Poetry Break: "Disinter Rest"
Bare Twisted Tree Limbs
(Image by tpierdolla)
Perhaps the time hasn't really come for another poetry break, but I need one anyway, so here's a poem that I wrote one late autumn Saturday in Germany before I met Sun-Ae, making the year no later than 1991, which means that this short piece is twenty years old:
I recall being dissatisfied with this at the time that I wrote it, partly because the rhyme scheme doesn't work perfectly, but I like it a little better now, mostly because the word plays are fun.Disinter RestLike an anaesthetic striptease
In some inhospitable room,
Abruptly, autumn dropped its leaves,
Extended limbs toward winter's gloom,
Performed a few perfunctories,
And left this stage an emptied tomb.
Or maybe I'm just feeling nostalgic.
At the time, I suppose that I was feeling blue about the passing of autmn and the coming of winter, or striving to feel that way, for I don't precisely recall, but I do remember the cafe in Tübingen where I was drinking a cognac as I wrote this poem, for the place was near the tunnel in town that offered a short cut through the hill upon which the castle was situated.
Just beyond the other end of that tunnel lay the charming Neckar Valley . . .
UPDATE: Lollabrats noted a problem with the word "extended," namely, that it sounds too much like a participle, so I've reworked the poem using the present tense:
Readers can judge which tense works best, past or present.Disinter RestLike an anaesthetic striptease
In some inhospitable room,
Abruptly, autumn drops its leaves,
Extends its limbs toward winter's gloom,
Performs a few perfunctories,
And leaves this stage an emptied tomb.
UPDATE 2: I've decided to personify autumn more:
Again, see what you prefer . . .Disinter RestLike an anaesthetic striptease
In some inhospitable room,
Abruptly, autumn drops her leaves,
Extends her limbs toward winter's gloom,
Performs a few perfunctories,
And leaves this stage an emptied tomb.
Labels: Autumn, Literary Criticism, Poetry, Poetry Break, Winter
posted by Horace Jeffery Hodges @ 4:08 AM
24 comments
24 Comments:
Jeffery, I can't remember: do you still write poems currently, or not? Something conveying your personality as it is now (as far as I can say, at least, after several blog and email contacts)
I pen two or three each year. I'd write more but have little time for the muse . . . unlike John Milton, of course, who had lots of spare time.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
Late autumn as in sometime after the fall solstice and before the winter equinox?
Sonagi
Imprecisely, Sonagi!
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
Hello. It's been a while since I came by. :)
This is only friendly criticism. :)
I think this poem needs and deserves more work. This poem is a mash of some good ideas that do not mesh.
My favorite part is also interestingly problematic. "Extended limbs" doesn't quite work because with the possessive adjective left implicit, "extended" becomes tainted as a participle, modifying "limbs." I wish you had made "extended" purely a transitive verb because what I like about this part is the conflation of autumn with implied trees; making "extended" purely a verb would increase attention to the unexpected beauty of this strangeness.
But making that strangeness easier to notice would also eliminate the interesting problematic reading offered by a participle.
For this particular poem, I prefer autumn--not trees--dropping its leaves. Just as much, I prefer autumn--not trees--actively extending its limbs. The repetition of pure transitives creates a pleasing pattern. But what is more important is that the repetition emphasizes the strangeness of conflating autumn with trees.
The fact of autumn actively dropping its leaves is somewhat easy for most readers to dismiss as unusual because the idea seems familiar even though it is not. It is likely easy for most readers to make the connection of autumn's purposeful dropping of leaves apparently from its own "body" with the natural loss of deciduous foliage in winter. It is much more difficult to dismiss as something familiar autumn actively extending its limbs, as nothing about a "season" seems to suggest a possible image for a "limb." The existence of autumn's limbs makes sense only with the realization of the purposeful conflation of autumn and implied trees. Without this connection, the impact of the image of autumn's "extended limbs" is completely lost. And it is the repetition that makes clear the purposeful conflation.
This repetition of strange images creates unexpected beauty by the credibility of its impossible and nonsensical nature. It forces the imagination to create all kinds of connections of images to make sense of it. Even so, a solid understanding of the image is simple to grasp! What is more important is that, ultimately, this is the kind of imagery you must construct to build a beautiful and movingly satisfying poem. This is the kind of imaginative work you want your readers to experience when reading your poem. This is a building block for a more mature poem you want to clip and save.
