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hatteras
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hatteras |
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jenni Member
since 1999-09-11
Posts 478Washington D.C. |
sandy, wind-whipped sun and the cry of gulls beneath hatteras light; father, robust and bare chested, posed with his strong arm resting gently on my shoulders, and me, sunburned in a blue striped top, squinting in the brightness to the camera's winking eye, eager to find a blackened shark’s tooth, or the perfect shell, to follow a distant ship until it dipped the horizon’s seam; budding waves slowly building, whispering my name. in stifling, dusty air of a tin-roof attic comes now this last gift, coffined in a derelict box. i believed he could know nothing of me, like a beacon blind to shifting sands beneath; but he saw, even then, beyond the knife-edge of blue, tracing the ship’s course farther than i -- leaving for me here on this slender strand of regret and longing a simple photograph, like a beautiful spiral shell on the shores of a wine-dark sea; the waves still slowly building, still whispering my name. [This message has been edited by jenni (edited 05-19-2000).] |
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doreen peri Member Elite
since 1999-05-25
Posts 3812Virginia |
second stanza here, jenni... is superb!! more succinct, vivid, showing instead of telling.... first is really good, too.. but i think your voice came through in the second a bit better all in all, great piece! you took me there... nice work. -dp |
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Forrest Cain Member
since 2000-04-21
Posts 306Chas.,W.V. USA |
Jenni I liked the flow and rhythm of emotion. You must have loved your father dearly and have expressed your sentiments very well. Nice poem. forrest |
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allan Senior Member
since 2000-04-09
Posts 620On the road |
Jenni, I liked this poem very much. Each line held my attention and released lots of meaning. It seems to me you either spent a whole lot of time on this or you were so close to those feelings that the poem almost wrote itself. Very creative use of language without distracting from the deep feelings you were communicating. You really created this well... I found the poem very moving. Very well done. |
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Elyse Member
since 2000-04-16
Posts 414Apex (think raleigh) NC |
oh jenni, this is just lovely! i love the phrase "budding waves slowly building/ whispering my name" just lovely. BTW, is that capr hatteras NC you're talkin bout? luv Elyse Do I contradict myself? Very well then . . . . I contradict myself; I am large . . . . I contain multitudes. -Papa Walt |
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warmhrt Senior Member
since 1999-12-18
Posts 1563 |
Hi jenni, This was much more of a "jenni" poem than your last...you're somewhat narrative style, lush with imagery, came through in this one. I loved these last six lines: "on this slender strand of regret and longing a simple photograph, like a beautiful spiral shell on the shores of a wine-dark sea; the waves still slowly building, still whispering my name." There are so many images and emotions put into those few lines that they could stand on their own as a poem. Only one thing to question...in the third line of the second stanza, you use the word coffined. Do you mean confined, or are you using poetic license by using the noun coffin as a verb (which I think would be spelled coffinned)? Hope I'm not being too picky...lol This was a very good read, jenni, Kris the poet's pen...gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name ~ Shakespeare |
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Grace Junior Member
since 2000-04-30
Posts 19 |
Jenni,I really enjoyed this poem.I felt a lot of love & serenity in it. I have been to the beach many times this year ad you've taken me there once again. Nice piece!! |
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jbouder Member Elite
since 1999-09-18
Posts 2534Whole Sort Of Genl Mish Mash |
Jenni: Strong images and a strong message, Jenni. It seems that much of your emotional expression in other poems I have read have seemed a little detached in comparison with this poem. I love the telling of the man's foresight in roping in an "eager" child for a quick snapshot to capture and preserve what may have been an otherwise fleeting memory. Such a picture would indeed be infinitely more valuable than a blackened shark's tooth or a perfect shell. Besides wondering when you are going to get a keyboard with working [SHIFT] buttons, I have few problems with this one.  The first stanza did fail to capture the NC Outer Banks for me (I lived there for several years). Your choices of words didn't really describe Cape Hattaras differently than any other Atlantic beach. But taking into consideration the memories of a child of such a place, I suppose the lack of description doesn't detract from the poem. Thanks for the read, Jenni. Strong work. Jim |
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Poertree Senior Member
since 1999-11-05
Posts 1359UK |
