[W T Clark]

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Rev.1
.............for John Riley

I stand in my skin in the rain in this storm

& wonder at lightning that shows me to me

I know I am not the rain bluffing at form

though I'm as shred-emptied & cleansed as its sky


a mask to my mask that's amicably doffed

to disclose an absence in each stutter of light

nor am I the hill or the hill's dazzled crop

of scrub-grass I've crawled on: as if I might root


as if I'm a blank that the rain can't define

since nothing makes nothing: disjointed & beating

& I who am either a king or a thorn

overhear myself to hear only wind speaking


it is time the flood ceased: that the Fool emerged

to sing the aloneness that reigns after rain

it is time I were not sheathed in myself like a sword

for a silence to ripen me with a name

***



I stand in my skin in the rain in this storm

& wonder at lightning that shows me to me

I know I am not the rain bluffing at form

though I'm as shred-emptied & cleansed as its sky


a mask to my mask that's amicably doffed

with each I it stutters with stuttering light

nor am I the hill or the hill's dazzled crop

of scrub-grass I've crawled on: as if I might root


as if I'm a blank that the rain can't define

since nothing makes nothing: disjointed & beating

& I who am either King Lear or a thorn

overhear myself to hear only wind speaking


it is time the flood ceased: time the Fool emerged

to remonstrate with the aloneness that reigns

after rain: time he were not sheathed like a sword

in me, time for a silence to ripen a name

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[John Riley]

Cameron, it took me a moment to see the dedication. I am humbled and honored and hope I am worthy of the poem. For now what I must do is read this several more times. It reads as though it came to you quickly but dug deep. It is a poem that needs and deserves deep reading. I am looking forward to doing so and will return soon.

Thank you

[Carl Copeland]

John recently made a plea for us all to “stop trying to understand and instead look and touch and reveal.” Without questioning the wisdom of that, I just can’t do it with your poems, Cameron. They always seem so dense with thought that staying on the surface is like taking the easy money and leaving what’s behind the curtain. In this poem, for example, there’s something about no-self: the no-thing being rained on and the nothing to which Lear was reduced on the heath. There are flashes of I-consciousness in the darkness (blindness). And there’s a call for the Fool to return after the storm, as he never did in the play, and for a name to fill the silence (give things their name after the Flood).

But while I’m trying to make sense of all that, this is the first poem of yours I’ve read that keeps me jazzed with a lively meter. Anapests, no less! A guilty pleasure of mine is chanting, and you make it so easy that I have to point out two places where I ran into trouble:

S2L1 — You’re either stressing “amicably” on the second syllable or you’re stretching the expected two anapests into three iambs. An amphibrachic “that’s ami-” seems unlikely. At any rate, it’s hard changing gears for two or three feet when the going is smooth for lines and lines on either side.

S4L3 — Have you gotten away here with three consecutive unstressed syllables (“he were not”)? If so, it’s a coup. That’s how I’d naturally say it, but there’s a school of thought that claims it’s impossible in metered verse.

Enough of that. I’ll now get back to digging below the surface—like a tick into an ear, as Mayakovsky put it.

[Julie Steiner]

In general, I like this, although the simplicity of the first part clashes with the prerequisite of familiarity with King Lear as things go on. Can't the storm and the identity crisis have their own power, without Shakespeare's celebrity endorsement? What Would John Riley Do?

And I don't see that the meter's absolute implosion in the last five lines is in any way an asset to the reader's experience of the poem. Unless you are trying to make a point that the wind's voice is less rhythmic than the speaker's, or than the background patter of the rain. But I find it less effective than the hypnotic cadence of what came before, and the poem ends for me five lines after the magic ended.

The wrong-footing in L4 seems unnecessary, too:

     though I'm as shred-emptied & cleansed as its sky
>>>
     although I'm as emptied & cleansed as its sky

(Yeah, I know, you're probably in love with "shred-emptied." I'm not, for the predictable, pedestrian reason that I can't figure out what it means, when I'm already feeling curmudgeonly about having wrong-footed the meter on the first attempt.)

[Mark McDonnell]

For reasons similar, though not identical, to Julie's I wondered about the explicit Shakespeare reference. Why not just "the King", rather than "King Lear"? In a poem so elemental it seems a shame to stop in the middle and point to the bookshelf to spell it out. The allusion would still be there and you would give the reader a little work to do. And I think it sounds better.

I like "shred-emptied". I read it as being reduced to shreds, or tatters, by the storm. I would guard against making these compounds that you are fond of into a poetic trademark, or shortcut to 'language-newness', though, which may dull their impact. Does that sound horribly prescriptive? I hope not. They work but perhaps not every poem needs them.

In the last stanza, it is not so much the metre but the sudden emergence of quite harsh enjambment that threw me. I'm sure you have your reasons to do with form matching content maybe, but it threw me, nonetheless. Could:

it is time the flood ceased: time the Fool emerged

to remonstrate with the aloneness that reigns

after rain: time he were not sheathed like a sword

in me, time for a silence to ripen a name

be something like

it is time the flood ceased: time the Fool emerged

to (shorter word) with the aloneness that reigns after rain

time he were not sheathed in me like a sword

time for a silence to ripen a name

I wonder if "form" in L3 is referring to poetic form and this is a poem about freedom and restriction in poetry (I use the word "about" tentatively). That would fit with John. This isn't a crit, just a wondering...

