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Thread: Faulted Outlier

  1. #31
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    Just gorgeous. I’ve currently got a metamorphic breakdown brewing I can’t stop collecting pebbles. From a geological perspective, this is basically porn. Can’t wait for more.

  2. #32
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    Love the sounds. Loved the idea of an earth scraped from boots that has a specific place. I like the care taken with the language and how you use specificity.
    Moderator
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  3. #33
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    I like how the poem moves from the big to the small, from flat plains and dams, to high hills, to the soil from boots, which is after all the constituent of all before it. I like how the poem does not romanticize the so-called lower classes but gives them their own particularity, their due.

  4. #34
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    Hey Sarah,

    Nice mixing of the technical and everyday language here. The Welsh-English antagonism very much to the fore, and now we have a class divide too. I imagine the geologist's interest in these "peasant" tales stems from the fact that he can relate to geological features, suggesting miscommunication from the very start of the relationship.

    Keep 'em coming!

    -Matt
    moderator

  5. #35
    Sorella is offline Fun and felicitous PFFA patron
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    Sarah,
    Effortlessly brilliant blending of folklore and technical terms here, seamlessly (more geology, heh). The epigraph is perfect to point us to the social setting. Fun and poignant reading.

    Sorella

  6. #36
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    Thank-you so much, Bench, Barbara Jean, Jee, Matt and Sorella,

    You're all lovely, and I also appreciate so much how you've spent time and thought about specific points. Ben, I'm now hugely tempted to write a erotic lovesong between Fictional Geologist and Fictional Wife. Slightly stymied by the language. But maybe, later on.

    Thank-you twice, Barbara Jean, for earlier comments that I now realise I forgot to credit. They were read and valued - you know your words, and I appreciate you taking the time to read mine.

    Anyway, onwards. I am starting to bore myself with the thread theme now so tomorrow it might be a kitty ditty. Or not. Onwards!

    Sarah

  7. #37
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    The family economy of the rural poor

    Young women’s paid employment and domestic labour were crucial to the family economy of the rural poor (Todd, date needed)

    The Geologist delighted in finding quarries.
    Tears and slices of landscape;
    fine sections of tuffs and lavas,

    The jagged crags of resistant rock.
    The impressive ridge of the Stiperstones.

    Old rocks, like the marbles and schists
    In the drowned fault valley
    of the Dardanelles -
    The Hellespont, swum
    by the lovelorn Leander
    until he drowned. Gallipoli,
    where 130,000 soldiers died.

    The geologist’s wife was left behind,
    displaced in wooded limestone scarps.
    The Silurian district of Ledbury, valleys
    cut in the soft shales, sheltering.

  8. #38
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    I stopped on the first line before continuing, and I am fearful of being overly pedantic, but the Spanish Flu did not arrive until 1918. I'm not sure if the year is important to you (such as wanting the time-frame to be during the Great War), but others are likely to notice this as well.

    By the third line, I thought I was having a stroke, but then I realized it was just Welsh.

    All kidding aside, the language is lovely. I like that you use "walked twenty leagues" instead of giving it in miles or kilometers. It gives the feel of an old tale.

    And at the end, I am getting a geology lesson.

    All in all. A nice dip back into into the geology world.
    --
    Looking at the latest. I am struck by the language again: "tuffs and lavas, / / The jagged crags of resistant rock."

    Love it.

    You mention schist. Pennsylvania, where I live, is noted for its schist. In fact, when used for building, it is just referred to as "Pennsylvania stone". There are local varieties, like Wissahickon Schist, which has a lovely sound as well.

    But then we shift back to the war, which has come up before. There are many stories being intertwined here, not just the story of stone and rock.

    I am curious about the lines starting with "The geologist’s wife was left behind", through to the end.

    Keep going.

    BrianIs AtYou
    I think I think, therefore I might be.

  9. #39
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    Mesmerising. As mentioned, I've been looking at pebbles. When you want to know what one is, suddenly you're finding a totally new, baffling language. I love that you're using it here...

