:: Poetry ::

:: Thursday, December 18, 2003 ::

This Poem is a Passing Train

This is the poem about the boy on the passing train.
This is the poem about the girl in the pretty dress.
Here's the part where she looks up from her book
to see the most lovely boy on the opposite train--
his eyes blink past like coins falling through air
and her irises swell like the darkened lip of a well.
In the book in her lap, the characters stop
and watch the boy on the train--they fix a pot of tea
and smile to each other remembering how they first met
on page 24, the Countess with a knife to the young man's
throat. A shiver playing through the tendons of his neck
told her he was not the intruder she thought him
but the man she would one day marry in a field
by the River Seine. And you've read this poem before, right?
The boy on the train doesn't see her, the train keeps moving,
the boy is lost to the young girl in the pretty dress,
but just as the boy's face blurs into a bright ribbon
the couple in the book kiss not knowing, either of them,
that the intruder has a heart of darkness and evil
and that try though she might to avoid it, she will be destroyed
with unbearable pain over the next 249 pages which flutter
in the tunnel light in the lap of the pretty girl.

:: Sean 12/18/2003 07:11:00 AM [+] ::
...

Yeah, the title is shit. So fix it. Damn. What are you people doing out there!!! Thanks for all your good work on this. I'll do all that stuff you say. The title used to me "The Last Thing I remember" but I dropped the bit about the blood, so she's just there at the end, and I never knew what that meant anyway. So, I'm really stumped right now. I have a poem I really like right now, so I might put it up in hopes that you'll just do a quick read and drive-by comment and move on to your own stuff. Sorry if I've been too productive--sue me. Damn.
:: Sean 12/18/2003 07:11:00 AM [+] ::
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Sean,
I really like this one, I think. The idea of fear and reticence when faced with the world is pretty universal, or at least they feel that way to me most of the time. The idea that everyone is watching you and that everyone will be “inconvenienced” by your mistakes or inactions speaks to an emotion that, I think, is pretty powerful yet overlooked.

I also like the turn from that kind of public fear to the private fear of the speaker with the lover in bed. That, of course, is the more important fear in many ways. However, I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to make of what happens in the final stanza. I’m with you up until right after the point where the speaker is both relieved and scared that the lover has turned to face the wall—I think that’s a great moment. But I’m not sure how to read what happens afterwards. Other than the fairly clear image of the freckled back, I don’t quite get the resolution of “blood” and “light.” The metaphorical language seems to come out of left field here, and I’m not quite prepared enough by the rest of the poem’s language to interpret this part. If there were some more obvious metaphorical foreshadowing, I might know better how to read those final two lines and get more resonance from them.

Otherwise, this one seems to work all of the way through. I especially like the line, “but you’re blowing / in my ear so brave and dirty.”

:: Rob 12/09/2003 07:07:00 AM [+] ::
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Sean,
Unfortunately, I head back to the States next Wednesday. I'd love to come visit, but cash is short to non-existant at this point. How long will you be over there? Coming home for any visits? If so, come stay in Evansville for a few nights. We can actually put you in your own beds this time, and there's a good place to go drinking within walking distance of the house.
:: Rob 12/04/2003 10:18:00 AM [+] ::
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Wait. You mean our Paul was there? Damn. I wish I could've come over. I'm just now getting a tiny bit of extra change. When do you leave Rob? Maybe we could meet in Paris or something. I don't know. You can't get here can you? So, fellas, sorry I missed you. I was just thinking that last year, we had a good time the weekend before Tgiving when I shot through on my way home. I did miss being home this last week. Looking forward to yinz upcoming poems.
:: Sean 12/04/2003 08:16:00 AM [+] ::
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"Oedipus, Billie Holiday, Charles Foster Kane and You"
OK, I'm finally getting back to it--end of the semester crap here has been getting in the way of doing good things like writing or reading poems. Also, Paul was here until yesterday, so we've basically been fucking off for a week, which was great. If I hadn't had to teach this semester, this trip would have been about perfect.

Anyway, the poem: I like this one alot, but the long lines don't seem to cohere somehow; they want to break somewhere in the middle. This may be way off base here, but I imagined that you were using the long lines as some kind of analog to Homeric lines--long, narrative, etc. However, they don't seem to work here. Really, the only suggestion I have is to try breaking these differently--if you do, you might generate a little more energy in the poem and stave off the prosiness that they're creating right now.

I'll get back to you on the new one.
:: Rob 12/02/2003 05:55:00 AM [+] ::
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