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One True Instant (Free verse) by Dovina Directly in front of me
the one I call husband
Our eyes meet for one true
and necessary instant
Then turning away as a stranger does
back to his lifeâs recesses
Those places I have not been
and will never be invited
The taut lean torso
a silhouette in my doorway
The sure hope of his shoulders
standing inert
Up the ladder:
Distance
Down the ladder:
Mobile Phones
Votes: (green: user, blue: anonymous)
Arithmetic Mean: 7.8
Posted: October 6, 2004 8:05 AM PDT; Last modified: October 6, 2004 8:05 AM PDTWeighted score: 6.4 Overall Rank: 784 Comments:
This hit me, like a Saxophone being put away.
Surely you are not that husband. Thanks.
you got me on this one
Is this a malady among husbands? I thought I was talking about just one. Good to hear you were got anyway.
I did'nt know if he was a stranger or really your husband. I knew
you were only talking about one. thats what got me. you can just call me william and tea will be served at 5:00pm malady (SMILE)
Dovina, why do you write poetry. The only reason I can think of for writing poetry is to communicate something you think valuable. If you have something valuable to say surely it is important that the reader understands it as it was meant. To suggest that people interpreting it wrongly is a good thing is absurd. Hence my comment about confusion. Who would be the author of confusion?
The most important thing a poet can express in my opinion is an uncertainty or an excitement over a coming together of images. In that sense the reader does not need to know what the poem means as such, rather grasp some kind of imaginary order. The Dylan Thomas poem 'the force that through the green fuse lights the flower' for instance communicates a sexual excitement understood through water on rock, quicksand stirring etc. As for the poem I believe zodiac's anger is driven by your lack of care. It is full of cliches - eyes meet, true, hope etc and seems unbothered that lines go by without offering anything ('directly in front of me the one I call husband' makes up a whole verse, it could easily make up one or two words, directly in front being redundant as it is presumed the narrator is paying attention). People make different interpretations of certain poems because the lack of depth allows them to, not because it is a good poem.
Hywel, -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. and anyone interested in thoughts on multi-interpretations,
I read a very short poem once that seemed to come from the same kind of thinking that had gone into some of my writing. I liked it because I felt a kinship with a man known for his heavy drinking and living part of his life as a bum. I was touched that two of us humans so different could come together on this poem of his. ART by Charles Bukowski âAt the spirit wanes, the form appears.â I thought how my own spirit wanes after work, relaxing with a glass of wine and the appearance of forms that find expression in written words. It seemed he had caught the notion that the cares of life and business inhibit the creation of art, the very notion I was feeling. The poem inspired me because it expressed something I had thought, but had never been able to say as succinctly as his brief poem. A year or so later I learned what the poet was thinking. He said that he wrote the poem because as the spirit wanes and becomes like a dead thing, a poet turns to forms such as sonnets, villanelles and the like to cover his lack and give the impression of having something to say. It was a slur on poets becoming erudite. What Bukowski meant and what I interpreted were entirely different. I do not say that this is how all poems should come across, only that itâs a way they can. He had his meaning and I interpreted mine. I still think itâs a good poem. I appreciate all your comments and agree that my poem is lacking in the expression of something that to me was a very significant.
I am extremely disappointed in you, Dovina.
Spoken like my father when he caught me in the cookie jar. It was because he loved cookies and felt them trickling away. No connection, I'm sure.
God you're dull.
He's listening. Go on.
I mean do you really think we're interested in watching you stick your head up her twat? I'd fucking rather be gay, you're right!
Dovina.
A girl she made a virtue of tinyness, scampering while we made breakfast, until one day her devious pa' caught her in the cookie jar.
I like it. -10- especailly "virtue of tininess."
The [White House] aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that realityâjudiciously, as you willâwe'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
- Ron Suskind
I loved the beginning, by the end though? I was like good christ. Women are so fucking co-dependant, blah.
Yea, that's sadly right. We can be tough in business, then come home and whine for attention. When he gives it, we complain it's not sincere and come to poemranker with our whiny missives.
OK, so the last line could be "The sure hope of his shoulders inert." Good poem anyway.
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As far as this poem goes, why did you say the shoulders were "standing", instead of some other, better verb? And why isn't anything here punctuated?
This is just bunk. And if those places and people do exist in any worthwhile manifestation, I promise you they're not talking or caring much about each others' writing, or very much interested in hanging out with the kind of person who goes in for that stuff. They're probably just smoking pots and giving each other really really hard times. Of course, they sometimes point out some glaring mistake in somebody's writing or, I don't know, make a suggestion or something; but there is no "ongoing discussion" or "pure forum for presenting and evaluating ideas" or whatever the hell you think, except among old dim gays trying desperately to act like they imagine "real" critics and poets acting and mostly being bored to death and doomed to neverending obscurity. If you're interested in those places, I'll in all honesty show you where they are. But please believe me, they're the most rarified homogenized orgies of self-glorification and utter boredom ever.
That said, I hope you don't think it doesn't occur to me occasionally to point out some problem I notice here. I get whims sometimes. For example, the "standing" thing seems rather poorly-considered. There are a ton of better verbs which describe what shoulders do; I'm sure you can think of some. Also, that lack of punctuation makes your poem seem kind of amateurish and affected when it might otherwise not. And also, you've got a serious bad habit of constructing sentences in a way that's probably what you imagine being artistic and eloquent (but isn't) instead of worrying about making them grammatical or even particularly intelligible. You might try being aware of it in the future. And before you say anything else, this is real criticism, or as real as it ever gets, sister. So SUCK ON IT!!!!! SUUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKK ONNNNNN ITTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!11!1
Yours truly,
zodiac in Karak
Dim response. PS-your third stanza is very poorly (and superungrammatically) phrased. See if you can find out why.
"GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning."
I was far too old to serve in the trenches of WWI, but the poeme made me feel as if I was ACTUALLY there, and it had been one of MY comrades who had broken wind. Food for thought? Thanks for listening.
By the way, did you see that your old physics teacher was such a dunce he had to sit his GCSE Maths? I hope you never told people you went to a "public school" whilst at college and instead pointed out you went to a fee paying grammar school.