The Poets' Graves Workshop

Hi Jackie - kind of joyful, almost meaningless. The unpronounceable in pursuit of the unplayable? - though this is eminently pronounceable. You are currently my favourite poet on the board - rhythm, melody, cut and come again play of meaning. Actually didn't you post another Scrabble poem about a ye...

If I could change L12 I would - the plural seems odd and the rhythm off.
Best,
Jules

Good one ray.
Liked the scarecrow's crack.
hugs/clocks great . . . sets up an expectation, delivered only with elderly/bewilderedly . . . more?

Jules

Very elegant and grim Not. The revision nails it, apart from the last line which backs off, seems to muddy the growing certainty the N is just waiting to try again. Simply cut it and then 'go home' acquires sinister weight. I thought 'know-it-not' was right for how the N sees it (impelled certainty ...

Tristan and mac, thanks for the read. Explaining a poem is I suppose an admission of failure so I'll hold back a bit. It's not intertextual, though it's true I've been reading Whitman. I like his tabula rasa approach to poetry. I think there's another famous American poem, much loved by self-help pu...

Hi Not, I'm still not sure of your intention, what it is 'they' don't hear. For me Heaney's poem seems to include the voice of the unsung. That phrase 'the music of what happens' apparently comes from a medieval text, one of the Fionn mac Cumhaill stories, so it need not lead directly to his poem. J...

Hi ton, I aggree the revision is bringing this to life, but it's not quite there. The rhyme scheme in S1 helps (I think we need its echo in S2). The only bit I'd question in S1 is 'for good' - the phrase doesn't quite work there.. A possible L4 - 'for ever? The dark that haunts our dreams.' There is...

I'm shit, I'm shit, I'm Captain of the Shit. Am I not a glorious man? I'm shit, I'm shit, I'm Captain of the Shit. Am I not a glorious man? Curious, these humans clenched and curled inside their little shells, barely even permitting to breathe such glorious selves. And still I'm shit. Am I or am I n...

That certainly complicates matters.
But not as pointlessly as I was expecting!
A new Heaney (for me) - the advantages of ignorance
Thank you
J

Removing the 'if' from L1 makes it stronger, less speculative. Adding the footsore and thirsty line introduces an element of pathos which for me diminishes the mystery and potential of this - 'what didn't happen' carries an ominous weight, a sense of some great disaster that might (easily?) have bee...

Hi k-j - Cheering on each muscular turn until 'it wasn't quietude you cured with,' - The reader is pulled up short and from this awkward construction on it becomes a grammatical wrestling match . . . I'm still not sure about the ordering of L19-21 but if my interp is correct I can see you don't want...

Hi Not - the O&P, traditional stalking horse of the prosodic universe (nation's favourite!), both tempting and resilient, but you've found a useful 'in' here - the power of the piece spiralling out of the pig's constrained fury and his obsessively fingered nose-ring holes. It's also effective to lim...

The latest revision has resolved a number of problems. Returning to this reminds me how much I like the opening four lines. The one word tweak on the end line makes a big difference, gives it a much safer landing. I also like all the changes in S2, though I'd be tempted to substitute 'put an end to ...

Thanks Not, Poet and JJ - A little something or a little nothing? The music and unreeling clichés are what drives this so it is difficult to unpick/revise. I think of it as being about the callow delusions of youth, quite probably echoed in the callow delusions of old age (another hat!). The one spa...

Very good - now that you've explained it. The relentless hammer-to-the-head end rhymes fitting the path she was on. It feels like a tribute of sorts. Should we have her name? - 'The Life of ...'? Something about the way you've phrased the Garbo bit makes it sound as if that was a separate episode wi...

Hi Stuart - this one has steadily grown on me - it blooms quietly and is well made, just like its subject. Mind/body technologies are very impervious to explanation, but you have found an interesting angle here, a way of injecting mischievous life without disrespecting the tradition. Though without ...

Thanks for the feedback Poet and Perry. This wasn't intentionally obscure, so it's useful to know it doesn't make much sense to you. The music or 'play' is more than half of it, so I'm pleased you responded to that Perry. A 'playworker' is an assistant/organiser at a summer camp or youth club. It's ...

Thanks for returning Not, 'the horned hemispheres' - the horns, strictly speaking, are the Alaskan Peninsula (which fades into the Aleutians). Vector maps do tend to over-simplify deeply inletted fragmented headlands, but the averaged out shape of Alaska there is essentially a quarter circle. I thin...

Hi Ray - I like it. It has this tragi-comic feel to the pacing and structure - a long set-up and everything revolving around this phrase 'I don't want to start her off'. 'Genetics'? - that seems like a red herring. I don't get the relevance, unless it's saying it's irrelevant. I think I'd leave it a...

Hi Eira - for me the most real part is the lost stanza. It's right in the present and carries with it some of the breathless trauma of the computer session - and then the memories bloom outwards, half consoling, half haunting. So I'd consider beginning with that. And maybe 'there' instead of 'caught...

Hi Steve - deadpan at its best. Brilliant start.
I'm inclined to agree with Ray's edits.
If you are wedded to 'Tomorrow's' return you could drop China and make S3 :

A curtain drawn,
a fire lit.
Tomorrow came;
ashes in an urn,
delivered by DHL.

Jules

Are you a pop star? A boy or a girl? Bit of a prat And this, now Yeah, if you wanna get a head And that, this (do I mean bliss?)

Thanks mac, Poet and Not - did everyone realise the inkblot image is the Americas mirrored horizontally and vertically? mac - yes, a better flow with 'a gent in' If I ever get to make a complete series of these I might call it 'Pages from my Inkblot Atlas' There's a definite parallel between the vis...

Thank you JJ, Miles and mac - a word/image revision posted (with added landlockeds) JJ - delighted with your comment. This is light verse, a form of nonsense poetry, but I seem to be hooked on it. mac - thanks for your suggestion, duly taken on board. This being a circumnavigation, name-checking eac...

Hi mac - great poem and some interesting revisions. The marriage of bric-a-brac and cul-de-sac is gorgeous but in the end I think it draws too much of the spotlight - and it still doesn't sit right (ironing it too Dada/comic, living in it too gratuitous, telling us what we already know). … I think t...