We were sitting round listening to the proper way to give the details of your life easy you would think but no there is more to it than you think or at least I think to not using coloured paper or different coloured inks then you got your call it is a call you have been waiting for hoping for you go outside in the corridor it is time for me to go and you finish the call as I pass you and I see you tremble with despair stopping the tears the anguish is screaming to come out don't give up I say seems flippant when you stand there a wreck keep trying you head on back into the room to hear more on the instruction of the details of your life or should that be the destruction the destruction of a man who just wants to work in a field they were trained in.
Comments
scratch | December 14, 2011 - 19:10
Louise178, There are sections of this that I have enjoyed reading.
I guess that the decisions you have taken regarding the absence of punctuation or poetic structure is intentional? I am not convinced that it works, I think that it has strayed just too far from poetic convention. I was distracted from the sentiment and poetry because of it – sorry but it’s just a step too far for my level of aesthetic appreciation – which I acknowledge might be my limitation and not yours.
Please remember that this is only by subjective and personal opinion.
Louise178 | December 14, 2011 - 19:31
I am sorry that it wasn't your cup of tea :)
Florian | December 14, 2011 - 20:36
Very poignant. A little like a puzzle on the first run through but on the second the portrait of anguish and impotence is very powerful indeed.
Louise178 | December 15, 2011 - 17:25
Thank you for your your comments Florian.
fatboy74 | December 16, 2011 - 00:21
Hi Jacqui, great to see you back on here writing and still not pulling your punches in terms of content/style.
I have to agree with scratch about the form, I think this is a wonderful piece of writing that gets lost a bit for the reader. For me, punctuation is irrelevant with "stream-of-consciousness-pen-to-paper" writing as long as you give the reader some idea of pauses - line breaks or dashes (which I know is sort of punctuation) - nothing wrong with making the reader work for it, but when it's to the detriment of the poetry (especially when it's as good as this) for me it just seems a bit of a waste.
You know your writing is definitely my cup of tea and I hope you don't mind me saying this (especially as you were my first ;-).
Writing that wakes me up and stays as always :-)
Louise178 | December 16, 2011 - 07:42
I know, I know it is difficult because it was a fleeting moment and I saw so much pain, how could I not put it down in a rushed confused form, I don't know !!!! To put gaps and line breaks and punctuation would have just seemed wrong to me, like I was putting the pain in a neat little form.
fatboy74 | December 16, 2011 - 14:37
I'd guessed why you chose to do it in this way for that reason and I suppose it brings up the question of who we are writing for.
Death of a Son
(who died in a mental hospital aged one)
Something has ceased to come along with me.
Something like a person: something very like one.
And there was no nobility in it
Or anything like that.
Something was there like a one year
Old house, dumb as stone. While the near buildings
Sang like birds and laughed
Understanding the pact
They were to have with silence. But he
Neither sang nor laughed. He did not bless silence
Like bread, with words.
He did not forsake silence.
But rather, like a house in mourning
Kept the eye turned in to watch the silence while
The other houses like birds
Sang around him.
And the breathing silence neither
Moved nor was still.
I have seen stones: I have seen brick
But this house was made up of neither bricks nor stone
But a house of flesh and blood
With flesh of stone
And bricks for blood. A house
Of stones and blood in breathing silence with the other
Birds singing crazy on its chimneys.
But this was silence,
This was something else, this was
Hearing and speaking though he was a house drawn
Into silence, this was
Something religious in his silence,
Something shining in his quiet,
This was different this was altogether something else:
Though he never spoke, this
Was something to do with death.
And then slowly the eye stopped looking
Inward. The silence rose and became still.
The look turned to the outer place and stopped,
With the birds still shrilling around him.
And as if he could speak
He turned over on his side with his one year
Red as a wound
He turned over as if he could be sorry for this
And out of his eyes two great tears rolled, like stones,
and he died.
here Jon Silkin puts the pain in a "neat little form" - I'm sure his first drafts were very different; i suspect the last thing he wanted to do is pour over the words he was putting on to paper to mould it into something palatable for an audience. At some level though he made a conscious decision that the use of poetic conventions was the only way he could properly convey the absolute clarity of that loss.
I feel like i'm bludgeoning the point and I don't mean to - I'm just a fan of your writing and want it read by lots of people. You have put this down in its purest form and I understand the reasons Jacqui and would agree if it was to be kept out of the public domain - but you are asking people to make an investment in it and because of that your reasoning (for me) doesn't hold up.
I think you'll probably get offended now (and I wouldn't blame you), but I wouldn't be missing re-runs of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in my Christmas hols to write this comment if I didn't care about your writing.
ATB Simon
Louise178 | December 22, 2011 - 20:39
Dear Simon I am not asking you to make any investment in me at all. Perhaps one day more people may write poetry like mine, perhaps they may not who knows. I write for the love of writing pure and simple. I am certainly not offended if I were to be offended I would not have put it up as I knew I would get some adverse comments. I think this site is brilliant and there is room for diversity.