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Story of One Girl, One Boy and the Hurricane REVISED 2

by seanfarragher 

Posted: 03 October 2005
Word Count: 597
Summary: vector 1. Mathematics. a. A quantity, such as velocity, completely specified by a magnitude and a direction. b. A one-dimensional array. c. An element of a vector space. 2. Pathology. An organism, such as a mosquito or tick, that carries disease-causing microorganisms from one host to another. 3. Genetics. A bacteriophage, a plasmid, or another agent that transfers genetic material from one location to another. 4. A force or an influence.
Related Works: Hurricanes revised (7th) • 

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Story of One Girl, boy and the Hurricane

Mark the spot where the universe stops.
Paint it red; make it a sweet lemon jungle.
Design the fancy of it so it burns the eyes
forever with tight lines, imaginary vectors.

Girl runs down a road to oblivion holds
her life in her shattered holy thong;
Is she too old as child?

Young grapes melt on flush lips.
There, the world ends but begins
in the dichotomy of assent or refusal,
crime and punishment; pass slowly
through the levees, surf the swill,
measure in yourself the bare skin of her
surprise at the riot of pleasure and guilt—

Tomorrow, when she or I race back
to the boy/girl she knows when he
reads the heavens, writes charts,
star maps,-- he scratches white
ink pen on blackened olivine papers
to perjure history as the syllabus offers.

She walked with long lines, red lips
her breast were barely seen, but when
she looked down toward Hades she made
the right steps to catch his thing.

Beauty may be tawdry. It may exhaust
breathing in an instant of calumny.

Yes, we are ordinary atoms, part
of scattered flaws when ions
revise sub particles with
by trigonometry of calculus
solution sets for equations
as star-walk orbits when tedious force
big bang writ in ledger for sake
of hypothetical labels advertised
as the critical cure for history.

Strange how we corrupt the obvious
allow Plenty their fake maps
dark insider trails with gasoline
rivers with bloated entrails drab
oily rainbows of infested swill

We set Plenty loose in fake, deadly clouds
to drown pity -- that romantic melodrama,
and then deceit beleaguered by vector insects;
righteous thorn pines promote prayers
race desert birds until they lost feathers.

Flight shifts with unprovoked frequency
in reverie until Galileo wrote the history
of the 21st century in urban English
while Da Vinci plucked invisible birds --
fireworks to notebook, rival to Apollo.

Later, we climbed the dais at the field
house to hear the Sunday Preacher.
He was the miracle of next week,
a Congregational Lay man who
made his fortune in early Iowa.
Magic image chased fortune with failure
as usual, foot stomping Bible belt oratory
and the girl curled up in her fortress bed
long after some boy at whim runs away --
he is raw ten years later, and happy,
miserable in submission.

Remember how diabolic forces first met at
the edge of exponential universe; given this:
it's strange the child cannot predict steps goodbye;
perhaps, he whispered insincere, soft vowels lost
in a dirty river. Unkempt words will smudge
connections to the stars alternate gleam
no matter how distant when to where;--

We thrive in the graves of an archaic
and goodly city. Dizzy Gillespie rasps
his bent horn in perfect cacophony,
rides rifts cuts dangerous Hollywood hills
dropping small change in the offertory
and murder at the bar for the barfly
who slums with an incandescent scowl
tapping praise for the Lord and death
for the taxmen, as you would expect
the military drunk getting ready for duty.
Father why do you bring your child
to bars for shuffle board and the smell
of beer, rot gut and little girl breasts
on the daughter of the barkeep serving
hamburgers and French fries and grape soda.

The mold grows deeper. The dead drown
in graceful trances. The force of clouds
meets the fire of the water; the hurricane
the girl, the land and people scatter while
crime leak away as Plenty draws up plans
for stealing land ruined as anarchy’s scores.





xxxx






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Comments by other Members



Cornelia at 22:43 on 03 October 2005  Report this post
The girl running down the road made me think of the (in)famous Vietmanese, or was it Cambodian, child in the newspaper photograph. The two neutral opposing forces remminded me of Hardy's 'Meeting of the Twain' Was it 'meeting'? I am not sure.Maybe it was 'conversion'. Anyway, it meant the Titanic and the iceberg. Here I am not sure of what the opposing force is. There was a hurricane, but nothing to 'oppose'it. Or am I missing something.