But a taint of participle breaks the pattern and to no purpose. Instead, it creates a brief bit of confusion as "extended" not followed by "its" maintains a reading as participle until the reader reaches the comma following "gloom," when the implied "its" becomes apparent.
It is the use of commas that make the participle useless. But the sense of a participle cannot fully be erased due to its strong position at the beginning of a line and its survival as a participle for the duration of an entire line. With a participle, the line's strong conflation of autumn and trees is lost. Instead, "limbs" becomes detached from both autumn and implied trees and becomes a new actor in the poem. Without a comma after "gloom," it would be "limbs" that perform perfunctories and leave the stage.
It is only the inclusion of that one comma that recreates after the fact the strange beauty of the conflation of autumn and implied trees. But the effect of the participle is to make the beauty harder to notice. This is not a bad thing necessarily, especially if you can leverage the confusion to create a beautiful string of nothing. But most times, it can be the kind of thing that makes a poem less interesting to most readers.
At least, that's what I think. ^_^;
Anyway, how have you been. :)
--lollabrats
Lollabrats, I hadn't noticed the participle problem, but it's now bothering me. How does this sound:
Disinter Rest
Like an anaesthetic striptease
In some inhospitable room,
Abruptly, autumn drops its leaves,
Extends its limbs toward winter's gloom,
Performs a few perfunctories,
And leaves this stage an emptied tomb.
I was partial to the past tense, but the poem was actually being written as the trees were shedding their leaves, so why not the present tense?
I've been fine, by the way, but very busy, mostly with editing work over this break.
How about you?
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
How about...
Disinter Rest
The bride--stripping with weeper's heaves--
Revelations! A frosty groom!
Resigned, Fall surrenders her leaves,
Extends her limbs--unyielding loom.
Marriage--a distance--no reprieves.
Winter leaves her bed. Emptied tomb.
--Horace Jeffery Hodges and lollabrats
It's too Emily, but it couldn't be helped. I wanted to keep to 8 beats per line to your ABABAB.
^^;
Interesting pun:
"unyielding loom"
Sounds like either "unyielding loom" or "unyielding gloom."
Clever . . . but the beat? Does it work?
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
I am doing so-so. I am hoping to be in a completely different situation this time next year. Probability of success? Low. But I feel giddy attempting it.
One of the things I want to do this year is enter a literary contest. Now that I regularly write, I want to do something about it, even if it is not at a professional level. ^^;
--lollabrats
The muse is a b***h. Good luck. And keep on writing . . .
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
"Clever . . . but the beat? Does it work?"
--Horace Jeffery Hodges
Could you elaborate? Obviously, my variant changes your poem a bit.
What's wrong with the beat? ^^;
--lollabrats
"Like an anaesthetic striptease
In some inhospitable room,
Abruptly, autumn drops its leaves,
Extends its limbs toward winter's gloom,
Performs a few perfunctories,
And leaves this stage an emptied tomb."
--Horace Jeffery Hodges
I agree that the present tense makes it much better. :)
Although the last line makes sense, it kind of sticks out. I don't think it fits. "Stage" goes with "striptease." But how do you see either connecting with "tomb?"
--lollabrats
What's wrong? Beats me. I try reading it aloud, and I can't quite find the metrical pattern. Especially that final line.
Also, would "Revelation" work better? There's just one, right?
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
I was thinking of a stage as an enclosed area, tomb-like when empty. Similarly, winter is a time of death, when a tomb-like silence holds sway under gray, gloomy skies.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
Ok, so you went with winter=death. :)
...
How about...
Disinter Rest
The bride--stripping with weeper's heaves--
Revelations! A frosty groom!
Resigned, Fall surrenders her leaves,
Extends her limbs--unyielding loom.
A destined marriage--no reprieves.
Winter leaves her bed--a bared tomb.
--Horace Jeffery Hodges and lollabrats
How about this? I have left only iambs and trochees. The meter does not merely invert the iamb on the first foot. Would you consider that problematic? ^^;
Besides, maybe "bared" goes better with "stripping," though it does not convey the exact same sense as "emptied." It just increases the difference between the variants. :p
^Obviously I am wrong about last line >.>
But I guess i'll leave it as is. Talk to you later. :)
--lollabrats
Yeah, the last line is still problematic . . .
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
"Yeah, the last line is still problematic . . ."
