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scribbles from the bull pen #2
| Dark Poetry #4 |
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scribbles from the bull pen #2 |
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JenniferMaxwell
since 2006-09-14
Posts 2423 |
last of the tourists - yellow jackets and monarchs swarm over the goldenrod where grass meets granite on my august beach shrouded in fog benches are empty the tourists are gone rooks feed on the crumbs from the last clambake seabirds are shadows inked silhouettes diving for silver fish in an ash colored sea sand for my hourglass these last summer scenes wine of my life in a bottle of salt |
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moonbeam
since 2005-12-24
Posts 2356 |
Ooooo you are on form! Imo cut "silver" - one modifier too many. And also lose "shrouded in fog". Fog has done all too much shrouding in the last 100 years. I see however that you need the fog, so I'd change the title (it's in the poem anyway "the tourists are gone") to "Fog" or "Beach fog" or something. The poem strengthens as it progresses imo. Very strong close again. What's this bull pen thingy? More American? I am always complaining aren't I. I like "scribbles"  . |
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JenniferMaxwell
since 2006-09-14
Posts 2423 |
Thanks for the tips, Moonbeam. Got rid of the shroud, but I'm keeping the silver fish since that's their proper name. Took off a little gild by removing the ash, maybe? The close isn't quite right. We both know what I mean but I think the words are wrong and it needs something more. Any suggestions? I'm reluctant to change the title because aren't we all more or less just tourists in this world? The bull pen is baseball term, the place where pitchers warm up. Revision 1 last of the tourists - yellow jackets and monarchs swarm over the goldenrod where grass meets granite on my august beach benches are empty the tourists are gone rooks feed on the crumbs from the last clambake seabirds are shadows inked silhouettes diving for silver fish in a fog covered sea sand for my hourglass these last summer scenes wine of my life bottled in salt |
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moonbeam
since 2005-12-24
Posts 2356 |
Got rid of the shroud, but I'm keeping the silver fish since that's their proper name. Took off a little gild by removing the ash, maybe? >>>Oh heavens, you can't lose "ash" - that was one of my favorite images! >>>I've worked out why it sounds better without silver. Without silver it's perfectly dactylic: DI ving for/FISH in an/ASH col oured/SEA >>>I guess I just like Dactyls! >>>I quite liked the close as it was. After all the very fact that we both know what the speaker means must mean it is working,no? Sometimes the best lines say things without saying them in such a new way, even quirky, that it will have a more lasting effect on the reader. Like when you have weird dreams. They are completely from a fantasy world, and yet hold some meaning. >>>I see what you mean about the the tourists, and the wider point. But for me this poem doesn't really address the wider point. Or am I missing something? Expanded, as perhaps it might be, you could perhaps work in a more universal perspective. I quite like it as it is though. M The close isn't quite right. We both know what I mean but I think the words are wrong and it needs something more. Any suggestions? I'm reluctant to change the title because aren't we all more or less just tourists in this world? The bull pen is baseball term, the place where pitchers warm up. Revision 1 last of the tourists - yellow jackets and monarchs swarm over the goldenrod where grass meets granite on my august beach benches are empty the tourists are gone rooks feed on the crumbs from the last clambake seabirds are shadows inked silhouettes diving for silver fish in a fog covered sea sand for my hourglass these last summer scenes wine of my life bottled in salt |
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JenniferMaxwell
since 2006-09-14
Posts 2423 |
You’ve really made me think, Moonbeam, and try to sort out what I was thinking. This simple little poem was an attempt to capture a moment far more intense than I was able to express, which, in part, is why I feel the close is pretty weak whereas it more or less works for you. Maybe if I try and explain my metaphors, such as they are, something will pop up that leads to a closing more in keeping with what I was hoping for. S1 Yellow jackets and monarchs are to my mind the worst and the best of summer. Yellow jackets are the things that annoy to distraction and of course sting, and monarchs, since they are both beautiful and migratory, represent the fleeting, transitory and ever-changing beauty of nature. The grass and granite - end of a lush green summer bordering on the cold, gray, stonelike quality of harsh winters here along the northern coast. S 2 - the rooks represent the shades and shadows of summer tourists who use our beaches as cheap souvenir shops - lugging off rocks, plants, shells, driftwood, sea glass and leaving us with the crumbs from their gleaning, their rubbish - water bottles, trash, garbage from their cookouts, etc. S3 Seabirds are the natives, those like me who depend on the sea for their very breath - in a spiritual sense. Oops, there's more but work calls, have to dash. Thanks for your interest, Moonbeam, and yes, the theme sure could stand a little expanding and clarification! |
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moonbeam
since 2005-12-24
Posts 2356 |