As usual, I can't understand a lot of this, but there seems to be a suggestion that the hurricane is a punishment for sin - or at least that is how the by and girl will interpret it. I need to read this again in the cold light of day. You seem very drawn to apocalyptic interpretation of natural events, which I find myself resisting.

Sheila

seanfarragher at 22:47 on 03 October 2005  Report this post
Consider in one hundred years, not ten thousand years, there will be no polar ice cap. Just one selected apparent "fact" But thank you for the read.

Cornelia at 08:57 on 04 October 2005  Report this post
I can see that this concerns you. I could say to you where are the woolly mammoths we were once so fond of? Where is Atlantis? I can see this is some kind of warning and you feel it is your mission, but I think you overstate the case, or choose an inappropriate model or one that's outdated. Some of this reads like Old Testament predicitons, Sodom and Gomorrah, watch out!. I can no more imagine a world without polar ice-caps than anyone else. No doubt it will have its qualities. They weren't much good to anyone except polar bears and explorers. 'Facts', expecially when presented by scientists, have a way of shifting about. They thought in the past we'd all have to stand on one another's heads by now for lack of walking space. What's the point of bothering about what may never happen or which may be superceded by something else even more catastrophic? My sister-in-law, a Jehovah's witness, was convinced there was no point in planning careers for her children when it was all to end shortly anyway. As she told me at the time, it was a well know 'fact'. That we are still here, the children middle-aged and somewhat bemused, is just delay. We are all caught up in that, however. I was a CND protester in the ^)s and still suspect there are nastier things than climate change round the corner. As for the ruined land, I think the swampy ground will drain, one way or another, and life will proceed, not to normal, because constant unpredictable change is a feature of the planet, as we know, not just now, or in the future, but in the past. I can't imagine geological historians agonising over fault-line maps and thinking there should have been some way of stopping volcanoes. Maybe the planet has a mind of its own, and although we can all turn the gas down, it makes you wonder whether whilst we are thinking about one disaster another is getting up steam somewhere.

Sheila

cust at 22:48 on 04 October 2005  Report this post
Sean

I am finding it hard to get into this. It is probably me. I suffer from word fatigue, and I find it hard to gain a foothold.

Some lines I can see, but the overall message eludes me.

Are the two forces the natural world in the form of disasters like the hurricaine, versus the advanced capitalist society with its attendant poverty, arrogance, decay, denial, dirt etc?

Am I getting close?

Perhaps if I could gain a foothold this poem could be unravelled for me. Can you help?

Lucy

seanfarragher at 05:43 on 05 October 2005  Report this post
Explication of poem. FIRST I REVISED the poem cutting many words.

I agee and disagree with the analysis that information in poetry needs to clear, a fixed story, something with a unique plan. On the other hand, if the poem confuses, as a new poem might, I listen to the criticism as I may be reading the poem through my memory and have lost the thread of the language. There is another consideration. Poetry is a auditory moment, lyrical and musical, and not a story as in traditional fiction. There may be more than one meaning. Your imagination brought to the poem could be more important than what I intended the poem to mean.



Story of One Girl, boy, and the Hurricanes


images of Lousiana, universal victims, water and emotional and political and economic extremes.



Mark the spot where the universe stops.
Paint it red; make it a sweet lemon jungle.
Design the fancy of it so it burns the eyes
forever with tight lines, imaginary vectors.

vector (an important word)

1. Mathematics. a. A quantity, such as velocity, completely specified by a magnitude and a direction. b. A one-dimensional array. c. An element of a vector space.
2. Pathology. An organism, such as a mosquito or tick, that carries disease-causing microorganisms from one host to another.
3. Genetics. A bacteriophage, a plasmid, or another agent that transfers genetic material from one location to another.
4. A force or an influence.

