Poetry Forum

Posted: **Sat Jun 24, 2006 8:11 pm**

I'm still working at Lycidas - see previous posts. Here's another fragment. They're intended to be capable of standing alone or being read in any order so hopefully this should merit attention in its own right.
-------------
Oxford End

The pole’s plunge
Leaves a watery concentric
Aftermath, wave breaking on wave.
Barely borne by the meniscus,
A solitary reed
Is subsumed,
And the willow weeps.

The falling curtain of this grieving tree
Descends to grosser earth and fades away –
So too our life, involved in dusk, shall flee,
And flesh to sod and silence shall decay.

Thus spake the voice of the dead:
The living had been drowned out,
Lungs filled with murky water,
Wave upon wave
Of dead men’s discourse.

Lycidas’ hand grazed the skin
Of the river, ploughing
A transient furrow,
Disturbed and disappeared
As soon as formed.
Like letters in the ether,
A streaming burst of speech,
The furrow faded
As the water folded over on itself
Like a wound.

Posted: **Sat Jun 24, 2006 8:50 pm**

This is great David.

Some might say the use of 'willow weeps' in the first stanza a cliche but here is more a bold statement of fact, consolidated by a lovely second verse. An example where cliche works and shouldn't be avoided.

As I say, the second stanza is lovely and drifts by like the view from a slow punt.

The laziness works with the weight perfectly throughout and some great water allusions.

Enjoying your Lycidas posts even if they do tend to stand firm against most contemporary ideals. Personally I'd like it to be more of a Jude the Obscure theme, I do enjoy a good tragedy.

Nice read.

Posted: **Sat Jun 24, 2006 11:53 pm**

Hi D

Writing a suite where each component works both on its own and as subsumed in its whole is a challenge! I hope you're up to it.

I put comments below... (but I do think the weeping willows is a weak spot as it will always be a cliche and come across as unimaginative - a filler, if you like, which detracts)

dillingworth wrote:I'm still working at Lycidas - see previous posts. Here's another fragment. They're intended to be capable of standing alone or being read in any order so hopefully this should merit attention in its own right.
-------------
Oxford End

The pole’s plunge
Leaves a watery concentric
Aftermath, wave breaking on wave.
Barely borne by the meniscus,
A solitary reed
Is subsumed,
And the willow weeps. [Lose this line.]

The falling curtain of this grieving tree [of the grieving tree]
Descends to grosser earth and fades away –
So too our life, involved in dusk, shall flee,
And flesh to sod and silence shall decay. [This couplet is implied by its immediately-preceding cousin, so better not to spell it out.]

Thus spake the voice of the dead: ["Thus spake" - yuk! Is it a conscious shot at Nietzsche - perhaps, but better if you don't wear his suit here.]
The living had been drowned out,
Lungs filled with murky water,
Wave upon wave
Of dead men’s discourse.

Lycidas’ hand grazed the skin
Of the river, ploughing
A transient furrow,
Disturbed and disappeared
As soon as formed.
Like letters in the ether, [You have a poor simile here - how about "Like letters washed away by teardrops"?]
A streaming burst of speech,
The furrow faded
As the water folded over on itself
Like a wound.

["Like a wound, healing"?]

Posted: **Sun Jun 25, 2006 12:21 am**

Post a poem CC...its been a while.

Unwritten rule: For every two crits at least one poem must be written.

(a tongue in cheek attempt to squeeze a poem out of you)

Posted: **Sun Jun 25, 2006 11:09 pm**

Minstrel -

I like your take on the rules.

dill -

For the most part I agree with what Mr. Vulture has pointed out, specifically about the middle rhyming sections. "Thus spake," came out of nowhere...it was you were writing in the mid-18th century to that point and then flew back 200 years. (It may too be a stab at Nietzsche...or at least, Walter Kaufmann...)

But I like the experiments with form. You start out slowly free verse, then sink into full metrical verse, then back out. If you can get those four structured lines to be less repetitive as already pointed out, it would be that much better.

