Vicky

[Hawkman]

There was little in your wake,
only a pair of shoes, a folded dress
and a faded panda, whose whites
were lightly bronzed with age,
all in a small brown packet
tied with twine
that languished shamefully
at the bottom of a box.
Even these, now, are lost.
And yet I have heard you whisper
from your distant bed
beneath shading trees,
where your only trace,
is that cut in earth
with its unhealing plaster
of weathered stone
which bares your name.

[AuntShecky]

Poignant and more than a little unsettling. In the final line, is "bares" the word that is meant or "bears"? (Either would work.)

[Hawkman]

Hi Auntie. Bears or Bares? Well, I tried both and both are true. I figured that anyone hearing the poem read aloud would assume bears from context, so only the reader sees the other. Perhaps it could be conveyed by inflexion but it would have to an extremely expressive voice to do it. Unsettling? Perhaps. Sad, certainly.

Thanks very much for reading and commenting on this one.

Live and be well - H

[Haunted]

So sad, and so beautifully handled. As Auntie pointed out, the last line lends itself to "bears" but your usage of "bares" extends the desolation and completes the poem.

[Hawkman]

Thanks for reading, Haunt. Glad it works for you. :)

Live and be well - H

[blank|verse]

This is a restrained poem, Hawk, in its emotion and language, that is wistful without being sentimental, and is very different in tone from your usual comical style. It reminded me of ‘Josie’ by Sean O’Brien (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/apr/30/josie-sean-obrien-saturday-poem) (‘Mid-Term Break’ by Seamus Heaney, and Wordsworth’s ‘We Are Seven’ (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/183927) also came to mind).

The mention of the ‘panda’ and the general lack of effects (and, arguably, line one’s ‘little’) suggests that Vicky was a child or young woman, and the mention of the shoes suggests Hemingway’s ‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn’.

However, overall, I think the poem is somewhat too restrained as it lacks a bit of emotional punch. Perhaps there’s a bit too much description; to that extent, you might like to re-think lines 5-8. In fact, they could be cut with no real loss to the poem. There’s a fine line between being understated and being uneventful. The shift to hearing her ‘whisper’ lacks potency as – to call it a cliché would be too harsh – it is well-used, hearing voices from beyond the grave. It’s interesting to note that Sean O’Brien negates this in the final lines of ‘Josie’:

[…] What is under the stone
Must belong there, and no voice returns,
Not mine and not hers, though I'm speaking her name.

Anyway, you should consider cutting line 7, which drops the ball in terms of restraint and keeping the poet’s judgement out of the poem; and the two affricates ‘sh – sh’ together makes for a bit of a mouthful. (Although the ‘sh-sh’ does have connotations of calming a child; but just pick different words to achieve that effect!)

Introducing a stanza break after line 8 would also give the poem, and reader, a bit of breathing space; it would also reflect the passage of time between the two lines. And I’d suggest losing ‘now’ from line 13 (‘where now, your only trace,’) as the first ‘now’ in line 9 is so heavy that it doesn’t need repeating. I’m also not keen on ‘unhealing plaster’ as it’s too close to a pun.

It might have been good, in a poem about loss, to reflect that somehow in the form or language. The language is very ‘complete’, there’s a lot of modification, and assonance and consonance in the first part of the poem, linking words together: ‘folded – faded’, ‘whites – lightly – tied – twine’, ‘bottom – box’.

In fact, developing your usual style of writing in ballad quatrains would work well, if handled skilfully, similar to the Wordsworth poem mentioned earlier, but with half-rhymes instead. The ballad form is close to nursery rhymes, but of course the content of the poem is very different, as Wordsworth knew. Still, what you have works well in its quiet, understated way.

[Hawkman]

Hi b/v, and thanks for reading and for your observations. With regard to the second now which you picked up on, I can honestly say that I thought I'd taken it out. I was simply blind to its presence in the poem as posted. This is not the first time I've done this, and I'm extremely grateful that you picked up on it. It has been excised.

As for including a stanza break, it was originally written in two stanzas, but they were of unequal length, which I didn't like, and I wanted neither to add lines to, nor remove one from, the poem (with the exception of that spurious now) It says what needs to be said. Consequently, your suggestions about cutting lines are unacceptable. They are there for a reason and the words have been chosen very carefully for their meaning.

When we read poems critically, and I mean we, there is a danger that we let our intellects get in the way of actually taking in what the poem says. We impose upon it what we think the poem should be about, rather than absorbing what it is about. We get hung up on the assonances and attribute layers of meaning to certain sounds which are actually incidental. Hence you attribute meaning to shush sounds rather than reading the words. What do the words say? This is where the meaning is.

Perhaps, rather than observing that the poem displays too much restraint, one should ask why the restraint is there. But then, maybe this is asking a little too much from a reader who is not in possession of the background facts. I'm not prepared to discuss these in public but I'd be happy to do so by pm if you'd like to go into it a little deeper. I would genuinely be interested in your opinion. You are correct in observing that we approach poetry from different angles, but alternative perspectives can be beneficial.

I must say that I liked and appreciated the O'Brien quote, though it isn't quite appropriate to the exact circumstance of my poem. But it does come close. I was a little dubious of the whisper, but I also had a reason for choosing the word and it felt fitting in the circumstance. Again, should you be prepared to continue this discussion in private, I'd be interested in your thoughts.

I really don't feel that it would work in ballad form, or even quatrains. The rhythms would be out of place and not having the rhythm would make the form conflict with the content. I specifically wanted to use free verse and make the scheme irregular. To be honest, the thing which really bothers me about this poem is whether I should have used which instead of that as the first word of the last line. I may yet change it.

Again many thanks for your thoughts on this poem.

Live and be well - H