Consider "Katrina" and "Rita" and the enormous force, influence of that experience. Certainly, in the world, in places were poverty (as in the Tsunami of 12/2004) Consider 9/11. I was not in the UK when the terrorists killed so many in the underground bombings. Neither am I in Iraq to understand the terror of the soldiers both UK and American and yes the people who die there every day in an attempt to restore order to their country.

We live in the cross hairs of these opposiing forces, and this is how I see the poem. Biblical allusions not withstanding (although that works too) it is about how man has had an incapacity to consider the rights and obligations of his fellows. Hobbes and certainly those who have studied the progression of population from a world of a billion to ten billion in 30 years may understand that resources will not meet needs. At some point what happens will be horrible, and will strike without mercy much as the tragedies of the old testament or the Book of Revelation.

I am not a Christian. I am a Unitarian/Hindu/Agnostic/Buddhist drawing from these theologies and others WAYS to approach the comming tragedies.

I have four children and one grandchild. Jacob, actually my step grand son, was born in 1999. He will be 62 in 2061. If I, higly educated, artistically sophisticated, politically astute and one in 6.3 Billion cannot influence change for a greater humanity how will the now child Jacob as an adult affect the world of 2060. Consider the internet. In 1990 it was a theory. Consider the computer. In 1962, I used one at Columbia made with vacuume tubes. in 2060, when Jacob is 59 he will be one person not in 6.3 billion but 11 billion. Those new human beings will be highly educated (China, India and Indonesia) and rightful demand their rights to the decreasing resources. It will no longer be possible for 5 percent of the world population (the west) to control so much of the world's resources. That is not the lesson of history, but how it has played out even considering disease and blight and plague.


My poem considers these issues and perhaps too heavily, but i needed to share my motivation for writing it.




Girl runs down a road to oblivion holds
her life in her shattered holy thong;
Is she too old as child?

Young grapes melt on flush lips.
There, the world ends but begins
in the dichotomy of assent or refusal,
crime and punishment; pass slowly
through the levees, surf the swill,
measure in yourself the bare skin of her
surprise at the riot of pleasure and guilt—

Tomorrow, when she or I race back
to the boy/girl she knows when he
reads the heavens, writes charts,
star maps,-- he lies scratching
white pen on olivine papers.

Beauty may be tawdry.
Motion slows outer rings of hydrogen
and oxygen, nitrogen and flecks of carbon
soften the snow at midwinter Mass.

Yes, they are ordinary atoms, part
of scattered flaws when ions transmuted
become sub particles with definition
by the trigonometry of calculus
to solve equations as star walks
when ponderous force big bang writ in ledger
for sake of labels, as negative and imaginary.

Strange how we seduce losers.

We set them free in fake, deadly clouds
to drown pity -- that romantic melodrama,
and then deceit beleaguered by insect
and thorn pines righteous promote prayers
racing desert birds until they have no wings.

Image chases fortune with failure as
usual foot stomping Bible belt oratory
and the girl curled up in her bed long
after some boy at whim leaves,
she is raw ten years later, and happy,
but miserable in submission.

Remember how diabolic forces met at
the edge of exponential universe; Given this:
it is strange the child cannot predict steps goodbye;
perhaps, he whispered insincere, soft vowels lost
in a dirty river. Unkempt words will smudge
connections to the stars alternate gleam
no matter how distant when, where;--

We thrive in the graves of an archaic and goodly city.
Dizzy Gillespie rasps his bent horn in perfect
cacophony, rides rifts spends dangerous Hollywood hills
dropping small change in the offertory and murder at the bar;

The mold grows deeper. The dead drown in graceful trances.
The force of the clouds meets the fire of the water;
the hurricane like the girl, the land and people
scatter while the crimes leak away as plenty
draws up plans for stealing the land now ruined.