  10. #40
    Featherless Biped is offline Ray to rhyme with bay; not Rae to rhyme with bae
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    Sarah, lovely to meet you here again! I'm glad we get to see more of this story unfolding. Count me as another fan of those dowsing-rod rowan branches. And there's something wonderfully big and ominous about the dark and basic silurian strata, reinforced by Gwendol's big and legendary name.
    You can call me Featherless, Biped, Featherless Biped, variations on the themes of featherlessness and bipedalism... or Ray. I'm going by Ray these days.

  11. #41
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    Sarah, all l's in the third stanza, the fourth stanza all sibilance.

  12. #42
    Dunc is offline but say it is my humour
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    Sarah

    The patterns of her hair ─ Lovely title in context. Gallipoli 1915 is part of Oz lore, of course (my maternal grandpa took a bullet through the thigh there). And yes, the War Office would be well placed to prefer diviners to geologists ─ one of those illuminating details.

    And the diviners got their rods from round your way, the rowans in the Malverns, a bit of Celtic magic. But the geologist's wife would never do that ...

    the peasant class ─ (Ahm, no Spanish flu till 1918.) That's a magnificent story, full of delight, and your fine last two lines to balance the two worlds.

    The family economy ─ So she has to get a job as a domestic, poor girl? Thank you for the stiperstones ─ fascinating.

    Fine reading!

    Regards / Dunc

  13. #43
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    Some Intelligent: Love this for the sonics. My second wife was Welsh (nobody’s perfect - bdrrrrrrrm - Tshhhhhhhh!), so I spent a fair bit of time appreciating the musicality of the language. Were the boots names after Wrekin?

    The Family: great word play in L1 on quarries, assonance and consonance in S2, again, consonance and assonance make the form fit the swimming of S3 until it reaches an abrupt stop at ‘drowned’.

    Keep’em coming.
    Resigned

  14. #44
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    Thank-you loads everyone. I'm looking forward to a happy uninterrupted hour reading this morning, which is at least a possibility since it's the weekend.

    Brian, you're not being pedantic - you're being helpful. Thank-you. I got the date wrong and these things are important. Pennsylvania sounds beautiful. Rock names are glorious, I think. And they're different, perhaps, from the latinate of 'official' bird-names - 'schist' (so the internet tells me) is from Greek. I wonder if this makes a difference as to how geology sits in the pecking order of the natural sciences. Yes, I'm trying to intertwine things - I'm a bit worried that I'm repeating the same inner images/meanings though (over and over I say how words make a different to how we live the world, over and over I share male middle class dominance in scholarships). But I will continue.

    Jee - thank-you! Yay! I intended that one, too. Although I think I need to watch for my being OTT. I read others' poems and the sonics are still there, but so, so subtle. I'm a bit ladling it on, sometimes.

    Ray, thank-you. I loved the 'dark and basic' too. The italicised words are straight from a 'found' book of geology - The Welsh Borderland. My copy is a reprint but the original is from 1938.

    Thanks Dunc (and also appreciate the sense-check about my date-slip). The thing with the family economy is that I wanted, originally, for the geologist's wife (an intelligent member of the peasant class) to find out she had more freedom as a peasant member of the rural poor than as a middle-class housewife. But, sadly, when I researched skimmingly, the truth was not so. She would have been kept within her family as a kind of domestic servant. So I have to change tactic. The servant idea is a good one - thank-you. She might have met the geologist whilst a servant, or something.

    Neil, many thanks (despite your Welsh comment). I take it you're bastard English? I also love that this hints you have a potential list of wives from different cultures. The story of the Wrekin Giant (or one version, which makes out the giant as stupid). I was told it by my Dad, as he pointed to the distant hill, and in his version the giant wasn't stupid, but simply weary.

    Sarah

  15. #45
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    Let’s just say I’ve made relationships, and divorce especially (all foreign), an expensive hobby...

    Part English (part Manx), but if you cut me down the middle you’d find the word bastard written through the middle. As for the Welsh? I make a point of applauding on those rare occasions you beat us at Twickenham or, erm, your place. It’s lovely to see a little principality do well now an again (why are the emojis here so ‘turd emoji’) - several dozen crying with laughter emojis...

    On a side note, Mumbles Head, Port Eynon, Pembrokeshire: where I spent summers as a kid on holidays that I wouldn’t trade for all the tea in Porthcawl. Wales also has the best place name of anywhere in the world; Splot.
    Resigned

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