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Glorious Turncoat, I Shall Return (Free verse) by Ranger A riverborn reflection
Winter jaded, white on green
Once a laden oak
And now, statuesque as a memory
Seemingly awake,
Mindful of the year's last caterpillar
A copper spark - hue dash
Spinning
Uncertainly settling into his woven urn
Like a zealous acrobat rocking under shade
Needle-wire undead tree let the wind cry,
Giving voice to his skin
To caterpillar:
"Why do you hang here?
Away from the others in their wind-chime chatter
-Do you fear the hollow resonance?
You, butterfly, shall be adored in equal measure after my time
Sustained by sap and leaf
Though I shall be cut down by those who planted me in the spring
When water trickled,
Then I drew from that everlasting well
Now see,
I bring a symbol of violence
Here on this hill in praise of the sun
Still you are silence
Named and broken
What will your wings resemble when you appear from this web?
Your coat will turn
Leaping about, zesty as rays upon silver
The cost of transformation you will not find
-Thirty tears will buy your passage
Nor will you reckon with those who dig my grave;
These gardeners are warriors
Gleaming blades will strike, and they, the marchers
They will seek my crown through the crossing of thorns
For the carpenter I am
For the writer I am
From afar I will be spied
And hear their chant:
'He, a Zeus of nature!
Cast him down to leave his print-
Let him lie in a sealed tome
Let him carry the messages of Man'
On the wind I shall hang like you, caterpillar
Light among zephyr and rain until salvation"
Up the ladder:
Utility Rose
Down the ladder:
a dream
Votes: (green: user, blue: anonymous)
Arithmetic Mean: 7.142857
Posted: May 2, 2006 3:42 PM PDT; Last modified: May 3, 2006 5:57 AM PDTWeighted score: 5.576303 Overall Rank: 2398 Comments:
i will need to come back to re-read and cogitate further before voting. i do like this, and the images of a tree hewn down always is painful to me, even if it is hollow inside.
I keep printing out your last several poems to think about and come back to comment on but not getting around to it. I will come back to this! First impressions: lots to like but could benefit from some pruning and tightening of imagery.
If I'm honest, I've been a little unfair on you all with this piece. It's really a 'context' piece, and was designed so. I wrote it in light of the recent announcements concerning this 'gospel of Judas' - but I wanted to see what people made of it independently of that knowledge. It was meant to be open to interpretation; I wonder how much easier you find it to read knowing where it came from though...
Ranger, this piece is pretty good. The first two verses seemed to go well with me. But with the last verse... I think you aught to give me a bit of explanation. As I told you before, I have strong views against this gospel of Judas... but I'm willing to see your point on this.. so help me out. explain the jist of the third verse in a nut shell. I refrain from voting till then.
An explanation...hmm. First off, while there is a 'purpose' to this, I don't want to claim any attitudes towards the content of this poem. It's up to the reader to decide what I think about the subject matter. As for the poem:
The tree is Jesus. The caterpillar is Judas. The whole thing is a fictional dialogue between Jesus and Judas before the betrayal. According to the new gospel, Judas had visions of betraying Jesus and told him so, to which Jesus answered that he would do so because he loved Jesus. This poem is about the fate of both of them, and the last line of each stanza should (with a little thought) tell you the purpose of the piece. Whether I am pro or contra Judas in the poem is for you to decide. Does that help?
The problem I have with the Gospel of Judas is that it borders on assisted suicide. He might as well have said to Judas "Take this spear and kill me and don't worry about damnation because I must die. Although he might have foreseen and even allowed his own death to happen, I find it hypocritical for Jesus to actually be an instigator of his own death.
You have this knack for raising points which never occurred to me. I swear poemranker isn't half as fun without you! Are you really looking for a god'swife award of condescension?
Thanks. Now if we only can get Zodiac frustrated enough with us to drop some wisdom on our ass we'll be back where we all belong.
In a John Ford movie starring John Wayne called The Quiet Man, John Wayne and Victor McLaglen have one of the greates epic brawls ever shot on film. The fight moves all the way through town and is ingeniously paused at it's climax in front of a pub so that the two men can take a minute to down a mug of ale and then back to fighting they go while the whole town stands around them rooting them on. It's all presented in a very light hearted way and I think it's a perfect example of most of the debates I've had on this site. I'd debate with God'swife any day of the week but I'd also be more than happy to sit down and have a beer with her.
I'd love to see zodiac back. Perhaps I should post some unenlightened quasi-philosophical babble to entice him back. Of course, what I mean by that is that he'll come back to set me right on the matter, not that he enjoys quasi-philosophical babble.
He enjoys babble. It doesn't have to be quasi.
Ranger, your description makes it now more clear. It's more like Jesus' dialogue to silent Judas. The idea and imagery are good, the portrayal of the tree and the caterpillar is fantastic. Your usage of the english language is beautiful. You never fail to amaze me on the various beautiful phrases you adopt or invent, (if that could be said of it.) On the whole I give it an -8-. marks for ...statuesque as a memory, What will your wings resemble when you appear from this web?, Needle-wire undead tree....
