Hiker, love your metaphor of notes vs. chords. Might agree about the poem (though it strikes me as very similar to "Fern Hill"). I think I need more efficiency in language now than I did as a youngun.
My eye is taken to the geography of the poem. I like the way it is laid out on the paper. Isn't that silly? It is as if I liked you because you were cute - no content involved, just looks.
A few lines can catch the reader unaware: "... I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother Through the parables Of sun light ...".
"...his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine."
Brenda, I think the dead guy is the speaker's childhood--himself as a child--which he sees from the hilltop once the rain and clouds move away from the village below him.
"The weather turned around" seems obfuscating to me, but that's what I get from it. Unless it's a common Welsh expression, it seems to me that D.T. is going for the grand old style at the expense of clarity.
I don't think it's silly to care about line structure and white structure. Consciously or not, we respond to the poem as a whole, and that includes the way it looks on the page. Yes, there is such a geography, in my opinion, though I never know how to talk about it, or even make it conscious. Do these stanzas look like Welsh hills? I doubt it's that literal, but who knows?
On this one, I really like your photos, but the poem does nothing for me. Just wordy, wordy, and no chord.
ReplyDeleteHiker, love your metaphor of notes vs. chords. Might agree about the poem (though it strikes me as very similar to "Fern Hill"). I think I need more efficiency in language now than I did as a youngun.
ReplyDeleteMy eye is taken to the geography of the poem. I like the way it is laid out on the paper. Isn't that silly? It is as if I liked you because you were cute - no content involved, just looks.
ReplyDeleteA few lines can catch the reader unaware: "... I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light ...".
"...his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine."
Is the poem about a dead guy?
Similar, you say? Not to me. Like a perfect wave, I caught this and it took me home:
ReplyDeleteTime held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
Brenda, I think the dead guy is the speaker's childhood--himself as a child--which he sees from the hilltop once the rain and clouds move away from the village below him.
ReplyDelete"The weather turned around" seems obfuscating to me, but that's what I get from it. Unless it's a common Welsh expression, it seems to me that D.T. is going for the grand old style at the expense of clarity.
I don't think it's silly to care about line structure and white structure. Consciously or not, we respond to the poem as a whole, and that includes the way it looks on the page. Yes, there is such a geography, in my opinion, though I never know how to talk about it, or even make it conscious. Do these stanzas look like Welsh hills? I doubt it's that literal, but who knows?