On the Pier, 1939
Posted: 22 July 2012
Word Count: 142
Summary: Another of my autobiographical poems, intended mainly for friends and family.
I'm not happy with the last two lines. Any suggestions?
Related Works: Devouring the family`s bread., 1946. •
|
Font Size
|
|
Sunburn always makes my mum look angry.
My cousins have run on to the end of the pier
where beery laughter bursts out of the show.
Between the wooden slats, heaving dark water
menaces far below. "Well don't look down"
she tells me, big-bellied and weary.
Smell of burnt sugar : puffs of pink heaven dissolve
in candy-floss let-down. Hard ice melts on my tongue,
twinges my loose tooth. Chips are not good for me.
In the slot my pennies, big and sticky,
start the laughing policeman rocking wildly.
I keep on watching, though he frightens me.
Screams overhead. Down here crabs are scrabbling
to escape the anglers' buckets. Gulls dive-bomb
the bobbing floats. No one catches anything.
Penny-sized circles splat the dusty slabs.
Black clouds flash, make us run for the bus.
Time to go, it's well past time to go.
|
Comments by other Members
| |
 Midnight_Sun at 13:55 on 23 July 2012
 Report this post
|
Hi Una,
for me the best lines are stanzas four and five:
In the slot my pennies, big and sticky,
start the laughing policeman rocking wildly.
I keep on watching, though he frightens me.
Screams overhead. Down here crabs are scrabbling
to escape the anglers' buckets. Gulls dive-bomb
the bobbing floats. No one catches anything. |
|
Although I feel the syntax isn't quite right in the line: 'In the slot my pennies ...' what about 'My slotted pennies, big and sticky,'? However, it is one beat less than in your original line and affects the rhythm a little.
The imagery in these two stanzas are very striking, and the 'screams overhead ...' and the dive-bombing gulls seem to be a metaphor for the air raids yet to come.
I am not sure how you could re-write the last two lines of the last stanza as this is autobiographical but here's my suggestion anyway:
Time to go, it's well past time to go.
Maybe when the baby's older, this war
is over, we'll all come here again.
I only suggest it since you are writing about when you were a child, hence the childish optimism.
I hope this has been of some help Una.
I enjoyed reading this piece of your personal history, so thank you for sharing it.
Kind regards,
Patricia
| |
 FelixBenson at 16:08 on 23 July 2012
Report this post
|
Hi Una
There's definitely something ominous about the seaside - something of the enforced 'fun' of a day out. It can be an aggressive place. I've always thought of it that way and wrote a poem once about the weird icons of the British seaside in the 1970s once. So I enjoyed this, if that's the right word. Perhaps 'admired' is better, because it's the combination of place and time that makes it so powerful. The supposedly 'carefree' seaside blends well with the gathering anxiety felt by the reader via the voice of the poem. The sea -heaving waves, the exhausted sunburnt mother, the candy floss that is disappointing - melting to nothingness, and that sinister enforced laughter of the policeman in the Arcade. It all creates a very vivid and atmospheric picture of the building tension that must have been so palpable at hat time. I've just finished reading the novel Hangover Square, which is set at the same time, so I felt especially attuned to the setting. I think this is a near perfect poem, how the details build in layers, the way the world which should be familiar, seems dark and full of foreboding. I really enjoyed this. Thanks for posting it.
Kirsty
<Added>
Ah I have just read your comment about the last two lines, and Patricia's suggestion.
I understood from the earlier lines that the mother was pregnant, and the title makes it clear that war is coming. So maybe you can leave out those specific references, and just say nothing would be the same again ?
| |
 James Graham at 11:38 on 25 July 2012
Report this post
|
Hello Una - When you posted ‘Devouring the Family’s Bread’ I thought a poem about a wartime moment would be interesting too. Well, here it is, and it’s a powerful one. Patricia and Kirsty have summed it up very well. There’s tension and foreboding in every stanza, gradually increasing until we arrive at the dive-bombing gulls.