A hypothetical scenario in in several corporate real estate board rooms: Howw do we get the US govt to pay 10 bil for new levees at hurricane force 5, buy the land at bottom line prices (as trump and others did in Atlantic City) have the legislature pass a law allowing casinos in the cities (not at sea) and of they will .... good business..... and then we own land, let it dry, clean it, and in five years rehabilitate it with townhouses, casinos, hotels and "what happens here, stays here" (strage hypocrisy). Actually, I love to play poker. I think it is possible to have casinos and not exploit the poor from their land. Very little of the value of the land would pass to the original owners. "PLENTY steals the land now ruined."







XX



<Added>


On geology.... Most geologic change takes place at minimus over tens of thousands of years (ice ages)..... the melting of the polar ice cap could be measured in less than one hundred. I am certain being struck by a meteor, eruption, tsunami is an instant event, but we have contributed to the warming of the earth. That has not happened before or if it did, we don't find a record for it.


Cornelia at 06:46 on 05 October 2005  Report this post
Thank you for the glossary. I agree with you about poetry not necessarily needing to be transparent, but neither need it be so dense that the reader, as Lucy so succintly puts it, cannot get a foothold. I taught poetry for years, so am used to unravelling meanings with the help of glossaries and drawing on my reading experience.That's why I thought providing some kind of commentary would help the ordinary reader. I think the problem is I can read all about this geological and historical and political stuff in the newspapers - freqently do -in a form I don't have to puzzle over. For anti-American antiglobalisation stuff, of which I am a great fan, I can see the films of Michael Moore or read Noam Chomsky. Like everyone else of the same persuasion, I am sure, I am all too well aware of the self-seeking and disastrous actions of leaders and their willing followers, and I was thinking, too, of future generations when I was marching against the bomb in the early 60s. It's only now that proliferation is begining to be realised in a way that some of forecast then. It's a good impuse that makes people think of their own families, and a way of restraining the more aggressive acts of males - it is males we are talking about here- but the lust for control overcomes that too. So long as Blair is so subservient, for his own reasons, the British can have no influence at all on a power-crazed maniac bent on world dominination. History repats itself - See the annals of Tamburlaine the Great.

Sheila

cust at 09:34 on 05 October 2005  Report this post
Thanks Sean.

I am fine with the themes - I just can't absorb the words. I am also from a different tradition, I think. I understand some of the references, not others.

Your glossary helps, but still, I would need to read this 100 times to get into the heart of it. Is this a problem? I think it is if you don't have time to read things 100 times.

I do note that many poems written in the Eng Lit tradition are very dense these days. I was reading (can't remember which) web poetry that was up for a prestigious competition and I was stunned by how it's "changed" since I studied poetry. Maybe it hasn't changed, but I am just out of step. Words are all, images, layer up on layer of allusions, clever tricks etc...

I am interested in your messages, particularly the fear of what will be for your grandson. I have a small child, and I am working hard to attempt to Make A Difference, in quite a different way than one might imagine - in a hidden, soft, quiet, but hugely radical way. No marching, no shouting (as yet!!). I wonder if I can make any difference, but I can try. My poetry is starting to be filled with this hope. I want to blast it out to the world. So I can see the energy in this poem, but it just doesn't somehow connect with my own momentum. I find it cold, indirect, words floating on a surface of something when I want to be able to take the plunge. I find remoteness difficult, as I am not a remote type of person, but maybe that's all part of your poem's message...?

I too think poetry can be (very happily) free from story. I was writing lately about my love of gaps and spaces in art. I am tired of stories as well as words - well the stock ones we see everywhere at least. I feel I have been overwhelmed by these. I love being immersed in something that is other than that, but the key thing (for me) is that my buttons need to be pushed so ideas can fly off in all directions.

I am not saying this work would not do that for others, but I am possibly not within your culture enough to have that happen. Is this a problem? It could be if the poem is designed to have wide appeal. If not, then it's not.

Guess I am just simple at heart - and worried.