Yvw Jennifer Maxwell. Well I have to admit I didn’t read as much into it as you were perhaps hoping as far as metaphors in the opening strophes were concerned. In fact I think there are difficulties in ascribing the rooks to the tourists (the rooks after all are doing a good job clearing up after the tourists are they not!), and the seagulls to the natives (“shadows” is a rather sinister word to use if this was your intent, and for me there simply isn’t enough to grasp onto to make that deduction). The first three strophes I felt portrayed a nice picture of contrasts and a very convincing and realistic painting of a natural setting. The final strophe I saw as the one drawing it all together. The significance of the pictured scene is that for this speaker the natural cycles and progressions of the place are as the sand of the hours and days of her life slipping away, but more than that the place itself is part of her, both the bitter and the sweet. Salt has the implication engendered by the phrase “salt of the earth” - the speaker as an integral part of the land and sea, while at the same time echoes the slightly unpalatable “salty” truth that outside influences can mar an otherwise perfect existence. The idea persists that the speaker is in harmony with both the benign and the harshness of nature (the monarchs and the yellowjackets), but the introduction of something artificial/unnatural (the tourists) gives a sour taste. Lots of different readings. Good poem! M |
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Balladeer
Administrator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-06-05
Posts 25505Ft. Lauderdale, Fl USA |
Hello, Jennifer. Nice to see you outside of the Alley Being a floridian myself, I cna relate to this poem very well and I think your images are excellent. God knows I'm not very adept at critiquing free verse but I enjoy good meter and your dactyls flow like the sea you describe. Beginning with the second stanza, the dactylic meter is beautiful in parts.. BENCHes are EMPty the TOURists are GONE rooks FEED on the CRUMBS from the LAST CLAMbake The only place where the meter breaks down is rooks and clambake SEAbirds are SHAdows INKED silhouETTES DIVing for SILver FISH in an ASH colored SEA. Excellent....except for the silver fish. It just doesn't work and, no, it's not a proper name, unless you are referring to the insect. I would delete the silver and go with 'diving for fish', which says enough and maintains the meter.SAND for my HOURglass these LAST summer SCENES WINE of my LIFE in a BOTtle of SALT. Perfect. On a critique level, if I may, the first stanza just doesn't work for me, due to the meter. The first line is just too choppy, unlike the rest of the poem. YELlow JACKets and MONarchs SWARM OVer the GOLdenROD where GRASS meets GRAnite on my AUGust BEACH SHROUDed in FOG. There is not much of a pattern there to follow, along from the fact it has one more line than the rest of the stanzas. The wonderful fluidity of the rest of the piece deserves a better beginning, in my opinion. Your title is PERFECT! I cannot think of a better way to describe the mental exercises we put ourselves through as writers than comparing it to a bullpen, warming up so that we can be sharp andat our best when it counts. I love it.... |
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Bob K Member Elite
since 2007-11-03
Posts 4208 |
Hi, Jennifer! Nice to see some of this new stuff. What it looks like to me, and you’ll know better than I will about this, is that you’re trying to get too much done in a single draft or so. By that I mean that you’re censoring yourself before you get the actual words on the page and before you’ve got a first draft written. This is a hunch, of course, since I’m not a mind reader, but each line has a sort of squeezed feeling about it, as though you’re bearing down mentally on a process that’s still in-process, and so not allowing it to have its head during its initial stages. I think you should probably continue to do this for a while, to get a feeling for what this is like. Maybe there’s something you can take from the experience that you can use, since you are coming at it from a Jennifer-shaped perspective rather than a Bob-shaped perspective. My own experience is that it tends to make my own writing feel a bit wooden. Some interesting things here that might help in the development of this poem, and occasionally come up as ways of helping work through problems in other poems... Who is the speaker? In this case, probably somebody much like Jennifer, yes? And where is she standing? Literally. Where she stands will often give you the specific details you’ll want for the poem and will often make other details problematic. If your speaker is on the beach, and she can make out the rooks ( a good detail, that one) and you tell us that the seabirds are shadows, something is going to be making your readers uneasy about the detailing of your silverfish. Silverfish may be a local name for a fish (as Balladeer is correct as well about silverfish being a skittery bug) that deserves its place in a poem, but from the situation of the fog and the difficulty in seeing the birds well enough to tell if they’re some sort of frigate or gull, you’ll probably not be able to make out those little flashing two to four inch long thin silver bodies sitting sideways in those beaks. And your readers will find ways of expressing their unease; even if they can’t quite put their fingers on exactly why they feel it, they’ll cast about until they find a reason that makes sense to them. If you can imagine yourself in a particular place over a particular beach on a particular day, a lot of this sort of thing almost automatically clears up. What other senses are operating with your speaker? Most of us, if we are ever able to get out of the swamp of abstraction we live with on a daily basis inside our heads, find we have a favorite particular sense, and we will tend to play to that when we write. Mostly it’s visual, because humans are visual creatures, and we want to be able to orient ourselves that way. It’s often the first of the senses we learn to place into our writing. But take a bit of time, if you decide to revise any further on this poem, and try putting in perhaps two deliberate references to feeling. Try for example, how the moisture in the air and the low pressure that comes with it seems to affect the way the wind feels across your skin. Does that wind feel slightly greasy? Or does it have the