This is lovely, especially the first line and the last four.
I am not sure that I understand, "Flower-tongues, the thread of the warp / dripping in the wrack of your hair." Maybe I am not reading "wrack" correctly... Something to do with seaweed? I'm not seeing the leap from weaving to the shore....
I read this poem yesterday and couldn’t think of anything to say. Today wasn’t much better. I don’t know how to read the poem, literally or symbolically. It’s pretty but it’s like a dress without a beautiful woman inside it to make it. A woman waits all day for a man under some trees; he comes, presses some flowers into her hand and kisses her wrist. So what? That’s me being brutal but read literally that’s all that happens. So I started to look at the word choice and just tied myself in knots trying to make it mean something. Why is she watching the sky? Is he a pilot? Or, since he has wrack-like hair, perhaps he is a sailor. Since he kisses a wreathe around her wrist is it his ghost that comes? I know I have a very meaning-centric view of poetry but I found this piece more frustrating than anything else. I feel like I’m trying to bludgeon meaning into it.
oh jim!:) you could probably reduce the majority of my poems to 'so what' literal readings. I guess it's just a love poem of sorts, I try to laden nature/images with emotion rather than abstractly stating it.
haha, i always have great fun reading Jim's comments, i must confess :-)
"A woman waits all day for a man under some trees; he comes, presses some flowers into her hand and kisses her wrist. So what?" - well nothing more, this is everything and this is the essential, everything that needs to be!!! if the words are powerful enough to make a new event out of that centuries-old scenario - and in this case they are!
and Sorlil, i had to think of my ivy-leaves as well, reading your images :-)
What can I say ladies? I guess I'm not a romantic. I used to be. I'd like to think I'm still thoughtful but . . . nah, there's no getting around it - the romance is gone.
Wowwee, I am in rapture with this piece. So many ways I was compelled to write of love, as Pablo Neruda did in sonnet XI, and you captured it here, and summoned it with the wrists! Thank you for sharing your writing. and for visiting my blog. I will look up Poems found in translation blog. Di
9 comments:
This is lovely, especially the first line and the last four.
I am not sure that I understand, "Flower-tongues, the thread of the warp / dripping in the wrack of your hair." Maybe I am not reading "wrack" correctly... Something to do with seaweed? I'm not seeing the leap from weaving to the shore....
thankyou james!
you're right, just couldn't let go of wrack for some reason, but it doesn't fit at all so it'll have to go!
I read this poem yesterday and couldn’t think of anything to say. Today wasn’t much better. I don’t know how to read the poem, literally or symbolically. It’s pretty but it’s like a dress without a beautiful woman inside it to make it. A woman waits all day for a man under some trees; he comes, presses some flowers into her hand and kisses her wrist. So what? That’s me being brutal but read literally that’s all that happens. So I started to look at the word choice and just tied myself in knots trying to make it mean something. Why is she watching the sky? Is he a pilot? Or, since he has wrack-like hair, perhaps he is a sailor. Since he kisses a wreathe around her wrist is it his ghost that comes? I know I have a very meaning-centric view of poetry but I found this piece more frustrating than anything else. I feel like I’m trying to bludgeon meaning into it.
oh jim!:) you could probably reduce the majority of my poems to 'so what' literal readings. I guess it's just a love poem of sorts, I try to laden nature/images with emotion rather than abstractly stating it.
haha, i always have great fun reading Jim's comments, i must confess :-)
"A woman waits all day for a man under some trees; he comes, presses some flowers into her hand and kisses her wrist. So what?" - well nothing more, this is everything and this is the essential, everything that needs to be!!!
if the words are powerful enough to make a new event out of that centuries-old scenario - and in this case they are!
and Sorlil, i had to think of my ivy-leaves as well, reading your images :-)
i really loved it!
What can I say ladies? I guess I'm not a romantic. I used to be. I'd like to think I'm still thoughtful but . . . nah, there's no getting around it - the romance is gone.
thankyou roxana, I'm so glad you like it :)
jim, I'm a hopeless romantic, a lost cause really! :)
Wowwee, I am in rapture with this piece. So many ways I was compelled to write of love, as Pablo Neruda did in sonnet XI, and you captured it here, and summoned it with the wrists!
Thank you for sharing your writing. and for visiting my blog.
I will look up Poems found in translation blog.
Di
thankyou dianne, such kind words :)
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