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| © Image by Caroline Forbes |
You can listen to him reading some of his poems here.
The following poem appeared in Poems on the Underground 10.
Mysteries
At night, I do not know who I am
when I dream, when I am sleeping.
Awakened, I hold my breath and listen:
a thumbnail scratches the other side of the wall.
At midday, I enter a sunlit room
to observe the lamplight on for no reason.
I should know by now that few octaves can be heard,
that a vision dies from being too long stared at;
that the whole of recorded history even
is but a little gossip in a great silence;
that a magnesium flash cannot illumine,
for one single moment, the invisible.
I do not complain. I start with the visible
and am startled by the visible.
Dannie Abse
Read the poem several times over the course of the next couple of days. Don't write anything down at first. After a fourth or fifth reading, make free notes of your responses: direct comments about the poem, what the poem made you think about, what it made you feel. Anything at all that comes into your head, but try and include at least one memory the poem made you think about
Put these notes away for a further couple of days before reading back over them and beginning to draft your own poem.
Write well.
L x
10 comments:
Rope Bridge
My dreams must be glimpses of my parallel lives
in overlapping dimensions, all inhabiting the same
space in different times, bent, folded, worm holes
from galaxies beyond, thoroughfares for my
slumbering consciousness to reconnect to
other me in rediscovered countries.
I often visit a great city, a seaport, hilly and
bustling, recognizing landmarks, delicatessens,
parks, statues, on one visit, and completely lost
the next, exhausting myself with soliciting information
from empty-faced passers by. I used to search
for this place in the real world, but it only appears
when given access through slumber.
I have a job in a vast factory, expansive and
Kafkaesque, out on the line with a whirring
machine, or running errands in a white Ford
van, or in the office mired in clerical stacks.
I live in several houses, in several neighborhoods,
every street sign, mailbox, and garden familiar.
I usually live alone. I read a lot. I attend movies
in huge ex-vaudeville theaters, on their last legs,
showing three films for three bucks. I go alone.
I have a terrible secret, a cache of money, very
old bills, hundreds of thousands of dollars, in
a floor safe in different domiciles. Where are
my accomplices? Where did the cash come from?
I always wear the blue collar, and all the dream
personas are jagged shards, extensions of me,
icons in mirrors facing mirrors, reflecting
sides of themselves beyond sight, becoming
microcosms of compressed existence,
sub-atomic faces on random neutrons,
passionate peanuts pelting every corner
of nameless football fields, strung together
like vibrating Olympic rings, huge towers of
invisible helix, a powerful pride of panicked
scenarios, all begging for me to drop into tonight.
Glenn Buttkus October 2010
A swan glides.
On this lake, no swans are ever seen
by others.
So
my swan is your memory, and the lake
our past.
There’s Always Something…
In the night, I woke to
moonlight coming
through the window-shade and
whispering voices downstairs—
only they were echoes from my dream.
Like fog slithering between
hay bales, an unused hanger,
a black silhouette in
a lit doorway—
there are visibles that don’t fill space,
but rather hollow out stomachs
and empty lungs of air.
Like when a person dies—
alive one day, then not.
Yet there’s still
her toothbrush,
her lip-prints
on a nightstand water glass.
Like how there’s always dust
on a windowsill,
a flicker in a candle’s flame,
or a star
just out of reach—
there’s always something
I can’t quite put my finger on.
Merrily, merrily, life is but a dream
I’m thundering in a blaze of bright lights,
having forgotten too pay the tooth fairy, on the Orient Express,
disembarking at Baker Street.
I step from the Victorian platform
I am falling, helpless, falling down stairs.
In the dark I hear rats scraping like chalk on a board;
a nurse flicks the ECT switch,
I am levitating above my torso, my past - I catch Nana singing
through her dementia, “roll out the barrels”
“doing the Lambeth walk, Ha!”
There’s a sundial in the secret garden,
a single plump candle, there are no shadows here, I see no flame,
yet I burn my finger tips. Whispers
from a wishing well, whispering! Wishing?