--Jeffery Hodges
XD
Now, now, let's be fair. I spent maybe ten minutes on this thing. Maybe. And I wrote it while wholly distracted by the suddenly entertaining second half of the Pittsburg-New York AFC Championship game.
You were distracted only by the sip of fine cognac and the anticipation of visiting a lovely scene! :D
--lollabrats
Now that I've encountered his name here, I came across this page by Professor Brother Anthony.
I'll go over that page when I visit my brother in a couple of weeks. Are there any names there you would particularly like to point out whose works you liked?
:)
--lollabrats
I'm no guide to Korean poetry. My suggestion would be to sample all and devour what you like.
Meanwhile, enjoy some sports . . .
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
I like this poem more, now, a week after first encountering it. When I first read this poem, I largely liked it. But I felt it did something that I particularly disliked. It had something to do with the last line. But I couldn't tell what exactly was bothering me. I think now I know.
It's the relationship in the poem between tone and subject matter. I don't like the relationship here. This is not to say that I think this criterion is necessarily a proper one to use to judge a poem. Still, it is a matter that I now realize is important to me.
The subject matter is fairly innocuous. It has more to do with trying to convey a private experience and an observation of a scene in which nothing is really harmed than saying something really grave.
But the tone of the poem is particuarly heavy and dismissive of any beauty that may be found in the scenery. I've seen enough pictures of Germany in the winter to tell that it can often be beautiful there when the leaves go and the snow comes. Instead, the poem shows a distate, or perhaps disdain, for the effect of the changing season. The striptease is anaesthetic. The room is inhospitable. And so on. By saying nothing positive about the experience and describing an air of emotional void makes the magical transformation of the landscape seem like the wait in line for bread in the snowy streets of Soviet Russia.
The last line is the culmination of all this gloom, ending as it does with tomb.
Several of your poems reveal a serious dark, brooding voice, quite different from the quirky humorous voice of your prose. And to this extent, I think your poem works well.
cont...
I guess my problem is one of personal aesthetic choices. I wished that somewhere in the poem, I could make more of an emotional connection to the voice in the poem. I wished I could tell better why the voice sounds dismissive, if not hostile, to winter. Was the voice feeling cranky that day? Was it consumed with personal issues? Is it preoccupied with some cosmic thought that makes him feel that way? I don't know. The last line merely represents my last opportunity to learn more about this brooding voice. Yet, there is no good reason for me to need to know.
I can accept this in some poems. But I didn't want to accept this in this poem because I thought it could have done some things differently. Primarily, I wish the poem would have attempted to more aggressively tie its images to something cursorily grander, as if it were saying that life is a drab striptease and then it ends in a tomb.
"Emptied tomb" is an interestingly strange way to end this poem. It fits with the usual metaphorical linking of the cycling of seasons with rebirth and rejuvenation. It contains both death and not death. But it is autumn--and I guess, not the limbs--that leave it empty. But what is the tomb? It's the state of winter. And it's emptied because autumn no longer resides. But the cycling of seasons is not a description of the return of autumn, but, rather, of spring.
In this way, I erred. You were originally right when you probably intentionally left the participle possible. It is not autumn, but the limbs that experience rebirth. On the other hand, limbs do not leave the stage of winter. Nevertheless, bare limbs make winter seem emptied. The participle was probably the correct choice as it also accounts for the transitive verb. This kind of mashup of images is what I most love about the potential in poetry. So, I apologize for having influenced you poorly.
But I still think the poem should have confused the reader in a different way. Frost's "Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening" confuse the reader into thinking that it says something cosmically grand about living, even though it merely says something about an experience of a cold moment outdoor.
At the same time, I wouldn't expect Basho to necessarily say something so explicit. And I shouldn't have expected this poem to do so as well, considering it was not its intent. But I think a poem like this especially would benefit from the perception of added depth. The poem is aggressively dark about winter. I just wish I knew why.
:)
--lollabrats
Also, my comment about the comma after gloom is wrong. It is not the comma alone, but the comma and the first few words of the next line that stengthens the case for the transitive verb.
^_^;
--lollabrats
Lollabrats, I still like the changes brought on by your critique.
Your focus on "emptied tomb" is interesting, for I wanted that to be ambiguous, an empty tomb being suggestive of the resurrection, after all. Just a bit of nuance . . .
I also had another thought of a change. You'll see.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
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