poetry – Page 104 – don't confuse the narrator

not so dusty

I like to start the new year with a clean house, but as I was away for several weeks from mid-December this year, that annual ritual went by the board.

Ever adaptable, I’m now looking at the Chinese New Year – January 23rd – as a spur to domesticity, so, in tribute to the Water Dragon, I started cleaning last weekend in the downstairs living area.

Like most of the women I know, I’m quite good at the lick-and-a-promise type of cleaning that can transform a room in five minutes when you suddenly realise the in-laws are due at any moment.
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of poetry, maths and cars

Although I was brought up surrounded by poetry, I don’t remember being aware that any of the adults around me actually wrote poems; not even light verse. Not until I was studying for A levels, that is.
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the present poetic II

(See earlier post the present poetic)

I took the “Catless […]” poem to the writing group last night to see if I could get any more ideas about the relationship in poetry between present tense and first person.

Discussion certainly ensued, but there were no definitive answers. (So I’ll be able to go on discussing it here as often as I want, and at whatever length seems appropriate!)
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eternal questions

I have been struggling with line breaks in my poetry for years. Even so, I am a bit taken aback by a friend’s email promising me a copy of a text “which should definitively answer the question of ‘Why did you put the […] line break there!?'”

In my last post (on the present poetic) and in follow up comments, I have been pondering some of the reasons behind choosing to write in the present tense (a subject I intend to revisit soon).

In other posts about first-person narrators I have considered the question of the writer/narrator dichotomy and why I so often write in the first person if I am not writing about myself.
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the present poetic

I recently sent a very early draft of a poem to a friend for comments. The piece began:

Catless for too many years, I have forgotten
the building of trust. She spends an hour
pacing, investigating every wall and angle,
exploring draughts from window frames
and under each door, establishing
her points of exit.

Leaving aside criticisms of the participles and the prosaic nature of the verbs – it was a draft, after all – I am interested in the comment that was made after the break on ‘spends’:
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