, I don’t know, just something seems off; possibly a syntactical thing. Or, again, a little easy in light of the rest.
‘yesterday’s mockingbird mime’ again, just ridiculously good.
‘…a crystal decanter of sky’: my initial reaction to this line was that it sounded like a Bolan lyric, or line from one of his poems, but I couldn’t place it, but regardless, I thought it sounded a little too obvious; but having re-read it it works perfectly.
‘glistens at the corner of the hour’ another one I wish I’d written.
‘someone, somewhere…’ this is only a personal note [because I think it really works] but I go all Westside Story
I will not, as Dylan once said, attempt to shovel a glimpse into the ditch of what each one means. But as always you have made the day a little brighter with your poem. cheers.

[Leanne]

Bolan eh? I don't think I've listened to T-Rex except accidentally for about 20 years! It could well be though, stuck in the dim recesses of the mind... although it sounds a bit more Syd Barrett to me

I'm actually tempted to just get rid of that entire third strophe. Personally, I really don't like the mockingbird mime or the crystal decanter and maybe they'd be better saved for another poem since I can't work out a way to introduce them that seems satisfactory.

Is it "savage" that's a problem in the first?

It's not even breakfast and I think I need whisky for this. Slainte!

[serge gurkski]

I agree with what Leanne wrote above (not the poet's job to do the explaining).
My best-liked poets in German, I - if lucky understand half of the time what they really tried to convey, and still I love reading them because their poems "trigger" sth inside of me. Hard to explain but still true. And yes, the workshop situation is a bit odd in that respect. (reminding me of school, and who has not hated being forced by their teachers to find out about the author's intentions? ,-)

[Leanne]

You're right though Serge, it does sound a bit arrogant -- there's a discussion thread around here somewhere about meaning but the upshot is, unless it's a point of clarity that I feel is important to make, I tend to feel that explaining a poem kills it. At the very least, the poet's explanation will preclude all other possible meanings for some people and that's not really doing the job that I think poetry ought to do. It IS important to make sure that there are enough "keys" in a poem for people to unlock meaning themselves though -- and that's the difference between open meaning and deliberate obscurity.

[serge gurkski]

I second this. Just that sometimes it is hard to know where to draw the line. Just the same with poetic license: you know, like using street talk, slang for effect and not because someone cannot do better. I accept Tom's opinion here but reclaim the right to differ if and only if I think unpolished words and wordings are used by a poet intentionally.

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(don't mind the arrogance at all, btw. )

[Leanne]

I found the thread on meaning -- like all our discussions, it devolves a bit toward the end but there are some valuable insights and a good bit of debate.