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Long time - welcome back, Arco.

Cavafy is telling on you. I like the ideas here but I think you could tighten things up here and there. Here's my take on the first two verses.

Chalcidian Greeks founded this city
not far from Naples and Vesuvius,
where the conspicuous culture and refinement
from ancient days still lives on.

You will note the citizens in the Agora
are courteous, with a keenness of perception
and a love for things Pythagorean............just little things really, which others could well disagree with.

The last verse caught my eye, this is a strong finish. One thing I would change here - 'if you decide' to 'should you decide'.

should decide to engage
in peripatetic enquiry,
will not be taken seriously.

cheers

Barrie

Thanks Barrie, it has been a long slumber.

I have been reading Cavafy recently and a couple of his poems stuck in my head ( though he has never written about the chalcidians)

I agree, your edits makes it much better.

thanks

cheers

Arco

I’m afraid I am ignorant of Cavafy (as well as Catullus, and many others). If I can limit myself to notes on presentation, I hope that ignorance won’t be too much of a handicap.

The narrative style is quite engaging, and feels almost like a speech rather than a poem. This, I’m guessing, is reminiscent of Cavafy.

Your profile doesn’t suggest which dictionary you use, but I’m guessing it would be an eastern Atlantic, rather than western Atlantic edition. My spell-checker (UK – English) suggests fervor should have a ‘u’.


There are a couple of asides in the piece. The first:

And stranger -- you are traveler
from afar; that much we can tell --
so, as you begin to amble in discovery,


uses hyphens (surely only one at a time is necessary) to separate the aside, but it might read as well with commas. If this is to be read as a speech, perhaps commas would encourage the flow, rather than attempt to break it. I see that the aside has its own comma, which complicates matters. I’m afraid I don’t know the rules here, but thought I should draw attention to the situation. Just to complicate matters, the sentence, excluding the aside, doesn’t seem to read correctly. A small rearrangement could address this:

So stranger - you are a traveller
from afar, that much we can tell –
as you begin …


A typo

there is on thing you need to heed:




to develop independent thoughts.

I don’t know if the use of the plural sidesteps the familiar phrase, but I think this would read as well with the singular. A matter of taste, perhaps.


Although the voice in the poem was a soothing one (to my ear, at least), it didn’t feel consistent throughout. The narrator appears to be distancing themselves from their subject matter. However, having said ‘Here’ in S5 (& later in S6), wouldn’t it be consistent to say “This is a city”, rather than “It is a city” at the start of S6?


better you deposit them
by the guardians at the gate,

This was the most awkward part to read. I think the sentence construction is correct, but I get a feeling of convoluted or archaic architecture that doesn’t seem in keeping with the rest.


your discourses --
should you decide to engage
in peripatetic enquiry,
will not be taken seriously.

I think the hyphen is unnecessary here. It appears to indicate an aside, but then fails to rejoin the original thought. In this instance, it looks like commas will suffice.


your discourses,
should you decide to engage
in peripatetic enquiry,
will not be taken seriously.


My apologies for such nit-picking pedantry. I didn’t feel able to address the content, not being familiar with Cavafy or his style. I hope some of the points raised may prove useful in consideration of the whole.

I enjoyed the gentle, languid style of this piece. The nits were picked at as I submerged myself within the poem. It was my interest that caused me to look so closely.


og

.

Very good to see you popping in again, Arco. I've missed your Antipodean archaeological erudition, of which this is a perfectly good example.

Cheers

David

Why thank you David, I appreciate your comments.

cheers
Arco