29 is sad and underspoken, the more powerful for that.
Pangolin, I tend to skim over pandemic pomes, but that was no-fluff brilliant.
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29 is sad and underspoken, the more powerful for that.
Pangolin, I tend to skim over pandemic pomes, but that was no-fluff brilliant.
Hey Matt, simply love the 'phone my mother' repetend each S. the switch at the end hits home, clever, maybe novel device in putting the repetend anywhere? Works really well, especially with the clatter of sonics throughout the IP. The ebbing away is real sadness. Thanks for sharing.
Matt,
Always good to catch up with your thread. I’ve been reading as I go along, watching your well-drawn anti-heroes (maybe not anti-heroes, but more ambiguous, flawed, questioning heroes) buck every Superhero trend and expected ideas of how heroes should behave and look with enjoyment. And it's thought-provoking around societal expectations & ideas of what is 'good', 'normal' and 'right'.
Excerpt - I like how this back story creates the idea of the central character as a flawed hero (but less - or equally as flawed than society). They make me question/return to ideas of Pierrot, half clown, half mirror to the sadness of the audience. There’s a sureness and rigour to the writing that means it doesn’t make me feel emotionally manipulated.
The Hermit - another mythical character reinvented for a contemporary storytelling (and in sestina). I think ‘pay-wall forests of his beard’ has to be one of my favourite lines. S’just enough bonkers to be interesting, and makes just enough sense to give an amazing picture of the beard as hiding place/shelter. Reminds me of Edward Lear , and the accompanying sense of sadness.
And his wonderful illustration which is at the end of the text as it's a bit large!
Good to see Bob back, playing a kind of foil to the other two characters. I wonder if Bob is a kind of Janus-like reminder of the human space between social expectation and individual urge for something better. Anyway, I’m now interested in Bob and I want to find out what happens at meditation class. Something tells me this could end up murky. Or in bland disappointment. The whale’s got to be a clue, though.
Backwards along the river - again, this works for me in how it blurs the lines between conventional expectations of ‘nice’ and memory-tracks of space and place. Iambic Pentameter works well, imo, giving the real and mundane an epic, but paced quality. It would be a good poem to hear read aloud, I think. It has a very good ending, and the whole, again, reflects the same complex and ambiguous narrative voice as before - as the story blurs and contrasts past and present, creating a space all of its own that creates a sense of images moving through time - a palimpsest.
Poor Pangolin. Writing this as a kind of song-and-dance routine adds to the pathos (and satire). I see it twitching to strings, like a puppet, wearing a top hat.
My mother on the phone
It’s a good poem - clearly formal but I’m not sure which one, but can read the loop and pattern of it - I think the formal element here works really well not just to share a story which reflects the subject (the focus on the phone calls, the mother and through that the ill father - who is no longer ‘Dad’) but also an increasing trapped in desperation to the situation.
It reads real, too. An effective and moving portrait of dementia, and its effect on a family that’s well-set in the contemporary, and a welcome reminder that, if looked at from a different angle, COVID-19 is not the scariest thing our fragile elderly population might have to face.
Your writing is always strong, and I hope you put some of these together one day and publish. I look forward to finding out which ones you pick for 'The Finish Line' & reading the last one tomorrow.
Sarah
Larry, Anita, Ben, Sarah
Thanks everyone for reading and commenting.
Ben, the repetend kind of just happened when I noticed myself repeating the phrase.
Sarah, thanks for the beard pic! My mother on the phone isn't a traditional form, but is reminiscent of one; maybe I could turn it into a villanelle. I was hoping to get across the impact of lockdown -- hence the singing group now taking place on Skype. There's no respite care, no activities, no visitors. And the powerless that comes when all you can do is phone ...
Day 30 is finally here, and that strange mixture of relief, exhaustion, and wanting to keep writing. Let's see if that last one is still there come Sevens.
moderator
Apocalypse/Creation Myth
It rains. The zombie hordes dissolve, but merge
into a slurried porridge, birthing spores
that hatch a vague intelligence, an urge
to seek out life and worm into its pores.
What humans there are left are easy prey,
worn down by zombie wars, no PPE,
no hope: there’s nothing visible to slay.
The zombie seeds go on a sporing spree.
Victorious, but lonesome, spores begin
to yearn for friendship, closeness, even hugs.
They slime together, puddle with their kin,
then flowering, they blossom into slugs.
Now Earth’s new overlords, they live in drains,
emerge to praise their gods each time it rains.
A few words from our sponsor
![]()
Last edited by GreaterMandalaofUselessness; 04-30-2020 at 08:29 PM.
moderator
Hi Matt!
A fitting, rather Vonnegutian ending poem.
I also enjoyed the cascade of imagery in 'Backwards along the river', in particular that the river is "given back its former kink". This reminds me of starting out on a path beside a canal in the city and following it out as far as time would allow.
I feel I must protest against your characterisation of the pangolin as a "second-rate anteater", and choose to interpret this poem as having been written in the character of an anteater, trying to smear the far cooler pangolin (taking advantage, of course, of the theories flying about at the moment as to the origin of the virus).
'My mother on the phone' is well crafted and affecting - touches on a situation familiar to me.
Great work throughout!
This last is perfect, I’d say you’ve saved the best till last, love it. Cracking work this year Matt it’s been a joy popping in.
Apocalypse - What a idea this poem has sprung: are new life forms trying to evolve, by first wiping us out? Obviously, these spores have no intelligence, but perhaps are part of the cycle of life. Who knows what next organism will take place when humans become extinct.
