Details of life

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.

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.

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 :-)

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