working draft / as long as this evening lasts
As Long as This Evening Lasts
One James Wright walking
a moonless, smoky, November field
with Ohio River slosh for soundtrack
– skies sagging toward winter –
is better than two Homers,
crossing the Aegean
in a slap of sea to hull,
the war ahead of them,
the words not yet memorized.
4 comments:
lol~~
witty and creative~~~
more please~
BTW~ thanx for visiting...I appreciate the comments you leave on my poems...they (the poems) are pretty much raw ..unedited emotion on the page...and I rarely ever edit anything...so, i know it works for me...but often don't think many people in the room can relate to my ramblings...so it's great to get the feedback~
~beLLe
this is a beaut, sam! "Ohio River slosh for soundtrack" just strokes my creative fur right. purrrrr!
a.
Beautiful language, in its pull toward the elegiac. I love the soundplay in the two contrasting noises water makes here, "slosh/slap," highlighting the contrast between the two poets. Subtle convincing skill.
I'm worried about the valuing of Wright over Homer, though -- or what I take to the the Wright-ish kind of (imagist, deep image) poetry over the Homer-ish sort with its implied ties to war. I'm not sure the comparison is valid. Certainly, if that imagistic strain in modern poetry is traced back to Japan/China (as I believe it should be), then it arises out of a cultural context just as violent as Homer's. The Japanese poetic image is rooted in Samurai death poems (and that "moonless, smoky, November field" insists that I recall Basho's death poem: "As for soul, it wanders the withered field," which also participates in that tradition. The poem invites us to trace Wright's poetics back to Japan.)
Another way of saying this: I wonder if comparing Wright and Homer (and what they stand for) inside an imagistic poem unfairly loads the dice against Homer???
Thanks belle, Arlene, and James for reading. I appreciate your comments.
And James, I have loaded the dice-- by design. And that's a risky move in the war of lyric vs. epic. Basho, as you say, does present an interesting possibility.
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