Snapshots

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin

At the hotel restaurant
in Paris
at the table next to me
a couple who have been married
since just before the invention of pain.

He looks past her shoulder
into the middle distance
as if he might find a thought there
somewhere, she
looks down, to the left of him, wondering
where the years have gone.

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I like, but these spare observations need to be even more spare I think. So, I admit it's fussy, but, if I had my way, you'd trim to '...who were married / just before the invention of pain' and excise any whisper of a cliché. I know your views on this point I think, but to be particular not general about it here, I can't see that 'into the middle distance' or, worse, 'wondering / where the years have gone' are doing much.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blp

I like, but these spare observations need to be even more spare I think. So, I admit it's fussy, but, if I had my way, you'd trim to '...who were married / just before the invention of pain' and excise any whisper of a cliché. I know your views on this point I think, but to be particular not general about it here, I can't see that 'into the middle distance' or, worse, 'wondering / where the years have gone' are doing much.

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I'm with you re the trimming but I'd sooner go with "who've been" (and will make that change). As for your other points, yes, those are not inspired choices I made but I think I'd stick to them on the ground that they're effective mimesis of the emotional tiredness of the couple.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin

Birds in adjacent cages
pondering
each other's dreams.

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hey I love this! it's kinda both complete in itself and makes you want to read more.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SleepyWitch

hey I love this! it's kinda both complete in itself and makes you want to read more.

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Thank you, Frau Pepperkakehaus, perhaps I could have continued it but I suspected I would just be milking the image. I wanted what you seem to have gotten: just that eye-blink. It's a snap-shot, after all.

A poet scans his most recent work.
'I wrote that,' he thinks.
'God-damn! It's perfect!'
and 'God-damn, how can I do better next time?'

Seems I always come into your threads late into the discussion, and yet here I am again... This is my favorite kind of poetry, the kind I tend to gravitate towards most often. No big statements, just a simple moment captured with elegance. Moments, simple moments, are full of oft unnoticed implications, mirror character, murder "eternity", and then pass to the next, forgotten. Only poetry accounts for them properly, breaks them down for observation. I'll bet the entire moment for which you account here lasted, what, 2 or 3 seconds? Yet when you break it down to its components, I feel I know alot about the couple, and where they feel they stand in life. Great work, sorry for my winded reply. Peace- chris

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Originally Posted by sparr0w

Seems I always come into your threads late into the discussion, and yet here I am again... This is my favorite kind of poetry, the kind I tend to gravitate towards most often. No big statements, just a simple moment captured with elegance. Moments, simple moments, are full of oft unnoticed implications, mirror character, murder "eternity", and then pass to the next, forgotten. Only poetry accounts for them properly, breaks them down for observation. I'll bet the entire moment for which you account here lasted, what, 2 or 3 seconds? Yet when you break it down to its components, I feel I know alot about the couple, and where they feel they stand in life. Great work, sorry for my winded reply. Peace- chris

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Yes, 2 or 3 seconds - if you measure it by quotidian time but in the pleasure one gets from finding the right 8 or 9 words, it seems to last much longer than any length of conventional, obligatory time!

One lives - as a writer, a lover or in one's commitment to a cause - for these deep immersions of the whole of one's self. Thank you for this and your usual deeply felt, deeply thought-out responses to my poems. And in response to your "peace," shanti shanti dah (if I have it right): The peace that passes understanding...

A man writing about something
he loves, but it is never the thing
he writes about as much
as he loves the writing about it.

The magic of it, the beauty,
the precision, yes, even
the sloppiness. Look!
He completes a sentence:

one brick in what may one day
be a building, but there is
no building more beautiful
than any one of its bricks.

Interesting, Schweetie-Shou. :) Something about the love for composition? For the activity itself?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sweets America

Interesting, Schweetie-Shou. :) Something about the love for composition? For the activity itself?

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Yes, have you not felt it too - even in writing your most sad poem, some element of happiness in writing about and therefore triumphing over it?

Snapshot: X

A woman who is so naked in her clothes,
beneath the sheen of her charcoal-grey stockings
the sheen of her milky thighs
shines out so beckoningly
that I turn away in embarrassment
then look back, again and again.