Lucy

<Added>

Duh, I was refering to the original version here. I didn't realise how much you'd changed it. It is getting there for me now. It's becoming more accessible. I still wish the energy of it would rush out and into me - I think that's what I'm after. Maybe I'm lazy aswell then?

Lucy

<Added>

...and I meant to say, the last line is the one that speaks most clearly to me. I do really like the ending. L



seanfarragher at 11:25 on 05 October 2005  Report this post
This exchange has been very beneficial. I want to simplify without stripping the poem of its force. I want to continue with the poem and will post updates.

Perhaps matriarchy would make for a more humane polis. Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton not withstanding. I prefer women doctors and female American lawyers (Using the American example to combine the functions of solicitor and barrister) as my father beat me to death daily, I imagine I would prefer women.

If I had been born English and not American, I would have loved to be a barrister. As I had an Anglo Irish Mother (she is deceased) I loved Ireland minus its 1950s Roman Catholic layers (although Joyce survived) -- The Church of Ireland as the Church of England seem appropriate for the 1950s when I was a child.

Poetry or anything I write of late goes back to those ten years between 6 and 16 (1949-1962) when I lived in a world of deep hypocrisy and terrible spin-doctors. I do not mean to judge by contemporary standards. Trans-historical analysis leads nowhere.

I do not use scientific terminology for affect. I was first a geologist, chemist, and mineralogy and petrology fascinated.

If we were light, and we traveled at that speed what happened, 13 Billion years ago would seem as if it happened as I type this sentence

I do appreciate my critics and your friendships are valuable beyond exception.

Thank you Sheila and L


Sean


seanfarragher at 11:59 on 05 October 2005  Report this post
The poem has been tightened and revised again. Thanks for your reads. Sean

cust at 18:40 on 06 October 2005  Report this post
Sean

I'm wondering if you could - you know just for a trial thing - write a very minimal poem in very ordinary language about this theme. Would this be a different thing for you to do? Might it exercise some new poetic muscles? I'd be really interested to see any results. (I, on the other hand, would probably benefit from dealing with some Big themes and use some more complex poetic devices. I have been thinking that this might benefit me, so perhaps the opposite might give something to you.)

It would be a constructive exercies for many poets to do what doesn't come naturally, I think!

Lucy

seanfarragher at 06:58 on 07 October 2005  Report this post
I am a trained journalist. I could write a simple story but what I wish to achieve is kin to the 16th century Italian tempra techniques applied to words. Obviously, when I paint I can build thin layers that add luminosity to the painting (this can be done with modern, abstract expressionist work).... My intention is to superimose images as in the poetry of Olson, Pound or Ashberry. You can't do it one on top in words, but you can by association, allusion, metaphor and even material that on the surface seems outside the poem. My intention is not to communicate a narrative story, but to create a musical creation that can (not will) influence the reader to reach their own visual and auditory frame.


Let me attempt to do what you suggest.

Hurricane

The Hurricane knocked life to drown
It split death in the grease.
It made the arms of the city darker,
invisible as the foul stence of lonely
slaughter house without any return.

Mark the spot where the universe stops.
Paint it red; make it a sweet lemon jungle.
Design the fancy of it so it burns the eyes
forever with tight lines, imaginary vectors.

Young girl melts on flush lips.
There, the world ends but begins
in the split of choice, crime,
punishment as daredevil release;
pass slowly through thos levees,
surf the swill, measure bare skin
of surprise at riot of pleasure—

Tomorrow, when we race back
to the flat dead we know when
we read the heavens, write charts,
star maps,-- we scratche white
ink pen on blackened syllalbus.

Death walked with long lines, red lips
her breast were barely seen, but when
she looked down toward sex she made
the calculated steps to catch things.

Beauty may be tawdry. It exhausts
breathing in an instant of disaster.

Strange how we corrupt the obvious
allow Plenty fake maps
dark insider trails with gasoline
rivers bloated entrails drab
oily rainbows of infested swill.

