Tuesday, March 01, 2011

First draft

Brenhilda

The river-sun whitens
(post removed)

15 comments:

Jim Murdoch said...

I can’t get past the title: makes me think of Wagner and a fat lady singing in a Viking helmet. Sorry.

Marion McCready said...

it's nothing to do with the Germans :) St. Ronan's sister, I'll change it to the other spelling if that helps!

Titus said...

No Jim, that's with a 'u'!
Rather beautiful, and I followed the landscape faultlessly, which signals it's good to me because I have no imagination for the natural world.
Deliberate echoing of David Wheatley's 'St Brenhilda on Sula Sgeir' or just scary, saintly coincidence?

Marion McCready said...

I changed it from a 'u' after jim's comment :)

thankyou titus! not so much echoing (though I'd read the Wheatley poem) as based on the same legend.

Titus said...

Gotcha.
Sorry Jim!

Jim Murdoch said...

@Titus - no problem. Sometimes I can be a real Philistine. As soon as I saw that title all I could hear was Elmer Fudd going: "Kill the waaabbit. Kill the waaabbit..."

Titus said...

Hey, no philistinism there! One of the greatest cartoons ever made.

Anyway, really came back to say I have just noticed StAnza is this month. What days are you going to be there?

Marion McCready said...

I'll be there for the friday night, all day saturday and the sunday morning. are you thinking of heading up to it?

Titus said...

I was thinking of it, but having looked at the diary Craig's on lates then nights, which makes things a bit tricky...
Mind, the boys are good and we could just come for a wander and a bit of atmosphere.

Marion McCready said...

that would be so good if you came up! :)

Roxana said...

i have to look up the legend and then i will probably understand more, but right now i prefer to continue dreaming of these wonderful images, especially the first and last lines, which are simply gorgeous...

swiss said...

i did make a comment on this but blogger appears to have eaten it! i mentioned niseachs, not knowing the story. and i'm still loving that last line

Marion McCready said...

thanks swiss and roxana, I've been reading a lot about Sula Sgeir, there are loads of interesting stories surrounding it.

James Owens said...

This is lovely, especially the first line and "Shushing leaves fill the sky with the rush of the sea." I had to go to Wikipedia for the story of Brenhilda (it's a good one), and I have one question. Do you intend this to be a poem in the saint's voice, or is this a modern person dreaming of union with nature and also thinking of Brenhilda? I'm not sure, and it makes a lot of difference in the way I read the line about coloured glass. If the speaker is a contemporary, I'm thinking of litter. If the speaker is Brenhilda, I'm thinking of a broken stained glass window. I don't know --- maybe the question isn't important; I'm not even sure that the indecisiveness is a negative .... Don't get the wrong idea, I love this :-)

Marion McCready said...

thankyou :) the narrator is a modern voice, dreaming of union with nature - yes and with Brenhilda who achieved the ultimate union with nature. so the broken glass is litter, though I'm not unhappy with the stained glass connection either!