08-15-2016, 11:03 AM
In mild critique, I had to look up [S]teel [R]eserve - in the part of the country where I did my serious drinking, the brand to call for was Grain Belt in the long summer days (with salt shakers on the bar) and akavit in the long winter nights. Not capitalizing the brand is better, though, because it also triggers the stiff-upper-lip meaning of "reserve." Nice.
For "decolored" I want to read "discolored." Not sure why "decolored" instead, but it sounds well. Turned black-and-white instead of turned brown?
"Duplicated" is so much better than "cloned." Yet the last line, though it hooks up with the third stanza via "diabetic," doesn't seem to fit - perhaps because it's plain rather than elusive. We're asked to sympathize with the bereaved brother's violent grief, but then to question whether a pig should have died (or been been vivisected, or whatever) to prevent it? Not a close call.
Looking at it overall, the poem is very fine; the first two stanzas put one in mind of that old RN signal, "All hands to dance and skylark." Then the boom is lowered; consequences. What does the ascending lark's trill mean to the lark? Something like "Hoosiers!" perhaps?
Well. A good read. Thanks!
For "decolored" I want to read "discolored." Not sure why "decolored" instead, but it sounds well. Turned black-and-white instead of turned brown?
"Duplicated" is so much better than "cloned." Yet the last line, though it hooks up with the third stanza via "diabetic," doesn't seem to fit - perhaps because it's plain rather than elusive. We're asked to sympathize with the bereaved brother's violent grief, but then to question whether a pig should have died (or been been vivisected, or whatever) to prevent it? Not a close call.
Looking at it overall, the poem is very fine; the first two stanzas put one in mind of that old RN signal, "All hands to dance and skylark." Then the boom is lowered; consequences. What does the ascending lark's trill mean to the lark? Something like "Hoosiers!" perhaps?
Well. A good read. Thanks!
(08-15-2016, 12:18 AM)Brownlie Wrote: We were serious about skylarks.
The prefigured bird morphed into odes
and odes to odes,
was like a highly studied conflagration,
trilling out “the hum.”
Arcane wizardry and dreams
so fascinated us
that we
pored over spells
and soon, as acolytes of erudition,
apostrophized from wan, decolored tomes.
With this in mind,
what of the man at 10 am,
smelling like a barn, imbibing steel reserve,
mourning for his dead-at-fifty diabetic brother,
howling “Hoosiers! Hoosiers! I hate the city! Hoosiers!”
Should we grow livers in a duplicated pig?
Non-practicing atheist