feel of a refreshing fine spray, with occasional fine drops of water blowing into your eyes, making them sting slightly. Would you confuse that with tears? Might that work as foreshadowing for your last line? You can systematically play with some of the other senses, and see what adding bits and pieces from them will do to the actual experience of the poem. As you play with them, you’ll find each will affect the movement and texture of the poem differently. Keep the same place, the same literal place on the beach. Now ask yourself, who am I talking to? Try keeping the same basic elements that you’ve worked with so far, but now imagine the different people you might be addressing in the poem. Imagine a favorite friend, somebody you actively loathe, a woman you idealize, you pick the role or person so long as the reaction you have to that person is vivid. Using the same basic stuff we’ve been playing with, what would happen if you addressed the poem to these different people without mentioning them by name, and without mentioning the feeling. Use the feeling and the person as fuel to push the poem along. My personal preferences about this particular poem don’t really matter. So to be inconsistent, I’ll share a few of them. You might try experimenting with moving stanza three into place as the first stanza. It gives an immediate sense of place and locates the speaker and the reader in that odd border place that shores seem to represent for us, places of transition between one state and another where magical things seem to happen. Earth turns to water. Water flows uphill and seems to devour the land, and then mercifully gives it back to us. Sky and water blur with fog. That’s the sort of place you give us here right off the bat instead of starting off with boring old real world things. It also means you can lose that slightly coy line about, “On my August beach.” The information about it being August is there in the goldenrod, which is, if I recall correctly, pretty much an August-flowering plant. Or thereabouts. “Swarm” is OK, but could possibly be a bit pallid. The line about grass meeting granite needs some visualization on your part. It’s not specific enough actually to describe the way grass and granite meet on a beach as opposed to in a traffic plaza or in a graveyard. I’d like to think that you’d want to distinguish what makes the one a beach and the other not. Even with the inclusion of the line I suggested you cut, the problem would remain. You want a picture to be seen here as opposed to a possibility to be excluded when the word “beach” rolls around. You want a “show don’t tell” situation as much as possible. A similar situation applies with the next two lines. benches are empty the tourists are gone Here you’ve created a situation where you’ve essentially repeated yourself instead of creating an opportunity to toss in something about the cycles of things here by the sea shore, for example— time to repaint the benches the tourists are gone . . . or some such nonsense. Perhaps you might find a way to link in the smell of paint or the color. Possibilities. “Crumbs” also might be replaced by something more vivid. Buns or cornbread are often overlooked in cleanup, and you’ll see the corbies at a piece of watermelon rind every now and again. You’ll want to have a look yourself, or make up something absolutely outrageous. I have a strong preference for getting rid of “sand for my hourglass” because of the echo of the soap opera, Days of Our Lives, and getting rid of “these last summer scenes.” Too many Ess’s makes the line sound like a convention of cobras hissing those remiss in gifting at Christmas. Sheer snaky sibilance. Sheesh. Instead I’d think about something like— from the last clambake wine of my life bottled in salt Hope I’ve been able to help a bit here, Jennifer. I always enjoy your stuff, and I think your writing keeps getting better and better. Best to you, BobK |
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JenniferMaxwell
since 2006-09-14
Posts 2423 |
Thank you all for your very helpful comments. There's a lot to digest and think about so I'm going to take a little time and do just that before I reply. |
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moonbeam
since 2005-12-24
Posts 2356 |
Geez,I think we need to rename this forum CA II. This is sooo good! No escape in the dark Jenn  [This message has been edited by moonbeam (08-13-2008 07:35 AM).] |
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JenniferMaxwell
since 2006-09-14
Posts 2423 |
Balladeer, thanks so much for your comment. Have to confess, I had no idea there were dactyls in this until you and moonbeam mentioned them. Not much on meter and forms as you can tell. Noticed you were doing an exercise on dactyls, double dactyls, in the Poetry Workshop. Ok if a Democrat stops by a little later to try out a few? Posting the link to the Workshop forum for other Dark writers who might also be interested in improving their writing. /pip/Forum22/HTML/000948.html Moonbeam, you very astutely picked up on the bitter and the sweet as being part of the speaker more so than the scene or the experience. Have to think about that. Maybe I shouldn’t. Bob K, you’ve give me some amazing suggestions on how I might turn this quick little write into something far more meaningful. I need time to sort them all out but positively will do a revision keeping all your suggestions in mind. Thank you! |
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Balladeer
Administrator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-06-05
Posts 25505Ft. Lauderdale, Fl USA |
Jennifer, I can assure you the workshop is completely bi-partisan ; |
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fractal007 Senior Member
since 2000-06-01
Posts 1958 |
Again, I love how you take imagery from the animal kingdom and use it to paint a picture of your own life. This was an enjoyable poem and reading it aloud made it sound very good. Life's short. Think hard! |
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