jenni you know i have a lot to say about this piece, but technical problems are preventing me from doing so, so i thought I'd just confine myself to pleasing brad for the time being and commenting on kris and jim's comments. kris, I'm sure the idea of a "jenni poem" was mine !!....lol ... i meant to say last time you used it in "walking" that i entirely agreed with you. "Walking" was indeed very different from her other poems. I also agree that Hatteras is a classic "jenni poem", although, as jim identifies, i also think that the writer in this poem is more closely involved emotionally than perhaps has been the case in others. Certainly it is a very moving poem. I think that the word you were questioning is "coffined" and not "confined", and i also think that you will find that it is in fact a reasonably well used transitive verb (which reminds me, back in November 1999 jenni had this to say about my use of a transitive verb: "Also, using “backdrops” as a verb in line 2 really set my teeth on edge" admittedly it's less used than coffined but nevertheless its a "proper" verb .. humpphh .. you see jenni, i don't forget some things !! ) and is indeed spelt "coffined". The reason I'm sure it's coffined rather than confined is simple that this "fits" so well with the suggestion that this is much later in time, and that the father has passed on and that to some extent the daughter's past life was incarcerated as well. (oops ..lol... and of course the other reason is that jenni doesn't make mistakes .. thought i better add that quickly ..lol )jim, i liked your interpretation of this: "I love the telling of the man's foresight in roping in an "eager" child for a quick snapshot to capture and preserve what may have been an otherwise fleeting memory. Such a picture would indeed be infinitely more valuable than a blackened shark's tooth or a perfect shell." I thought that the complete absence of detailed description of the physical characteristics of Hatteras to some extent actually added to the poem's achievements. The very fact that the writer deliberately and noticeably failed to particularise suggests to me that she is indicating that the actual scene is entirely unimportant. There is an awful lot going on in this poem and it's mostly not about a beach or a photograph. The title is quite a clever way of saying: "here is a poem that you think is going to be about Hatteras, but then when you read it actually says very little about Hatteras so you (the reader) better start to think just what it's really about." It would have ben neat to call the poem something like "Wine-dark" for instance, but this wouldn't have had the same twist to it. Incidentally the transition through time in the poem from early life to later life suggests a "journey" ... i thought maybe jim you might have had something to say about the origins of the word "wine-dark" .. it's the sort of thing you'd know about i guess? Lots more to say about this. Philip [This message has been edited by Poertree (edited 05-22-2000).] |
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jenni Member
since 1999-09-11
Posts 478Washington D.C. |
thanks everyone for your very kind words! kris, the word in that line is indeed "coffined", as in "enclosed as if in a coffin." my dictionary lists "coffin" as both a noun and a transtive verb, and the verb in the past tense is spelled with only one 'n'. thanks for bringing that up, though, misspelled words really irk me, lol, and it's always good to double check things.  jim, philip is right about the actual setting not being so important to me here; whether this "added to the poem's achievements" as he says is up for debate. is the title misleading? i hate titling my poems, i'd name them all "untitled" if i could keep track of them that way, lol. i think maybe a better name for this piece would be "the photograph" or something like that, i don't know. you say the lack of description of the outer banks didn't detract from the poem, but you obviously noticed it. i am not inclined, i don't think, to add any more description of the physical scene, although i guess i could rewrite the first two lines, either make it more evocative of the cape, or make the setting an entirely generic beach. how big a problem do you really think this is? did you think it seemed more noticeable because of the title? in other words, did you go into the poem thinking, here's a poem about cape hatteras, only to be disappointed it was about some photograph and a girl's relationship with her father instead, whereas you might not have noticed the lack of description of cape hatteras so much if the poem had been called "the photograph"? see what i'm saying? suggestions? thanks again everyone, jenni p.s.: btw, allan, this is a fourth draft of the poem, it's taken me maybe three months (off and on) to get this far, lol. |
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Poertree Senior Member
since 1999-11-05
Posts 1359UK |
quote: ... sorry to intrude in your thread again jenni without anything more to say, but had to preserve that little phrase for posterity .....LOL ........ see that jim?? .. eh? ... eh? ... lol... and don't you dare delete it !! back later on the poem i promise |
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epoet Member
since 2000-05-11
Posts 291grand rapid,MI, usa |
where can i start? great job, first time I read it I thought about the beach. Had to read a second time to see the sun coming through. nice poem. P. J. Kotrch |
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Trevor Senior Member
since 1999-08-12
Posts 700Canada |
Hiya Jenni, "sandy, wind-whipped sun and the cry of gulls beneath hatteras light; father, robust and bare chested, posed with his strong arm resting gently on my shoulders, and me, sunburned in a blue striped top, squinting in the brightness to the camera's winking eye, eager to find a blackened shark’s tooth, or the perfect shell, to follow a distant ship until it dipped the horizon’s seam; budding waves slowly building, whispering my name." Great stanza, very good use of words in creating a mood and scene, very subtle. The only suggestions I have is consider changing "whispering my name.", seems kinda cliched and unfitting of a wave, perhaps "hushing words" or, "budding waves slowly building a rolled wall of hushes", dunno just a suggestion. Also "wind whipped" describing the sun seemed off? Were you speaking of the eyes that are looking at the sun, as in a reference to squinting tired eyes caused by the wind whipping sand? "sandy" I took as the color of the sun rather than sand and wind getting in your eyes. "in stifling, dusty air of a tin-roof attic comes now this last gift, coffined in a derelict box. i believed he could know nothing of me, like a beacon blind to shifting sands beneath; but he saw, even then, beyond the knife-edge of blue, tracing the ship’s course farther than i -- leaving for me here on this slender strand of regret and longing a simple photograph, like a beautiful spiral shell on the shores of a wine-dark sea; the waves still slowly building, still whispering my name." Man that was a great stanza. I had to dig through the words to get the whole picture but well worth the little extra effort. Only two suggestions I have is consider chopping out the comma in the first line and do a line break instead after "air"....and think about maybe changing the last line...though I thought it fit much better than its use in the first stanza. Also I thought "knife edge of blue" was a refreshing description and wished I had thought of it first. I think you have a real talent at giving a mood to the scenes of your poems. Thanks for the read, take care,Trevor |