You already do have something interesting. Maybe this is a stretch but it's an interpretation I'm sticking with: I saw the structured thoughts in the structured section in the middle and the non-structured thoughts in the non-structured sections. The grand thoughts on life and death went into that fully metrical middle, but the surrounding paragraphs seemed to be more like brief observations.

Keep it up,

- Caleb

Posted: **Mon Jun 26, 2006 12:42 pm**

Hi Dill,

I agree with CCV about
"Thus spake the voice of the dead".
Alsos you have changed tense, and do many dead people have a single voice?
Perhaps
"So insist the voices of the dead" ?

Similarly, I'm having a spot of bother picturing "letters in the ether".

These minor quibbles aside, I have to say I enjoyed it.
Geoff

Posted: **Mon Jun 26, 2006 1:43 pm**

I've read this through quite a few times since it's been posted, as well as the comments that have followed it. The views on cliche and archaism are ones which I wholeheartedly share - as a rule. Having followed these verses on Lycidas, I don't find these to be out of place here, they add to the feel of the whole thing -

'Thus spake the voice of the dead:
The living had been drowned out,
Lungs filled with murky water,
Wave upon wave
Of dead men’s discourse.' - I find this a reminder as to what prompted Milton's 'Lycidas'.

The style in which all these 'Lycidas' poems has been written has been intriguing - a style which seems to imply that 'Lycidas' belongs to an earlier age.

The only thing that I might change, after reading the suggestion by ccv, is the last line - 'Like a wound (healed).

Of all the comments written about this series of poems, the one which is most apt was written by Minstrel -

'... drifts by like the view from a slow punt.'

Thoroughly enjoyable - although I'm not sure that Milton would have approved of Oxford as the setting - the idylls(?) of Cambridge, surely.

good stuff

Barrie

Posted: **Mon Jun 26, 2006 3:21 pm**

Two things really jump out at me when reading this:

1 - I think it's a wee bit verbose.

2 - Your alliterative styling is a wee bit overt.

^ Both of which lend an air of gaudiness to the whole thing.

I'm sorry! That's sounds so terrible. But it's just my opinion.

For what it's worth, I did enjoy the poem.

In constructive spirit,

-Me

Posted: **Mon Jun 26, 2006 5:25 pm**

Minstrel wrote:Post a poem CC...its been a while.

Unwritten rule: For every two crits at least one poem must be written.

(a tongue in cheek attempt to squeeze a poem out of you)

Oh, alright, then

*****

The Colour of Day

Rising, I drew back black-eyed covers
from purple-sprouting hills,
showed my naked, pink, early warmth
to their new hair near the dark spots,
which they were still discovering by
torchlight, the colour of night.

They held up their sticky fingers
to the window where I winked,
I dried them out and lit up their faces
as they found new giggles, deeper,
quieter laughter in the face of
the taunted choler of the night.

Posted: **Mon Jun 26, 2006 5:52 pm**

barry that's exactly what i was aiming for - the underlying idea is that lycidas belongs in the age of milton, can't survive in modern life, hence through his consciousness anything that's related becomes ancient or at least appears incongruous. the metrical middle section is the "voice of the dead", the way milton, marvell, pope might have described the willow. the free sections around it are the more modern voice.

Posted: **Tue Jun 27, 2006 5:36 pm**

Dill,

I'll not much mention the anachronistics--already been done--and I know you've good reason.

I will say that S2 seems weakest. "The falling curtain of this grieving tree" I think you can leave off "falling," this, to me, is perhaps implicit but quite obvious. Also, I'm not sure you should repeat "shall" twice in a stanza, lends itself to melodrama.

The final stanza, though, is just a fucking killer. Kudos. By the way, it's good to see you back and active.

Cheers,

K.

Posted: **Mon Jul 03, 2006 12:24 am**

A truely nice piece of work, enjoyed the piece. keep up the good work Mr Dillingworth, kind regards. Duncan Williams.

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