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After The Snow/Diamonds And Rust (Glosa) by Ranger (quatrain taken from 'Diamonds and Rust', by Joan Baez)
Well I'll be damned
Here comes your ghost again
But that's not unusual...it's just that the moon is full
And you happened to call
Is it only two years past?
I'd swear it's been much more
But I remember just one November
And everything after is gone
Lost in the year's last veil, always soft to part
No thorn words struck, no cold door slammed
Like a street scene - scarf and shawl
I sing 'Qui êtes-vous, belle dame?'
Having sworn never again - here I now am
Well I'll be damned
With those last words to a nightingale
Crushed velvet twilight starts to fall
As though somebody cried 'Love blinds its domain'
I shut my eyes to make sure
I caught a glimpse serene, a dream of you, once well known
Who spoke of dark romance, of love arcane
Enchantment, haunting song
Bound and still in awe, enthralled with you to blame
Eyes closed all in vain -
Here comes your ghost again
Storm of emerald. You stare, ever irresistible into me
Then from this deep, grave mattress vein
I rise like an uncertain sun, slow spindle
Thin black silhouette of gallows frame
Yet again in dead, round candle's faint light
The diva wind brings her lament
Blood-chill iron voice to hail
A queen you seem, proud you reign
Where I lay in that spectred aisle's pull
But that's not unusual...it's just that the moon is full
And you haven't visited for a while
I still think you're beautiful
Though I never was
More than mortal mundane
Like a shivered dart fresh from water's skin
Lying sunk in bedspread sprawl
In the company of a broken mirror
I was going to sit here this December in disdain
Just drink, and think of nothing at all
And you happened to call
Up the ladder:
Brother's Egg Book
Down the ladder:
The Way You Could Say Nothing (But still I understood)
Votes: (green: user, blue: anonymous)
Arithmetic Mean: 7.6
Posted: March 23, 2006 7:22 AM PST; Last modified: March 23, 2006 1:22 PM PSTWeighted score: 5.3099275 Overall Rank: 3609 Comments:
Good use of the Glosa. You stick to the spirit of the original quatrain. "thorn words" and "cold door" - great. The last four lines really clinch it.
Your removing Dickens leaves the street scene with scarf and shawl alone to show us the old-time setting. Now we have to wait until "love arcane" and still wonder if the shawl was just a hippie immitation.
Also, Cain was to Abel as she is to you. I thought that Cain's guilt was a good way of showing this. It's still a good poem, but not really an improvement in my opinion.
Hmm, that's interesting - you and ecargo have different views on this. Well then, rather than constantly edit this and infuriate people, here are the two passages as they originally were:
'Like a street scene in a Dickens novel Scarf and shawl - I sing "Qui etes-vous, belle dame?"' and 'Bound and still in awe, enthralled just like the guilt of Cain Eyes closed all in vain'. What are the preferred options? Polling starts now. Thanks for your views, Dovina - as always they're appreciated.
Well, ultimately your gut has to be the judge. I have my own biases and opinions and gaps in knowledge. I might say "what's Dickens doing here?" because, based on whatever Dickens novels I read a million years ago, my idea of Dickens is ragged waifs and bleak scenes of poverty and whatnot. You or someone else might think, well, duh, Dickens, ghosts of future, past, etc., and think it works perfectly well. Ditto for Cain--I think the connection is tenuous at best. You or others might disagree; find connections I don't see.
What I will say is this: if you're putting in extratextual allusions simply to justify a detail--e.g., referencing Dickens as a way to provide context for shawls and scarves--I don't think that's a good enough reason. There are better ways to do it that don't distract and provide more balance or ballast or whatever in the poem. And when you get to the stage where you've figured out how to fix most of what you didn't think worked--that third draft stage or whatever--put it aside and grow some distance. Then go back and see what jars, what people said jarred them, etc., and then have a go at tweaking it. Anyway--Ranger Nightingale. What kind of hitman name is that? http://www.biovox.com/generators/hitman.
Yeah, I get what you mean about the links being a bit too obscure. I might try and write Dickens back into this sometime in the future as when I think of him I always think of London at Christmas. Dovina got the Cain connection spot on, I might have a think about whether I can bring him back too. You're right about getting others to read through it...much as I wanted to make this a 'personal' piece (this 'writing from experience' lark isn't as easy as it sounds...) the response I got was that I had to get rid of the name.
In the murky world of organised crime I would be 'One-Shot', it seems, armed with (of all things) a candlestick. And I have a respectable number of victims too. Is your codename even halfway as cool as mine?
