Like Kasey's, this too is a "wet paint" poem (maybe we should call ourselves the WetPaint Poets!?). As I am prone to overwriting, I tried playing around with a more fragmented form to see if I could break that habit. I guess I am wondering, at this early stage, if it simply makes any sense!? Thank you all for making such a safe space for such a new poem!
FUNERAL IN ALEXANDRIA
(working title)
Once they slid you inside the wall white marble marked
with your name and dates the mourners stood
with your name and dates the mourners stood
in a consoling knot
I craved a more private grief
Petals from exhausted roses fell a pink skittering down chapel steps
in a freshening breeze Afternoon threw down both winter
shadows and illumination: whitecaps on dark-grey sea
shadows and illumination: whitecaps on dark-grey sea
pristine skullcap on the Muslim caretaker He
startled me
sidling from behind a mausoleum practiced at preying on distress
with a tap of a dirt-covered finger to his cheek asked
for a bousie a kiss I granted in the spirit of baksheesh
Take good care of my
father-in-law my lips brushed onto
his sun-rough skin the silent words: he is
yours now
All around us a landscape of jagged stones broken crosses
their Christs stolen and sold despite glass shards glinting
atop the high cemetery walls and in the weird light cast
by this gathering Mediterranean tempest a brilliance of loss.
Hi Claire! Yes, your poem makes sense! :)) You got my attention when you said you're prone to 'overwriting' since I feel I might be prone to 'underwriting.' This striking poem is certainly not overwritten. I really appreciate the very definite Mediterranean feel of bright light/deep darkness, each abutting the other in this poem. I'm very taken by the 4th line: Petals from exhausted roses [] *pink skittering* There are two areas of ambiguity which you might take another look at-- He startled me/sidling from behind... since it might be unclear who is doing the sidling. Also: the stanza beginning 'Take good care of my father-in-law...' I would consider moving the phrase "My lips brushed onto his sun-rough skin the silent words" to the beginning of that stanza. (I wonder what the others think.) I love 'their Christs stolen and sold'-- This is a very strong poem!
ReplyDeleteThanks for this poem! I'm captivated by the figure of the caretaker - "preying on distress" so we get that he is not a good guy, but the speaker grants the request anyway, an undeserved gift, in my mind made from the view that maybe throwing out gestures of care into the world, however undeserved, may ease grief a little bit. And the weirdness and desolation of a world in which we have to entrust our beloved humans to the care of a person as lacking as this. The poem also captures the disfiguring power of grief - in the world of grief it is normal to slide people into walls and for afternoons to "throw down" - love the aggressiveness of that verb here - both shadows and brightness.
ReplyDeleteHi Claire, Thanks for sharing this poem! It's very clear and I, too, enjoyed the Mediterranean tone. I also think that the fragmentary form is working really well. It might be interesting to play a bit (I’m not suggesting anything too drastic) with how the poem begins: for example, what if you started with: “white marble marked
ReplyDeletewith your name and dates” and then went on to “the mourners stood in a consoling knot?” I’m not 100% sure about this suggestion, but I found myself wondering if the poem could destabilize the reader’s understanding of the poem just slightly so that the reader feels as though s/he is putting together fragments of a narrative. It might be interesting to see how shifting the ordering of some of the phrases influences the emotional tenor and pacing of the poem. A smaller note: line 11 stuck out to me because it’s the only line that ends with a preposition. That’s neither here nor there, but since it caught my eye I thought I’d mention it! I really enjoyed reading this and look forward to reading more.
(Blogger just ate my comment - Claire, I'm going to try to reconstruct from memory - please tell me if there's anything that doesn't make sense!) I'm so glad to have read this one, and agree with Vasiliki that it completely makes sense. I'm especially struck by how many relationships there are here - in this one relatively short, beautifully compressed poem: between the speaker and caretaker (I also find him fascinating), the speaker and this culture/landscape, the speaker and her dead father-in-law. Much is hinted at - in a really skillful way - and there's also much that's mysterious (which I love) - but not obscure. Since you mentioned a tendency to overwrite (I am prone to the same!) I wanted to offer an exercise my poetry teacher Suzanne Gardinier had us do on a draft poem: she gave us different categories of words (adverbs, etc.) and we had to go through the poem and circle, then eliminate, all the words in that category. I thought it might be interesting to try this with adjectives, in your poem - circle and see how many there are, and if there are any you could live without (or - scary but interesting! - eliminate all of them, and see what the poem is like after). I loved reading this one - thank you for sharing it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this poem, Claire. I too remember posting, but don't see my comment here. I'm in agreement with others' comments--that this lovely poem makes a great deal of sense, and that it might be worth thinking about destabilizing the narrative just a bit and taking out some adjectives. Such changes may help you to create a sense of discovery and surprise. I hope this helps.
ReplyDelete