A good revision of the earlier draft. "The land beyond the Firth is gone" is a superior opening line. I hear an echo of "Earth" behind "Firth". That and the interior rhyme in "gone/alone" emphasize the solitude. I love "waves wane into white smirr", and how the "spindrift [that] seasons the dewy air" returns as the "zest / of sea".
Good to see you posting again. I always look forward to your work.
i'm still thinking about this. i liked the bit about the stones in the first version though (pedantically!!) i didn't think of jaspers as cold, agates as smooth and i don't think you get rubies in scotland (outside of fife and i think they may be garnets). but i did like the oppositional character of the stone/sea with hailstones as a sort of tranition
anyway here's some yevtushenko to keep you going http://lightning.prohosting.com/~zhenka/poemarchive.html
This is a good piece of drafting. I think it begins to lost its focus at stanza four though, drifting off into description without any obvious purpose or connection to the earlier stanzas. Where have the people you refer to suddenly gone? Where is your narrator in all this - albeit lovely - description?
The best poetry comes out of a language under pressure, and a writer under pressure. There's a sense of that in the first half of this draft; then it becomes something rather beautiful but too leisurely for poetry, with no urgency left.
But I get a strong sense here of a poet working with genuine seriousness at 'shaping' the work, with pleasing results. So if you could just recapture that focus ...
hi jane, you've hit the nail on the head as usual, I think this one will need to be sat aside for a bit before I'll get anymore headway with it. Thanks, I now know where to start when I get back to it.
8 comments:
A good revision of the earlier draft. "The land beyond the Firth is gone" is a superior opening line. I hear an echo of "Earth" behind "Firth". That and the interior rhyme in "gone/alone" emphasize the solitude. I love "waves wane into white smirr", and how the "spindrift [that] seasons the dewy air" returns as the "zest / of sea".
Good to see you posting again. I always look forward to your work.
Thankyou, I'm glad you like it! I look forward to seeing your work also!
i'm still thinking about this. i liked the bit about the stones in the first version though (pedantically!!) i didn't think of jaspers as cold, agates as smooth and i don't think you get rubies in scotland (outside of fife and i think they may be garnets). but i did like the oppositional character of the stone/sea with hailstones as a sort of tranition
anyway here's some yevtushenko to keep you going
http://lightning.prohosting.com/~zhenka/poemarchive.html
Fair point! I guess I need to research my precious stones, I appreciate your comments and thanks for the link
This is a good piece of drafting. I think it begins to lost its focus at stanza four though, drifting off into description without any obvious purpose or connection to the earlier stanzas. Where have the people you refer to suddenly gone? Where is your narrator in all this - albeit lovely - description?
The best poetry comes out of a language under pressure, and a writer under pressure. There's a sense of that in the first half of this draft; then it becomes something rather beautiful but too leisurely for poetry, with no urgency left.
But I get a strong sense here of a poet working with genuine seriousness at 'shaping' the work, with pleasing results. So if you could just recapture that focus ...
hi jane, you've hit the nail on the head as usual, I think this one will need to be sat aside for a bit before I'll get anymore headway with it. Thanks, I now know where to start when I get back to it.
am stuck on gescheiteste. what is that?
smart/clever
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