Poetry Forum

Tuktoyaktuk

From her vantage point at the head
of the bay she would watch
as they padded
round the fringe

of a newly frozen
Beaufort shore. Each time
she was convinced that the weight
of the herd's frost-bitten hooves

would break the ice and plunge
them down long fathoms
of Arctic water
to where the beluga's

bleached ribs nestled in the lap
of an American
man-of-war, but it never
happened quite like that.

Always instead the chill of contact
with the pack
ice would shiver through their skin
and organs, would bite

into fur and bone with a hard,
brilliant white.
From her vantage point
at the head of the bay

she heard their breathing
scrape against the raw air
like the rasp
of a freshly diagnosed

cancer patient, made
a quick, handwritten note -
'the place of the caribou' -
and closed her ledger.

Nicely conjured atmosphere, chilled my bones all right, the harsh simile at the end finishes it well. Much enjoyed.
Regards, C.

Very very interesting.

I like the repeat of her location.
Really enjoyed the caribou images. There would be steam rising from their breath, I think.

You have captured the chill and white bones, very well.

There is something about the last few lines. She heard them, made a quick....
I think a word could be added for clairty.

Nice poem.
Thank you,
Suzanne

What an enjoyable read with lots of amazing feeling and imagery. Thanks
I'm not sure if I'm quite getting the reference to Man-of-war in the context but doesn't matter at all. Love this poem and the last stanza is superb

Steve

Some rather odd line breaks, I think - at the head / of the bay, with the pack / ice: not lots of them, but enough (and odd enough) to stand out. Overall, the poem wouldn't suffer from the lines being a little longer.

And I can't help thinking that like the rasp / of a freshly diagnosed // cancer patient is an extremely unappealing simile - unless, as C (ironically enough) seems to suggest, it has some reference to the she of the poem.

But it does get the cold, and sense of wilderness, across very well.

Cheers

David

Enjoyed, an interesting tale. Don't see how the cancer patient fits in.

Each time
she was convinced that the weight - you might lose she was

Always instead the chill of contact
with the pack - don't you need some punctuation after pack?
ice would shiver through their skin
and organs, would bite

So ... is any response to be expected, HB? Just wondering.

It's not compulsory, of course, but it is customary.

David

Apologies all, I thought I had commented on this already. Mea culpa. I'm currently neck deep in something that is already days late, but will come back to offer a fuller response forthwith. In the mean time thanks for all the encouraging words and interesting insights. I've been looking at shorter lines as a possible way of striking a harder, more rebarbative note, which may account for some of the points raised in conversation around line breaks, but I'll post more in a day or so.

Thanks again everyone

As promised, a fuller response to some queries.

With regards to the cancer patient in the last stanza - the Inuit population that lived in Tuktoyaktuk suffered terrible losses, as many did in the New World, when they came in to contact with American whalers. Anyways, I was thinking about how contact between different groups can be lethal, not just because of weapons etc., but also the much more impersonal processes of biology, and cancer stood out as an impersonal and destructive process - though I don't think, as a matter of historical accuracy, the Inuit contracted cancer from European explorers. Also, for some reason I always associate cancer with white things, and all that Arctic snow and ice made me think of it. I take your point, David, about the simile being unappealing, but I wanted something pretty harsh, like fingers dragged down a blackboard, to grate on the reader. I didn't have in mind particularly that the cancer should apply to the speaker of the poem, but it's an interpretation that might be fruitful to consider.

The point about harshness and grating also informed some of the line breaks. I was trying to generate a couple of contrasting rhythms - one quite fast-paced, as the speaker imagines the ice breaking and the caribou dropping to the ocean floor, which is kind of a fantasy about dying, and the other much more a feeling of grind, of life painfully endured. In the case of 'contact / with the pack / ice' I wanted to try and smuggle a half rhyme on contact/pack in as well. I was using 'pack ice' as a noun - it means the sheet of ice that forms when fragments are rammed together, I think - though I can see how that looks like a grammatical error.

Suzanne - I think you might be right about the last stanza.

I hope that's of some interest to folks,

As ever, thanks for taking the time to read