[Cally Conan-Davies]

REVISION TWO

When don't turns into do



when the door doesn't stop the wind

when the footprint refuses to follow

when the keeper blows out the flame

when piss leaks from the witch's bottle

when the circus breaks new ground

when Etna blows smoke rings

when whimsy bolts the clown


today and today and today

when the clock looks down on you

when the cut steel and the tip stain

impress the mob on the hill

where a house hides in the corner

and the curtain gives a twitch

and nobody notices it



but the fool who reads into

the runes of the runneling rain

and the hunch of the half-starved possum

gnawing the blackberry canes

while the moon cradles the mountain

humming about nothing new

as the sun does to the dew

REVISION ONE

When don't turns into do



When the door doesn't stop the rain

When the footprint gives up following

When the keeper flouts the flame

When tears drown the witch's bottle

When the circus breaks new ground

When Etna blows smoke rings

Who's looking down on you



Who's looking down on you

When whimsy bolts the clown

When the cut steel and the tip stain

Impress the fervent crowd

When there are hidden houses

Building in dark corners

Where the eye of the local warden

Is bound to notice you


But you can see straight through

The understanding rain

The undiminished sunlight

Falling on every face

So the moon hands it over to you

But she's taken by surprise

For the knight has swapped his hood

For don't and turned to do



**********
Initial caps added
Original first line was the same as title

[Siham Karami]

Calligraphy,

What a poem for the current zeitgeist! Very powerful with the collective images. (Now I’m feeling embarrassed that I said I hope you’ll post when you already did, but I hadn’t seen it yet.) I like the way it completes the circle at the end. It’s so entirely different than most poems, in a number of ways, nothing excessive, it hits the reader with this spare directness. Also I feel its arrangement is somehow chiastic. The middle stanza is like a fulcrum, “who’s looking down on you” – this stanza nailed what I feel about this moment in time. There’s a sense of surveillance and things dark and hidden going on we can’t yet see, but it’s happening. The first and the last sections are like yin and yang – the first section introduces the feel of what’s happening as a kind of crescendo. I love “Etna blows smoke rings” - starting each line with “when” tells us this is a critical moment in time. It’s in the mode of warning, a prophecy, has a sort of biblical feel. Then the final section brings light: “but you can see straight through” - all this is good.

My only question is about the final lines beginning with “so the moon hands it over to you” - it’s not clear to me what “it” is - everything was building up to this point. I don’t mean explanations, it’s that the logic of the last 4 lines escapes me, except the part about the knight. It feels like at that critical juncture, I missed something. For all I know it could be a single word or could be a change. I like the sense of action, but it’s only a sense. I feel it needs more connection to the rest, the end feels like it’s close but the connection I feel needs to be stronger to give the knight more meaning - but I may change my mind. The sunlight does connect to the moon, so I’m thinking I probably should give it time. I will come back. So glad to see you here! Much to love about this poem, sometimes endings just need finagling.

Arrow———-> xox (when I write xo, my phone says “do”!)

[Jim Moonan]

How could I even feign to find fault with this? (you see — It's making me write poetry already)

I disregarded the box you put this in (The Deep End) and rode it giddy-up from beginning to end, holding on for dear life with each new stanza's cadence, gushing at the poems inside the poem that rushed by. I hadn't realized how much I missed your poetry until you came back with this offering. And it's surprisingly, pleasingly on solid ground (not a drop of water in sight).

No caps, no punctuation; just a generous amount of space between the lines which I always associate with your poems. It flirts with being a litany (with no response) but departs to be free-floating, unencumbered by anything that would slow it down or break it up.

After the loaded latency of the first stanza, the poem takes off into esoteric territory but I have already been hooked and I want to come along and am rewarded with more beautiful language that translates to a moment when don't becomes do. That's all I know and all I need to know.

Some interesting variations in meter keeps me bobbing along, again feeling like I'm going giddy-up. It is wonderfully paced and full of a kaleidoscope-like imagery.

The end goes over the rainbow.

My token deep-end crit is this: the title. Mostly because it is the first line. Would "Don't Do" be too cute? I think a perfect title awaits...

It's rare-air poetry..

.

[Rick Mullin]

Calleroo...


I love what I'm getting from this--the glory of "no holds barred". The power of the uncontrolled once we open up and realize we don't have it under control. Favorite lines are as follows:

when the footprint gives up following

when tears drown the witch's bottle

when the circus breaks new ground

and of course:

when whimsy bolts the clown


The moon line I read as the moon, which we think of in terms of its controlling force regarding tides and being something stuck in place by cosmic physics, leaves it to you, relinquishes control and leaves the overpowering tides to you.

I'm only mentioning meter because this is a metrical board thread--I am having a hard time finding something consistent.

Lastly, I like the unpunctuated lines, even the one that would normally get a question mark. But I'm not crazy about the layout and I don't like the title repeated in the first line. I like it better stated in the title and echoed in the final line without that immediate repetition. And I'm not seeing a compelling reason for spacing out the lines in the stanzas. For comparison's sake, look at this, which compensates for what might be lost in the change by capping the lines:

When don't turns into do


When the door doesn't stop the rain
When the footprint gives up following
When the keeper flouts the flame
When tears drown the witch's bottle
When the circus breaks new ground
When Etna blows smoke rings
Who's looking down on you


Who's looking down on you
When whimsy bolts the clown
When the cut steel and the tip stain
Impress the fervent crowd
When there are hidden houses
Building in dark corners
Wwhere the eye of the local warden
Is bound to notice you


But you can see straight through
etc

RM

[Cally Conan-Davies]

Great call, Rickster!

