Poetry Forum

On a motor tour of English cathedrals during which a romantic involvement was terminated.

The ruined abbey
An unattainable solidity -
Shored up
Against the breaking centuries.

The head-shrine of St. Hugh
A pathetic paradigm
For my self-projection:
Head divorced from heart,
Sinews severed.

Before Bede's bones
An anxious prayer:
Resquiat in pace,
But how can pieces rest?

Over the fragrant altar
The vaulted arms embrace
At evensong. The warp and woof
Of ancient harmonies
A token
Woven like her hair
Or self-made clothes.

In the stone cocoon of silence,
Memories of her humid room
Fertile with sweat and frictive meats,
As skin weeps.
A blind exploration,
A sedative explosion,
A silent exposition.

Rising from my knees
I shake off another night,
Another expiation.
That single revelation
Reiterates itself
As miles slip by like minutes.

Hi dillingworth. I usually avoid critting your poems - not because I don't like them.....just that I often don't understand the mental links (maybe due to my lack of education), but here goes.
I didn't think the "Sinews severed." line kept flow with the "Head divorced from heart,". Was it meant to be shocking and abrupt?

Liked -

"pathetic paradigm" and the idea of the paradigm.

and managed to get -

"Resquiat in pace,
But how can pieces rest?"

but what is "frictive"

and I don't get -

"A blind exploration,
A sedative explosion,
A silent exposition."

Liked "expiation" as my new "word for the day".
I know it must be a pain explaining the obvious to peasants, but I would appreciate it ....seriously. I'm sure the "Fred Bloggs" view must be worth something.

Cheers.

Mick.

frictive is not actually a word, it turns out, but i want it to be an adjective derived from friction! may have to change that...

as for
"A blind exploration,
A sedative explosion,
A silent exposition."

er, it's a description of coitus. ahem.

Thanks for that dillingworth..........don't worry - I didn't have to look up
"coitus" - sorry to "interupt".

Mick.

psh. frictive is a word to me, that's all that matters.

Hi David,

I think this is one of your best posts to date

first stanza - needs reworking - you are stating not showing - can you be objective for the reader ? - that is you are forcing conclusions for the reader in this scene ...

last two stanzas work really well - a profusion of vowels: i's, o's adding tonal weight to the voice with marvellous sonics.

Clever the way you have drawn parallels with religious ascetism with speakers internal state of affairs; emotional life.


Arco

Gidday

Had me scrambling for my online Latin dictionary. Such an education, this forum.

Frictive - I was thinking biology (fructive/fruiting) not physics (friction). Think it fits better so will stay ignorant.

Fancy going on an ABC* tour after a break-up! Pretty depressing.

Liked this poem a lot.
Dave

* Another Bloody Cathedral

fricative is a word though. It’s a consonant produced by the forcing of breath through a constricted passage – such as f or s. so the line “fertile with sweat and frictive meats” is a perfectly balanced fricative sentence – clearly composed by someone at home enough with the old fric to abbreviate it, keats-styley. nice. how about sticking in an apostrophe? also it then feeds into the “sedative explosion….silent exposition” bit in a moment of harmony between prayer and sex, speech and breath. genius.

Wiktionary: "frictive: of, relating to, or caused by friction".

That'll do for me, expecially because "frictive meats" is a great line. Nicely and suitably visceral.

I think the first two verses stutter a bit. The motor only really starts turning over at "Before Bede's bones ..." - that is a great verse.

Btw, is "the head-shrine of St. Hugh" a paradigm at all? Sounds more like a good old-fashioned metaphor to me, but you're talking to a man who has never knowingly used "paradigm" correctly.

Very good from here to the end, although I don't much like "sedative explosion", and would humbly propose that you go

A blind exploration,
A silent exposition,
A [something else].

That running order sounds about right to me, although I don't know exactly what your silent exposition represents.

Using "expiation" in the final verse echoes those lines very effectively. Perhaps you could tweak the last line - not sure what it's telling us, unless it's that you're averaging 60 m.p.h. And we must need more than that, surely?

Highly cerebral, as usual. You do induce a bit of a non-graduate's inferiority complex, you know. Not your fault, just something we have to grapple with.

Cheers

David

Hi, Pretty damn good as usual. Your imagery and theme are very well integrated I think. I liked the contrast between the deliberately prosaic title and very poetic poem if that makes sense.
I loved
"A blind exploration,
A sedative explosion,
A silent exposition."
'Sedative explosion' seems spot on to me. Those endorphins are definitely sleepy making.

wow a bit of debate on that verse then! david, by "silent exposition" i tried to express the way the sexual act is expressive of a great deal (some of which i tried to get into the poem) whilst being (fairly) silent. as for the head-shrine of st. hugh, it's at lincoln cathedral - a real shrine, though the head went missing long ago. paradigm and metaphor aren't that different i suppose - O.E.D. has similar defns. for both, including this corking supportive quotation for "paradigm":

"1996 C. HIAASEN in C. Hiaasen & D. Stevenson Paradise Screwed (2001) xx. 383, I don't really care if he liked to play find-the-periscope with prostitutes, but I do care that he passed himself off to voters as a paradigm of Christian rectitude."

Shucks dill. Can't argue with Carl Hiaasen. (I'm guessing that must be extra-curricular reading for you.)

And I think you're right on "silent exposition".

David

This is a wonderful poem! I had a couple of question spots...


Insensible stones shored up
Against the breaking centuries.

Against the breaking centuries brings to mind the unlikelihood for a couple to make it to old age still holding hands. An ominous foreshadowing.

Insensible was hard for me to apply to something as obviously inanimate as stone.

But how can pieces rest?

Changes the tone that had been a little heavy and melancholy from all the stone. Puts it in a sarcastically framed light.


At evensong. The warp and woof
Of ancient harmonies
is it just me that woof seems to have a silliness to it? Maybe an other word wouldn't clash so much with ancient? Woof sounds young and modern, like speaker woofers, but this is probably, and most likely just me.

A token
Woven like her hair
Or self-made clothes.
I love the feel of this stanza


In the stone cocoon of silence,
Memories of her humid room
Fertile with sweat and frictive meats,
As skin weeps.
A blind exploration,
A sedative explosion,
A silent exposition.

I love how the relationship feels so much like the attractions being visited here. As the stanza moves on it leaves the stone figures completely and is in the realm of the living with all the explosive phrases.

Rising from my knees
I shake off another night,
Another expiation.
That single revelation
Reiterates itself
As miles slip by like minutes.

Where was I on my knees? I lost the motor tour somehow unless he is riding the sam course over and over and being reminded.

Thanks
Jennie

rising from knees because praying at the end of evensong - the motor tour visited 10 english cathedrals (this was a couple of weeks ago). warp and woof is a stock phrase describing weaving - one is the vertical threads, the other horizontal, can't remember which. i think you may be right about "pieces rest" though, was trying to think of a way of continuing the theme of fragmentation and dismembering.