[Jim Moonan]

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I haven’t kept up with the comments but did want to come back again to say the revision is excellent (even though I miss the “Oh”. The single letter “O” to my ear leans toward someone about to launch into a sea shanty, whereas “Oh” has a hint of breath in it, a whispered second syllable, that to my ear adds emotion. I've seen the pros and cons of each discussed here and “O” seems to be in favor…)

Above all else, it is a rare poem. It stops me. The opening simultaneous image(s) of “weeping window/widow/willow ” is mentally/visually stunning. It is as if a peacock has spread its fan. The fact that it then proceeds to focus on the window itself and continues straight through to the end is stunning. It’s as if you’ve managed to smuggle something essential into the poem using the window as a vehicle to smuggle it in (don’t ask what it is — I can’t put it into words : ))

I said initially that the ending came as something of a surprise to me. It still does, only because there could have been other ways for the N to address the window, e.g. It could have addressed the window as a weary eye longing to close or something along those lines. Your ending yanks the poem back at the last moment to end with an exclamation. It was surprising! But it is also what I’ve come to view as being what cements the poem as being rare in my eyes.


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[Alexandra Baez]

Hi, Jim, thanks for coming back. I see your points about “o” vs. “oh.” That’s a good observation about its breathiness. I don’t know—I could go either way on this, but given the feedback, I decided to opt for my instinct.

What a neat peacock fan-spreading analogy--that’s a high compliment! I’d never thought of the “weeping widow” suggestion of my words.

The fact that it then proceeds to focus on the window itself and continues straight through to the end is stunning.

So, here’s a question: How would you feel if I were to take Tony’s suggestion and broaden the application of the word “frame” here—do you think I could still maintain the effect you mention? So far, in fiddling with Tony’s idea, I feel that my results have lost something of this original charm that both you and some others have appreciated.

It’s as if you’ve managed to smuggle something essential into the poem using the window as a vehicle to smuggle it in (don’t ask what it is — I can’t put it into words : ))

How about this: A limited vehicle of perception will always yield only (ultimately) delusive impressions of duality.?

It could have addressed the window as a weary eye longing to close or something along those lines.

Oh, interesting--I never would have thought of that.

[Jim Moonan]

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Originally Posted by A. Baez

Hi, Jim, thanks for coming back. I see your points about “o” vs. “oh.” That’s a good observation about its breathiness. I don’t know—I could go either way on this, but given the feedback, I decided to opt for my instinct.

Is it possible that the poem would be fine without the "O"?

Weeping window, braced against the crisp

I know there are metrics/syllabics to consider...


Personally, I hear "oh" quite a bit when I'm just thinking to myself — both as an expression of discovery and as an expression of something deeply poetic that has appeared — like a weeping window : )


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[Alexandra Baez]

I have some questions for everybody in this comment.

Jim,

Originally Posted by Jim Moonan

Is it possible that the poem would be fine without the "O"?

"Weeping window, braced against the crisp"

I know there are metrics/syllabics to consider...

Yes, most formalists seem to agree that it’s best not to begin a metered poem with a variation—that it’s important to establish the meter for at least a few lines before departing from it. I suppose that the exception would be when the poet has decided to be loose in their metrics throughout.

Originally Posted by Jim Moonan

Personally, I hear "oh" quite a bit when I'm just thinking to myself — both as an expression of discovery and as an expression of something deeply poetic that has appeared — like a weeping window : )

That’s understandable, but I suppose because of the time I’ve spent with traditional verse, I genuinely heard “o” in my head for this one.

To this point, Tony, I’m still curious about your answer to this:

Originally Posted by Tony Barnstone

I wouldn't end with exclamation mark--too 19th century

Originally Posted by Alexandra Baez

Don’t you feel the same way about the vocative “o” at the start? Could this line have the same punch--could it have enough punch--without the exclamation point?

And, Jim, I’m still interested in your—and others’—take on this:

Originally Posted by Alexandra Baez

So, here’s a question: How would you feel if I were to take Tony’s suggestion and broaden the application of the word “frame” here—do you think I could still maintain the effect you mention [" The fact that {the poem} then proceeds to focus on the window itself and continues straight through to the end is stunning."]? So far, in fiddling with Tony’s idea, I feel that my results have lost something of this original charm that both you and some others have appreciated.

