[Jim Ramsey]

[version 2]
The First Time at the Beach

Oh how we two had tossed and flopped about,
wet flesh on wet while gods were wryly smiling,
I taking pains to mute my acts of defiling,
and not contort my face or sob or shout.

It was no time to fake more courage now,
no chance to ply old tricks or new positions,
no time to try some fumbling inquisitions—
the time was ripe to forge ahead and plow.

I conked the fellow smartly across its head—
it shuddered then, and then is when I shook
too, spilling guts from gills to bottom of that snook
with the guilt of one whose hands had left it dead.

I broiled it brushed in garlic, butter, lemon,
and said a blessing up to fishes’ heaven.

[version 1]
The First Time at the Beach

Oh how we two did toss and flop about,
wet flesh on wet the while the gods were watching,
I taking pains to save the act from botching,
to not contort my face or sob or shout.

It was no time to fake more courage now,
no chance to ply old tricks and new positions,
no time to try some fumbling inquisitions—
no, ‘was just time to forge ahead and plow.

I conked the fellow smartly on the head—
it shuddered so, and so is how I shook
when gutting gill to bottom quick the snook
with knowledge ’was my hand had made it dead.

I broiled it brushed with butter and lemon
and said a blessing up to fishes’ heaven.

[more word changes: cry to sob, thresh to flop, served my to said a]

[Alexandra Baez]

Jim, before I get into more detailed critiquing, my overarching comment is I'm not sure why this starts out as a poem seemingly about sex and then suddenly in S3 flips into a poem about fishing without a backward glance. Apparently the analogy is an effort at humor, but I don't think it can work without the poet making a conscious effort to relate the two parts to each other.

[Susan McLean]

Jim, I followed the progression from a suggestion of sex to fighting to catching a fish, so I assume that you are deliberately keeping the reader in suspense about what is really going on. However, several things interfered with my ability to enjoy the progression. In L1, "did toss" sounds archaic. Find a word that will allow you to make this simple past tense without the "did." Your "'was" as a substitute for "t'was" is also archaic and distracting, as is "the while" in L2. The inversion in L11 should also be avoided. You are a foot short in L13, and the "lemon/heaven" rhyme is not a great way to end. I think the subject could work as a vignette, but it needs to be in a contemporary voice.

Susan

[R. Nemo Hill]

Yes, I followed the progression as well, and thought the false lead was humorous in its way. That humor does kind of lie on the surface, however, and some more mischievous connection might be made to turn the poem into more than an exercise in thwarted expectations.

But, like Susan, I can't fathom why you chose the archaic tone toward the end.

Nemo

[RCL]

Jim, I like the progression and second the suggestions by Susan and Nemo. Glad to see you working on a sonnet.

[John Riley]

Jim, I think most of the poems you’ve posted have an actual charm but tend to you bury them under an antiquated style. My suggestion here is to revise without trying to write a poem. Forget you’re writing a poem for a bit and let your natural voice come through. Try to get out from under it and see what comes up. I like the idea and the charm here and hope you can set it free.

[Jim Ramsey]

Hi All,

I have posted a new version reacting to crits. I’ve made the beginning just a little darker, mostly in fixing archaisms and strange wordings. Botching is now defiling…does that work?

Hi Alexandra,

Thank you first of all for getting comments going. I’ve been a little gruesome lately examining animal mortality and am never sure how such themes will go over. I had just reread Hemingway’s “Big Two hearted River” before writing this. In that story Nick Adams bashes a trout against a log to kill it before dressing it out and returning it to his keel. Not for the first time, I came to question my own hypocrisies about animals, a question shared by many I am sure in that I eat animals others kill but I get squeamish if I have to be the executioner and butcher. When I wrote this and posted it I was visualizing the fish already in the N’s possession and that the N was struggling to proceed with dressing it out. Now I see it’s obvious for the reader to think the first part of the poem involves the catch rather than the cleaning. You asked about my comparison between the two, the sex, and the fish. One intent was to compare the apprehension present the first time one has sex with the first time one takes on a squeamish chore. Another intent was to make the reader consider that sense of hypocrisy I was feeling, and then to let meat eaters like me off the hook at the end when remembering some nicely cooked piece of fish. Another intent was to flip reader expectations just for the fun of doing so. In that, I am just a senior citizen seeking my juvenile side. All that said, a writer’s intentions are nothing if they don’t succeed in the reader asking the same type of questions as the writer is asking.

