Old Annie
Posted: 01 July 2006
Word Count: 235
Summary: This is a poem that originated in the flash group.
I have posted the first version at the bottom of the page.
Related Works: Annie •
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August end holiday
cloud rises late from the hills.
Summer kisses autumn.
Leaving the Roman Road
under Wether Fell,
we dip into a shallow valley
where rivulets
giggle hide and seek
between the green.
Words are pools
that twink with eyes
of dreamed children
staring upwards,
floating menageries
drawn down from the sky.
Our old dog,
once new penny copper,
prods her muzzle at the water.
Ears surprised
with the salt cold taste
she springs in a beat
as if she sees
dog reflecting god.
Jerking a slow canter
down hill,
she thumps thought
to form:
“I’ll be on
the otherside of the pool
by winter.”
********
Flash
August end holiday
the cloud rises late from the hills
as summer kisses autumn.
Leaving the Roman Road
over the Dale Top
we dip into a shallow valley
of rivulets hiding and giggling
in a game a hide and seek
between the green.
Words are pools
winking eyes
with a world of children
gazing upwards
drawing menageries from the sky.
Our old dog, ears surprised
by the salt cold of water
points her once copper muzzle down.
As if her eyes see
dog reflecting god
she springs in a beat
and follows a slow
canter down the hill
thumping out the thought
‘While I have nose and
a leg for each element
the source runs through me.
I’ll be on the otherside of the pool
by winter.’
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 joanie at 19:27 on 01 July 2006
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Hi Nina. I have come to love any poems where there are references to specific places, yet I don't think I have ever done one myself. I googled 'Wether Fell' - Google was particularly helpful and wondered whether I perhaps meant 'Weather Fell'! NO!
I just love the rivulets giggling and playing hide and seek and the gorgeous details of the dog; I can see my lovely border collie in his latter years.
The last bit is still making me think.
Just excellent, Nina, I thought!
joanie
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 Elsie at 10:21 on 02 July 2006
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Nina, this is lovely.
What a great line:
Like Joanie, I love:
where rivulets
giggle hide and seek
between the green.
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The second stanza is full of lovely internal ryhme. It is much improved from the flash group version. My only wonder is whether it shoud be the narrator having the thought about the old dog dying soon? The new penny copper is georgeous, makes me think it's a red setter.
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 NinaLara at 12:36 on 02 July 2006
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Thanks Elsie and Joan - It is meant to be the narrator having the thought - I'll have a think about how to make that clearer!
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 James Graham at 19:05 on 03 July 2006
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This is a vivid evocation of the place, and portrait of the dog. There's more to it, though. I keep lingering over the third verse (Words are pools...') where there seems to be a change of direction. The streams in the valley trigger off these lines, which are about words themselves. Language
'reflects' the world. Words, like pools, are deep. At best they sparkle with images, associations, ideas, feelings, as pools in a stream sparkle with little points of light...and these twinkles from the water are like children's eyes. This is a beautiful, and adventurous, image.
Your 'floating menageries' is even more adventurous. Being deliberately over-literal for a moment, I imagine a literal menagerie, a collection of animals - small ones, I think, at home in the landscape of your poem: rabbits, field mice, otters. But ultimately I think 'menageries' works best not in a literal sense but as a metaphor - just as the water seems to draw 'down from the sky' reflected points of sunlight, perhaps cloud reflections, reflections of passing birds, so words draw from the world around us ideas, associations, images, memories: a 'menagerie' of them, a large and varied collection.
I've a sneaking feeling this is yet another example of my 'reading' of a poem - where the poet wonders how on earth anyone could see that in it. But these strike me as rather extraordinary lines - quite elusive, but capable of having something like the meaning I've taken from them. And even more nuances of meaning than that, potentially,in the imagination of other readers.
I'm a little puzzled by the ending. For me, the pool at the end can't help being related to the pools in the lines I've just been talking about. But I don't yet see the significance of the narrator thinking she is going to be on the other side of the pool by winter. I'm sure this is not because there's anything wrong with the poem - just that the penny hasn't dropped for me yet. Keeping it simple, the narrator foresees the old dog dying soon, perhaps before winter. Will she take her to the other side of the pool to bury her? It would be a fitting place - an inspiring place in which sunlight sparkles like children's eyes.
Am I close, or have I missed something?
James.
