[John Riley]

Revision

No Pie

Down below this high window

I see me running down the street

Down the long hill toward the street end

I watch me stop at the minister’s fence

Her young dogs are yappy but they know me

I rub their black and brown heads

I turn back to the street and look up and down

I see the eastern sun on the back of my head

This high room is full of boxes and one bed

I look lost down the hill standing by the street

Have I forgotten what I am running from

Do I remember what I am running to

Do I feel the hill’s gravity tug

Will I surrender to the pull

Or will I walk back up the long hill

Maybe come inside the house for a visit

Have a cup of tea without pie


***


No Pie

Down below this high window
I see me running down the street
Down the long hill toward the street end
I watch me stop at the minister’s fence
Her young dogs are yappy but they know me
I rub their black and brown heads
I turn back to the street and look up and down
I see the eastern sun on the back of my head
This high room is full of boxes and one bed
I look lost down the hill standing by the street
Have I forgotten what I am running from
Do I remember what I am running toward
Do I feel the hill’s gravity tug
Will I surrender to the pull
Or will I walk back up the long hill
Maybe come inside the house for a visit
Have a cup of tea without pie

[Jim Moonan]

.
I only have a minute but will offer a few comments.

This has an almost eerie, disembodied feel to it that is uncomfortable.

The N is watching from high above looking down a steep street that comes to an end at the minister's house where the dogs are yapping. No minister appears.

The capitalized lines are odd. Not in a bad way. It's absent punctuation.

L7: I turn back to the street and look up and down — I don't know how you can look up and down a street from the vantage point of being at the end of the street.

Quizzical last line.

Gotta go. I'll be back.

.

[Christine P'legion]

Hi John,

The perspective in this poem -- the N watching himself, or some version or memory or astral projection of himself -- is its strength, I think; the idea of being able to observe yourself from another vantage point is intriguing. How is it happening? The mechanics are ambiguous, which invites the reader to puzzle over them. (To my mind, the N is "watching" in memory only, superimposing it on the scene -- but perhaps in your conception it's another situation entirely.)

The repeated "I, I, I, I" down the left-hand edge of the poem is a little distracting to me. Taking some of them out might also make the action feel a little smoother, so:

I rub their black and brown heads,
turn back to the street and look up and down,
see the eastern sun on the back of my head

The fact that the N is questioning what the observed-N will do in the last few lines complicates our suppositions of how this observation is occurring. Maybe it's time-travel, ha. It's a puzzling little piece. That's not a bad thing.

The significance of the tea without pie, though, is entirely lost on me. I rarely eat pie without a cup of tea at hand, but my tea-drinking is pieless 99.99999% of the time. If the "without pie" is implying something about poverty, or (a lack of) hospitality, or something else... I'm afraid I've missed it.

Jim my reading re. the street end etc. is that the observed-N is moving toward the end of the street, but pauses at the minister's house before he gets there; after interacting with the dogs, he turns back around to check the street before continuing (to pet the dogs, he must be facing the house/fence/yard, surely?).

[Paula Fernandez]

John--

I'm solidly confident that I'm a below-average critter on this forum, but I'm determined to improve and to make a contribution. So here goes.

I read this as moving day. The only clue to that is that the room is full of boxes. But, for me, this interpretation is vital as it gives the rest of the poem a context such that I can begin to feel why the narrator is sharing this set of self-observations. It's moving day and their self has gone out to say goodbye to the familiar things of the street. But this is a moving day full of uncertainty. Do they know where they are going? Will they be known there? Regardless, if they come back to their familiar space, there will certainly be no pie since the baking things are already packed. This place (the high room) is no longer home. Thus, the absence of pie represents the absence of home and self-care in the process of uprooting. Once I hit upon this reading, I did feel something wistful in it. But I feel I had to do too much work to get to that... more than I'd ordinarily do when reading poetry. Maybe this needs to give more interpretative clues?

[John Riley]

Thanks, Jim, Christine, and Paula. I know this is another strange one and that generally keeps people away. My question is am I merely treading water with it? I suspect all I've written lately are minor, are merely me running in place. Why not a poem about hurrying away, wondering if I should return? Or maybe I didn't leave or can't leave.

Jim, you're right. No help appears because the minister has no help to offer. Christine is correct about the street end. He isn't there yet.

Christine, thanks for appreciating the main idea. I see how the tea without pie can be confusing.

Paula, moving day is interesting. Is anyone going to know me in the new neighborhood? I like that and value the thoughtful and serious reading.

Thanks, again. There are things here to think about when revising.