A very subtle touch is the laughter from the pier show, which is echoed by the laughing policeman. His laughter is more menacing, and is part of the build-up of menace; but on a second reading the ‘beery laughter’ seems to take on some of the policeman’s menace.
Just a thought: if the coming war is mentioned at the end, the date might not be necessary in the title. It’s this effect of second and subsequent readings I’m talking about. If the title is ‘On the Pier’ the poem would be read at first as a childhood memory of the seaside in normal circumstances. Readers would certainly pick up the anxiety that runs through it. Then at the end they would discover the real reason for this, and re-read the poem in a different way. However, it is just a notion, just an alternative way the poem might work - there’s absolutely no need to make that change.
I do take your point about the last two lines. It’s mainly that ‘Nothing will ever be the same again’ is too commonplace and you need a way of saying something similar in a more striking way. The child’s awareness that the life she has been living for such a short time is going to change in some unknown but fearful way is the key thing to express; it’s the meaning of that day at the seaside, and it’s the idea that should end the poem. I’ll give this more thought and get back to you. A very fine poem.
James.
<Added>
The alternative to leaving the date out of the title would be to leave it in and end the poem with a single line - 'Time to go, it's well past time to go'. It would be asking a little more of the reader, but everything's there, in the date and in Mum being 'big-bellied and weary', for the reader to complete the picture. You would leave the child's fear of coming changes unsaid, but the reader could supply it.
But I'll still think about how a final three-line stanza could be composed.
|
|
| |
James Graham at 09:42 on 26 July 2012
Report this post
|
Una, I’m sorry you’re getting this in dribs and drabs, but a new notion keeps popping into my head. It struck me all of a sudden that
| Time to go, it's well past time to go |
|
makes a very good last line - not by itself as I suggested before, but as the end of a three-line stanza. Beyond its literal meaning it suggests it’s time to leave one kind of childhood experience behind and face another, altered experience.
Preceding this line, there could be two lines expressing the child’s fears, in a not too obvious, rather nuanced way. She wonders, will I have a new sister or brother? Will Mummy only half love me now? Perhaps she vaguely imagines soldiers coming to their street; as a child, I remember seeing images of German soldiers and worrying that they would come and kill us. These are just thoughts that might possibly help you find two good lines.
James.
|
|
| |
 plurabelle at 20:48 on 26 July 2012
Report this post
|
Many thanks for your thoughtful responses and suggestions, Patricia, James G. and Kirsty. I'm working on the last stanza in the light of these, but not rushing it. (I don't do well in hot weather !) This poem means a lot to me and I want to get the ending as right as I can.
I have been thinking of something like "clouds come over, sun goes down", but perhaps this would be too obviously symbolic ? All the other details are real vivid memories, though they may not all belong to the same specific occasion. The whole pre-war summer is a memory of tension and anxiety mixed with warmth and liveliness -
I'm beginning to think I ought to attempt a short story about this... but perhaps not,
I can let the poem do the job.
Una.
| |
Midnight_Sun at 08:53 on 27 July 2012
Report this post
|
Hi Una,
a short story would be great!
I'd love to hear more about your childhood memories of pre-war, during and after as I find the subject very interesting.
No pressure or anything 
Patricia
| |
James Graham at 15:08 on 27 July 2012
Report this post
|
This may be one notion too many, and if so please ignore it. But I’ve been thinking about your poem almost as if it was my own! I’m still thinking in terms of three lines ending with ‘Time to go, it's well past time to go’. Do you recall any notions you had as a child of what war meant, or what it was like? When someone said, ‘There’s going to be a war’, what went through your head?
I was born a little later than you, in 1939, so I don’t remember pre-war at all. But I do recall childish ideas and images that were triggered by talk of war. I was spooked by cartoon caricatures of Hitler and thought of him (quite naturally) as a bogey-man. There were images of German soldiers in comics (well, boys’ comics) and I imagined them coming through the nearby woods, maybe to get me or my Mummy and Daddy. It seemed very strange to me that soldiers of any sort all wore the same clothes. (Still does.) I had dreams in which I was playing outside and a small plane flew overhead; I tried to run away but that dream-thing happened in which you try to run but can’t.