Mainly, I am mightily swept along with this, Cameron. I think it's really good. It's genuinely lovely to see poets writing about and for each other here, and such good poets and worthy recipients. (I did post a limerick on Facebook for Matt Q's birthday, if that helps)

Mark

[W T Clark]

Hello Carl, Julie, John, and Mark: I am glad this met with your general approval. Iambs are a thing of infinite variety; but I do like the incantations of anapests.
Carl: yes, "amIcably" is how I intended the music to fall. As for your sense over rules; rules are nothing to the sense: if the music is right with a four, I will let it be so: the anapest does not have infinite variety; but it does in its chant require a loudness that brings out the multifariousness of a stress: that those who say one cannot have three unstressed syllables (though they are proper wise-men and I would not argue with them most of the time: let prescription generally hold) I think here that they forget that one syllable can have a half, or lesser stress, compared to the thud that completes the foot.
Julie, I have taken your thoughts with Mark's: roled them into a ball, and applied a revision. I hope you find the music less intermittent toward my end.

Mark: I don't see King Lear as a return to the bookshelf; I see it as an apocalypse; the drama of King Lear seems often alive to me in a flower during rain. The poem came to me from that; from John's poems: especially the recent one that is "non-metrical"; and the remarks he made about the mystery of a human and the mystery of a flower. I want the narrator to be both: King & thorn. I have taken yours and Julie's suggestions: thank you!
"shred-emptied" sounds how lightning looks.
There is much form in a petal tome than in a poem. For me: the poem is about being alive. I hope that isn't too cavernous.
I take your advice about compounds with a solemn look of agreement: we must be wary of habits.

John: you are welcome. I look forward to your return.

Carl: chant it, yes!! I tok inspiration from Cally's lay-out to interpose this more drastic music with silence: to keep the beat still a little unsettled: a little slowed down and interposed.

[R. Nemo Hill]

Quite a heroic poem, Cameron, or a post-heroic poem: for only from the the old beaten down barn-of-a-man can there arise the name that endures beyond facile identity, the "aloneness that reigns after rain." And it was a good move to simply use the word king rather than King Lear which collects echoes more mythic (though the scholarly echoes are included in its reverberation). The poem is remarkable, and it evokes its dedicatee in a suitably translucent way, by looking through him. Weathered things, weathered beings, have a grave translucence that calls into question all that presumes to be concrete.

Nemo

[Mark McDonnell]

Mark: I don't see King Lear as a return to the bookshelf; I see it as an apocalypse; the drama of King Lear seems often alive to me in a flower during rain.

Cameron, I hope I didn't suggest that there was anything dull, dusty or academic about the actual play King Lear, or even about using its stormy cataracts and hurricanoes as a reference point for your poem. Simply that being so specific in your allusion was a little on-the-nose and potentially limiting. I like the changes.

Cheers

Mark

[John Riley]

I tried to return here sooner but my physical therapy session yesterday rocked my day and it is still shifting around this morning. I know the work the physical therapist is doing is necessary, but I swear I caught a glint of evil in her eye as she pressed my poor damaged knee against the table, oblivious to my sobs and whimpers.

I've never had this experience of commenting on a poem dedicated to me. It's an honor, Cameron.

I see this as a response, or at least associated with, my poem on non-met. This poem has pushed me to look more closely at that one, to attempt to determine what I've written, because I am convinced it's often the things we don't realize we've said that are the best. Maybe that is a poem about someone searching for an identity who, at the end of a long search, is still not having any luck. Maybe if he flies apart it will be among the planets, but the planets are just as lost, worshipping the spin of their own existence. Although it was suggested the statue was a slur on people's religion, it is actually an admission he will never be that saint, turned from the sea.

OK. That's weird. Deconstructing my own poem and knowing my interpretation may be wrong. But I see something similar, if better accomplished, going on here. Identity after identity is tried on and discarded until the one character that deserves an initial cap emerges--the Holy Fool. He isn't discovered by work and experiments. He emerges when the effort is done.

I'm not certain that reading is the right one. Cameron's poems are always open to various readings, which is why they are intriguing. There's always a journey but you know from the outset the journey will be worth it. I'm seeing this poem through the prism of my poem and find a similar struggle, look, attempt here. The work is necessary to learn, probably not for the first time, that the work isn't necessary. It may be the problem. Or, to be Russian about it, the only way to escape the suffering is to stop suffering.

To say suffering is too much. I'm having fun.



. . . nor am I the hill or the hill's dazzled crop

of scrub-grass I've crawled on: as if I might root


as if I'm a blank that the rain can't define

since nothing makes nothing



This reads as though it was written quickly. If so, I recommend doing this more. It feels as though you've lifted the top of a pot that bears more stirring.

Good poem, Cameron, and thank you.

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by W T Clark

yes, "amIcably" is how I intended the music to fall.

Ok, I have yet to find that pronunciation in an online dictionary, British or American, but it may be out there.

Originally Posted by W T Clark

those who say one cannot have three unstressed syllables … I think here that they forget that one syllable can have a half, or lesser stress, compared to the thud that completes the foot.

I’ve long thought it must be possible, since it happens all the time in speech. Cally pulled it off recently, and I think you did in your original of this poem. In the revision, for some reason, I want to stress “were” or “not,” making pentameter, but I’m ok with that.

I’ve just noticed the additional Lear reference in S3L2: “Nothing will come of nothing.”

I also get a resonance with “Man Carrying Thing,” though Stevens seems to expect some kind of zenlike direct experience after the storm, while you want to start naming things again. I tend to think humans cannot not name things, so maybe I’m in your camp.