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Poertree Senior Member
since 1999-11-05
Posts 1359UK |
Jenni it was 4 months, or whatever, well spent writing this. I totally agreed with trevor that you have a real talent for creating atmosphere and one of the things i really liked about this poem was the change from the first to the second stanza in this respect. Just on trev's other comments for a minute. quote: strangely enough this opening line bothered me a little as well when i first read the poem. I didn't mention it at the time because i came quite quickly to realise that it was the ambiguity which was worrying me ...ie not being able to pin down precisely WHAT was sandy or how sun could be wind-whipped. Soon however i simply let the image that the words conveyed kind of dominate rather than trying to read precision into it. It's kind of like a minimalistic sketch where the individual pencil lines are meaningless but taken as a whole there is an image. So it was with this line, surely there can't be anyone who hasn't been on a sunny windy beach who doesn't immediately identify with the picture that's painted, and that is surely what matters, no? ~smile~ I have some sympathy with trev's comment that "whispering my name" sounds slightly cliched. In fact though i still feel that it's better than what you had before and moreover i like the rhythm created in the line by the word "whispering" ..kinda long drawn out and hushed like the slow incoming waves themselves. While i thought trev's suggestion was nice idea, i guess i feel that the meaning of the final lines of each stanza is absolutely critical to the whole poem, and if you substitute something like quote:then the idea of the waves "speaking" her destiny is completely lost. I'd defer to trev in matters of chopping commas and breaking lines, he's great at stuff like that and I'm not, but i suppose that to some extent you were seeking to parallel the opening line of the first stanza? jenni, you know i really like this poem, in fact i like it better than anything I've read from you, just trying to stop myself doing a line by line analysis in favour of a quick synopsis of what i see in it (and of course the reader is right ! ....lol)...... so here we are in the present a daughter working through the usual attic "stuff" (lol) coming across the photo in the derelict box. Her mind goes straight back to a past time and we have a comparison of the "then" and "now". This comes through overtly in the direct contrasts between the claustrophobic imprisoning atmosphere in the attic and the wide and free beach, but then also it's clear that she's comparing her own life and its progression since that time. Foremost in this reverie is the image of her father and the role he's played, and continues to play even after his passing, in her life. I love the way you focussed the attention of the reader on the word "eager" by isolating it in one line. Eagerness to please and to live up to an ideal or standard seems to a large extent to sum up the poem. She is weak to his strength: quote: yet she would be happy to do anything (maybe good or bad) quote: to make him happy with her. However hard she tries she can't follow, She hasn't the height (experience) to see as far: quote: yet even then in her youth (like all of us) she is being called (by the waves) to find her own path in life. I'm doing what i said i wouldn't do ..lol..... I'll shut up soon...... just to say that the second stanza i read now as a kind of awakening. His "last gift" is to make her begin to see finally what she has been doing. Perhaps he saw all along her quasi dependence and that one day she'd have to make her own way and listen to her own waves. Now looking at him in the photo as just a man she may realise it is still not too late to heed the calling waves and start her own Odyssey on Homer's wine-dark sea.....lol. Great play on the word "strand" btw ... loved the new "beacon" line .... "knife-edge of blue" .....excellent ...... what more can i say ......lots actually .. left out the whole circularity, globe, spiral thing ...lol k... I'll shut up now, wonderful poem jenni Philip |
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X Angel Senior Member
since 1999-11-07
Posts 1521Oregon |
Have you ever read a poem and lacked the words to reply? That was what happened the first time I read this. I'm not about to get into an in depth critique..first off I don't have the time, second is that I am not qualified to tell someone else how to write poetry...I struggle with that as it is..without telling someone else how to struggle too! I thought this poem had a sort of mystical-ish memory quality, as if the poem was viewed through some sort of a haze. I really liked this poem, and wish I could say I had ever spent four months on a poem LOL. But my poetry happens in emotional spurts and something I started four months previous would not be easy to keep alive that long. I admire you for that! I have also read some of your other poems and was duly impressed! Great job on this jenni, I look forward to more.~Heather "Our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything." --William Shakespeare |
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