Sagot :
Answer:
‘Poems that tell a story’
I have greatly enjoyed reading and thinking about these 12 poems. I am impressed by the range and originality of responses to the idea of inscape; and by the ingenious poetic techniques used to convey movement. The subject matter of some of the poems took me by surprise. Only two of them concern animals; and three of them are about stationary objects.
I came to the exercise with a strong preconception about the 'best' kind of inscape poetry, and was expecting lyric poems focusing closely on visual and acoustic impressions, without any surrounding context or narrative. (I admire the steady, eye-on-the object-animal poetry of Lawrence and Hughes). I was therefore intrigued by the number of poems that tell or suggest a story. It is difficult to handle narrative effectively in 16 lines of verse, but it can be concisely conveyed through snapshot techniques and skilful elision, as these poems show.
Hawk by Diana Adams
Hook-nosed bandit, dazed
red shouldering the ledge.
His imprint still fresh
and oily on my window.
Huge wings strung wide
smack at the glass; a full breast
of feathers impresses in pane.
Glass is deceitful.
Now he watches -
black knives of wings
so still. Moon Drinker
A Real Mouse Eater, I'll take you
dress and undress in feathers, be your
slender hostess, breathe your rodent
breath. Maybe we could grow old
and not betray each other.
This a compelling inscape poem. The hawk's power comes across in terse, mostly monosyllabic phrases, handled with dramatic immediacy: "Huge wings strung wide/ smack at the glass". Note the skillful use of short lines, and the chilling suspense conveyed through enjambment: "Now he watches-/ black knives of wings/ so still". Up till the line "Glass is deceitful" the reader is held by the physical presence of the bird, but thereafter the perspective shifts onto the speaker's state of mind. The poem puzzles with its erotic implications, and the effect is enigmatic, disturbing. I am reminded of the poems of Hughes and Plath. I don't quite like "in pane" (is a pun intended? If so it distracts,), but otherwise this is impressive writing, tightly controlled.
Violin by Sheila Black
You must use the body - its curves,
its hollows, the spring of the sound, which
brings back what is absent, what has
been and is now gone, fading. Cat-gut,
fret, the busy machinery of longing,
which takes its strength from the
presence of absence, the body's darkness,
the wood carved out, thinned and
made to flex. There is a pain at the
source of it - so easily broken, this tree
without a heart, the sap dried to amber
patina. Only in the sound can you
hear it move, the veins in the blood of
the body that is no more. The bow pulled
along the taut strings, a pitch that
is all but unbearable.
A violin does not itself 'move', but is moved by the player, and it also 'moves' those who listen to it. The poem plays implicitly on several connotations of movement - "Only in the sound can you hear it move"- and makes us indirectly aware of the parallel between playing an instrument and making a poem. There is a craftsman-like feel to the language - "Cat-gut,/ fret, the busy machinery of longing" - and a love of the violin as a physical body, with its "curves" and "hollows". The poet has very exactly caught the feel of mellowed wood - "carved out, thinned and made to flex". Some of the line-endings are a little weak: it is stronger to end on distinctive nouns and adjectives such as "curves", "longing" and "amber" than on conjunctions. Otherwise I like everything here, except "the presence of absence", where the violin as a physical object gets lost in abstract nouns. "A poem should not mean/ But be" said Archibald MacLeish; and for the most part 'Violin' follows that prescription exactly.
Fog by Helen Cadbury
Earth-sweat, sea-breath,
hangs about, cold-shouldering street corners,
disconsolate, untouchable,
smothers horizons, pockets whole villages,
sprays dirty thumb-smudge graffiti
on city walls, in ditches,
spits chill onto the woollen scarves of citizens,
who shrink into their coats, avert their gaze
until the cloud-fall sighs and heaves itself away
- a slow unfathomable fade -
to hide in low valleys and the shadows of churches,
waiting to muster when the day's back is turned.
It is difficult to write about the movement of fog without thinking either of the opening of Dickens's Bleak House, or the fog-cat in Eliot's 'The Love-song of J.Alfred Prufrock'. But this simple, 12-line description is remarkably free of those particular influences. It begins with two arresting spondees, "Earth-sweat, sea-breath" - compound nouns, reminiscent of Hopkins. Then it unfolds slowly in a single sentence of free verse, spreading across the page in longer and longer lines, to mimic the engulfing gloom. The verbs are well-chosen to convey the active, versatile movement of the fog - "smothers", "pockets", "sprays", "spits", "heaves". "Cold-shouldering" is clever, and exactly right.