Hi Julie,
Such a flowing and vivid poem, with a lot of momentum and an impressive
kick at the end. I particularly appreciated the pace and vigour of the
phrases - each line seemed to lead easily and quickly into the next.
This is mostly established by the grammar - effectively it could be read
as one long sentence - but the forward slashes help to punctuate the
poem, slow the reader down just enough to help them pause on each image
or sensation. The couplet form worked for this too - balancing movement
with pauses. I liked "music box music" for its sound, and "we picked
tar from our sandals" (I remember that!), "a bugger to get off" (that's
familiar too), and "when being girl or boy never mattered". That last
phrase is straightforward, but because you just drop it in there without
labouring the point, it resonates through the whole poem really well. A
few little details niggled at me. First, the opening seems to shuttle
between now and then in a slightly disorienting way - "how fast the
summers go / they seemed endless back then" almost sets up an
expectation that we're about to hear about the fast summers. There
might be a tweak that would make that smoother. This is picky, but I
was confused by the ice-cream truck "cool[ing] / palms with lollies" - I
was expecting ice-cream, and would lollies cool? I liked the sense of
the smirking moon, but not sure if that quite matches the sense of being
dared to stay out. Finally, I'm unsure how to visualise, or how to feel
about, "gnat clouds" - is that clouds of gnats or actual clouds? I'm
picking on these details because, well, all poems are about details, but
also because this is such a poem of flow - flashes and rivers of memory
- so a reader might trip on small things. Disturbance is good, don't
get me wrong - and you do that well in this poem - especially the end -
it's just a matter of meticulously finding where the poem wants to surge
and when it wants to be faltering. Another great title!
Cheers,
Andy Jackson
http://amongtheregulars.com/
On Sun, Jan 20, 2019, at 3:50 PM, Maureen Sexton wrote:
Hi Julie
Terrific poem. It took me back to my childhood.
You’ve captured it beautifully.
I particularly loved the lines:
“the goal we tried not to score”
“we tried to look sorry”
“is name cemented”
I am suggesting you remove the second “music” from the second line in
the first stanza.> It might help to be more specific about some things: what
sort of ice-
cream van, what sort of lollies, what sort of weeping flower, etc.> I found
the lines divided by / a bit annoying. I would love to see
this poem divided into actual lines without the /.> I did like the way you
moved from stanza to stanza.
Great poem.
Maureen
*Maureen Sexton*
0435024616
maureensexton@xxxxxxxxxxxx
'The haiku has this rather fantasmagorical property: that we always
suppose we ourselves can write such things easily.' Roland Barthes>
**LIFE IS DRAWING WITHOUT A PENCIL**
On Friday, 18 January 2019, 11:23:47 am AWST, jvbirch <dmarc-
noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:>
Hi everyone
Here’s my first poem (after forcing myself to stop tweaking it!)
Looking forward to reading all yours
Julie
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