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Coffee Jar Coffin
Posted: 25 November 2005
Word Count: 99
Summary: I am studying poetry as part of my degree course and I am just putting together my End Of Module Folder.
I am hoping to include this so any feedback would be great. It is part of a sequence of poems entitled Snapshots Of Urban Life.
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I hold you in my hand one final time.
Weighty in your coffee jar coffin,
you strain the Kwiksave handles,
how you hated the weekly shop,
swipe my legs through Forget-Me-Not plots.
The receptionist clamps you to her bosom
I can almost see you smile…
Transferred to an urn you return
in the arms of a burly man,
your mates would have died laughing.
We march to your spot.
Grass skinned back, for once you conform
Fall neatly into place.
Your dent on the settee space.
I top a can of Stella, sip and tip some in for you.
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 Account Closed at 21:43 on 25 November 2005
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A very powerful piece - I found it gripping. Have a few suggestions, which I've incorporated below:
I hold you in my hand one final time.
Weighty in your coffee jar coffin,
you strain the Kwiksave handles.
How you hated the weekly shop;
now you swipe my legs through Forget-Me-Not plots.
The receptionist clamps you to her bosom;
I can almost see you smile…
Transferred to an urn you return
in the arms of a burly man;
your mates would have died laughing.
We march to your spot.
Grass skinned back, for once you conform,
fall neatly into place.
Your dent on the settee space.
I top a can of Stella, sip and tip some in for you.
Most of my suggestions (and they're only suggestions, as it's up to you!) are to do with tweaking the grammar here and there and losing the initial capitals where you don't need them. I also think the poem is plenty strong enough to allow a couple of one line stanzas - at the beginning and half way through, where I've placed them. I also think the one-liners I've suggested give the reader a chance to breathe the line and let the feelings linger - um, if you see what I mean! - ie they have emotional and journeying depth.
In any case, it's a fantastic poem - wish I'd written it, darn it! The last line is rivetting.
:))
A
xxx
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Tray at 11:49 on 26 November 2005
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This is great Anne, really helpful.
I never think to use single lines in my poems and I was a bit concerned that I had too much in each stanza, so you've solved the problem for me, thank you. I also take your point about letting the reader breathe.
I'm a bit of a scaredy cat when it coes to semi-colons so tend not to use them, but I can see it helps in that line, and the capitals was just me being slovenly, whoops!
Adding "now" also works - as makes it more in the present tense, brilliant!
A very chuffed Tray x
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