[Michael Tyldesley]

Time and Money

i.

Long before buckskins gave way to greenbacks,
wealth came from the whispers of the ocean,
tribal folks combed coastlines for cowries:
an early market forged by crashing seas.

ii.

The Aztec Empire’s money grew on trees
as malvaceae seeds for turkeys, gold, sex
and slaves. The cocoa bean would rattle pots
like nickels shaken in a piggy bank.

iii.

For Roman legionnaires: to be worth one's salt
was to earn in salt, to preserve, to survive
the conquests on meat cured by salaries
romanced with a pinch of Moneta’s mint.

iv.

The Chinese traded spade for knife money;
a whale’s tooth could be worth a canoe in Fiji;
the Rouennais were taxed for beurre; you paid with
your nose in Éire or got ransacked by Vikings.

v.

The Californians panned for precious dust
then mined the crypto rush from bit to shitcoin –
boom to bust – supply to wavering demand;
the world, an oyster, spins on silicon sand.



************************************************** *******


Follow The Money (Original)

Long before buckskins gave way to greenbacks,
wealth came from the whispers of the ocean,
tribal folks combed coastlines for cowries
in early markets forged by crashing seas.

Aztec Empire riches grew on trees
with malvaceae seeds for turkeys, gold, sex
and slaves. Cocoa beans rattled in their tins
like shaking clink of a copper nickel.

In Ancient Rome, to be worth one's salt,
was to earn in salt, to preserve, to survive
the conquests on meat cured by salaries,
Moneta, coinage and the romance of mint.

The Chinese traded spade for knife money;
the Fijians: a whale's tooth for a canoe;
taxe sur le beurre in Rouen; you paid with
your nose in Éire or got ransacked by Vikings.

The Californians panned for precious dust
then mined the crypto rush from bit to shitcoin –
boom to bust – supply to wavering demand;
the world, an oyster, spins on silicon sand.

[Michael Cantor]

And so...but nothing happens. Any stanza is moderately okay - the lack of a driving rhyme or rhythm - or a strong and consistent meter - hurts the poem, but a good/interesting story might salvage, or at least improve it. But there's so real story or arc to the poem - or, if there is, I'm not getting it. It just lumbers from age and location to age and location. Sorry, Michael, but it needs better sonics and a better story.

[Brandon Hyer]

The idea behind this poem is wonderful, exploring currency from a historic perspective. I particularly enjoyed that last stanza, Michael.

I found myself wishing that the 1st and 2nd lines were switched.

Sorry to nitpick, but is the spelling malvacEAE instead of malvacAEA?

This poem gave me facts (well-written facts to boot), but by the end I was longing for understanding.

[Matt Q]

Hi Michael,

I wasn't sure where this was going at first and had a similar conclusion to Michael C. The poem moves forward in time, and there are some nice moments along the way (I liked "early markets forged by crashing seas", for example), but it didn't really seem have a turn or a conclusion. I didn't know what, if anything, it was saying. Rereading, though, I wondered if the oyster on the (silicon) sand was echoing the cowrie shells of the opening stanza, and, since the oyster is the world, then maybe the idea was that over time the world had become money. What starts out as shells on a beach, a tiny part of the world, becomes the whole world. Money/capital encroaches over time. Or something like that.

If that's where you're going, I'd say that was an interesting direction. At the same time, I reckon the poem needs to do more set that up. It currently seems like the middle three stanzas don't really contribute to the encroachment reading -- they could be substituted with any other set of historical examples and not affect how the poem concludes -- or that's how it seems to me, maybe I'm missing something. So, I'd maybe think about how to have to those stanzas presage the close in some way.

The metre here is pretty rough, some lines scan as pentameter, some as tetrameter, and some could arguably go either way. You might look at tidying it.

best,

Matt

[Ann Drysdale]

I found a turn, and a conclusion. The turn is constant because the poem's a circle. It told me that wealth began as shellfish and sand (cowries and coastlines) and has arrived back there (oysters and sand- ie sand that carries silicon, of Valley significance, in its quartzy bits.)

Now I'll have to slide back into the woodwork and think about where to go next with what I've found. I'll have to shut my mind to other currencies and explore the significance (if any) of the things that are already in my head - the depletion of the oceans (farewell cowries) and the undeniable ubiquity of silicon (we can start on that, now, as the oil runs out...) And where was oil in the poem?

I think perhaps the unrelenting progression through some-but-not-all of the monetary systems makes the poem grind a bit. It told me nothing I didn't know and woke up the "and what about?" effect of which I am genuinely ashamed. Perhaps the list could be shortened and the two ends explored in more detail?

[Jim Ramsey]

Hi Michael,

I agree with Michael C. and Matt that better metrics could strengthen this. You already have some nice alliterations and interesting images. I disagree with them a bit over the lack of a theme. Though it's not obviously presented, I sense the piece to be looking at the questionable progression away from bartered trade goods with tangible values in older times toward a symbolic currency system and even an imaginary currency of crypto and rapidly changing chip technologies and values and shortages and seeing it as the perilous gamble it is. Much has historically been made over moving away from the gold standard, over the printing of money, over government manipulations of currency values, over borrowing deficits, over the hedging of future values in capital markets, over derivatives and just generally over the pyramid scheme of boom and bust that a capitalistic system invariably creates through untempered greed. I think if you can find a couple small hints to slip in, showing not telling, a theme examining such concerns will be quite visible and more satisfying to the reader.


** I see I cross-posted with Ann...

All the best,
Jim

[Orwn Acra]

With a squint I can kind of see what you are getting at. It is not focused enough. Other than certain passages of Capital and David Graeber's Debt, the poem also reminds me of Les Murray's much shorter

High Sugar

Honey gave sweetness
to Athens and Rome,
and later, when splendor
might rise nearer home,

sweetness was still honey
since, pious or lax,
every cloister had its apiary
for honey and wax

but when kings and new doctrines
drained those deep hives
then millions of people
were shipped from their lives

to grow the high sugar
from which were refined
frigates, perukes, human races
and the liberal mind.

:

...which may help guide you.

[N. Matheson]

I admire the effort, and the imagery itself is rather enviable, but I have to agree with former assessments: there is no real connection here to link the images. Is it meant to be a commentary on the folly of empire? Memento mori? The price of avarice? I'm lost here.

[N. Matheson]

Also, your idea that Roman soldiers were paid in salt is a common idea, but it's actually a historical misconception. It's untrue.

[A. Baez]

Hi, Michael, I’ll echo the comments of others about the unclear thesis and meter. There are some interesting phraseologies and concepts to be found, and I enjoyed learning something along the way. I liked contemplating the ways that different peoples’ lives were shaped by their varying currencies, and I enjoyed the conceit of “mining the crypto rush"--an interesting bridge from California’s past gold panning.

As the poem stands, I’d remove the comma after S3L1 and place it instead after S5L2—but I expect that revisions will shift and sift these sands, anyway.