Re: [ZESTPoets] Re: Three poems from a few years back...

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 05:35:57 -0700

 The image is always very clear in my mind, I think because first and foremost I am a painter, an image-maker. As a result most of my poems deal with the visual image rather than the idea, and often enough with just one moment in time. The process of revision is not so much evolution as the cutting away of excessive verbiage, until I have exposed as much of the image as I want. Most of my poems start out longer and end up cropped.
 
The lines you liked were suggested by the image of the corpse-like leaves, which in turn came from the sound of the mourners' feet in the previous stanza. A corpse needs a shroud... Interesting that you should think of Mondrian's Grey Tree. It was at the back of my mind while I made the revisions. I had been to the Tate the previous week to see an exhibition of modern painters, and while that particular painting was not on display some of his others were, including the more sober ones.
 
I am considering a haiku on the last 3 lines simply because that tense image of the sharpened branches lends itself to the terseness of the form. This is one of the pleasures of writing...taking a portion of your work and reshaping it, not as a clone, but an offshoot. The result is sometimes far better than the original.
 
Thanks!
 
jane
 
 
After the first gales, leaves lie across the grass
Like corpses, whispering death in ghostly voices,
And the wind keens through the empty branches,
Sharpening their edges against the bitter sky,
Cutting it into a grey shroud for dead summer.
 

What do you do, that you know about Mondrian?

Abhishek Hazra <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
tears.>
:-)
no, no not at all, Jane! When brother and sister sing
that song together in a dim-lit room in Ghatak's
"Cloud Capped Star" (Meghe Dhaka Tara) can one resist
the tears?

Just curious, Jane. In your writing process, how does
the imagery evolve over versions/revisions?
I really liked the image of the sharpened branch. For
me, those last three lines were really visually
evocative, particularly the action of the branches
‘cutting up the sky’.
I was kind of reminded of Mondrian’s ‘Grey
Tree’...Particularly the manner in which the mass of
broken lines carve up the picture plane in multiple
ways producing arrays of form-counter pairs.
 

Yahoo! Messenger NEW - crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail

--
You are encouraged to post poetry, respond critically to the poems circulated and participate in discussions. To post, email your message to [email protected] OR post online at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/post/

Tell friends to subscribe to ZESTPoets by sending a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED], OR, if they have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/join/



---theZESTcommunity--------------

[1] ZESTCurrent: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCurrent/
[2] ZESTEconomics: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTEconomics/
[3] ZESTGlobal: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTGlobal/
[4] ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/
[5] ZESTPoets: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/
[6] ZESTCaste: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/
[7] ZESTAlternative: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTAlternative/
[8] TalkZEST: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TalkZEST/
---


YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS



Reply via email to