I’m just thinking in terms of two lines expressing, in a simple way, some image, some fragment of a child’s perception of war. They would appear in the poem as thoughts that passed through your mind just after seeing the dive-bombing gulls.
The alternative would be two quite simple lines expressing thoughts, anxieties, about the coming baby. Anxiety about the war would be submerged, but would still be present.
I hope this helps, but never mind if it doesn’t. You may come up with something better.
James.
|
|
| |
plurabelle at 01:17 on 30 July 2012
Report this post
|
Thank you, Patricia and James G., for your interest in my pre-war memories as well as my poem. I am trying to put together a little booklet, mainly for my grandchildren, (who don't show that much interest in the history, though they quite like some of the poems). My limitations are health, energy and technology - this is the third time I've typed this comment - I don't know what I'm doing wrong.
Patricia, I've looked at your profile and remember enjoying your story in the Short Story group about the boy, his grandfather, and his father lost in the War. Next time I'm visited by one of my whizz kids, I could try and send you what I have got so far, if you would like that, and if that is allowed by the group rules?
James, I have changed the last lines of the poem - hope it's improved though not perfect. I may yet chop off the last line, following one of your ideas - the 'time to go' line is stronger, and perhaps the ' nothing will be the same' idea doesn't need to be so explicit? (Though I am rather attached to it...)
Una.
| |
|
|
James Graham at 19:05 on 31 July 2012
Report this post
|
There's a lot to be said for this ending.
Penny-sized circles splat the dusty slabs.
Black clouds flash, make us run for the bus.
Time to go, it's well past time to go -
and nothing now will ever be the same. |
|
Rain comes and spoils the rest of the day, as it might at any normal time, but '1939' keeps echoing in the reader's head. The rain, and especially the lightning, become symbolic of the troubled times ahead.
There's a neat link, like a coloured thread, between 'pennies in the slot' and 'penny-sized circles'. The unnerving laugh of the laughing policeman is heard again.
What happens if you leave out the line 'and nothing now will ever be the same' is that you put more responsibility on the reader to supply that thought. For me it's implicit in the whole poem, and guided by '1939' in the title I imagine most readers would have that thought in some form: there will be big changes, the life this little girl has been used to will be eclipsed by something she doesn't yet fully understand.
At the same time - sitting on the fence - while this line makes the thought explicit, it doesn't merely state the obvious. I feel it wouldn't harm the poem either to leave it out, or to keep it. It makes the poem either a little more direct, or a little more oblique. But not much either way.
James.
|
|
| |
plurabelle at 20:51 on 31 July 2012
Report this post
|
Thank you so much, James - you have really helped me make up my mind. I will remove the explicit ending, since I've realised what was making me worry about it. It was that, unconsciously, I was recalling T.S.Eliot's repeated line in 'The Waste Land' -
"Hurry up please, it's time..." - which was what made my line sound ominous. This would probably have been plagiaristic, wouldn't it ? and so was possibly making it feel a bit weak.
I've also realised why I was clinging on to the line - it was the poem's origin in the local group I used to go to. The exercise was to visit a childhood memory with a focus on each of the 'five senses', and then to add something suggesting a 'sixth sense'. I intended to bring back a happy seaside scene and was amazed at the anxiety that came through, which is what makes the poem significant to me.
What is happening now, as a result of your, Kirsty's and Patricia's response to this poem, is that I'm getting inspired to write more about this period, possibly in short story form. If I can keep the energy flowing - watch this (Writewords) space...
Una.
| |
James Graham at 11:29 on 01 August 2012
Report this post
|
This is the finished article, Una. A very fine poem, a poem of real quality.
James.
|
|
| |
 V`yonne at 12:57 on 11 August 2012
Report this post
|
|
I think that's wonderful and it really took me back - that detail of the loose tooth is excellent and I think James is right.
|
|
| |
| |
Comments by other Members