A silver birch explodes; Philias Barnham’s clowns appear, “roll up...
I part the tents canvas, medieval cold, Monks in cashmere!
Like 1950’s secretaries scribing with luminous quills in oversized books.
A face in a shroud looks up,
“the more I learn about dreams, the less I know
about the house of apples” He smiles.
Alters
(Dissociative Identity Disorder caused her
mind to create 40 different characters, known
as ‘alters’, as a coping mechanism for the trauma
caused by years of physical, sexual and mental abuse.)
she is no longer one
the one who goes to work
comes home to feed her son
wonders how hours slip away
she is no longer one
the one who survived
as she pulls on high heels
straightens the hem on her suit
she is no longer one
when for hours she may become
the frightened child wanting
to escape after hearing a door
she is no longer one
when she finds herself alone
feeling a tightening belt
wanting memories to vanish
Alters
(Dissociative Identity Disorder caused her
mind to create 40 different characters, known
as ‘alters’, as a coping mechanism for the trauma
caused by years of physical, sexual and mental abuse.)
she is no longer one
the one who goes to work
comes home to feed her son
wonders how hours slip away
she is no longer one
the one who survived
as she pulls on high heels
straightens the hem on her suit
she is no longer one
when for hours she may become
the frightened child wanting
to escape the click of a door
she is no longer one
when she finds herself alone
a belt tightening at her neck
to squeeze out memory
Hi everyone
@ Glen: Rope Bridge - a vivid dreamscape and the precise details recreate scenes for me very effectively. I think it could be pruned though... you could cut some of the imagery that repeats a similar idea. I feel the poem would be stronger for that.
@ Stephen: A swan glides - enigmatic. I love the shape on the page, the hing of 'So'. I wonder if it's a little too understated? I'm left wondering why it's not your swan/my memory, why the swan only belongs to one of the two people, when the lake belongs to them both. Not the best questions to be contemplating in the wake of the poem??
@ Erin: There's Always Something - I like the gentleness of this poem and I feel there's a strong poem here if it can be worked a little bit more. Maybe 'echoes of my dream' isn't quite fresh enough? And I had a problem with the jump from the quite large figurative imagery to the intimate imagery of the body in the 2nd stanza. I also wondered if the poem needs the last two lines?
@ Martin: Merrily, merrily - Wow, it's wonderfully surreal but I find it difficult to identify what the poem is about, apart from showing more extensively what the title is saying. Perhaps some people will enjoy it for the clash of imagery but I'm left wanting more... something that I can take away and make part of my experience.
@ Anonymous: Alters - The repetitions in the poem are an effective structruing tool for the subject matter of the poem. I wonder if that structure needs to be broken at some point though, and that would help to introduce and element of tension that I think the poem needs. It might also benefit from some precise imagery too to suggest particular emotions, particularly in the 3rd stanza and the 4th when the dramatic development could be intensified. But you have a strong draft to work with.
Thanks for posting. The first of November's prompts will appear in a few days.
L x
To a Blooming Sophora Tree
I have no idea why when raking oak leaves
I smell the scent of sophora flowers
and how it bears a mysterious nature
in its other names as Scholar or Pagoda Tree -
Fresh leaves stretch in a teapot,
with a taste of bitterness. Three scholars
sitting in its shade. Hours of discussion.
Tea is good for them, especially in the heat.
Young fingers strip white flowers from twigs
as snacks before dinner is ready.
Its green arms, a bridge between heaven
and earth, gather and raise the children
to the top of branches and then lower them
down to the ground when the call of Come Home
echoes in the dusk. I look for an answer
to its names and am amazed by my recall.
Agreed - I love 'Breton's' surealist poems. I am on the train from Suzanne Vega at Cadogan Hall, I love her beat poems. There should be room for all things (altough quality of words is paramount).
Hi Lu - I just picked up your poem posted to this prompt a little while ago:
I like the peaceful, meditative quality of this poem. For me it explores how lines can blur between memory and imagination, how we paint in absences. How we feed ourselves... which brings me to my Hungry Writer project... Thanks for posting.
L
x
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