Poetry Forum

MCMXCV

She used to hang our pictures
in procession down the staircase wall,
puppy-fat and curls giving way
to crew-cuts, bum-fluff and a pair
of dirty-blonde sideburns,
to inch-thick jam-jar glasses,
their tortoiseshells making that
the year that Billy Jackson
turned you over for your leather brogues
and rounded Estuary vowels,
the year of Creutzfeld-Jakob’s disease,
HTMLs and the siege
Of Srebrenica.

Nice idea Henry. I like the procession. I think the ending would be more effective if you stuck with personal dates (I'm assuming they aren't!) - I don't know what to make of

the year of Creutzfeld-Jakob’s disease,
HTMLs and the siege
Of Srebrenica.

- they just seem random events picked to emphasize a year you've already stated in the title.

Ros

Agree with Ros. Also, I think you should take it a bit further. Lose the last three lines and write a couple more verses.

k-j wrote:Agree with Ros. Also, I think you should take it a bit further. Lose the last three lines and write a couple more verses.

Greetings. Agree with K-J agreeing with Ros. Why is the dating in Roman numerals? I may well be missing something that explains this, but on the face of it the purpose can only be to introduce a puzzle element for someone not so familiar with Roman numerals and who is a bit hazy about the date of Srebrenica? Okay, puzzles are fun, but is it really much of a puzzle?

Seth

Ros wrote:they just seem random events picked to emphasize a year you've already stated in the title.

True, but isn't that rather the point though - we all remember particular years for particular events, and these stick out in the mind of the poet.

For me, I rather like it, going from the specific and personal to the general and (I hope) impersonal. I think it succeeds in creating an insight to the poet's personal life. But I do agree that the Roman numerals in the title are at least unnecessary, and at worst have a vaguely grandiloquent feel.

Cheers
peter

Thanks for the comments all. There is a high degree of randomness about the reference in the final line, though the overall intent was, as Peter noted, to go from the personal and the impersonal and perhaps along the way to query what we regard as random.

With regards to the title, I had in mind this one...http://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/mcmxiv/

Thanks again

My reaction resembles Peter's more closely than it does the others'. I like the anchoring device of the geopolitical events, and - now - I understand the use of the Roman numerals in the title.

To say (as I think) that your poem - and I like it in itself - doesn't have the resonance of Larkin's is to set the bar unreasonably high, I think. We can't be comparing ourselves to the Greats.

Cheers

David

I can see how mad cow disease and Srebrenica would connect to Billy Jackson etc. but HTMLs seems too random for me. I like the procession idea, though.