 Okkervil at 20:15 on 23 June 2003
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I can soooooo identify with this *twitches*
....but seriously folks, it has a sombre feel, but doesn't drag y'down. I like the images the first few lines conjure In my mind (though I'm not tellin' you them 'cos they're probably wrong an' I'll look like a fool). I've been reading too much literature about people going mad. Smart poem!
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bluesky3d at 21:30 on 23 June 2003
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wow!
(Kathleen, you have sent me into deep thought mode with your words!) ... they sound wonderful and powerful!
A :0)
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poemsgalore at 18:37 on 24 June 2003
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Thank you very much, glad it got you both thinking, I think a lot of people will probably relate to the "insanity" bit. Would like to hear what the first few lines say to you Okker, you can't be any more mad than I am.
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Okkervil at 20:36 on 24 June 2003
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*goes red* It just sounded to me like the frustration of conflict- arguing with someone, and throwing out everything you can think of, and they just stare at you, and when you've run out, they just have to mutter one perfectly honed slice of spite that cuts right through you... y'know, feeling yourself slip down a shale mountainside while maintaining eye-contact with the person you hate, the person that pushed you, standing on firm ground. I sorta thought thats what insanity would be.
*thinks* But that's not neccesarily from personal experience...
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bluesky3d at 20:58 on 24 June 2003
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That is a great image James.. but something tells me possibly Kathleen did not have quite that sort of 'insanity' in mind when she wrote this, but I could be wrong?
;o) A
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Okkervil at 21:10 on 24 June 2003
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The way you put insanity in inverted comma's makes me feel stupid. Would anyone care to enlighten me on what I've missed!?:p
Y'know...chosing words for their power an' those words troubling you at night? Erm, it sounds like anger t'me. Dammit, I said I wasn't telling!
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bluesky3d at 21:15 on 24 June 2003
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Isn't that one of the beauties of poetry... the delicate ambiguity?
I wait with anticipation to see whether Kathleen will provide any more clues.
A :o)
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Ioannou at 21:27 on 24 June 2003
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The disbelief in the value of your words, and the precision of 'the opponents' rings true. And the terrible weight of nights, and weekends, when you have nothing to daytoday to distract. It's a hard life well written. Love, Maria.
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poemsgalore at 18:50 on 25 June 2003
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You've sort of got it James, but the worst part is lying awake at night going over and over again in your mind what was said, and how you could have replied in a way that put the other person down and shut them up. And Maria is right too, feeling that you have nothing valuable to say and the other person is belittling you all the time - I know what I mean, but the poem says it better than I can.
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Ellenna at 07:25 on 26 June 2003
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Kathleen I can so identify with the feelings that have created this wonderful piece and you have expressed it all so perfectly....
Ellenna :)
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 James Graham at 12:33 on 01 July 2003
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Kathleen, this poem has got a real life of its own - it not only allows but invites the reader to make discoveries in it. Here's what I think I can see in it. The 'you' whose language is powerful (but terse) is referred to in plain words, without imagery - and briefly, in only two lines. The 'I', the voice of the poem, has all the rest, and all the vivid and poetic language. It's a rich irony that the one whose 'words drop/as dead as petals' is the one who is given that very image and the even stronger and very striking image of the kite in a hurricane. The kind of words so well-chosen by the 'you' are not words that belong to poetic imagination. There's something sinister, for all their brevity and plainness, in the two lines about 'you', and this 'you' manages to haunt the poem - this is someone who has power but no poetry, about whom it's hard to make a poem at all; someone whose presence is destructive and whose words can be weapons.
I can see some finer points in the technique as well. The two images, confetti and petals, in the first two lines complement each other very well - each is 'like' the other metaphorically as well as 'like' the words of the poem's voice. Confetti suggests that the whole poem may be about a bad marriage - but doesn't impose the idea on the poem, just floats it. The kite in a hurricane picks up 'wind-blown' so that we feel that even in the course of the poem the speaker's plight (or realisation of it) has got much worse. And the kite image is very strong and vivid. 'Lion' is good - this is better.
James.
