“So, The Wind Blows?”

[billy]

" i found it disjointed."

I imagine you would, and this is primarily a result of the type of poem it is. "Good poems have several layers." Most people would agree that the literal meaning, or what I call the "apparent meaning" is not necessarily what you are suppose to take away from the poem, especially as poems to be metaphorical. I may be literal be talking about a female dog going through her day, as she nips and bits at other dogs, but the moment she is stood up to she shows she is a coward. OK, well and good. Maybe we impose an interpretation on this, and say the dog represents an overbearing female. But say then as the poem moves along we are shown certain things we did at first not know, and as a result we now see the dog as our country, striving to protect us the best she can. Then we begin to see that the pattern of being misunderstood fits in with this historical pattern of the rise and fall of nations, and once again our perception is altered. A little like we she a fairly large woman holding a man by the neck and slamming his head at a car as fast and as brutally as she can. Our initial reaction is to be repulsed, but as we find out certain things, such as the man is a confirmed pedophile and has already shot the woman once, when she would not let him get at her daughter, and as a result of being shot and losing blood she is about to pass out, and wants to render him unconscious or dead before she passes out. Of course things are not generally quite so literal in a poem, but I think you will probably take my meaning, often poems are layered. I began examining this idea is more depth as I was studying the poetry of Blake in the late 70's. Without going into it, two ideas arose. What if I t treated archetypes, not as abstracts, but as characters. The second idea was, well if we have all these layers, let's just do away with with the most superficial. Well the most simple is also the most literal. So the idea was to write a poem, and strip away the most literal meaning, but leave everything to the reader. This poem incorporates both of those ideas. Thus the disjointedness.

Sorry, I'm real tired,

Dale

sorry for not getting back sooner dale;

the disjointed part for me isn't the layering, i just felt some of the metaphors didn't gel that well with each other. i think i said unnoted worked on more than one level, so to did some other parts of the poem but i didn't see an obvious connect or disconnect in some, it somehow felt more random than contrived.

as for the footnote; (i saw you reply to someone else ) that's as i took it and not as an explanation. (apart from clarifying unnoted)

of course i could stretch the meaning of a metaphor or two in order for them to work but in doing so i'd be stretching the truth of what i saw.

all that spouting done and dusted, it's not a bad bloody poem