Poetry Forum

The Phillipines

Backed up
[tab][/tab]against the border
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]of an abandoned

maze of back-streets
[tab][/tab]amputated
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]from the hub

surrounded
[tab][/tab]by school kids
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]with wormy eyes

the penny in the lime-
[tab][/tab]scaled fountain
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]shimmers

Some hand
[tab][/tab]bolted a page
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]to the sky

but rich men's pens
[tab][/tab]don't scribble
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]around here

Dead ivy
[tab][/tab]claims the canvas
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]with a dusty stretch

signed off
[tab][/tab]bottom right
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]by a spray-can teen

Clubs Popsicle and Naked
[tab][/tab]lay flowers
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]at my feet

but my mind abducts my eye—

a mind fixated
[tab][/tab]on the chicken egg riddle
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]of old ladies' fashion

fooled and surprised
[tab][/tab]by tie-dyed splash
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]of Africa

Laughable to find
[tab][/tab]such quarry
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]in a sea of vinegar

but I refuse to mourn
[tab][/tab]the absence
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]of glass

and instead raise
[tab][/tab]a cold metal vessel
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]with brim encumbered

by bubbles and breath
[tab][/tab]from the belly
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]of an oaf

I toast the back streets
[tab][/tab]of my dalliance
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]with daytime

and watch the lights
[tab][/tab]come on
[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]in Asia












~

Phew. Things have been quiet around here, haven't they? All the shouting is going on over at Brendan's British Empire poem.

Sad to say, I couldn't seem to get a fix on this one, Brian. It just came through to me as disjointed ruminations, which I'm sure is not what I'm supposed to be getting. Perhaps it's just my complete lack of Phillipine (Philippine?) reference points. Feel free to give me some clues, if you think they will help.

Perhaps this will nudge some more responsive comments from others. I hope so.

Cheers

David

Thanks for reading and commenting David. Sorry it didn't come through for you, but I can't complain --- any responses at all are a blessing these days. Seems people are more up for a scrap than they are trying to get to grips with poetry that doesn't spoonfeed.
As ever, I'm reluctant to lift the poem's skirt too much in post-comments --- I always feel explanations are a bit of a cop-out. And as I mentioned somewhere else once, being the repetitive arse (note UK spelling ) that I am, I personally try to appreciate the poetics of a poem before trying to decode specific meanings. If the poetics are uninteresting and the content not immediately clear, then fair enough, maybe time to change channel.

(slightly off-topic, but as I mentioned before, I think the 2:1 ratio for comments:new posts, is a false economy and encourages readers to reader wider rather than deeper. Maybe one for discussions, later)

Apologies for yet more disjointed ruminations . . . .

B.

~

I really liked this - it's a bit crazy but some great vignettes throughout. I thought of the poem as a kind of scrapbook of fleeting impressions during a journey - the key theme to me being the conflict between man and nature, beauty and ugliness. A few suggestions:

- Reading across the first two stanzas "the border of abandoned maze of back-streets" doesn't quite make sense grammatically. I'd stick a "the" in there with "abandoned".

- Why the chicken egg riddle? Seemed to jar slightly in the context of the rest of the poem. You may be able to enlighten me though!

- Why the indentations? If there's a reason for them it's fine but otherwise seems unnecessary somehow. One thing you could do is to try to "hide" images in the indented lines to give us different ways of reading the text. E.g. reading the first line of each stanza gives you "backed up maze of back streets surrounded the penny in the lime" which could stand for the speaker's position in his travels?

Enjoyed the rhythm and sound of the first part, say down to by a spray-can teen, and think I'm getting the meaning. I'm not sure that leaving the punctuation out is achieving anything. Particularly enjoyed the moving in from the wider view through the children to the coin in the fountain and then the spray-can. I'm not reading any wider metaphor here - don't know if I should be? Moving on, I get a bit lost -

Clubs Popsicle and Naked
lay flowers
at my feet

nightclubs? or a metaphor for something else? Either way, it's rather lost on me.

a mind fixated
on the chicken egg riddle
of old ladies' fashion

fooled and surprised
by tie-dyed splash
of Africa

Like the image here, but don't see any real chicken-egg conflict in old ladies' clothes.

Then we seem to move to you enjoying a beer - again I'm a bit disturbed by

from the belly
of an oaf

as I can't find the context. And the ending is fine but doesn't really enlighten me further.

So, overall I'm enjoying the images and the movement from one to another, but I think I'm missing any overall point. Not that I really want you to explain it - as you say, I think it's a mistake to explain poems. Either the stuff is in there for the right reader, or it ain't.

Don't know if that's useful, but it's my best shot for now.

Ros

Thanks dillingworth and Ros.

Glad you are both enjoying the rhythms of this, very rewarding. The lack of punctuation and use of indents are a big part of that. To my ear, the sounds, the line breaks and indents are the punctuation Ros.

As for meaning, well maybe this is just the wrong side of obscure and maybe I am guilty of enjoying this for myself far too much. I might change my mind in due course, it's certainly been known.

Cheers.

B.

~

Hi Brian

The seedy setting of the first two stanzas put me in mind of a seedy subject. The references to Club Naked and a nocturnal lifestyle do nothing to dissuade me from that train of thought. I just can’t make the two ends join up. Maybe I'm off the mark.

The images are interesting and the word choice feels good, but the construction of the phrases switches back and forth between confident and broken English. You don’t appear to be trying to use different voices at these different points, so something else must be going on. Sorry, I can’t figure that out.

As David suggested, it looks like the title bears a spelling mistake. Is this a deliberate misdirection? It feels too generic a title for the subject matter. However, if I’ve got that all wrong, maybe it’s a clever ploy.

