Poetry Forum

A.M.

Tokyo night rolls up like skirts on motorbikes
and daylight a bare thigh, hits our hangovers.

You raise your coffee to ringed eyes that sink
like moons in a bitter black lake. Strange how

b&w it seems after the colour of darkness and
touch can smear a grimace on the face of day.

The crow's wing stretches with intent above
naked yawning streets as your fingers search

tabletops for tunes you cannot drum. Tongues
are dry waiting for songs that just won't come.

Your eyes swim towards shore, splash me with a
smile. Forget the train, let's stay & tread water.






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Sorry but this one really doesn't work for me at all, it feels too conscious of trying to be full of new descriptions and right from the opening one they don't draw me as a reader in.

For me, this improves as it goes along. I wasn't so keen on the syntax of the first stanza: the comma there in the second line does not work for me.

Tokyo night rolls up like skirts on motorbikes
and daylight a bare thigh, hits our hangovers.

This I like:

b&w it seems after the colour of darkness and
touch can smear a grimace on the face of day.

Not keen on the crow - seems an odd image to put into a city scene. Why 'with intent'?

Then it improves and I like the rest!

Ros

I like parts of this a lot.I think you need an expression other than "rolls up",it gave me to understand beginning rather than ending. Roll up!Roll up!

the bare thigh of daylight hits our hangovers?

fingers search tabletops for tunes they cannot drum - liked that and the next line but maybe you could omit "are" after tongues.

let's stay and tread water - that's a nice finish.

Ros wrote:
Not keen on the crow - seems an odd image to put into a city scene. Why 'with intent'?

I believe Crows are common in Japanese cities where they interact well with the environment

Crows in Japan have gone "street smart", or "traffic light smart". They perch on the bonnet of halting cars at the stop light and drop walnuts on the road ahead of the car.

When the light turns green, the car tyres crack the shell, and the bird returns when the light turns red next to carry off the meat from the broken nut!

http://www.hinduonnet.com/seta/2002/08/ ... 070200.htm

Brian

I am going to be perhaps over critical on this but I am afraid your Old Women with Rice raised the bar.

The section below I like because the images are clear but more importantly they are appropriate. What I mean by that is that the metaphor is close to the literal, they fit - the crows wing and the fingers for example.

Strange how

b&w it seems after the colour of darkness and
touch can smear a grimace on the face of day.

The crow's wing stretches with intent above
naked yawning streets as your fingers search

tabletops for tunes you cannot drum. Tongues
are dry waiting for songs that just won't come.

This contrasts, I feel, with the more contrived metaphors or similes particularly the skirts and thighs. I think Ben is right that they are too conscious efforts compared to for example

touch can smear a grimace on the face of day which is effortless or more accurately your skill makes it appear effortless.

I also wonder about the two line structure - this piece feels as if it should have more flow rather than be a series of stilted couplets.

Just my impressions Brian - offered in a positive spirit, take or toss as you please.

elph

BenJohnson wrote:Crows in Japan have gone "street smart"

Clever crows! I quite like crows - we get quite a lot, being on the edge of suburbia. Still don't understand the 'with intent', though.

Ros wrote:

BenJohnson wrote:Crows in Japan have gone "street smart"

Clever crows! I quite like crows - we get quite a lot, being on the edge of suburbia. Still don't understand the 'with intent', though.

Brian, I think I preferred this to the rice poem. Technicalities aside, it felt more honest to its moment, and definitely more vibrant. A pop sensibility.

Cheers

Stuart

I liked some of your images here. I thought the comma in the first couplet would be all right if you also had a comma after "daylight".

I thought the 3rd, 4th and 5th couplets worked well, with a couple of reservations. I'm not experienced enough to know whether using initials and ampersands (b&w) is fashionable in poetry, but I don't like it, personally.

The stuff about the crow makes sense after your explanation, but it's very specific to the context, and doesn't really work without local knowledge. Perhaps you could expand on it, or it would make a good poem in its own right.

My biggest reservation is about the imagery you've used with the eyes. It's clever, and I feel a bit mean for saying this, but in the last couplet I had a mental picture of two cartoon eyeballs with little eyes and arms, doing the crawl. Sorry.

Helen

Great first line. Not keen on the rest, but I don't think you need me to go into detail.

Ben

Hello B.

The poem communicates the atmosphere of the Tokyo night quite well.
I enjoy place poems a lot. But it is not only about Tokyo, it is also about
the speaker and a 'you'. The speaker's thoughts blend in a harmonious way
with the city. The alliteration in the last two-line strophe enhances the idea
of leaving everything behind, of loving the moment: the drinking of a coffee,
the surrounding scenes.
It is a short poem so it would be better to avoid the use of 'like'.
The opening line, therefore, doesn't particularly work well for me.
You meantion 'bare thigh' in the second line, but still the opening line
does not grab my attention as it should. The simile in the second strophe
could be made more specific. If the poem is about a Tokyo night/early
morning (as the title suggests), being drunk and having a (bitter) coffee,
then I would like to know more about the moon that particular night.
I would leave out 'strange' and directly go to ... how b&w it seems after ...
Also the 'smear of grimace' isn't doing what it's supposed to be doing.
I'd like to see a fresher image, more grounded in the concrete.
Do you need 'with intent' and 'naked yawning'. I'd suggest a different
modifier for the streets. At this point there is the introduction of songs
that are not sung and tunes that cannot be drummed. I like this and think
that you could add a few more lines about these 'songs' and 'tunes'.
However, I'm not too keen on 'that just won't come'.
I've got mixed feelings about 'Forget the train,'.
There is a train to be taken and instead the speak suggests
staying. The train line just feels a bit abrupt, although I do like
the ending.

I hope I've been helpful in some way.

Thanks for sharing with me.


Maria

Thanks for all the input, especially those of you who have clearly spent some time with this.

I recently sent a batch of 25 new poems to my publisher and this was actually one of her favourites, with particularly praise given to the crow lines . . . but she is a resident of Tokyo so perhaps, arguably, in a position to appreciate it more due to "local knowledge". However, I don't usually subscribe to such knowledge being necessary for the enjoyment of any poem.

I find Ben's comment interesting about not being drawn in. What does draw a reader in to a poem? Sound? Image? Syntax? Ideas? I find a lot of modern poetry tries to hard to grab a reader with fireworks in the opening lines. Personally I prefer a poem to open up through its syntax and interesting juxtapositions.

That said, there's something not quite right in this poem for me either, but not sure what it is yet. All of your thoughts give me things to consider but I hope with a bit of time, the poem will tell me itself what it needs.

Cheers.

B.

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