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PrinceMyshkin
03-16-2008, 08:01 AM
When the starving Irish came to Montreal
some of them died in quarantine
in what came to be known as “fever shacks,”

but we who are neither Irish nor starving
(except for love)

lie in our own fever shacks
on rucked-up sheets
drenched in the damp of our desire.
Pendragon
03-16-2008, 02:08 PM
Aren't you a day early? :p
PrinceMyshkin
03-16-2008, 02:18 PM
Aren't you a day early? :p

...and a dollar short!
asilef73
03-16-2008, 02:22 PM
drenched in the damp of our desire.


i love this line. very visceral.
Virgil
03-16-2008, 05:44 PM
i love this line. very visceral.

It is a very good line. And the poem is pretty solid. Very good Prince.
AuntShecky
03-17-2008, 10:44 AM
Sure and this is a grand poem! Grand.
PrinceMyshkin
03-17-2008, 11:00 AM
Sure and this is a grand poem! Grand.

Faith an' begorrah, ye wouldn't be handing me the blarney now, would ye?
PrinceMyshkin
03-17-2011, 01:42 PM
Bumped in honour of St Patrick's Day.
deryk
03-17-2011, 02:14 PM
I checked my temperature after reading this. It's normally 95 degrees Fahrenheit. It read 98. Thank you for normalizing me.
everyadventure
03-17-2011, 04:54 PM
Sounds like someone got "lucky."
Delta40
03-17-2011, 05:22 PM
All those giant green top hats swooning and singing through the city yesterday, I understand why later they might find themselves in a 'fever shack'
Jerrybaldy
03-17-2011, 08:55 PM
:shocked:You live in a fever shack, drenched in desire? I need to re-assess the Prince I think I know
Haunted
03-19-2011, 03:16 AM
that's why they deserved a holiday of their own. Sorry I'm late for the parade. To Prince with his "hot" verse and every Litnet poet, a belated St. Paddy's Day from this New Yawker
Bar22do
03-19-2011, 07:58 AM
Hey and hope N got just caught in St Patrick day's gloom for a little while...
If I'm not mistaken, today is St Cyril of Jerusalem's feast day! An occasion for a new reflection...
Anyhow, thanks for sharing your poem and for the occasion of learning about Irish quarantine and "fever shacks"... best, from Bar
PrinceMyshkin
03-19-2011, 09:37 AM
Hey and hope N got just caught in St Patrick day's gloom for a little while...
If I'm not mistaken, today is St Cyril of Jerusalem's feast day! An occasion for a new reflection...
Anyhow, thanks for sharing your poem and for the occasion of learning about Irish quarantine and "fever shacks"... best, from Bar

Thank you, but I'm somewhat puzzled. A short while ago I received email notification of a response from you in the form of two poems: "In Herzelia" and "In Yaffo," no author's names provided which leads me to wonder if they were by you - but in any case, they are fine poems. I'd be curious to hear what is the connection you saw between my poem and these two; and I think everyone might appreciate it if you posted them.

And thanks to Haunted, JerryB, EveryA, Delta and Deryk.
Bar22do
03-19-2011, 09:44 AM
Don't be puzzled, I made a wrong move and was about to post my comment on your thread in a new thread while I already posted my new thread as a post in yours. I immediately re-esatablished the correct order (though the system reacted even faster) and now you can read and judge my Diptych in a separate thread.
So no, no connection, though one might wonder...

Have a good day!

Bar
YesNo
03-19-2011, 09:50 AM
but we who are neither Irish nor starving
(except for love)


These are very nice two lines linking the immigrant fever shacks and our own desires.
firefangled
03-19-2011, 02:30 PM
Nice one, Prince. I especially like "on rucked-up sheets."
PrinceMyshkin
03-19-2011, 02:46 PM
Thank you, Yesno, and


Nice one, Prince. I especially like "on rucked-up sheets."

I wonder if you have a similar relationship with any one or more words, e.g. "rucked" which I vividly remember encountering for the first time in a short story or novel by John Cheever, fell in love with and used as soon as I could afterwards in a portion of a novel I was writing.
firefangled
03-19-2011, 02:57 PM
I wonder if you have a similar relationship with any one or more words, e.g. "rucked" which I vividly remember encountering for the first time in a short story or novel by John Cheever, fell in love with and used as soon as I could afterwards in a portion of a novel I was writing.

I always loved the words of Wallace Stevens (and I have stolen it more than once) in The Dove In The Belly:

"Why should/these mountains being high be, also, bright/fetched up with snow that never falls to earth?"

Your (or Cheevers) rucked-up reminded me of fetched up by Stevens.