[Matt Q]

Absorption

Before the fungus killed me
I spent a long time in the woods
On all fours with my tail in the air
Practising moving like a fox
Listening to the crunch of dead leaves
And climbing only those trees
That would have me

No one warned me about the fungus
No one warns you about things like that
And so I didn’t see it coming
Almost all of it was hidden underground
Branching chains of memory
Communing with itself
Humming

There are worse ways to go
Lonelier ways
I became part of a song
Woven into the tangled pathways
Of a woodland saga
With no heroes or monsters
I still wish I had become a fox

But no one ever gets their first choice
And this too is transformation

.

[Jim Moonan]

.
Quickly in to say I like it; an animated entropy. What we don't see kills us or we eat ourselves.

The lines that brought the whole thing to life for me are,

I became part of a song
Woven into the tangled pathways
Of a woodland saga

Btw, in the last line, one is has gotta go : )

.

[James Midgley]

Hi Matt,

I've been sitting with this one since you posted it and trying to work out what to say about it.

I like the deadpan, slightly naïve style which is both sweet and melancholic. I like the choice to capitalise the line-starts and leave off on punctuation, and how the linebreaks sit on natural phrase-making pauses to better accentuate this and guide a reader.

Within that framework, lines that might feel empty of content like 'No one warns you about things like that' work well to modulate the pacing. There are options for cutting, but I had the feeling that I was quibbling to a point where it was no longer helpful. Maybe 'of a woodland saga ... monsters' took me out of the poem the most.

That said -- the poem doesn't work satisfyingly enough, for me, to stand alone. Its referents remain vague (what fungus? why are you practising being a fox? why did you want to become a fox? etc), and the deliberate simplicity of the language doesn't give any imaginative interaction there either (except that it is genuinely charming). It also means I don't really know how to pitch my readings of some lines. In a larger context the final two lines here might work just fine, bouncing off conceits in other poems, but here they're too vacant.

I say it like that because I imagine this is a sibling poem to the other foxy pieces I've seen you post? What I've seen and what I remember are poems shot through with the creeping apprehension of decay, perhaps due to illness, of death (one kind of transformation) in lieu of growing towards a different stage of life (and in the direction of desire), and ponderings on the viability of ideas to do with rebirth. Anyway this is all to say that this poem as it is might sit perfectly well with friends and not need much of anything done to it because it can rely on those other poems to flesh out its contextual freight -- but I'm not really sure what to say about it on a workshop forum and/or without accompaniment!

I enjoyed the poem with those other poems roughly in mind -- but it might not be one to send to a journal without backup and whathaveyou. Thanks for the read.

[David Callin]

I like this one as it is, Matt, but I wonder what it would be like if you focused only on the fungal experience. Does the fox detract from that? Is the fox really necessary?

I'm prepared to be persuaded that it is.

Cheers

David

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Matt—

Your poem made me think of the television series, The Last of Us, in which the fungus that infects ants and turns them into zombies makes the leap to humans.

I like the lackadaisical tone of the N in discussing his demise or absorption into the fungus. He apparently expected to be transformed into something, but wistfully regrets that no one prepared him for the transformation, and that he was transformed into a fungus zombie instead of a werefox. (BTW, I did a little research, and only one species of fox, the gray fox of North America, is able to climb trees.)

Your piece made me think about what a poor job we do as a society preparing ourselves for each of the potentially traumatic transformations we experience: puberty, school, marriage, parenthood, old age, death. Fine work!

Glenn

[Phil Wood]

Enjoyed this Matt. Particularly the internalisation of the 'humming'. May I suggest 'forest' for 'woods' and 'furtive' for 'hidden', to keep that consonance ticking. I wondered why you decided on 'saga' rather than 'folktale'?

[Matt Q]

Jim, James, David, Glenn, and Phil

Many thanks for your thoughts on this.

Jim

I'm pleased you like it, and thanks for the catch on the typo.

James

I think you're right that the relevance of the fox is unclear. And also that in the context of related poems, the significance of the fox to the N would be clearer. I hadn't really thought about that. It's useful to have that pointed out.

On the question "What fungus?", I'd hoped to imply that N had encountered it while crawling around in the woods, and so ultimately it was a consequence of his wanting to become a fox. Was that unclear? Or maybe you are asking a different question?