The last two lines give it a beautiful finish.
Hey Ranger,
OK, I hope this is the most recent write you wanted my commentary on, more like a critique, which I am more than appeased to do; you are so faithful to my writes. Here are some examples of nit-picks I didn't care for... -I don't care for poetry lacking correct punctuation. Punctuation is a huge confusion-killer to the reader (I know you only left out the periods, but in order to do this, the poem MUST be extremely clear on how it is to be read & theme as well, which is a tactic I have not even attempted yet myself). Fragments, as is the main composition of the first stanza, are fine, but an entire strophe of them can get under my skin a bit... -Overall, hate to say it, I found little grasp of clarity. It seemed to me you sort of ventured off into winter wonderland half way through, never to return. My mere opinion of course. This choppy style simply does not give your reader enough to hold onto, to grasp the in-depth theme of this poem. I saw too many descriptions after descriptions after...you get it, leading to where? -Lastly, I thought it was too long, unparalleling itself from the overall theme. I do get the overall theme & believe these types of poems should punch with "show," no "tell" in a Dickenson sort of way. I think you get very distracted from your base theme. With every line, every word, ask yourself if it is a direct response back to what you are trying to portray to your reader; this is critical in good poetry, & I know you are more than capable of this, no doubt. -Again, lastly, avoid similes. I am contracted w/ a poetry professor out of NY who taught me this valuable "slap on the hand," per say. The usage of similes only distracts the reader from theme, big no-no. Sorry for the novel, but I was truly just trying to be of some kind of help... ~Sunny
Well first off, thank you for the spending the time on this, I know all too well how long these things take. Now let's see what kind of a response I can come up with. Let's start with the punctuation. It's something which I'm working on in poetic writing - I'm actually more of a storywriter outside of poemranker so I find punctuation and grammar in prose easy enough. I don't, however, always appreciate it being used in the same way in poetry and in the past I've preferred to let the line breaks do much of the work. I do see your point though, and will adjust accordingly in future. I'm not sure about the first stanza being fragmentary though...how so? I know it requires the reader to do a bit of interpretation but then again, that's what I aim for in poetry. I'll return to that later though.
Same again with the choppy style. The surface poem is meant to be just a description of Jesus talking to Judas. The 'meaning' (what I'm 'getting at') of the poem is hidden beneath the surface though. Seriously, every line, every word was selected here and although I don't pretend to think that I've got it perfect I do think that I arrived precisely where I meant to arrive. To be honest though, I get the impression that you struggled with the same thing on your last post - you said that a lot of people had misinterpreted it and missed the point entirely. I gave a similar reading to that poem as I did to this one while I was writing it. This poem is about rebirth. To put it simply, it's Jesus telling Judas that in time he, like Jesus will be reborn (i.e. with the discovery of this new gospel). To open up a bit more of the complexity in it, the silence of Judas is based on one of zodiac's poems (Gethsemane (or, Jesus learns what's up with dying)). That, along with continuing the theme of rebirth, is the purpose of the last line of every stanza. 'Lazarus'. He, to me, is one of the most symbolic characters in any text. Umm, where was I? Similes. I am now totally confused about that point, having been told to use them more often by god'swife in response to my glosa of her 'Blueprint'. I guess that's something I'll have to unravel myself with experience. (to be continued in the next box...)
I did wonder whether you'd dislike this poem, knowing that you are a Plath fan and a Shakespeare disliker, as you've said to me before. I'm the opposite; I can't stand Plath (in fairness I have always been horribly biased against her since first reading that awful snowsuit story years ago, but what little else I dared to read since then did nothing to sway my opinion), whereas I love a gripping yarn of olde. Now, there is a purpose to me saying that; namely that I tried to write this with the intention that even someone who wasn't enamoured of religious or oldey-worldey literature could enjoy it, it's clear that I now have some work to do to remedy its shortcomings.
Anyway, I'll stop there. I know this sounds colossally defensive; it's not meant to - my purpose in this is to find out how I can change the style of my writing to become more readable to a wider audience. The way I've wanted my poetry to go recently clearly hasn't worked...time to go back to basics, methinks. Thanks again for taking the time to read and write your thoughts, they can only help me improve.
My apologies for my own unintelligence & lack of foresight. You may not be able to see this, but I gave you an 8; as I read & continue to reread, I realized my first critique was written premature, out of just plain stupidity. Slightly embarrassed, but thought it was quite the brilliant piece,
~Sunny -I hope we continue to critique one another; I find your critiques very insightful & intelligent. I promise to do 'my research' on my next critique :)
I've got to admit that I figured out the concept of the poem by myself. Yay me! I did, however, had the unfair advantage of knowing what the theme was in advance :-) so I guess it doesn't count after all..
