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Post by purplejacket on Jan 7, 2009 12:50:49 GMT -5
I like how this starts so small and just grows and grows.
one girl
add another person
add all the street people
all the city people
all the cities of people
yet they all are alone - all singles
all skipping to the beat through the masses of each other
it has a nice build.
ha. - this is the second, possibly third time I've caught you checking out chicks on the morning train.
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Post by mfwilkie on Jan 8, 2009 23:24:46 GMT -5
Some thoughts on maintaining the observational tone of N, b.
A school girl on the morning train studies
lists of English words. She covers the
translations with a transparent red card
that stutters down the page, word by word,
filing each in the library of her brain.
Pages and sleeves occasionally brush
the lady seated to her left/or right and
each slight touch, each graze against
this woman's padded coat, is a gale,
a howl disturbing her concentration.
The girl gets off and glides
through the madness of a Tokyo morning.
She swims against the human tide
untouched by another person.
She unveils a full repertoire
of twists and twirls, of feints and pirouettes
as if a dancer miming the drowning of Odette;
she is both creator and maestro of this non-
contact sport.
She twirls onto an open city street
in a city of 15 million people, and dances
in the shadows of skyscrapers that stand
in the shadows of airplanes moving people
from cities of millions to cities of millions;
people staring out of windows, no one
speaking, no one willing to touch.
Let me think about the 2S a bit more. It would be a place to eliminate one of the 'she's.
Maggie
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Post by mfwilkie on Jan 9, 2009 11:47:26 GMT -5
b, had a further thought on this stanza.
She twirls onto an open city street
in a city of 15 million people, and dances
through shadows of skyscrapers, rigid
monuments fixed in place beneath the
shadows of airplanes moving people
from cities of millions to cities of millions;
people staring out of windows, no one
speaking, no one willing to touch.
In the 2S, b, shouldn't the contact be FROM the lady seated next to the girl? The reaction, the internal howl, should be because she was brushed not that she was the one brushing.
Pages and sleeves occasionally brush
the lady next to her
and each slight touch,
each graze against this woman's padded coat,
is a gale howling through her concentration.
I edited mine.
Sleeves from the woman seated to her right
find occasions to brush against the pages of
her concentration and each unintentional
familiarity, each graze of unwanted nearness
incites a howl of personal violation no one can hear.
Maggie
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Post by Timothy Juhl on Jan 9, 2009 14:27:54 GMT -5
Hey Brian,
I've been waiting to comment on this, having reread it for the third time...I'm a sucker for the narrative poem and love clear, concise and accessible language like this. Right off, you use the word 'million' three times in the final verse and the numeric 15 draws unnecessary attention, I feel, to a weaker line.
'She stutters down the page/word by word'...envious of your word choices here. I think the third verse might be dropped and rewritten to one line added to verse four, and this way you can keep the 'untouched' image for your last line...the real arrow of the poem.
I look forward to your next post.
Tim
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Post by brianedwards on Feb 1, 2009 22:53:58 GMT -5
Finally gotten round to revising this one. Thanks again to all who commented before.
B.
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Post by mfwilkie on Feb 3, 2009 23:22:01 GMT -5
Thinking about twirls for a bit, b. Think whirls fits her better.
She whirls onto an open city street,
a city of fifteen million people
and dances through shadows of skyscrapers,
monuments erected in the shadows of airplanes
that carry people from city to city,
people staring out of windows,
without words, without touch.
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