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NinaLara at 20:42 on 03 July 2006
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Strangely enough James, all the things you have spoken about were in my mind as I was writing the poem. The flash line was words are pools (which was a line taken from my Session 4 poem) and I was trying to get a bit closer to what I meant by this.
As this was a flash, the images are ones that came to me without really thinking consciously of their connections ... but there were two thoughts - the first being about words being pools that reflect the world ... but being a slightly different version of it. Secondly, I realised that dog literally reflected god ... which signifies the arbitary of language, but also the bizzare connections we can make between words. The otherside of the pool becomes another dimension where nothing is formed and where everything is beyond the filter of language .... god, heaven, another a place, a place beyond words, nowhere at all, emptiness, completeness .... whatever you fancy. The children who's eye's twink are dreamed ... not born, perhaps, or waiting to be born or just hoped for.
I need to rethink the ending a little to make it completely clear that the dog is putting the thought into the narrator's head that she (the dog) will be dead by winter.
This sounds a whole lot more complex than I thought it was when I was writing it! Seemed quite straight forward then ....
Thanks for your thoughts, James. As enlightening as ever.
<Added>
p.s. I was thinking cloud reflections when I wrote it - but I love the fact that it could be animals in the real world too.
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James Graham at 21:12 on 04 July 2006
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No, it isn't straightforward. It is a complex poem - but the reader is helped by the narrative framework of the journey and the dog's little 'incident' at the pool. Then beyond that we have a whole spectrum of associations that come first out of the 'Words are pools...' verse, and then the ending: all the potential meanings of being 'on the other side of the pool'.
I hope you'll see what I mean by the following. As they are, the last three lines leave the reader to make a big leap. You explain that the other side of the pool signifies 'another dimension where nothing is formed and where everything is beyond the filter of language .... god, heaven, another place, a place beyond words, nowhere at all, emptiness, completeness'. I wonder if it might be possible to signal even one of those possible interpretations of the 'other side' to give readers a little more to work with? Of course it would spoil it to be too explicit; the trick would be to find an oblique way of suggesting meaning and work it into the closing thought. It would mean having an additional line or two in the closing section.
By the way, I think the fact that the dog puts the thought into the narrator's head is already clear. It's the thought itself that perhaps needs expanding - with just a hint that says to the reader, 'The other side of the pool has layers of meaning...here's a clue to one...now imagine more for yourself.'
However, having said all that, you might decide to leave the last three lines just as they are. No extra clues for the reader. There are examples from classic poets, e.g. Blake and Yeats, of the ending throwing down a gauntlet. Right. See what you can make of that, then. If you leave your ending as it is, it will be that kind of challenge. Which would be ok - there would be that tantalising brief thought, and the reader would have to supply all the rest.
So, compromise a little more with the reader - or throw down the gauntlet?
I had noticed dog-god, by the way. It's a clever idea in the context - a 'reflection' in the spelling of the two words, corresponding to the dog's reflection in the water, and yet a very different kind of mirror image.
On 'menageries', I made the association with animals but not with the animal shapes we see in clouds. I see that now, and it's another little offshoot of meaning that springs from the poem.
James.
<Added>
Changed my mind. I was going to add something but I'm sure I've said plenty already.
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NinaLara at 19:42 on 05 July 2006
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Thanks James and Stephen!
James - I am digesting what you have said and am pondering how to get a sense of beyondness into the final lines. You really are marvellous for the brain!
Nina
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NinaLara at 09:26 on 06 July 2006
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Revision:
any thoughts on this for the ending?
as if she sees
dog reflecting god.
She jerks a slow canter
down hill
thumping limestone rooms
below
that free
reluctant
drops to echo
as they collide
with thought
to form
“She’ll be on
the otherside of the pool
by winter.” |
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<Added>
Though I'd change the title to 'Old Annie' too.
<Added>
limestone roofs
below
may make more sense here.
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James Graham at 15:41 on 07 July 2006
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It was a good idea to change the title, and to change 'I'll be on/ the otherside of the pool' to 'She'll be on...' It was 90% clear before that the poem is about the old dog, now it's 100%. Those little changes tidy that up completely.
The new closing sections seem very close to an excellent, very resonant ending. Now the very landscape seems to join with the dog herself in prompting the final thought, and that points up the importance of the thought even more. There's a big build-up to the final thought now. So there should be, because it's a thought that has depth and should have many associations for the reader - some of them suggested by the earlier 'Words are pools...' lines, to which the closing lines refer back.
