Hello all and thanks for your good wishes regarding the JH reading...it went well and I think I did ok. Jen is a nervy sort of reader, a bit lacking in confidence despite having some killer material! I am maybe more used to public speaking given my job, so I wasn't as nervous as she seemed to be.
I read one of the 'Arvon' poems as well as the material from the still-as-yet-unpublished book! It's been chosen for a National Poetry Day postcard in Perth & Kinross...if you'd like me to send you a postcard please email me at a.z.jackson@dundee.ac.uk with your address (work address if you'd prefer not to let me have your home address) and I'd be happy to do so.
Just to give you something to crit (like you need it!), any ideas on improving the poem below would be very welcome:-
Bequest
My watch died in a foreign land
where tides and deadlines fell away.
Its fleeting battery had bled right down,
the steady sweep of certain hands
became a twitch, a moribund
excuse for time. I looked around
for clocks to set me right again,
but every friendly dial was turned away
in shade, or whited out by sun.
Back home, a distaff heirloom came my way,
once flickering with cogs and wheels,
now cold as handcuffs. Ghostly weals
it left upon my flesh were false,
fake scars no deeper than the skin.
Inside the workings, oxidised to grey,
its beetle-tick sustained an old man’s pulse,
and yet its grip on time was loosening
as carelessly it lost a piece of every day.
The clocks I look to now are mostly new,
and accurate to ludicrous degrees,
the kind of fractions one could lose
in blinks, or jolts of sleep. I should begin
to gather up these blips and freeze
them somehow, maybe one day cash them in.
I know my grip on time is loosening
and, carelessly, I lose a piece of you each day.
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I enjoyed this very much, and admire it - so I’d pause a moment before looking for ways to improve it. The clock/watch conceit is really powerful and used well, it seems to me - aided by the insistent rhythm that suggests ticking. The three stanzas each suggest different aspects of the speaker’s anxieties - I found the imagery in the last two lines of the first one especially effective.
ReplyDeleteFor me, I think the first and last stanzas work the best. In the third one, where the watch idea is now firmly established, the contrast is well drawn between the “ludicrous” accuracy of modern timekeeping and our own failure to make the most of each moment of time.
I’m trying to decide how well the handcuffs image works in the second stanza. ‘Cold as handcuffs’ makes you think of metal, which is a link with the ‘cogs and wheels’ - but it’s a very strong, malevolent image, but is immediately weakened by the “ghostly weals” (Although the weals/wheels play is nice). I think I know where you’re going with this - the weakening bond of the past - but I feel the image stands out from the rest of the poem in a slightly incongruous way, and clashes with the ‘weakening’ idea. I wonder whether you could do anything with the notion of ‘chain’ - chained to the past, and ‘chain’ suggesting an old-fashioned watch - and a watch chain is a weak one as chains go. I don’t know - just a thought. On the other hand, I thought the last four lines of the middle stanza were great. Loved “beetle-tick”.
The only other point that wrong-footed me a little was the “certain hands” in the first stanza - the main meaning of ‘certain’ presumably being ‘steady’ or ‘sure’. But it reads at first sight as meaning ‘particular hands’. Maybe the ambiguity is deliberate? - since I assume you’re making use of the double meaning of ‘hands’ here. Actually, on that point, I think I’ve talked myself into accepting it. :o)
Hope these thoughts are of interest - I really liked the poem.
Hi Andy, I'm in general agreement with Chris (Hi Chris) who has done all the critical work (!) so I'll just add that if mine I would change just one word, and that is 'fleeting' in the first stanza (its closer to time than that which uses time - battery: energy , potential). Beside batteries not lasting ('once full' ?) they do so through loss of energy or potential and another word could lead the emphasis in either direction (fleeting, loss of potential). Just a thought - liked it very much
ReplyDeleteBest,
Barry
Thanks both - your comments are wise, as always. Not sure how I replace 'fleeting' while keeping the rhythm, Barry, but will give it some thought. I may btry and tidy up around the 'cold as handcuffs' too to preserve the sense of 'oldness' in the idea. But thanks very much - this blog is doing its job well for me here!
ReplyDelete