I’m referring here to the last part of Tony’s last comment:

Originally Posted by Tony Barnstone

I wonder if the turn gives away the ending? Capsuled and framed both say the window holds the world. So, there is an opportunity for one more move, a deepening of the thought. Frame of meaning? What's outside the frame? What about those other windows the eyes? What about language, which frames thought? And so on...

The best I've been able to come up with so far in response to this suggestion is

of spring. And only one thing stays the same:
round every pull of whim, round every claim
of weather—matter's unrelenting frame!

which really captures what I'm trying to say in this poem, but it just seems to be trying too hard. This ties in to my earlier comment, which I would also still love feedback on from anybody:

Originally Posted by Alexandra Baez

The one thing I'm not sure is coming through clearly to anyone (because I'm afraid I'm not expressing it clearly enough) is my central point--the irony that whatever scene presents through the window in March seems to embody the essence of reality, even though it may be opposite in nature to another scene that had the very same effect on the narrator even just the day before.

Thanks, all!

[Tony Barnstone]

Alexandra, your questions are hard. For some odd reason I don’t mind the O. Perhaps it’s so archaic that I hear air quotes around it and even a kind of genial, retro, sentimental, feeling attaches. Ultimately, your poem is dealing with the same issues I’m dealing with in my Heidegger poem, or at least with issues aligned with it. What is being? How do we know being? We know being through time as expressed in the windows of the eyes and the other doors of the senses. Why is there a being instead of nothing? Or, more accurately, why is there nothing, that then becomes being, and then becomes nothing again? Or even more accurately is there really any why to it at all or is it just a what? And then the existentialist query about this, does the end of being give meaning to the presence of being? In other words, does death give meaning to life instead of sap life of meaning? so I interpret your poem as really being one about phenomenology —the doors of perception and reality as manifested in them through passage of time. here’s where I have some issues with your final lines. On the one hand, you’re saying, something remains the same as being passes through time in the window of perception. What remains the same is the frame, yet that frame is dilapidated so it actually changes and only stays still in the N’s perception. That irony could be brought more to the surface.

[Tony Barnstone]

My sense is you are getting at the question of presence…first in space but less obviously in time. Yet the question of freezing time in your poem has more irony and pathos than you are currently expressing, I feel. You can stop your body in space but not in time, and that is the source of all sorrow and loss, e.g. Buddhism. Your delightful, whimsical poem has a capacity to break our hearts more. The window is weeping, after all.

“True reflection presents me to myself not as idle and inaccessible subjectivity, but as identical with my presence in the world and to others, as I am now realizing it: I am all that I see, I am an intersubjective field, not despite my body and historical situation, but, on the contrary, by being this body and this situation, and though them, all the rest.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception

[Tony Barnstone]

...as in

Encounter

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going
The flash of a hand, streak of movements, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

Wilno, 1936
― Czeslaw Milosz

[Alexandra Baez]

Tony, thanks for all your thoughts. I appreciate your nuance analysis of the “o.” I like your take and it’s just what I’d hope for.

So it sounds like you did grasp what I was driving at in a deeper level throughout the poem; it just hasn’t been brought to a high buff. It also sounds as though to achieve that, I might really need to change more than the second half of the last line. Would you agree that as a tweak, this doesn’t cut it?

of spring. And only one thing stays the same:
round every pull of whim, round every claim
of weather—matter's unrelenting frame!

It seems that my peculiar task is to try to better bring out the depths you identify without introducing a discordantly cerebral tone to the whole poem. Any ideas, please let me know. Otherwise, I may have to put this on the “long ponder” shelf.

I feel so fortunate to have a poet on here who has been exploring various issues parallel to those that I have (a key difference being that I don’t have the formal philosophical background that you do).

[Tony Barnstone]

Hi Alexandra,

Maybe think of adding one more stanza to give the poem room to breathe? And no, I don't think your edit to the last line works yet--too much telling and moral at the end. The rest of the poem is crisp and exciting in its details and I feel that is how the poem should go out, too. As to philosophy, I think of myself as the way Eliot described Blake, "We have the same respect for Blake’s philosophy ... that we have for an ingenious piece of home-made furniture: we admire the man who has put it together out of the odds and ends about the house." I've cobbled together some ideas the way I furnished my grad student house--with sofas tossed on lawns and broken chairs found in alleyways.

Be well! Tony

[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

The ‘O’ tossed me out Alexandra, which was a shame because I could have appreciated and enjoyed this much sooner.

I still do not like what to me is a needless anachronism but the rest is so well crafted with a wonderful conceit that I can see and feel through your eyes.

Jan