Tuesday, August 09, 2011

First draft

We lie side by side

(poem removed)

5 comments:

Jim Murdoch said...

This poem breaks into four sections for me, in fact I would present it in four separate stanzas. I am not sure they gel as well as they could though.

The first sets the scene, a couple on a bed. These two sentences feel especially prosaic. The meaning is clear but there’s little scope to read anything into bit. And why ‘black shapes’ rather than the more obvious (and symbolic) shadows? Is this the bed ‘the dead’ spoken of later also lay in? Are the pair alone?

The second image is of the room, the light shade – are you stating the obvious when you mention that it’s spherical? – and the (rectangular) door with its (typically circular) halo. The second line, ‘blooms like a black moon’ is good, sonorous.

The third section, where you talk about sleeping in ‘the same direction as the dead’ is the best bit. Here you mention evening creeping in. Perhaps you could link that with the ‘black shapes’ in the opening section. The link between the holding hands is good.

In the last section I like ‘the finality of curtains’ – makes me think about the curtain they drawn across a coffin in a crematorium but there are plenty of other possibilities. Not sure about ‘palm of sky’ – don’t really get it. I’m assuming that it was snowing when she died – ‘mystery of crystals’ is also good not just because it describes snow but because of the whole mystery surrounding death. I see you echo the ‘loose’ from the poem’s third line. A bit obvious but fine. I don’t like the teeth simile though – too harsh for me – and ‘battlefield’ is typically one word.

On the whole I like it. I think you can do better with it but the key elements are there.

Roxana said...

i finally agree with Jim here, in all points!!! :-) especially that the third part, with the dead, is the best, and that i don't like the teeth/battlefield image in the end, not because it is too harsh, but it feels artificial, forced, when it comes to a metaphor for snow.

it is wonderful to see so many poems here again :-)

Marion McCready said...

wow, thanks jim for that thorough reading! :)

thanks roxana, yes the teeth made me laugh when I came back to reading it, not the effect I was going for! :)

Anonymous said...

I like the ideas in this one, but I just think it needs a little more work. And re the teeth, I have a poem in the current Snakeskin which describes finding bits of human bone in a field on the Somme. I still shudder, remembering.
Colin

Marion McCready said...

thanks colin, I've been reworking this one all morning and think I'm getting there :)
I enjoyed that poem in Snakeskin, I went to the Somme as a child.