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bluesky3d at 13:19 on 01 July 2003
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Kathleen,
you have mentioned ‘Lion’ in your introduction to this marvellous poem, (implying possibly a comment being the spur to you writing this?… could that be?) ...but therefore may I be permitted to make another comment...
I agree that this is an even 'better' poem than 'Lion', as James Graham says (not to be confused with James Okkervil who made some excellent comments above too).
To me, Lion was as much about breaking away loose into the wild savannah of words and ideas and images, to the freedom to escape rhyme. If you wrote 'Insanity' subsequently to writing 'Lion', perhaps this would seem to be the case?
So that was one of the points, about which I was intrigued… ie the chronology and whether you had just written it?
This poem is the one I have been most moved by, of all your poems I have read to date. It contains many powerful allusions and metaphors within so few lines.
Andrew :o)
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poemsgalore at 18:47 on 01 July 2003
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Well, I don't know what to say. Thanks so much for your comments. Some of them I was aware of, but you have pointed out some aspects of the poem that - although true - were entirely unitentional James. Maybe my subconcious self put those unintentional meanings in there for me.
Sorry to dissapoint you Andrew, but both poems were written a few years ago before I began to concentrate on 'rhyming' poems. I think Lion was written first - yes, I'm sure it was. I'm glad you like it anyway.
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bluesky3d at 19:56 on 01 July 2003
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At certain times in our lives I suppose poems and other forms of expression can come as a result of periods of higher emotional intensity, which when one's life is 'back to normal' we then find our level of creativity also returns to a stable state again.
How can we find that level of emotional intensity without having it as a product of our lives being messed up? I dunno. Let me know if you find the secret?
Andrew :o)
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Ellenna at 01:04 on 02 July 2003
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people who have any artistic bent be it music, words, paint, dance..tend to live on the edge slightly and there is often an inner loneliness , not a negative thing, which allows them to see and feel acutely from observation .... ones life doesnt have to be a complete mess though to tap into anything creative.. but by virtue of heightened sensitivities often lives are complicated..
as for "back to normal" ..not sure what that means really... its possible to sustain creativity on another level I think..dynamism can be sparked from positive sources... in heightened emotional intensity..too...its the fine line i guess.
failing that have a bottle of good wine !...and forget what i have just written :)
Ellie
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Ellenna at 01:10 on 02 July 2003
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...and Kathleen, I think your poems are stunning whichever order they arrived!
Ellie :)
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olebut at 11:50 on 02 July 2003
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I think it is true that emotions influence our writing but equally if one is ( I am sorry but cant think of a better expression) in touch with your emotions then you can for most of the time find the emotion to write.
I find that I get the so called writers block when I let mundane things fill my mind which stiffles the emotional creativity.
this I think is different from bluesky's suggestion.
You have to be an emotionally aware person to write, it is recognising those emotions and allowing them to surface and be involved in your writing experience that is I think the trick.
I also believe that excercises to stimulate the emotions are a valuable aid to wrting they may be group things or individual activities such as watching the sea walking through a wood or a busy part of town, and when the trigger is set off you need to be aware enough to recognise that trigger be it a phrase or an image or an ativity.
......
Kathleen that may have distracted form your poem sorry
I see your words as a precis of life
thank you for sharing them
take care
David
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poemsgalore at 18:50 on 02 July 2003
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First of all - what's normal? Anyway, seeing as I write my best stuff (in my opinion anyway) when I'm in a bad mood, what does that say about my emotions. Fortunately (or unfortunately for my writing) I'm not often in a bad mood. Thanks for all the lovely things you have said, and Ellenna you are very sweet.
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James Graham at 19:45 on 05 July 2003
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On 'unintentional meanings' - that's exactly how good poetry works! Well, that's my theory. A good poem is a starting point. When the poet has finished with it, its readers carry on creating it. More readers should get the chance to work on this one.
James.
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Dark One at 22:23 on 19 July 2003
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This a brilliant short piece that really captures for me the image of struggling to maintain your reason as you get older. I think the analogy with the kite in a hurricane is a stroke of genius
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