Plenty is loose in fake, deadly clouds
to drown pity -- that romantic melodrama,
and then deceit tortured by diseased insects;
innocent thorn pines promote prayers
race desert birds until they lost feathers.

Flight shifts with unprovoked frequency
in reverie until Galileo wrote the history
of the 21st century in urban English
while Da Vinci plucked invisible birds --

Later, we climbed the dais at the field
house to hear the Sunday Preacher.
He was the miracle of next week,
a Congregational Lay man who
made his fortune in 19th century Iowa.

Magic image chased fortune with failure
as usual, foot stomping Bible belt oratory
and the girl curled up in her fortress bed
long after some boy at whim runs away --
he is raw ten years later, and elusive.

Remember how diabolic forces first met at
the edge of a various universe; given this:
it's strange the child cannot predict goodbye;
perhaps, he whispered insincere, soft vowels lost
in a dirty river. Unkempt words to smudge
connections to the stars alternate gleam

The mold grows deeper. The dead drown
in graceful trance. The force of clouds
meets the fire of the water; the hurricane,
the land and people scatter while
crime leak away as Plenty draws up plans
for stealing land ruined as anarchy’s scores.





xxxx



Cornelia at 07:47 on 07 October 2005  Report this post
Your account of your technique is illuminating and I recognised early what you were attempting to do, although at first I just thought you had a shaky grasp of grammar and were just piling on the metaphors and allusions, some of which, I might add were so abstruse as to be outside the knowledge field of the most people, even those like me who have spent years reading and teaching poetry. Language, to my mind, is a medium of its own, quite unlike music and painting, with its own rules and qualities, although it has much in common with the other media you mention. It's possible to heap all these words together and just like paint or like sounds they can remain separate or reverberate and contrast or complement others to produce different effects. I think there is also a communication aspect unique to language which is lost when the references are obscure. Painting and music don't have the same referential effect so literal meaning doesn't matter in the same way. I think, too, there is a problem of tone, which has much to do with postmodernity, bringing awareness of complexity and fragmentation, of the subjectivity of our experience, which makes certainty and prescription, even horror, inadequate to address current dilemmas.

Sheila

seanfarragher at 10:49 on 07 October 2005  Report this post
In post modern poetry grammar is essential (knowledge of it)....LINE BREAKS, stops, space, breath, are personal to the reader, and the poem is not a muscial score to be read by direction. It is is my opinion more a point of departure, a place were the reciter of the poem uses his/her voice breath as an actor to let the phrase reach as a collaboration. These assumptions of mine are not RULES but my personal anarchical perhaps response to how a poem will evolve in a digital age. Song to paper to record to digital to ??????? holograms..... my fantasy....i know absurd to be as a hologram to be be retrieved to the deck of the star ship enterprise in 2500. How I would love to be conscious. I know it is absurd, but in any case thanks for your comments, and this discussion has truly helped with my poem. One thing i HAVE leaned after reading and writing for 35 years (I am 62) that I always want to be in the live poet society in that my work like that of Matisse (who I adore) constantly evolves not to the times but in spite of the times.

Sean

<Added>

I majored in physics, chemistry and geophysics as an undergraduate (mathematics actually) so for me the allusions are not affectations, but how I see a crystal or how minerology and petrology are models for life. I truly wonder at the failed phylum that another consciousness might have evolved..... I had the perfect education for a poet. I loved everything and I studied as undergraduate very little literature. I did that in Graduate school. When I advise students how to educate oneself to be a poet. I say study everything even economics or business or accounting, be curious and inventive, but dont study literary criticism as undergraduate. Learn something and then look at the gracious lines of Keats and Blake, Yeats and Farragher (lol)......


Cornelia at 12:13 on 07 October 2005  Report this post
Hmm yes, my students used to tell me that spelling and grammar were a matter of personal taste. I seemed to get more than my share of anarchists. Or they would say they were going into business and their secretaries would do the grammar, as if it were beneath them to bother, not that they couldn't get the hang of it. I suspect some of them are the ones who swept Lynne Truss to the top of the bestseler list.

