Rain patters dust,
fingers run over cracked mud.
A sprig of green in rust,
your heart foretells the flood.
A shoot of vine cracks bone,
tendrils wrap jagged wilderness.
A river from a stone,
Nile in Emptiness.
Please tell me what you think
Sorry, you cannot respond to an archived poemReviews
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I've just read this five times, Brandon...
...and one more time aloud. It's a difficult river to cross, yet somehow I'm immersed in it. There are so many resonances in the poem for me that I won't presume to comment yet. I've taken the liberty to print it and ponder it for a while; I trust you won't mind. I'll be back in a day or so on this.
I'm most often not good at interpreting poems that are as highly crystalized as this one is; yet my first impulse is to feel (the word is deliberate) pure beauty of form and image, and sad sorrow of theme.
I'll be back.
Lad -
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Thanks Lad, don't mind at all.
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Creative
I like it. Mysterious with a touch of adventure. It brings the Nile to life right before my eyes, yet with emotion flowing in place of water. The form is quite nice as well, being this is not a lengthy poem. Great job, this one really made me think.. Rewarded 4
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Hey
Thanks!
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So many thoughts spring from this, Brandon...
...that I'll try to organize them numerically.
1. This is a marvel of concentration, so carefully crafted that it's a pleasure to read. So many poets refuse to revise a first draft that it's a breath of fresh air to know that you've already gone through three. I know the work involved, and it sure is fun, isn't it? I think of Auden's warning to his premature drafts: "Not yet, not yet, my precious." Personally on yours here, my feeling is that it's completed, and it's very fine; the compactness is, no exaggeration, stunning.
2. I like the regularity of the 3-beat lines throughout, with a refreshing break of 4 beats in the 6th line. Knowing how carefully you write, I assume that's deliberate; very appealing.
3. In my opinion, the poem's diction is the result of superb choices: patters - no better word for image and sound. I like the straight and slant rhymes: run, rain, rust; heart, flood; cracked, jagged; sprig, fingers; shoots (visual rhyme with) flood. Now THAT took work, but it doesn't show; it's hidden under fine style.
4. That "your heart" - probably grammatically connected to that "sprig of green" - hints at what I read as the connection of the poet with his poem. As a reader, I can't escape the implication that this poem is a meditation on the poet's self. Even though the distance between the poem and its creator is long - as seems to be your style in your best poems - the connection seeps through with great subtlety.
5. With no "the" to particularize "Nile", and the capitalization of "Emptiness", I sense the poem lifted from literal description to symbol, which I see as the ever-returning life-force (flood, river) into the midst of spells of dry death (dust, bone, stone, Emptiness) - the power of the life-force, in general and in the poet. Hope within the drought of despair.
6. Of course, all that verbage above might be unnecessary if the poem is simply a physical landscaped description of that ancient Egyptian River of Life!! But I don't think it can possibly be so reduced; it has so much human resonance, at least for my reading.
7. As you might have noticed by now, I think the poem is perfection in every poetic and personal way. A gem.
Now, just for fun, Brandon - and this is absolutely in no way a suggestion for revision - here's how I'd write a couple lines to my style, since I like verbalizing nouns and nounalizing verbs - hope you don't mind an exchange of preferences, just for poetic chit-chat:
Rain patters dust,
fingers runnel cracked mud.
A sprig of green in rust, (fantastic line)
your heart foretelling flood.
A shoot of vine cracks bone, (another fine line)
tendrilling jagged wilderness.
A river from a stone,
Nile in Emptiness.
I try not to do those noun-verb flipflops too often, as I did when I first began writing, because they can easily become mannerisms, which celestialpie and Windhover refer to as "Ladisms", and I gladly take as I know they're meant: a compliment. Yet sometimes I wonder if I push them too far; I can't seem to help myself sometimes!
Cheers for a beauty, Brandon.
