Poetry Forum

These fields, cut through with linden-shaded walks,
are much frequented by the votaries
of pleasure. A glass dome houses butterflies
and red-eyed frogs and scarlet ibises,
and at its centre stands a corpse-flower,
erect, exuding sweet and morbid musk.
Hot air balloons ascend from here,
bedecked with golden suns and fleurs-de-lis,
and drift away to alien parishes.
Meat pies and beer and oranges are for sale;
the cries of hawkers mingle with the blare
of carousels; off-duty sailors roar
corrupting blandishments at nubile maids,
and lovers whisper in the colonnades.

Hi
IMHO both very good+done. It creates an atmosphere suffused with sex (erect, nubile, musk) and is also interesting set linguistically at some indeterminate but older date (maid/blandishments) when going for a stroll through gardens was the thing to do. It has a kind of Yellow Book/Aubrey Beardsley/Decadents 1890s sort of feel (red eyed/morbid/corpse). Strong imagery, dark whimsy. Like the final maids/colonnades rhyme. The earlier here/fleur-de-lis and even on to lien and beer (more internal semi-near-rhyming) is good.

And yes, I had to look up corpse flower.

Cheers,
Ant

Hello KJ

I really loved this beautiful sketch, surely one of the best forum pieces I've seen posted in years!

Coming to mine was Cooleridge's "Kubla Khan"

"Amorphophallus titanum" "the changing giant phallus' - "the corpse flower -
What a powerful symbol that is and very skilfully used too I may add.

May I offer some very teeny nits to polish this excellent work. Deleting the unneeded words highlighted in red.

These fields, cut through with linden-shaded walks,
are much frequented by the votaries
of pleasure. A glass dome houses butterflies,
and red-eyed frogs and scarlet ibises,
and at its centre stands a corpse-flower,
erect, exuding sweet and morbid musk.
Hot air balloons ascend from here,
bedecked with golden suns and fleurs-de-lis,
and drift away to alien parishes.
Meat pies, and beer and oranges are for sale;
the and cries of hawkers mingle with the blare
of carousels; off-duty sailors roar
corrupting blandishments at nubile maids,
and lovers whisper in the colonnades.

Thanks for sharing,

Wally

I thought the last 8 lines were terrific. You've almost managed to rhyme parishes with oranges. The whole thing is excellent, really, except for all those commas followed by and. Is this a personal tic? I've not noticed it before. I'd suggest something like this

A glass dome houses butterflies,
red-eyed frogs and scarlet ibises;
at its centre stands a corpse-flower,

Reminded me of something Larkin did, can't remember what it's called.

Very nice. It almost seems as though it should be called "The Pleasure Gardens at Vauxhall". I wonder whether you've perhaps overdone the orotund old-fangled phrasing, but it's a very enjoyable read. You could easily be slipping away at the end to meet up with Boswell and John Wilkes, to go a-rogering some doxies.

Cheers, my good sir

David

Yes, much fun. You could lose most of the commas and many of the ands, as suggested.

corrupting blandishments at nubile maids,

feels a little over the top, even given the language used.

Now then, David, enough of the rogering. What sort of board do you think this is?

Ros

Ha ha. Laughing at David's rogering.

Surprised this one was so well received.

Yes David I totally used Vauxhall as the template.

Ros you might be right, having the maids be nubile might be a bit too much.

Ray (and others) I suspect all the commas and conjunctions are a personal tic. The problem is I get bound up in the metre. I can't seem to make iambic lines - at least not many of them - without lots of ands and ors and lists.

k-j wrote:Surprised this one was so well received.

Ros you might be right, having the maids be nubile might be a bit too much.

Well IMHO "Nubile/blandishments" is good...indeed spot on linguistically... if the poem is seen - as I saw it - as being set in some way in the world of the Yellow Book/London 1890s when gardens were the thing. I was serious about that reference. Imagine Oscar Wilde/Aubrey Beardsley wandering around gardens...looking for sin.

One of the best poems of atmosphere that I have seen on site so far...IMHO.

Cheers,
Ant.

Yes, it is very good - very consistent atmosphere. I agree about the looking for sin, but I think there might be a better way to put it than use nubile.

Ros