A Few Words - There it is. The captain of this country's ship. Pelican art was sponsored and killed by Captain Trump. Good ending.
Hi, Matt,
"Backwards along the river" - I’m still back then. Where we came from never leaves us, does it. Whenever I've gone back to visit my home town and the first house I lived in no longer exists except in memories from the black and white snapshots in old photo albums. Lovely journey of both N and place, the nostalgia of seeing both himself and the town in a younger time, and wanting things as they were.
"Mouldy Pangolins" - Some things you just can't unsee once you're read them. (You know to what I'm referring.)
"My mother on the phone" - Another poignant view of dementia and some of its many elements, made all the worse these days because you can't visit, just offer support over the phone, and the entire burden falls on the care-taker, in this case N's mother. So, doubly painful. In my husband's family, it was reversed - his father watched his mother decline. During her last year, my mother-in-law thought I was her cousin on one occasion and my daughter on another, so these lines resonated:
I phone my mother, but my father answers.
He’s baffled by my greeting. I’m not Dad,
he says. I ask him if his wife is there.
No answer. Then my mother's on the phone.
"Apocalypse/Creation Myth" - Not. Zombies. Again.
"A few words from our sponsor" - Which is part of the problem.
You've had a very productive NaPo, always a pleasure. (And Seven's starts in a week. Mwhahahahaha!)
Donna
Moderator
Let the poem do the talking. Then hide behind it.
Get your copy of Try to Have Your Writing Make Sense - The Quintessential PFFA Anthology!
Matt
Mouldy Pangolins ─ is a delight all the way through. Never bowed to Jesus .. I wonder how we can tell when a pangolin is bowing? And I'm entirely won by your last line.
My mother on the phone ─ Ah me. Great sympathy with N.
Apocalypse ─ I can't argue with that. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a silver trail ...
And thanks for the words from your sponsor. It's good to clear these questions up.
And that makes 30 of the best for NaPo 2020. Damn' well played!
Regards / Dunc
Matt, Sometimes is definitely for post NaPo, the half disoriented half awake half what’s important and half what’s not, but really it’s about that bathroom visit, and the universe condenses into a single point of infinite weight. Yes and yes!!! Nicely done, that. I really enjoyed the Chronic Ghazal, and in particular S1, S2, and S5, definitely another keeper for post NaPo. I enjoyed the Average Bobs, seeing life through Bob’s eyes, which is really our own, heh? I think you could definitely run with this, seeing Bob’s reactions to his changing environments. Bob will be the poem that keeps giving!
Cheers,
Matt,
Congratulations, you made it with flying colours, slug, clebratory lettuce juice in your drink and all!
The NaPo hoo-hah over, and various crises too, that set the fluffing back, finally time to read more of your high-class thread with the focus it deserves!
Excerpts makes me want to read or watch One Flew Over again, while admiring your light yet serious hand as it comes over in so much of your poetry, a rare combination of humour and depth.
The Hermit’s Holey H. – so vivid and sad – sounds true.
Average Bob – intriguing story, love the rhymes.
assessing life through beer-foamed glasses That I know something about!
Hope there will be more of Bob (reads on).
Backwards – beautiful description of Everyriver in Everytown, yet specific. The end is thought-provoking and fresh:
The weir is just the same back then as now,
but the one we sit and listen to, this weir,
lies in the past, and I prefer it here.
Pangolins – totally crazy and funny as all-get-out!! Bravo!
I Phone My Mother – I read this earlier and it grew more saddening for N as I went on – the form, where the title is repeated in the first or second half f a line, I have tried to pin down.
Maybe John if he has commented can help! Best wishes to N and the parents. Nothing is frustrating in the same way as problems with elderly parents.
Apocalypse/Creation – of course! The slugs take over!!! I didn’t see that coming.
Hooray for you!
Sorella
Last edited by Sorella; 05-01-2020 at 01:09 PM.
Matt, I've so much enjoyed following you (from too great a distance to keep up, alas!) this month. You've given away the secret of Dunc's mermaid, and many other questions we didn't know were scratching at our heads.
I've never tried a ghazal, but your Chronic one could make me love them. Well, to be honest, your handling of rhyme and rhythms make me love everything you do, and when you add in the fun and the wordplay, like the sonnet's clever knight and rook, and the héron cendré sans cendrier, c'est la chamade.
I haven't yet tried your technique of cut-ups, aside from the necessary for paradelles, but it looks like an interesting experiment, which you handle well.
We share an odd fascination for gastropods, I see. The first endearing, the second alarming, the third rather sweet. I only write about them to exorcise them from nightmares. Will we have to do a slug ditty next year?
And the pangolin again! I'm impressed by his irreverence.
The sense of place and detail in Backwards and Railings leaves images firmly stuck in my head.
My mother on the phone is such a bleak illustration of the spiraling descent of dementia, exacerbated by the stuck-in-time situation we're in.
And at the end, the damn slugs take over the world. And here I thought it would be the cockroaches.
Such a delight to have you here to read.
Hi Matt,
You probably don't remember me from the one Seven Sevens I participated in several years ago, but riffling through some pages in this site for the first time in a while, and having fond memories still of your poems from back then, I took a glance just at the final page of this thread.
"A few words from our sponsor" really made me laugh a lot, so first of all, thanks for that.
I also really enjoyed the second half in particular of "Apocalypse/Creation Myth." Just the right mix of humor and emotions we can probably all identify with right now make your slugs both charming and sympathetic.
Cheers.