poetry – Page 125 – don't confuse the narrator

images

There are times I can see the appeal of Twitter for a writer, particularly for poets. I often ‘find’ an image that I know will probably one day find its way into a poem, but that I don’t have time to think through and connect to other things right away.

So, in 140 characters – or less, to make it easily re-tweetable – I could capture that image in a kind of tweet’ku.

There again, I already spend enough time updating the blog, so perhaps I’m better off posting such things here, particularly as I can include the photo directly. Like this:

Cob nuts in mob caps

welsh leaks

A problem with the overflow at my mother’s house has reminded me of a poem I have never managed to polish to my complete satisfaction. The first stanza seems to have potential, I think, though the line breaks still bother me. It’s probably ‘finished’ enough to post here, and I’ll be glad if anyone wants to criticise or comment:

A heavy storm has made the flat roof leak
 and in the small hours, memories drip  
from the bedroom ceiling.  Unlike the rain
they cannot be absorbed  
by piles of folded towels,
or mopped  into a bucket, so  
she paddles through them, 
barefoot, towards dawn.

The poem was intended to be called something like All Hallows Anniversary and gets quite maudlin, but the fact I’ve thought about it now in August and under very different circumstances may, I hope, shake me out of my affection for the original idea.

All thoughts and commentary appreciated.

the spaces between

The heart nests in the bone tree.
She chatters idly, then sings
when the sun touches her. In Spring
she seeks a mate, peeping
from behind a complex foliage
of words and silences.

(An old poem posted because the photo reminded me of the ‘complex foliage’. Having found it, I thought I’d try and remember something about how and why I wrote it.)

It was Castaneda’s Don Juan who talked of not seeing the shapes of the tree and its leaves, but instead looking at the spaces between them.
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the wayside flower (green and pleasant)

It’s a cliché, but England really is green, and I was amazed at the exuberance of the plants and wild flowers growing on untended verges. There’s a tiny blue cornflower tucked in the among the yellow and red here, and I couldn’t believe how truly blue it was. Here in Spain, they seem to come in a shade of over-washed lilac.

Still, it was a Spanish wayside that inspired this vignette:

Poppy-petal butterflies ride
at anchor on a charlock sea,
while in the depths below
ox-eyed monsters lurk.

poems and pints

One of the things that struck me – and some of the other participants – at the poetry conference last week, was that one of the readings and the Q&A session were held in a coffee bar.

I had the temerity to question this, and was told that it was an American poetry conference and that that was the way they do things; I wasn’t to worry, though, as there would be drink available on the final night.
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