I think this is close to being a very successful poem - that kind of poem which we feel at once, on first reading, has levels of meaning that are accessible if we think about it and use our imagination. First, there's the 'surface' of the poem - a little story, an anecdote containing a journey, a particular place, and old Annie's experience at the pool. The final thought could be taken to mean that old Annie will eventually be buried by the pool...and why not? It's a special place. But that's a literal understanding of the last lines, and only part of their potential meaning. The rest gathers round your explanation of 'the otherside of the pool as 'god, heaven, another place, a place beyond words, nowhere at all, emptiness, completeness'. The 'Words are pools' lines combine with the closing lines to open up these meanings. Any 'active reader', who brought something to the poem, should be aware of at least some of these meanings and associations.
The only reason I said it's 'close to' being a great ending is there's something I don't quite understand. In 'thumping limestone roofs', are you thinking of caves? Are there caves under the hillside, in which water drops echo? Or if not, what do you mean by 'limestone roofs'? I'm just a bit puzzled by that. The rest of the new ending, everything in the section 'that free...to form', is perfect, I think. A short 'note' from you on 'limestone roofs' would probably clear up the whole thing.
If we are talking about caves, it might be a slight improvement to say that old Annie, in her 'slow canter down hill', seems to thump the limestone roofs and dislodge water drops, rather than say she actually does so. On the most literal level, she would have to be a very large mammal to have this effect! But 'seeming to' makes all the difference. We get rid of the slightly silly literal impossibility, and understand that Annie seems in imagination to make a huge impact on the earth - a wonderfully oblique way of suggesting that that moment at the pool makes a huge impact on Annie's owner, a sudden sharpened awareness of mortality.
Tell me if I'm right or wrong about the caves. I've enjoyed this poem very much. It's been quite hard work - who said poetry was meant to be a stroll in the park? - but worth the effort, and very rewarding.
James.
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NinaLara at 18:39 on 07 July 2006
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This is a limestone landscape which is very likely to have caves below. Yes - it does need a reminder that this is an imaginative rather than a literal association!
I'll give some thought about how best to do this.
Thanks James - you are very good for my clarity!
<Added>
as if she sees
dog reflecting god.
Her slow canter
down hill
seems to jerk the
limestone roofs below
to free
reluctant
drops that echo
as they collide
with thought
to form
“She’ll be on
the otherside of the pool
by winter.”
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James Graham at 15:35 on 08 July 2006
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Everything's clear now - the impact that Annie makes on the limestone caves below is figurative, a deliberate exaggeration (hyperbole to use the pukka term) which points up the strong impact the little incident has on the narrator. I think it works perfectly now.
Now it comes down to one word. 'Jerk'. It doesn't seem right to describe a massive geological feature as being 'jerked'. I had a trawl through the online Roget, entries under 'bump', 'beat' and 'impact', and thought 'pound' might be a good choice. Poor old Annie doesn't quite 'pound' the earth, but the word has just enough of that deliberate exaggeration to create the effect you're looking for. Another choice, for a different reason, might be 'touch'. By itself it has no exaggeration in it, but in the context ('touch the limestone roofs below') the reader would still sense that this 'touch' is quite a powerful one. And 'touch' also implies 'have an effect on' i.e. (light) physical or (strong) emotional. Could be a telling word here.
Otherwise the poem as it is now is working for me like a Swiss watch - from the surface story through to the underlying potential meanings. Everything's in tune.
James.
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NinaLara at 06:28 on 09 July 2006
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Dear James,
I like the gentleness of touch very much ... but i'll have a think about it. Jerk seemed to remtain the rustyness of the old dog's joits ... but when I thought about jolt I saw that those words are too strong for the impact of a small dog on a landscape! Other possibilities: pat? tap? I'll ponder on all three possibilities (tap winning at present due to popular usage of 'tap into' and the watery associations.)
Thanks
Nina
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James Graham at 13:43 on 10 July 2006
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'Tap' or 'touch' - neither of these would have just one straightforward meaning, but would have an extra level of meaning in the poem's context.
Her slow canter
down hill
seems to tap the
limestone roofs below |
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Her slow canter
down hill
seems to touch the
limestone roofs below |
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The more I stare at these two, the more I like 'tap'.
James.
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NinaLara at 15:16 on 10 July 2006
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me too James - it is good to 'hear' the sound! Tap it is. What a difference a word makes ...
Thanks for your help, James
Nina
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