It's no good telling someone who is in love with language and words to study physics or engineering. It's true some people later realise that science is not truth but fashion, as ephemeral as the design of Kate Moss's camping boots. Holograms, schmologams. I'm writing at one of those tables with a holographic design on the surface. Did I think it might make my study seem more like a cafe?

Anyway, I'm, 62, too, and I like Matisse - loved the recent RA exhibition - so there's one thing, no, two, we have in common.

Your work really helps me to clarify my own thoughts on poetry.

Sheila

cust at 15:52 on 07 October 2005  Report this post
Hi Sean

I take it you weren't that keen on my suggestion then? It was a bit radical given that you've written many many things and are obviously a multi-layered personality yourself. I didn't in any way mean to misunderstand or belittle your many valuable experiences and vast knowledge of things, just incase that's what you were thinking. I just wanted your poem to stand on its head (maybe by using only, say 50-100 words) to see what would happen. By the way, I am not sure that's what you've done with your plainer version at all. Anyway, I will leave it at that....

I have some things in common with you btw - a lifelong fascination with how things are made, how they work. I am from a scientific family. I was primed to study science from a very young age. I wanted to do physics or chemistry, but at the last minute I did a swerve to literature and language, much to my father's chagrin, because it just felt right. Now I am left with a total fascination with the natural world - all engrossing at times - and my word/art/music muscles have been well flexed by my experience as a student, a journalist and a writer/editor. So I also have both strands going on and I love to combine the two. However, I have recently become conscious of being too "heady" and I've been living in a more bodily way which suits me much better. What I'm trying to say is that poetry has become minimally brain orientated for me, and I'm probably drawn to things that tie in with that; that seem to brush the edge of literary-ness (sorry, horrible expression).

I love the idea of layering. It reminds me of adding bits of tissue to a collage, or feltmaking (which I also do). Building up a picture painstakingly and then standing back to see what the overall effect is - how does the sum reflect the parts - does it at all? Have you created something with a whole that you did not intend?

I didn't think your use of scientific allusions etc was affected at all, by the way.

Thanks for your comments too - it has helped me focus more on what I want to do in my own work.

Lucy

seanfarragher at 19:14 on 07 October 2005  Report this post
Lucy. quite the contrary. Our discussion of the poem was invaluble to me, and NO WHERE do I reject out of hand what you said. I would not have tried to rewrite the poem as I did. I found that interesting. Thank you with all sincerity for the contribution. I love learning about the people who are virutal except for their momentary comments on their lives. We are all too similar in our need for conversation about what matters in poetry and friendship.

Sean

<Added>

I am also an abstract expressionist painter (or I have been before arthritis) working in thin layers of paper and pigment with acyrlic varnish NOT medium. One clouds painted wet on wet and the varnish does not. I loved to work in mural size...... 8 feet by three or four. Canvas stretched on the wall and painted with gesso, and then measured to a particular size so the border of the later gray painted over gesso acts as a natural frame without using wood supports. Thank You again.

cust at 21:40 on 07 October 2005  Report this post
Hi Sean

I can see how your artistic talents would influence your writing. I acutally feel like art comes more naturally to me, but I have done more writing so that's my easiest route of expression. I haven't got time at the moment to do an art course or even have some time messing about as I have a little girl who has taken over my life and is directing my energy into other things...

I am not usually into knowing to much bio detail about writers but in your case I think what you have told us does add valuable context which I was needing to orientate myself with regard to your work. I know I will not fully get all your allusions and metaphors but I see the mechanics of it more fully now. Perhaps this is the foothold I was after. When you write again I will bear all this in mind.

Over and out

Lucy

<Added>

eeeek, too much, I mean.

seanfarragher at 20:11 on 10 October 2005  Report this post
Never too much. Lucy/ i look forward to your poems, and to further discussion. I can always be reached at farragher@comcast.net

Sean


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