[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

REVISION

The earth’s alien sentience
is seen at night.
The glowing wisps of exhalations flit
like butterflies,
ethereal and beautiful
above the ground.
Inside are corpses, decomposed.
who fertilise
the coil of roots that pull the soil apart.
Life grows through vines
with flies to pollinate each fruit
behind the bloom.

I walk into a newly risen night
beneath the softness of a gibbous moon.
I ease into my stride and lean to hear
the sirens of a half-remembered tune.
I have no mast, no wax and can’t resist
ground-hunger songs that tremble in my feet,
I move, the earth is calling to be fed.
Refrains, though faint, that strengthen in repeat.

‘One essence indivisible,
we are the songs,
we are the shadows cornered in the eye.
The blink of time.
We knew of life, we know of death,
we wait for you.’

ORIGINAL

I’m in a world that’s full of anxious dogs
Incontinent but not afraid to bark.
Cocooned in pungencies I almost taste,
I feel the chafe of wings inside the dark.

The earth is flower carpeted
and in the night
the will’o’wisping exhalations flit
like butterflies,
ethereal and beautiful
above the ground.

I walk into a newly risen night.
beneath the soft weight of a gibbous moon.
I ease into my stride and lean to hear
the sirens of a half-remembered tune.

We are the corpses, decomposed.
We fertilise
the coiling roots that pull us all apart.
We grow through vines
with flies to pollinate each fruit
behind the bloom.

I have no mast, no wax, I can’t resist
ground-hunger songs that tremble in my feet,
I move, the earth is calling to be fed
a chrysalis that’s opened to defeat.

Our essence indivisible,
yet separate.
We are the shadows cornered in the eye,
the blink of time.
We knew of life, we know of death,
we wait for you.

[Julie Steiner]

Jan, to me this feels like two different poems mashed together somewhat randomly, rather than two different poems illuminating each other, which is what I think we both wanted to experience.

Perhaps the sestets could be followed by the quatrains, but with the first quatrain moved to the end, setting up a sort of ring composition with the first sestet's winged things.

[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

They are meant this way Julie. It is written as one poem.

The quatrains are the chrysalis awakening of the Odyssean traveller, the self, from the territorial imperatives of being to searching (the existential crisis) interspersed with the sestets of earth hunger calling from a somewhat Jungian Shadowland.

It is genuine not pretentious.

Jan

[John Riley]

Misunderstanding

[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

Dear oh dear John coming from someone who tries to write metric verse with lines that stagger on unsteady feet, did you graduate as a student?

I speak in different registers depending on venue and audience the easy speech of cattle yard and stable gives way when I leave the farm.

Exegesis is something you should ask about.

I was explaining to Julie as I respect her views and readings and wanted to see if my explanation made imade a difference. I work to a framework and design a logic path before I start and then I will work within that frame and try to follow the path and use the right level of language then condensing and condensing as I edit. My muse rarely talks to me I just work at it.

Your ad hom needling has been going for a while hopefully this outburst of yours will alleviate your problems.

I am deadly serious.

Jan

[John Riley]

You misunderstood. I thought you were being funny.

[Michael Cantor]

Sorry, Jan, but this doesn't work for me either, and I find myself sympathetic to Jon's comments.

I think that if you get rid of the quatrains - save them for another poem - and went with the three sestets (but do something about will'o'wisping - the language doesn't fit with the rest of the poem) it works better.

[Julie Steiner]

Jan, I did actually see the intended contrast between the quatrains' Odysseus and the sestets' siren-song (probably because I just wrote a poem about the troubles of the recent Odysseus moon landing). But it took me a few strophes to figure out what was going on there. Nothing in the first quatrain said "Odysseus" to me, and nothing in the first sestet said "sirens" to me, even on a second reading, when I was clued in by what came later.

I suppose the siren songs might be the dogs' barking, as well as the words in the sestets. But to me, "dogs" and "pungencies" suggests a closed-in urban scene in the first quatrain, in which dogs (and probably unhoused humans as well) relieve themselves on brick and concrete, while in the first sestet, "flower-carpeted" suggests a more rural scene, or at least park-like or suburban lawn-like, or (at a stretch) cemetery-like. So it's hard for me to picture these two strophes as being spoken by two different narrators occupying more or less the same space.

