[Richard G]

Hi Matt.

I was hoping "you" would be read as "one". So, that N is recounting their own experience, but also addressing the reader, and suggesting the more general case.
That was how I understood it.

I'd say "monster trucks" are only really trucks in the American sense of the word, as in, they're not lorries. I'm definitely thinking of an 18-wheeler, and "lorry" lacks the drama, and the consonance. But I'll think on.
You've probably already discarded it, but on the off chance you haven't ... juggernaut.

I think I need L4, even in not specifically "north side", otherwise what "warren" means risks becomes less clear (image loss again),
Not convinced, but far be it from me to argue.
and it's also less clear (maybe) that it's her town, and not some distant unknown place.
Rather the opposite to me, I thought, that the north side was somehow foreign to her (or at least rarely visited.) Maybe something a bit more proximate/local?

drives into the warren

of streets beyond the avenue/library/new estate/chip shop ...

"wandering" I was hoping applied to her mind
It did (on second reading) but it still feels sedate (and so somewhat at odds with the panic of 'rabbit in the headlights.) Probably just me though.


RG.

[Jim Moonan]

.
I like it, find it strangely connected to Barbara's poem Geography on a Saturday Morning. The woman in your poem could be the woman I envision in Barbara's poem. Maybe it's just my penchant to find connections wherever I can.

I will try to come back before too long because there's a wild thing going on in this. Another creation of yours that seems to have its own life.
.

[Matt Q]

Richard and Jim, thanks both

Richard,

Yes, I wanted "the north side" conveyed her somewhere she's not so familiar with, so I'm glad that came across. But I also wanted to convey that she's in her own town, and hasn't say, driven halfway across the country.

"Juggernaut" wasn't actually something I had considered, and would convey the unstoppablility of it what's coming, so thanks for that suggestion. I've added it to the file for when I come back to this.

I do take your point on "wandering". Though it also makes me think that a rabbit in the headlights freezes, rather than moves. So maybe wandering works. Which doesn't mean there isn't a better word.

Jim,

Thanks for stopping by.


Thanks again both.

Matt

[Jim Moonan]

.
This is a cautionary tale couched in metaphor to my ear, though I can’t say exactly what is happening. The woman begins in her car but soon loses it and becomes lost and on foot, finally finding refuge in a carport in a plastic chair. Very strange. Even nightmarish. Though it begins in third person, it then turns to the reader ("you"), cautioning that it could happen to anyone; it is telling the reader that, just like the woman does, we all lose our way, lose control, end up taking refuge somewhere desperate, something like surrendering to insanity by crossing over the border — the border being the place where sanity and insanity meet. You’ve made it a physical place, but it is really a place in the mind. What I see is a physical manifestation of insanity. Darkness visible.

I do get a whiff of American terrain when I see the words badlands and monstrous trucks. Monster trucks are grotesque adaptations to pickup trucks that have their suspension and wheel size jacked up/oversized to give the truck the ability to run over/demolish smaller cars, trucks, etc. I liken them to those bodybuilders with freakish steroid-made muscular bodies. I think I’ve heard them referred to as muscle trucks, too. Anyway, I think what you are referring to are those 18-wheelers used to transport goods, etc. In my neck of the woods we called them “big rigs”.

My note regarding a strange connection I felt between your poem and Barbara’s reflects a sense I sometimes get here on the Sphere of poems posted in close position that seem to cohere to each other without intention.

There is a strange warping of tense between the first half of the poem and the second. In the first half the tense is present. In the second, future.

A couple of places where I stumbled:

claims it / as her home, claims / it is her home, feels redundant.

This line:
and you are also shivering,
might be more echo-like if it were
and you too are shivering,

I wonder, too, about the plural “horns blaring" vs. “horn blaring”. Yes, big rigs have a horn blast that has a double-tone sound to it but it is a single horn. Not a big deal, though.


.

[Matt Q]

Thanks, Jim.

I was hoping that "that first time" was referring to the opening's "the first time she gets lost". Looks like it isn't as clear as I hoped, and that's useful to know. I think Glenn read it similarly to you. And possibly this also confused James did too.

So, hmm. I guess I could simply cut "but that first time". Or change it to "but her first time". The issue is, though, is that this event (her getting lost in this way) is a first time for both of them, and that's why I wanted the repetition.

"claims it / as her home, claims / it is her home". I wondered if people would think this redundant.

The difference I'm after is between claiming that a place that wasn't previously will now be your home, and -- wrongly/deludedly -- claiming that it is your home. Saying, "this car-port will now be my home", versus saying, when asked, "But I am at home", when your home isn't actually that car-port. Maybe I should cut the second one. Of change it to something like "claims / it was always her home"

I vacillated between "horn" and "horns". Yes, it has only one horn, but having horns, plural, seemed more demonic.

Matt

[Matt Q]

I've made couple of small changes.

The poem is now a single sentence, which I think makes it clearer that the second occurrence of "first time" is referring the same event, rather than two separate ones, which is how a few readers were reading it.

Jim, I've italicised "is" in S7, hoping that this will make the distinction clearer between claiming the car-poet as her home, and mistakenly claiming it is the car-port is the home/house that she already has. Does that make any difference?

Matt

[Richard G]

Hi Matt.

I rather preferred the two sentence version. That break seemed natural.
Still not sold on the monstrous/monster truck. The horns blaring tell me it's a vehicle, I don't think you need to spell it out here. (And as a metaphor it lacks a punch.)

RG.

[John Boddie]

For those of us who have dealt firsthand with the diminishing capacity of older parents, the metaphor here is unmistakable with initial confusion leading to delusion and finally to fear. The use of animals is effective in exposing the "less of a person" progression as one's loved one moves from level to level, stabilizing briefly at a given plateau before crossing the border to the next one.

It's good work.

JB

[Richard G]

On the off-chance that I wasn't clear, the metaphor I found weak is the 'monstrous truck', nothing else. Better the oncoming awfulness is left to the reader's imagination than have it described (for them) as simply a truck (however monstrous.)

RG.

[Hilary Biehl]

I have nothing particularly helpful to say, even after returning to this several times since it's been posted, only that I think it's well-done, and effective. I haven't been through this with my own parents, but I have in the past worked with elderly people with dementia and I recognized the scenario. The poem has a spareness and clarity and yet, at the same time, a disorienting quality that fits the subject matter. The shift from "her" lostness to the lostness of the N. or perhaps the reader works well for me.