[W T Clark]

This isn't revelatory and it certainly isn't an epiphany. It is one of those instants that catch you out: that are not "important" in the discernable sense but still stand out humming ghost-like above the normal plateau of "living" which I agree with Rilke is not really living at all but the half-life required for the real instants of living: like this. We don't need to know anything: who the I is, who they are. Trying to "understand" a poem is writing another poem over the original so the elements of the original which unsettled you can be safely concealed. We don't need to know anything: the poem, like the moment, has come untethered and stands out humming. It's one ofth ghost-instants.
The repetition is essential. So is the final line which closes or reveals nothing and is perfect that way. So is the title. In fact I think you should increase the repetition: tighten it harder around the poem's neck. You might also consider that the parallelism of these lines:
Have I forgotten what I am running from
Do I remember what I am running toward
would be improved if you had "to" instead of "toward". The poem's rhythm is its syntactically-complete unenjambed lines, its repetition, and its parallelism. So I think that needs to be perfect. They make a ghost-rhythm. Anyway, a very good poem for holding the instant quickly.

Hope this helps.

[Jim Moonan]

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Originally Posted by W T Clark

This isn't revelatory and it certainly isn't an epiphany. It is one of those instants that catch you out: that are not "important" in the discernable sense but still stand out humming ghost-like above the normal plateau of "living" which I agree with Rilke is not really living at all but the half-life required for the real instants of living: like this. We don't need to know anything: who the I is, who they are. Trying to "understand" a poem is writing another poem over the original so the elements of the original which unsettled you can be safely concealed. We don't need to know anything: the poem, like the moment, has come untethered and stands out humming. It's one ofth ghost-instants.
The repetition is essential. So is the final line which closes or reveals nothing and is perfect that way. So is the title. In fact I think you should increase the repetition: tighten it harder around the poem's neck. You might also consider that the parallelism of these lines:
Have I forgotten what I am running from
Do I remember what I am running toward
would be improved if you had "to" instead of "toward". The poem's rhythm is its syntactically-complete unenjambed lines, its repetition, and its parallelism.*** So I think that needs to be perfect. They make a ghost-rhythm. Anyway, a very good poem for holding the instant quickly.

Hope this helps.

(*** my emphasis)


I'm back as promised but, as Cameron so often does with his crits, all the oxygen has been sucked out of the critiquer's room and has left me gasping at the poem's nucleus. My gratitude to both of you. I am often-times just a dim-dark surveyor groping for the heartbeat of a poem. But I am also something of a geiger counter in measuring a poem's value and I detected something valuable in this one at my first pass. Cameron, your crit is beyond articulate. John, it is a pleasure to have these legions of untethered moments recognized and memorialized. They are ghosts, as Cameron so deftly identified them. I have a slew of them swimming in and out of my consciousness. They remain ghost-like in our lives as we forge forward or away or in circles. But left untethered they become lost in the wake. Not this one, though. You have served me a slice of pie.

I like all of Cameron's suggestions.

-----

Coming back to clarify “sucking the oxygen out of the crit room”. I simply mean that what can be said about a poem has been said with no more left to be said. It’s something of an oxymoron of an analogy but it still works for me. I was left breathless by Cameron’s crit.

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[Mary Meriam]

I read this as a song. I wonder if adding space between each line might slow it down a pinch. I like Cameron's idea of changing "toward" to "to." I also like the music of will-pull-hill, and how "without pie" is given an important place, at the end, even though it's absurd.

[R. Nemo Hill]

I had the same reaction as Mary, adding a space between each line, letting each emphatically bare statement resonate more fully. The initial cap works well with that approach also.


No Pie

Down below this high window

I see me running down the street

Down the long hill toward the street end

I watch me stop at the minister’s fence

Her young dogs are yappy but they know me

I rub their black and brown heads

I turn back to the street and look up and down

I see the eastern sun on the back of my head

This high room is full of boxes and one bed

I look lost down the hill standing by the street

Have I forgotten what I am running from

Do I remember what I am running toward

Do I feel the hill’s gravity tug

Will I surrender to the pull

Or will I walk back up the long hill

Maybe come inside the house for a visit

Have a cup of tea without pie
.
.
.
I love it like that.
Nemo

[Jim Moonan]

.
Or this:

No Pie


Down below this high window

I see me running down the street


Down the long hill toward the street end

I watch me stop at the minister’s fence


Her young dogs are yappy but they know me

I rub their black and brown heads


I turn back to the street and look up and down

I see the eastern sun on the back of my head


This high room is full of boxes and one bed

I look lost down the hill standing by the street


Have I forgotten what I am running from

Do I remember what I am running toward


Do I feel the hill’s gravity tug

Will I surrender to the pull


Or will I walk back up the long hill

Maybe come inside the house for a visit


Have a cup of tea without pie


.