Her mid-calf length black winter coat
beneath her long, loose brunette tresses
hardly conceals the round of her shoulders,
the thrust of her breasts, the mild hummock
of her tummy and the lissome strength
of her arms, which are such that I want nothing
but to give myself to her, utterly,
utterly.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin

Yes, have you not felt it too - even in writing your most sad poem, some element of happiness in writing about and therefore triumphing over it?

Snapshot: X

A woman who is so naked in her clothes,
beneath the sheen of her charcoal-grey stockings
the sheen of her milky thighs
shines out so beckoningly
that I turn away in embarrassment
then look back, again and again.

Her mid-calf length black winter coat
beneath her long, loose brunette tresses
hardly conceals the round of her shoulders,
the thrust of her breasts, the mild hummock
of her tummy and the lissome strength
of her arms, which are such that I want nothing
but to give myself to her, utterly,
utterly.

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What a pervert you are... :p Just kidding. ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin

Snapshot: X

A woman who is so naked in her clothes,
beneath the sheen of her charcoal-grey stockings
the sheen of her milky thighs
shines out so beckoningly
that I turn away in embarrassment
then look back, again and again.

Her mid-calf length black winter coat
beneath her long, loose brunette tresses
hardly conceals the round of her shoulders,
the thrust of her breasts, the mild hummock
of her tummy and the lissome strength
of her arms, which are such that I want nothing
but to give myself to her, utterly,
utterly.

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Magnificent! I love the repeat of "sheen" in lines 2 and 3....and "utterly,/utterly."

Pan-handler at the corner.
His usual post.
This time I take the long way around.

On Park Avenue a second storey balcony
sags as if yearning for the ground.
The windows of what was once a restaurant
are covered in manila paper.
The front door is wide open.
The street is still.

I love this, and I especially adore the photo of your grandkids. I think manila in this context is spelt with one "L", but I could be wrong. I have been before. Once, I think.

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Originally Posted by CdnReader

I love this, and I especially adore the photo of your grandkids. I think manila in this context is spelt with one "L",

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You're right about that, thanks.

Quote:

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but I could be wrong. I have been before. Once, I think.

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But not about this. Your "once" is at least the second time you're wrong!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin

On Park Avenue a second storey balcony
sags as if yearning for the ground.
The windows of what was once a restaurant
are covered in manilla paper.
The front door is wide open.
The street is still.

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You know what? This one might be part of my favorites, because it tells so much! To me anyway. In it I hear the ending of something, the start of something new, the expectations and perhaps the fear of what is going to happen, you know it will strike soon but you don't know when. This emptiness is as exciting as it is frightful. Thank you.

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Originally Posted by Sweets America

You know what? This one might be part of my favorites, because it tells so much! To me anyway. In it I hear the ending of something, the start of something new, the expectations and perhaps the fear of what is going to happen, you know it will strike soon but you don't know when. This emptiness is as exciting as it is frightful. Thank you.

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Yes, that is very much how it felt to me. The restaurant in question is on my route back from my Cafe, a familiar part of the street scene, and disturbing to see that it has failed or suffered a catastrophe.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin

Your "once" is at least the second time you're wrong!

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:lol: :lol:

There was a shotgun wedding
between truth and willed belief
but, after myriad visits to marriage counsellors,
they decided to split up, dividing between them
their respective ideologies.

The sun blazed down today
intolerant of despair.
Therapists all over town
shuttered their windows
and went home early.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin

At the hotel restaurant
in Paris
at the table next to me
a couple who've been married
since just before the invention of pain.

He looks past her shoulder
into the middle distance
as if he might find a thought there
somewhere, she
looks down, to the left of him, wondering
where the years have gone.

---

Oh, I love it! It reminds me of a play I wrote. Read mine please. :)
And I love the username:)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kelby_lake

Oh, I love it! It reminds me of a play I wrote. Read mine please. :)
And I love the username:)

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I've gone and read the very, very little bit of it you posted and left a comment. Should I assume you know where I got my username?