On that note, I had considered changing S1L5 to "Tasting the crunch of dead leaves", originally just because it added another sense modality to the poem, which is mostly visual, but now I'm wondering if that would also help to suggest how he'd come into contact, been infected.

I think you're right that S3L4-6, they could be stronger. I wonder if I could even just cut them. Maybe "I had become a song" is better without elaboration, though I'm a little averse to being left with a six-line stanza. I'll definitely be giving some thought to alternatives.

Glenn,

Ah, I remember that series, I watched some of it. I'd forgotten about the role of ants, though. I'm a fan of the zombie apocalypse oeuvre, though I wasn't thinking of it here.

My understanding is that while red foxes can't climb a vertical tree trunk like a grey fox can, they can climb up a sloped branch, move from one branch to branch, and they can jump up onto a low branch (they can jump pretty high). So if a tree is accessible in this way they can climb it, which I guess fits with the line about climbing "only those trees that would have me" -- though I won't pretend that's what I was thinking of when I wrote it! I've never personally seen a red fox in a tree, though I've seen them on garage roofs, for example, and you can find photos of red foxes in trees on the internet, and I reckon they can't all be photoshopped.


David,

That's an interesting suggestion, though I'm not really sure how the poem would work without the fox. Though, I can see that, as James suggests, the fox's significance to the N would be clearer if read in the context of related poems.


Phil

I went for "saga" because they are very long and interwoven, which seemed to fit better with underground mycorrhizal networks, the "branching chains". I don't know that "folktale" fits that. I guess I went for "woods" because I was imagining a particular place when I wrote it, something smaller than a forest. I'll think about increasing the consonance. I wonder if "forest" would overload it, though. As well as placing the N in the countryside, which I'm not sure I want.

Thanks again everyone,

Matt

[James Midgley]

Hi Matt -- I suppose much of my confusion comes from imagining these components are figurative, that the fungus is standing in for something different, but I can't locate it beyond a general apprehension of Things Decaying. Read in isolation, the fox ideas are odd -- why should N be practising being a fox? If N is human (they have not, after all, become a fox by the end of the poem), why do they have a tail? If they are a different animal, well, why is that being withheld?

While reading I had the sense that these things must be explained in other poems from this grouping -- but it may be that I'm imagining explanations that don't exist. I've seen two poems from you that seem to take the same fox approach, I think, and I suppose I'm imagining a generous glut of them elsewhere that fleshes out these ideas and might answer my questions above (or accrue in a satisfyingly mysterious way). But I have no real way of knowing, of course.

My feeling about 'saga' was that it was chosen because it might justifiably be a 'song' but also involve 'heroes or monsters' -- so, binding the metaphorical language together here. But I don't know if you need it, and saga does feel a bit non-woodlandy. I also notice today that 'woven' and 'tangled' are doing something like the same work (but admittedly not exactly the same work) and you could consider just picking one -- 'woven into pathways' / 'tangled in the pathways' or similar.

Happy to clarify anything else if I can!

[Phil Wood]

Hi Matt

I think that is a justifiable reason for using saga, though the adjective could be more relevant if pointed towards the mycelia rather than the woodland (which doesn't have a sense of scale).

[Matt Q]

James and Phil,

Apologies, for the slow response. I've had a very busy week. Belated thanks, both, for coming back. I've had no joy with coming up with any revision, but I think I'm least clearer what I need to focus on when I come back to this, which is very useful.

James,

Ah, you want meaning Ok, that gives me something to think about. I didn't really have a strong figurative intent, if I'm honest. I saw a headline which said something like "man killed by fungus" which gave me the first line and let it take me where it would. I guess if pressed, I'd say that in becoming absorbed, he becomes part of a community, something bigger. But again, that coming across would depend on placing this alongside other poems in which the N is shown as solitary, lonely, isolated, disconnected, in stasis (and I do have a glut of those!). Useful to know that you are wondering if he's human. That hadn't occurred to me, but I can see why. I guess this poem I posted a while back would give some of the above context -- the tail, his lifestyle, the fox connection. Anyway, I think you're right. As it stands, the poem needs to be read alongside other poems, which is useful to know.

Phil,

Thanks, a useful point. I guess I was thinking of the fungus as permeating the woodland, and the network being threaded through it. But maybe, "mycelium saga" would be better. It has nicer consonance, too.