Only three readings in, but I’m not making much headway. I’ll try some lateral reading to see if that helps.


a little befussed and confuddled

og

Good stuff og, thanks for engaging. I think you understand more than you realise.

Title misspell is indeed deliberate, if that helps at all. Wasn't intending this to be a puzzle to solve, but, there you go . . . .

Meaning is vastly overrated.

Cheers.

B.

~

this poem seems to be floating on air - very light.

or on stilts - like the floating village

i'm not so concerned with what you say but how you say it - how you play around with words & images - & give a sense of the place - without trying to make sense - i feel no need to delve deep in the meaning of the riddles - or why the poet has jumped from philipines to 'tie-dyed splash of Africa' - perhaps it's Bombay Gin!

or why he finds it:

Laughable to find
such quarry
in a sea of vinegar

i could understand his refusal to mourn the absence of glass - perhaps he's misplaced it - but he's found a metal vessel &it will do -to raise a toast - even tho the brim be encumbered by 'bubbles & breath from the belly of an oaf'

I toast the back streets
of my dalliance
with daytime

and watch the lights
come on
in Asia


so the reader, if in dalliance with the poet, will enjoy these daytime visions

or he/she wont - if not.

i fully enjoyed - because for me the poem walks on air

Hi Brian
Billy Collins once spoke of the sadness of readers “..torturing a poem into confessing its meaning.” I guess, that’s roughly where you’re coming from, at least on this occasion, not always, and I tend to agree. There can be music in a poem, without unambiguous meaning. I enjoyed this for its flow and its images – I imagined you absorbing, reinterpreting, the sights an sounds of some seedy backstreet area, while enjoying(?) some kind of on-the-hoof Asian fastfood. A couple of the images didn’t connect with me, and I thought – personal view – its rhythm would be even better with the addition of the occasional (conventional, sorry) bit of punctuation and indef article – e.g.

Backed up
[tab]against the border[/tab]
[tab]of an abandoned[/tab]

(haven't worked out the formatting system here, yet)

But the lack of these didn’t significantly impact, horrible word, my enjoyment. Nice work.

Ahh, there seems to be some black magic working in between the lines 3 & 4. You see, I'm hearing a semi-colon at the break, but mebbe I'm listening too loud? It's been said.

How about we capitalize Abandoned? Anythin' happen then?

Tnx 4 all the kudos.

B.

~

I think - not sure - I see what you're getting at, but it still doesn't work for me, I'm afraid.

Most of the poem conforms to a conventional (if unpuctuated) English grammar scheme, but the first 4 lines don't. It seems odd, somehow. A semi-colon at the break would mean that s1 ends on a qualifier. To my ear the insertion of the indef article solves it at a stroke without loss of poetic effect.

All the best
peter

Arian wrote:I think - not sure - I see what you're getting at, but it still doesn't work for me, I'm afraid.

Most of the poem conforms to a conventional (if unpuctuated) English grammar scheme, but the first 4 lines don't. It seems odd, somehow. A semi-colon at the break would mean that s1 ends on a qualifier. To my ear the insertion of the indef article solves it at a stroke without loss of poetic effect.

All the best
peter

*sigh*

brianedwards wrote: I have had my fill of commenting on piss-poor poetry and getting eff-all in return.
~

We're doing our best, Brian. If we're not getting this one, we're not getting it. Either a) we're the wrong audience, or b) it needs some revision if you want us to appreciate it.

Ros

Ros wrote:

brianedwards wrote: I have had my fill of commenting on piss-poor poetry and getting eff-all in return.
~

We're doing our best, Brian. If we're not getting this one, we're not getting it. Either a) we're the wrong audience, or b) it needs some revision if you want us to appreciate it.

Ros

Who's "we"? Why the desire for a "we"?

"we're"/our"/"we're"/"we're"/"we're"/"us" ------ that's some scary shit Ros!!

Must a "them" be constructed in order to validate the "we"?

Confoozed. Time for bed.

B.

~

Brian - this took a few reads for me to settle in to, by which time I was able to appreciate more some of the great images you have going on. I think my favourite was

Some hand
bolted a page
to the sky

but rich men's pens
don't scribble
around here

I did find this difficult to read, the first time my eye just skimmed over a lot of it. That could be for several reasons - 1 is just the difficulty of reading a long thin poem on a (12") screen, this would have been easier if I could have printed it out. That is definitely part of it, at this point though im not sure to what degree.
The other possibility is that I felt the short lines broke the images a little too much before I could get to grips with them, and the long thin structure made it feel much longer than it in fact is. Again, maybe just a personal taste thing. The third possibility is that it is slightly too long. The chicken riddle stanza jarred me a little too, and felt out of synch, I wonder how attached to it you are as I feel it could bear being chopped

On the subject of the meaning behind it, I'm still not sure what all the parts translate into, but I don't think it matters in this one. The capitalised Abandoned obviously gives some significance to it, above and beyond the meaning of abandoned, and I haven't a clue what that is - but as I said, I don;t think that matters, just knowing it is significant adds some depth I feel.

So, one of your harder ones to read (for me), but worth the reader perservering with I feel.
Sharra
xx

I know what you mean, Brian - I'm sighing too. But for a different reason.

Peter,
you might be pleased to know that after 4 months of distance, I have returned to this poem and finally added that article you suggested!
Ha! What a stubborn fool I am at times.
Thanks for the friendly kick.

B.

~

Def. better with the article. Coming back to this, appreciated it more than before - but only down to Clubs - still can't link the later images with the first ones.