Hi Michael, and thank you for posting and sharing your poem. I like your work (I’ve browsed your website). For me, you have a very clear style which is uncomplicated but manages to convey complex ideas without labouring them. And I like this poem very much so I’m grateful for the chance to read it.
I’ve been at work today but spent some time with the poem this morning and thought about it hard over lunch. I like the meta-qualities of the poem - the fact we don’t see the picture, or the man, or the woman, but they are instead defined by the things around them. I like the frames, the view - mentioned, explicitly, just as the poem closes and the moment is released, in a sense. I wonder who ‘we’ are, too - the narrator.
I haven’t got as far as looking at the images youv'e linked to yet (apologies, this is because I spent too long with the poem). I’m going to do so in a second- I’m really interested what your choices are. I know that mine would be to go for the frames/things angle - maybe Braque. Not an image of a woman. If I were going for an image of a woman - very straight link with image and poem - it were it’d be from that period - Modigliani, maybe. Or you could go for Tracey Emin’s bed, and that would bring a whole new set of meanings to the poem. I know! Rachel Whiteread’s Due Porte. That would bring out the ‘things’ angle.
Anyway, I’m excited to explore your links, and I’ll be doing this next, and will post later once I have done so!
Sarah-Jane
|