I would strongly suggest either getting rid of the incontinent dog imagery at the beginning, since that's not recognizably part of the Odyssey, or moving it after the point at which the narrator says he's deviating from the story. (Personally, I'd rather see the urine imagery cut to make room for something else that better supports the Odyssey and siren imagery, but it's your poem.) I like the reference to wings, which is more in keeping with the original bird-like depictions of the Sirens; I'm not sure how they turned into mermaids in some versions.

Reordered, with indentation (inspired by some of Michael Cantor's poems that alternate between two realities):

I walk into a newly risen night.
beneath the soft weight of a gibbous moon.
I ease into my stride and lean to hear
the sirens of a half-remembered tune.

     The earth is flower carpeted
     and in the night
     the will’o’wisping exhalations flit
     like butterflies,
     ethereal and beautiful
     above the ground.

I have no mast, no wax, I can’t resist
ground-hunger songs that tremble in my feet,
I move, the earth is calling to be fed
a chrysalis that’s opened to defeat.

     We are the corpses, decomposed.
     We fertilise
     the coiling roots that pull us all apart.
     We grow through vines
     with flies to pollinate each fruit
     behind the bloom.

I’m in a world that’s full of anxious dogs
Incontinent but not afraid to bark.
Cocooned in pungencies I almost taste,
I feel the chafe of wings inside the dark.

     Our essence indivisible,
     yet separate.
     We are the shadows cornered in the eye,
     the blink of time.
     We knew of life, we know of death,
     we wait for you.

That's still problematic. I think you need to end with the last sestet, but the original's first quatrain doesn't lead into it very well. Probably because you never intended it to, heh. Anyway, you'll figure something out.

[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

Thanks Michael

The drawing board is back in use. It is an experiment.

Thanks Julie much to mull over in my revamp. More, in detail, later.

Jan

[Jim Moonan]

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Julie/Michael could be right. This may (or may not depending on how you choose to rework it, if at all) be two poems.

In any event, I found it powerfully spoken when I first read it. I've tried twice to respond but pulled up short as I continued to digest the suggestions being made. Below is what I almost posted yesterday, which in turn also includes in italics what I also almost posted the moment I read it a few days ago. I just don't know how to condense it to say something worthwhile. Maybe "as is" it will give you something to think about:

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Jan, There are better critiquers than I, especially on the metrical board. I never consciously think to look for how a poem follows through on references or avoids logical glitches or flaws in architectural integrity. I have little aptitude for that. What I do have a capacity for is noticing how it unfolds. I consume it like it was something exotic ordered from a menu, enticed by its title and drawn in by its opening lines savoring its flavors and textures like I would when I'm hungry. I want to feel a sense of satiation; something that satisfies my appetite for beautifully expressed thoughts. I don't typically check to see if all the dots have been dutifully, meticulously connected. My impressions of a poem sometimes fall short of critique and instead register the pleasure I get from the "taste" of the poem. Presentation, in and of itself, is meaningless to me. If what I read/digest appeals to my taste for poetry, then the presentation was effective. Let's just say I like soup : ).

Of course, this is a critique forum. We all speak critically from our hearts and minds here. I have no qualms with anything anyone has said about the poem thus far and how it might be made better. I like what some have suggested (Julie's suggestion of using italics is interesting). The best I can offer here on the Metrical Board, given my anemic understanding of and aptitude for critiquing a metrical poem (and writing one. See my See poem on this board — Ha!) is to give you my impressions.

Below (in italics) is what I wrote spontaneously upon reading the poem once, right on the heels of it beingng posted, before anyone laid eyes on it. I was there when it appeared. One of those things. But I didn’t complete my thoughts at the time and so held onto it. Now, too much technical water has flown over the damn dam. I am standing on the bridge above it. I feel vulnerable knowing that sometimes I say things I don't mean — But that doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't be said. So now I’ll just leave it incomplete and let it speak for itself. It doesn't say much more than it moved me to write this:

Jan, you’ve said some beautiful things here. You are in the eye of inspiration throughout. I get the sense that it just spilled out of you, though I doubt that’s actually true. To write beautifully one must work hard at finding the most beautiful words to dress the body of thought. You have fearlessly reached for the jugular of understanding our essence. I think you’ve wrestled it to the ground but it has managed to escape your beautiful grasping at it, pinning it down. It may have ultimately escaped your grasp but it was well-worth the effort, for me at least. I’ve gotten something from it that I don’t get often but crave for always: transcendent thinking. In this case, the thoughts transcend to something of a middle ground but still give me enough lift to see the beauty of the imagery and thoughts contained in the poem. The language that informs the imagery creates a gorgeous landscape that is felt.

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