Now, the commentary: The entire poem seems to me to portray Judas favorably on all fronts. It's not Jesus who describes Judas as a caterpillar - soon to blossom into a butterfly - it's the narrator. He's referred to as 'Glorious' in the title. He'll be 'adored'. There isn't a single thing to indicate criticism, so that would be my bet. However, two disturbing references: You've got to admit that "undead tree" is creepy if you're relating to Jesus. I mean, okay, he's not dead, but why 'undead'? Bring on the zombie associations... ;-) Another thing that jarred on me is the reference to Zeus. Last time I checked, he was an extremely pagan god. I've got to wonder, why are you bringing him up at all in this religiously-themed piece? I can't imagine it was by accident... you put too much attention into underlying meaning and detail. Nitpick: It ain't a fictional dialogue between Jesus and Judas, as you said. If anything, it's a monologue in which Jesus tries to convince the silent Judas into betraying him. If Judas actually says anything, I can't see it. You get an 8 on this one for beautiful language, as ever. Didn't really identify deeply with the theme, though, as might have been expected :-)
Yep, I thought you'd get this one straight off - very topical really! It doesn't matter that you had an advantage, at least you pay attention to what gets said - always a good thing.
The undead bit is a fairly direct reference to zodiac's poem - the bit where he talks about Lazarus (who is the most symbolic character in this poem, I think) and yes, very unnatural and creepy - but then, so is ressurection. Zeus, well, that bit runs deeper. 'He, a Zeus' was designed to do a lot of phonetic work when played with a bit; the same applies to 'hue dash'. I don't expect them to be directly picked up on as the direct references, but after a few reads I'd hope that the sounds would start to seem...familiar. And Zeus himself links the divine with the natural through a fairly lengthy chain of connotations, but that wasn't the primary use. You're right that Judas says nothing in this, but I was pretty torn as to whether it should be called a monologue (which to me always seemed a little more 'soapbox-y' than this, which could potentially be expanded to include Judas speaking). As for my attitudes toward Judas, well I'll tell you all that later. I don't think either of us have the time for theology these days, maybe after all the academia ;-D As always it's great to hear from you - hope things are going well!
'At least you pay attention'??? That sounded rather rude of me. Sorry, 'give attention' would have been closer to what I meant. Having been zapped by some 16-yr old on one of the MySpace poetry groups for having an attitude problem, I'm a bit paranoid about these things. Although thinking back to the way I spoke to poetandknowit in the early days here, it's a bit ironic how these things go in circles. What's stranger is that I actually miss the guy a bit. Poemranker was much more fun with a bit of controversy...
methinks the Zeus appearance is fairly appropriate. we are talking about Roman times, after all, so maybe a Jupiter reference would be better:
"he, a Jove of nature" or something... not sure if it makes your phonetic work or not... but isn't there another biblical reference to Jove? also of interest, i found this definition of tree: [Archaic.] A gallows. The cross on which Jesus was crucified. was that intended? if so, mega points!
R.E. the Zeus passage; after a few reads (out loud, of course) I'm hoping it'll morph phonetically to resemble 'Iesous. Same applies to 'hue dash' ultimately becoming 'Ioudas.
You outdid me with the tree research; although I wanted to bring up slightly gallows-y imagery with 'undead' but I can't honestly claim to have seen those meanings. Wish I had though... 310 view(s)
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A riverborn reflection,
Winter jaded, white on green,
Once a laden oak,
Now, statuesque as memory,
Seemingly awake, remembering
The year's last caterpillar,
A copper spark - hue dash,
Spinning,
Uncertainly settling into his woven urn,
Like a zealous acrobat rocking under shade.
That spread-leaf (oaks donât have needles) undead tree let the wind cry,
Giving voice to his skin,
To the caterpillar:
"Why do you hang here,
Away from the others in their wind-chime chatter?
Do you fear the hollow resonance?
You, butterfly, shall be adored in equal measure,
Sustained by sap and leaf,
Though I shall be cut down by those who planted me
Many winters ago
When water trickled.
Then I drew from that well of life eternal.
(cliché â change this.)
Now see,
I bring a symbol of violence
Here on this hill in praise of the sun.
Still you are silent,
Named and broken.
What will your wings resemble when you appear from this web?
Your coat will turn,
Leaping about, zesty as rays upon silver.â
âThe cost of transformation you will not find;
Thirty tears will buy your passage.
Nor will you reckon with those who dig my grave;
These gardeners are warriors.
Gleaming blades will strike, and they, the marchers,
They will seek my crown through the crossing of thorns,
For the carpenter I am,
For the writer I am.
From afar, I will be spied
And hear their chant:
'He, a Zeus of nature!
Cast him down to leave his print-
Let him lie in a sealed tome
Let him carry the messages of Man'
On the wind I shall hang like you, caterpillar,
Light among zephyr and rain until salvation."
I like the Biblical image, the transformation of caterpillar as life after death, perhaps. Not sure what the dead oak tree represents â could be the Bible or old tradition now gone.