Re: The Lammas Sun Has Gone //Rik

In rec.arts.poems on Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:22:10 GMT, Rik
<rik@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

*The* *Lammas* *Sun* *Has* *Gone*

Beyond the glassed face, fish
swim through mulm like ghosts

First, thanks for a word that's entirely new to me. I'll never have to
write "fish ***" again. :-)

who haunt cellar barrels

All good so far. Maybe a comma after "barrels", maybe not.

sifting gassed yeast broth;

I read this tongue twister aloud correctly at the fourth attempt, and
wrong again at the fifth. It's certainly a powerful collection of
sounds but there's a limit to how far power should be preferred to
ease of pronunciation, and I'm not sure your really want such a
warlike agglomeration of sounds here anyway.


I'll net you a drink, neck
the skin that sheens from nape
to blade, sift the hairs
weaving your back in whorls -

Could "weaving" be represented by "and weave" (if the narrator is
doing the weaving) or "that weave" (if it's the hairs)?

Either way, I'm not keen on "weaving" so soon after "sifting". Yes,
they're four lines apart, but the start the last lines of two
consecutive strophes, so the effect is noticeable. And participles are
usually not very good anyway.


and after? There is no after.
This face is glassed, the glass
is froth; ghost-white worms
sift mulm, feed fish, swim on.

Well, they don't swim on after they've fed the fish, do they?

Maybe:

sift mulm, swim on, feed fish.

or a replacement for "swim on", since its uninterestingness is oddly
exposed when it's no longer at the end.

I really, really do think that "feed fish" would be better last words,
and in fact I think that "swim on" may spoil the whole effect wherever
it's placed.

Rik Roots
(Draft #1, Sept 07)

First draft? You ***! My latest first draft reads like this:

The evening milk, the sunrise eggs NO SING!!
add adj tetram?
begs legs _tuaregs_???
(google cheese vars - show?) ***!!!!!

"the sunrise eggs no sing" may be the most poetic bit so far, but
really it means "No, try the singular of "eggs" because the rhymes may
be better than the crap you've thought of so far."

Thanks to your excellent example of how to write not only well but
also fluently, these six harmless words may soon be put out of their
misery,

you ***!

:-:

--
PJR :-)
<http://pjr.gotdns.org/verse/16-poems>
.

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