More shortly!!

Revision posted


Cally

[Simon Hunt]

Wthe? This must be a typo, right?

[Cally Conan-Davies]

Arrow!!!! Thank you soooo much for your reading, Arrow! Yes, the zeitgeist. I was definitely tapped into a strange world convulsion, I think. I didn't expect these lines at all. All I had was a line that came up from sleep with me when I was waking one morning: 'when don't turns into do'. I wrote it down, which is not something I usually do. At the time I thought -- how liberating! Just as Rick put it "The power of the uncontrolled once we open up and realize we don't have it under control." I mean, we're so held back by 'don't's in our lives. It's as if we learn them so much deeper than we learn the 'do's. The trouble is, when you let everything out, everything DOES come out. Everything. So I am hoping that something complex comes through, something unsettling.

I think you're onto something with the ending. I can't see a way at this moment, but I know I need to keep dreaming it. I don't want to step in with my reasoning boots on. I want to wait to see what the poem wants . . . thank you for your guiding eye!!!

Dearest Jim! Hahaha!! No, not a drop of water in sight! HA. I'm so glad you had that giddy-up feeling! It needed to rush in an onslaught of images, really. I agree with you in that I don't think the poem wants to GO anywhere beyond that "moment when don't becomes do" as you put it so beautifully. I am also very glad you can follow the metre like a ride. Variation is the heart of metre to me. It comes alive through irregularities. It's just who I am. I love bouncing along rather than a smooth ride.

You locked onto the very thing I couldn't solve. The title. YES. Until moments before I posted the poem, the title was 'Untitled'. And at the last moment, I thought perhaps that's a copout, so I went with the practice of using the first line as the title. So thank you! You were absolutely right. The title needed work.

Rickster -- you fixed it! Rickster the Fixter! How did I miss that? The first line as the title, then dive straight in! I love your reading of the poem. The glory of no restraint. But as soon as I started riding it, something crept in -- unrestraint applied across the board -- really scary things happen. The relationship between control and uncontrolled, restraint and unrestraint -- it's sooooo complicated and profound and layered. It's exhilirating with sinister undertones. Things can turn into their opposites so quickly.

Metre: I hear 3 strong beats per line, with some lines pushing to 4. It's a ride, I know. Lots of irregularties. But the 3 beat pulse is strong, I think.

I've gone with all your suggestions as you see. The capitalising was a great call. But I'm still too timid to close the space. I love my space!!! Ha! I'll see if I can go there eventually!! I promise!

Also, now I have 7 lines in S1 and 8 in the others, and I want to keep it 8 8 8, so I've got some work to do. I need to shift lines around, and try to come up with another line. So this could be how something might occur to me to adjust the ending, Arrow!

Thanks so much for your great readings, and great help! SO much appreciated!


Cally

[Cally Conan-Davies]

Simon, THANKS! I hadn't noticed that! Fixed.

[John Riley]

I love it, Cally. I will continue to read it.

Thanks

[Paula Fernandez]

Hi Cally--

Nice to meet you and thank you so much for your supportive comments on my poem. I'm still working on it, so will thank you (and others) more properly with next revision.

In the meantime, thank you for sharing this challenging work, aptly placed in the Deep End. I'm going to make a confession, which is that I don't think I understand it. It may be that is your intention, and, if so, I win! But I thought it might be interesting to you to hear the ways in which I go lost and see if they are the intended ways.

First, thanks for the wide line spacing. For me, this gives a visual clue that I will want to read this with a long pause after each line. During this pause, I try and let the line firm up into either an image or an emotional response. I think the poem would not function as well without those spaces since each line requires (for me) a lot of processing time.

Second, as I work through the seven lines of the first strophe, the first four lines (door, footprint, keeper, tears) all strike me as having an ominous undertone. Things are going awry in the speaker's world. But then the next couple lines (circus, Etna) strike me as, in turns, hopefulness and even exuberance. Here comes the circus! Isn't Etna doing something truly fascinating? Finally, I arrive at the most ambiguous line of all... "Who is watching over you"

This 7th line threw me for a loop, because three answers presented themselves almost simultaneously: God, Big Brother, or no one. So, one way to read this is a sort of devotional tone (God is always there for you). Another is that your overlords (google? government?) are monitoring, and another is that you are all alone sister.

So, while holding these three possibilities simultaneously in mind, I enter the second strophe hopeful for some resolution from the poet as to whether we are living here in the world of God, Orwell, or Sartre.

Now, the second strophe's themes are quite impenetrable to me, as I'm not sure what to make of something like "whimsy bolts the clown" though it sounds quite exciting and cool. Similarly with the next couple of lines. But the last four lines of the second strophe push me strongly toward the Orwellian interpretation. The speaker is in the world of the Overlord.

Having achieved this point of clarity, as a reader, I grow excited! The puzzle is coming clear. But then, the third strophe throws me off again. It seems that the speaker is immune to the overlord's reach due to their comfort with the natural world? Basically, none of the interpretative work I did in the first two strophes seems to help me penetrate the resolution of this poem. What on earth is the knight representing?

All that to say, that sometimes I wonder if I lack some sense organ that allows one to see hidden things in words that others seem to get intuitively right off the bat. I'm sorry, I just don't get it, and I've tried. I see that others got it right away, which makes me feel a little bad actually.

I'm not sure if any of that's helpful, but after this poem sat and taunted me for a week, I thought I'd take advantage of the fact that the author is actually in reach for commentary and make my solemn confession. Is it meant to be as interpretatively ambiguous as I've read it?