Rolling to a stop
corner Park & Mt. Royal
I caught sight of the woman who cuts my hair.
I wound down the car window,
called out: "Hey, Zussanah,"
and got a big smile in return.

you should :) i'm epileptic as well as myshkin so i really identified with him :)

thanks for reading mine :)

A woman was walking her smile
this afternoon on Fairmount Street,
a sort of hoppy-skippy dog
pad-pad-padding along beside her
but her smile was unleashed.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin

A woman was walking her smile
this afternoon on Fairmount Street,
a sort of hoppy-skippy dog
pad-pad-padding along beside her
but her smile was unleashed.

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This is precious. These remind me of Robert Bly's Morning Poems, but yours are usually cityscapes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin

A woman was walking her smile
this afternoon on Fairmount Street,
a sort of hoppy-skippy dog
pad-pad-padding along beside her
but her smile was unleashed.

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Yeeeeaaaaah, that's a sweet one, Jer! :)

For these 30 minutes, life,
I am deeply in your debt:
this rickety faux-marble table
on Van Horne outside of Le Paltoquet,
my dark, rich espresso allongé,
the flavour of which practically bites,
my croissant oozing butter,
my cigarette, the three guys
speaking Arabic at the next table,
the breeze sweeping east to west,
and Soulain with, as I told her,
the smile of an angel.

*

If you don’t fall in love
for at least a few minutes every day
then someone on your path
went unappreciated.

i have had that exact moment in paris, but never could have articulated it the way that you did. there is something so powerful about a poem that can get across such a strong message in so few words. it reminds me of nouveau roman in the sense that there is more said in what isn't said. well done!

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Originally Posted by caelycate

i have had that exact moment in paris, but never could have articulated it the way that you did. there is something so powerful about a poem that can get across such a strong message in so few words. it reminds me of nouveau roman in the sense that there is more said in what isn't said. well done!

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Many thanks Caelycate. Paris - San Francisco! You sure don't mess around with the dull or ugly places! My favourite sight-seeing in Paris is just to stand on any street and look up at the slate black tiled roofs or have a cafe filtre and a petit pain at an outdoor cafe.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin

At the hotel restaurant
in Paris
at the table next to me
a couple who've been married
since just before the invention of pain.

He looks past her shoulder
into the middle distance
as if he might find a thought there
somewhere, she
looks down, to the left of him, wondering
where the years have gone.

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This exactly happens and marriages fail and how they can not be in sync with
reality.

Montreal, that lusty city,
renews its virginity each spring
and cries out
from every uncovered street:
Take me! Oh, Take me!
I'm as ready
as I've ever been.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin

If you don’t fall in love
for at least a few minutes every day
then someone on your path
went unappreciated.

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:lol: that's a unique perspective and i like it.

In the warmth of the sun
I watch a dainty smoker go by
as he brings the end of his cigarette
to his lips as if it were the fingertips
of his virginal young lover.

I like the brevity of these little snapshots. I don't want to disagree with any of their stances, but just a quick question, if one is falling in love every couple o' minutes, that's not real "Love," is it? Perhaps an attention deficit disorder or the song from "Finian's Rainbow": "If I'm not with the one I love I love the one I'm with."

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin

In the warmth of the sun
I watch a dainty smoker go by
as he brings the end of his cigarette
to his lips as if it were the fingertips
of his virginal young lover.

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I love it, Shou. You have this wonderful eye which seizes the moment.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AuntShecky

I like the brevity of these little snapshots. I don't want to disagree with any of their stances, but just a quick question, if one is falling in love every couple o' minutes, that's not real "Love," is it? Perhaps an attention deficit disorder or the song from "Finian's Rainbow": "If I'm not with the one I love I love the one I'm with."

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Oh, God bless you for knowing and mentioning Finian's Rainbow! But if that song is about male fickleness, I hope my little vignette refers to something else... I understand your point about the quantification of "real" love, and no doubt I'd have avoided the question if I'd used "infatuation," but, really, in the realm of the emotions, what is "real"?

Oh I didn't know there was more snapshots being posted in this thread. i thought it was just the first poem, called "Sanpshots". Some of them are quite good, but I don't want to re-bring them up now. I'll have to keep checking in.

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Originally Posted by Sweets America

I love it, Shou. You have this wonderful eye which seizes the moment.

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Oh, thank you, croutie! And I just had a wonderful skype conversation with someone!