Lad -
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Thanks Lad
for a very kind critique. Just for shits and giggles I thought I'd send you the first draft just to prove how much revising is an invaluable practice:
Rain on dust patters down
(You are my oasis);
Patters death into mud,
(You are greening rust),
Silver drops winking,
(A shoot of vine cracking bone),
Blinking back lighting,
(A river from a stone),
Hurled by jealous gods,
(My tent pitched against nothingness).
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B, I really get a kick out of poets' earlier drafts...
...and your third is no exception. I see why you revised, because this draft hasn't quite coalesced into a oneness of vision. Yet it has more of the slightly erotic tone which I forgot to comment on in the final one you posted. I mean (and here I might be revealing my twisted mind): "(You are my oasis)" and "A shoot of vine cracking bone"...well... And in this draft: "Hurled by JEALOUS gods / (My tent pitched against nothingness)." - something wicked this way comes in that tent!
But, all in all, I like the fourth draft better; much more mysterious for me, more universal.
One of these (idle) days, I'll show you the drafts of a poem - usually two standard pages jammed with scratched out lines, squeezed in words, arrows like a football playchart, all in all a fine pile of crap. Sometimes I really do wonder how such a stew ends up as a fairly satisfying poem.
Thanks for the read.
Lad
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Wonderful
Brilliant marveloous writing -
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Polly,
Thank you for reading and for your kind response.
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Hey
This poem has many well written lines. The first line is my favorite, a very powerful line.
Nice poetry
Bill
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In the second stanza, do you want to talk about the resurgence of Nile, its coming to life as it is filled with water again? I am trying to gather why do I interpret it that way because it is not very obvious. Perhaps I want to read it that way. In a sense, you leave the poem open to stimulate thoughts, but I am wondering what would it read like if you tightened the ending a bit. Just wondering.
I like the way this poem reads. I took long pauses after every line. The imagery is pretty heavy in this poem and I enjoyed it. The only phrase which was slightly rough was "cracks bone". But again, not too much.
Lastly, I would love to know your own thoughts and interpretation that you were targetting for this poem.
HM. Rewarded 8
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I wasn't speaking of the Nile
per se, but if you get this interpretation out of it, then I think this is as good as any. To tell you the truth, I really don't see all of the things people who read my stuff see. This is a good thing because it means that they're taking ownership of it and getting involved without my poisoning their experience with my interpretation.
If you think about the verb "cracks" you'll see that the rough feeling was intentional.
Thanks for reading. -
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Hey... i just noticed something went wrong with my comment. Its only half of what I had written! The first para of my comment is missing! But you got the message anyways.
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Hi Brandon.
I read this quite a while ago, then had to go away and let it steep a bit. I read your earlier draft that you shared with Lad as well, and I'm torn between the two-- I like the parenthetical conversation of the earlier draft, but I think your current draft is so finely crafted; I marvel at how different the effects are.
I am always concerned with meaning above all-- I am of the opinion that structure follows the meaning. "Form follows function." The first stanza refers to inundation after drought, I assume, since we're going from "cracked mud" to "flood," and famine and inundation are specifically associated with the Nile. The second stanza, I'm less sure. I read lines 5 & 6 to mean vegetation seizing and breaking up the remains of the dead. It's a lovely, strong image, but I am unsure as to how it relates to the rest. Perhaps I am being too literal-- Egypt is the land of the dead, after all, and it continues to build life on top of bones, as we all do.
Egypt and the Nile are also symbols of timelessness and eternity. There is something eternally wild about a river-- no attempts to dam it up or tame it otherwise ever quite stand in the way of flooding-- and they certainly don't help a drought. "A river from a stone" is the crux of the piece-- the idea of life and plenty from something so stoic.
All in all though, not my favorite by you. Coming back and reading it again, it feels like a math problem-- it is deceptively simple, and I know I am missing something. I suspect the solution is something elegant, but I just can't tell what it is.
Lauren
. Rewarded 8
Lad
August 3, 2007