Hi Susan,

This is not the first time I have thought archaisms are going to be acceptable because I write a poem trying to be quirky and cute. So far on the sphere, I am batting zero in using archaisms to reach such questionable goals. You, Nemo, Ralph and John all question my use of them here. Alexandra had no opinion on them, probably only because she was withholding crits until I give her a poem without what she saw as a major fail. So let’s call it a consensus: the archaisms have to go. I’ve added a foot to L13. I am still working on coming up with a new ending couplet with a better rhyme. Thanks for the help.

Hi Nemo,

I think I’ve ditched the archaisms, although I sometimes use them without intent and they slip in. I too would like the poem to be more than just a trick played on reader expectations. My revision doesn’t really do much to change its general lack of something to chew on except the fish provided, so to speak. I’ll keep my mind open to ideas and my sense of humor too. Thanks for the comments.

Hi Ralph,

Thanks for commenting. I tried to fix some things per the crits, and hopefully more ideas will come. I tried to be true to the Elizabethan sonnet form, but I flipped the typical theme of love around a bit trying to be cute. Comments have been kinder than the poem deserves. I’ll keep thinking on ways to improve it.

Hi John,

I think you are giving me spot on advice. My problem isn’t only that I am trying to sound poetic though. I once wrote a resume when I was about thirty-five that was filled with archaisms. I didn’t realize it until a friend reviewed it for me. Apparently I am generally always out of date and playing catch up. At least this time most of the archaisms were intentional, if misguided. I have put up a new version but it still has that waxing poetic artifice I think you are talking about. I’ll work on it. Thanks for the help.

[Max Goodman]

The title and L12 hint at misgivings about killing. If this is a large part of what the poem means to be about, it might explore the similarities between the two types of lost innocence without the misdirection, which contributes to my feeling that the poem, in this version, is meant as a joke.

FWIW.

[Jim Ramsey]

Hi Max,

Thanks for the excellent perception that I'll take as a question. I actually can’t say whether this poem is a big joke. I can’t say whether I think it’s deep or shallow. And now, please forgive me in advance for getting windy. I think it depends on one’s outtake on life, or more specifically, on whether someone thinks that we sometimes only pretend at a civilized existence. I think I fall into that camp of thinking we often pretend. My poems are confused because I am confused. I ask myself questions like did any pharaohs have qualms about taking their favorite servants into death with them, did at least one Aztec priest have a doubt before plunging the knife into a young virgin and pulling out the heart, did at least one general think that I am killing more people than I am saving, did any farm wife have qualms about wringing all those chickens’ necks. We often rationalize our behaviors in favor of doing what we want to do. I don’t like to see animals die, or to even know they die, but I still eat them. I’ve read myths and artistic pretenses that the act of sacrificing an animal for a meal is an opportunity to thank the gods and to personify the animal as a brother/sister spirit willingly sharing its soul in the circle of life. I am of the opinion that killing an animal is always brutal, never humane, because death is not intrinsically pleasant, but still can be a practical aspect of subsistence. I do think I am in a smallish group of those willing to bring it out in the open, and to admit my culpability. Now whether my point of view or how I bring it out can be popular with anybody, and especially with artists and sensitive people, is a big question that I am experimenting with in the poem. In most of my poems, the joke is usually on me. You are probably very right that this theme would go over better if it avoided what I'll call my little gloss of humor. I don't think it has much chance of publication as it now stands.

All the best,
Jim

[Max Goodman]

Originally Posted by Jim Ramsey

whether my point of view or how I bring it out can be popular with anybody, and especially with artists and sensitive people, is a big question

Honest confusion is a point of view any intelligent person can empathize with. In any case, unless it justifies something the reader finds wrong, the popularity of a poem's point of view hardly feels like something worth worrying about.

Your confusion is worth writing poems about, Jim; the purpose of this site, I think, is to seek help in doing that. And your feelings about killing are worth acting on. I don't see how post 9 gets you any closer to doing either of those things. In fact--forgive me for saying so--it strikes me as a substitution for doing them.

**

The confusion you discuss in your post is not, for this reader, in the poem. There are at least two reasons:

Fooling the reader at the beginning puts the speaker in a position of power; it's not a tactic that shows the speaker struggling with anything.

The guilt is mentioned briefly, never strongly shown, and brushed aside (using the word "brushed" as though to point out what is happening) with a glib, jokey feeling "blessing." Without post 9, I would never see that the speaker feels confused or, other than in a theoretical what-those-silly-vegetarians-might-think way, guilty.