Bloody Benny. Feh. My record's not bad though:
People Iced: Thirteen Car Bombs Planted: Thirteen Favorite Weapon: Bottle Rockets Arms Broken: Twenty One Eyes Gouged: Twenty Nine Tongues Cut Off: Three Biggest Enemy: Angel Dust Actually, my record is kind of lame comparatively. Oh well.
You wanna be a real gangsta, you gotta go here:
http://www.gizoogle.com/ You have the name, now get the lingo and the attitude.
Hey Ranger, its been a while. This is good, I like the fourth stanza the best. I also like the repeated line "well I'll be damned." And I can totally relate to the lines "And you haven't visited for a while/
I still think you're beautiful." I'm sorry I can't pur forth a more meaningful responce, but I am drunk. Big surprise. After this semester I'll be back in full, but right now I have no time for poemranker.com =[ Keep up the good work, man. 332 view(s)
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Lines that could use some work, IMO:
Everything thereafter is gone from recall- [after, maybe, instead of thereafter, and I don't think you need "recall"; everything after is gone? More direct and more encompassing.]
Lines a little "meh":
The ending of a failed love, so soft to part
Wind screams a melody, so terrible
Shrill blood-iron voice to hail [the thuddiness of "blood" and the softness of "iron" work against "shrill", also, what's a "blood-iron voice"?
Oh, heck, easier to just go sequentially--
No thorn words thrown ["thrown" doesn't seem to work with "thorn" though I like the play on sound]
Lose the nightingale. Keats has forever claimed the nightingale, and the rest of us look like asses for imagining that we can use it. (Yes, there was a nightingale in a poeme I recently posted. Yes, that makes me a hypocrite and, likely, an ass.)
Curtain of twilight [cliche]
I like these lines a lot, though I think they need tweaked (as they'd say in PA) a little:
As though somebody cried 'Love blinds its domain'
I shut my eyes to make sure
[of?] A scene, a dream of you, a figure once well known [maybe lose "a figure"?]
Who spoke of gothic romance, love arcane
[I dunno about "gothic" here--it's too obvious, and the term "gothic romance" makes me think of old Mills & Boons type books--the waifish heroine, the tortured, scarred, reclusive hero wrestling with broody ghosts; the crazy wife in the attic, all very _Rebecca_ ("Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter for the way was barred to me. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done. But as I advanced, I was aware that a change had come upon it. Nature had come into her own again, and little by little had encroached upon the drive with long tenacious fingers, on and on while the poor thread that had once been our drive. And finally, there was Manderley - Manderley - secretive and silent. Time could not mar the perfect symmetry of those walls. Moonlight can play odd tricks upon the fancy, and suddenly it seemed to me that light came from the windows. And then a cloud came upon the moon and hovered an instant like a dark hand before a face. The illusion went with it. I looked upon a desolate shell, with no whisper of a past about its staring walls. We can never go back to Manderley again. That much is certain. But sometimes, in my dreams, I do go back to the strange days of my life which began for me in the south of France...)"]
Oops, sorry, I have no concentration skills left.
Enchantment, haunting song
Bound and still in awe, enthralled [again, Cain ref seems off]
Storm of emerald, ever irresistible [?]
From this deep, dark mattress vein
Grave [?]
[Not sure I get this]
uncertain sun, slow spindle [good image]
And you haven't visited for a while, Jenni
I still think you're beautiful [I like this, simple and wistful]
Though I never was
Little more than mortal mundane ["never was little more than"--grammar's off--never was more than or was little more than]
Like a silver streak fresh from water's skin [water's skin I like, silver streak is too familiar though]
Lying sunk in bedspread sprawl [nice]
For the company of a broken mirror [for the? recast this line maybe? ]
I was going to sit here this December in disdain [disdain, rhyme aside, doesn't seem like the right word to me]
Just drink, then think of nothing at all ["and" instead of "then"? I like the ending, by the way]
And you happened to call ["but" instead of "and"?]
Okay, now that I've nitpicked this to death--I really like the loose rhyming throughout and I think that you maintain the mournfulness, the hauntedness, throughout. I really like this, period. Good poem. Terribly long comment.
Errm, where next...ah yes. 'Storm of emerald...' passage. That was meant to get more ethereal (as in 'seeing' the ghost, the memory seeming real). 'Deep dark mattress vein' being the bed appearing shadowed like a grave in the moonlight, followed by the gallows image.
The grammatical points I think you're right about...I tried twisting the language about a bit but in quite a few places it doesn't work.
Time to get the notepad out and write all this down so I can redraft, methinks. Cheers for the suggestions, I need the advice for this one. Somehow I find glosas very tricky to write, particularly from songs (even if the songs are excellent =D)