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Cricket Series
Posted: 12 August 2006
Word Count: 114
Summary: Seminar Exercise - Spy for a day
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The rain delays
my walk to the train station.
I have another half,
bobbing between
rapids in the gutters
and their conversation
about Revelations.
Monty Panesar bowls
against the back wall
before I notice my knees,
on the brass bar-front,
pounding wet-day signals
to my ankles. Later
at the Railway Café
you confess to me,
over a metallic cup of tea,
that you still see our dead Father
out of the corner
of your damaged eye.
I wish I could hallucinate
the smell of embrocation
and sour leather pads
when he dumped his bag
in the hall after a match.
Your pie and gravy reek
to the back of my throat
in unwelcome consolation.
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Comments by other Members
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 Nell at 16:24 on 15 August 2006
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Hi Nina,
Something about the way you've written this pulls me in, takes me there, in spite of some puzzlement regarding the second stanza. That slightly surreal quality contrasts and points up the very concrete images and sensual experiences in the rest of the poem: the feeling of wet knees aginst the brass bar-front; the ...metallic cup of tea... The poster of Monty Panesar is a deft touch.
I especially like the images and enjambment of:
Later
at the Railway Café
you confess to me,
over a metallic cup of tea,
that you still see our dead Father
out of the corner
of your damaged eye. |
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Somehow too the nostalgia of the piece is emphasized by the rain, the feeling of wetness, the reek of pie and gravy and 'unwelcome consolation'. You've put across those recognisable feelings with immediacy and truth. A great response to the exercise.
Nell.
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 Paul Isthmus at 12:48 on 16 August 2006
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It's the senses that come through strongest for me here, the senses that tell of a British railway station and a set of relationships and memories in the rain - the smells and the senses, and how these, in the poem itself, set off memories. It really put me there, and I enjoyed it.
I wonder about this sometimes. Some of my favourite poems are ones that conjur up strong atmospheres of elsewhere inside me, that take me away and re-set me where I am slightly changed, and this is often done through sensual description. There's not much more than this - it's the power of the language coupled with the atmospheres it invokes that seems to be the joy of it.
What does this mean for the understanding of a poem - like Nell, I haven't got a clue about what the second stanza is about really. But I like it. To me it is suggests apocalypse, it's a painterly stroke and it works well with the rest of it, suggesting something whilst at the same time remaining hidden.
So much of what I write and why I write is about painterly strokes - the marriage of the strokes with the whole picture is what I hope to achieve. TS Eliot said that genuine poetry communicates before it is understood. But what I wonder about it is why has it been so important? Why do we love it? Why have poets been such centrally important figures in the past, and what are they now? I personally think the role of the poet these days is much like the role of the monarchy, gestural, confused, nostalgised and often unwelcome.
Paul
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Xenny at 13:31 on 18 August 2006
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Hey Nina
It's funny - I found the first couple of stanzas a little hard to get into, but they still must have created a real impression on me, as the sense of dampness kind of left its aura over the rest of the poem.
I thought the last two stanzas were brilliant. This to me seemed perfect:
I wish I could hallucinate
the smell of embrocation
and sour leather pads
when he dumped his bag
in the hall after a match.
Your pie and gravy reek
to the back of my throat
in unwelcome consolation. |
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Not that I don't like the rest - I was just very struck by this bit.
Xenny
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 joanie at 19:24 on 20 August 2006
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Hi Nina. I like the opening of this very much. I am glad of the title because I immediately get into the spirit of it!
I love the personal feelings and the physical I notice my knees,
on the brass bar-front,
pounding wet-day signals
to my ankles. |
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but more than that, my favourite part of all this is the way it makes me go back and re-read all the time, until I have a perfect picture, but that doesn't happen! My mind is still racing. Excellent!
joanie
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paul53 [for I am he] at 07:32 on 29 August 2006
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I ended up liking this very much. It grew on me, so much so that I cannot now clearly see why I found the first readings slightly impenetrable. I missed the hook to draw me in on the intial passes. Maybe it was the title that threw me; mention any "sport" and my eyes glaze over.
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NinaLara at 07:39 on 29 August 2006
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Thank you everyone for your comments!
This poem has taken off in my mind into something quite different. It is interesting that the opening was so difficult for to get into! It really wasn't meant to be. Just a simple description of being in a pub on a wet day ... but I left out that important bit of infomation. I'll post my transformed vesion when I get a chance to write it!
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