In Normandy

[Conny]

In Normandy


Among these cliffs, the debris of the war:
Huge gun emplacements fated to be churned
into the ocean by the creeping shore,
waiting like sentinels to be returned
back to the earth for good, into pure stone,
until the land has hardened like a scar
and petrified each boot, dog-tag and bone
inside the graves above here: Omaha
Beach, broad and menacing below the sun,
where frantic children chase after a kite,
unknowingly consumed by freedom won
across this killing ground, where, bathed in light,
their shadows lengthen on the gleaming sand
riddled with things they don`t yet understand.

[cyn]

Originally posted by Conny:

Hi, Conny.

I'll start by aligning myself with Harry's (Hi, Harry) closing comment and proceed by disagreeing with the first thing he said: this poem's (ambitious) single-sentence format might work out well. Perhaps what's making this poem a "strong contender" is your, um, talent as a script-writer, but your skill as a cinematographer compromises the viewability of your "scan and pan".

In Normandy

FTR: yes, I'm already expecting "a war movie".

Would you consider dropping the In?

Among these cliffs, the debris of the war:

Even with my American Ear, I had no problem with "DAYbree", but I protest the gratuitous promotion of "OF"; this line is tetrameter, but I'm prepared to hear counter-arguments.

I am, incidentally, reading this as if it were a sonnet, and I'm keeping expectations conventional [viz "IP"]; tell me otherwise.

Huge gun emplacements fated to be churned

I suspect nobody's really gonna demote a sound like "hYOOj" [insert thesis here; see also "pYOOr"]; under the same hypothesis, "tOO", for all that it is such a little word, is the broken glass atop the emPHAsis fence. Metrickiness suggests this line is hedging toward hexameter, but keeping "tOO" small reduces the stress-count to five.

To force a longer commentary terse: the only word that "really works" (as in both "for me" and "hard") in this line [imo] is emplacements; Huge gun sounds [imo] bad; fated is weak; Harry covered churned, et cie; BUT emplacements is a great place to "pull a focus".

into the ocean by the creeping shore,

See, great image, but shaky presentation (the difference between Stedi-Cam and hand-cranked, dig?). And if I don't hit "BY" with (unnatural) emphasis, this line's a tet.

waiting like sentinels to be returned

Anybody else hearing dactyls [waiting like sentinels = "HIGgledy-PIGgledy"]?

You're making me wish I'd seen this place, not only in "my mind's eye", but also in real life: the only word to imply a "human scale" to The Narrator, until now, has been Huge (of which I do not like the sound, anyway); along come these sentinels, and I'm wondering whether the cliffs might not somehow dwarf those emplacements, by visual comparision?

Imagine The Narrator really is Among these cliffs, claiming a broader, more sweeping perspective (like a camera) than any of the humans (dead soldiers and kids) in this story. Maybe you'd consider turning your sentinels (I may be wrong, but I get an implication of "height" as well as "on duty" in that image) into, say, slabs? like tables? altars? [my choice:] crypts?

back to the earth for good, into pure stone,

OK, sorry, returned / back is [imo] terrible; I'm having philosophical problems with good and geophysical trouble with pure; I scan this line ("BACK to the EARTH for GOOD, INto PURE STONE") as hex (see "hYOOj" comment). Nevertheless, as with everything leading me to this stage of the action, there's something likable here, but I think it's the "what you're trying to show me" and not "what you've actually done".

until the land has hardened like a scar

Look, Ma! "IP"!

I love the idea of "imperfect healing", but you've kinda contradicted the idea you just got through expressing in the previous line. I'm foully discontented with the combination of hardened and scar (perhaps merely "toughened" for scar; I think of something like "scab" with hardened).

and petrified each boot, dog-tag and bone

Again, "IP", with an inverted "fourth foot".

Here's where I'd like to spend a dozen pages discussing how punctuation and metrical variations ought to make this single-sentence format work, but it wouldn't [imo] be especially useful (for this poem; as general theory, it might be worth doing, eh?) until The Basics [viz "grammatical constructs of image and action"] have been identified as "what you really want" as well as "saying what you intend".

For example:

inside the graves above here: Omaha

Harry spotted ("the rather confusing construction") what might be a flaw (anyone already familiar with the location of the American Cemetery has an advantage, but even such a one might get dizzy if you swing the camera quite that quickly); I'll hop to the end of the line and pick on your decision to rhyme Omaha with scar (am I in Boston? please reconsider).

As I refuse to demote here, my inclination to read Omaha as a dactyl ("OH-muh-haw") keeps the stress-count to five, but what do you want from life?

Beach, broad and menacing below the sun,

Here, again, I will not demote Beach; could be it feels like "BEE-ch", hence, it's like it's a trochee? I'm scanning this line: trochee [?], trochee, dactyl, iamb, iamb; there may be other, possibly better, ways of describing/discussing "what words sound like", but this is the jargon this culture seems to want me to be able to use at this time; I hope I'm not making a mess of it.

{my insecurities are taking over}

Conny: please forgive my clumsiness; maybe somebody who "really knows" will come along and show us [me] "how it's done".

Meanwhile, Harry took care of menacing ("show-don't-tell"). I'll pick up the kvetch at under the sun:

where frantic children chase after a kite,

The logical antecedent of where is, of course, Omaha / Beach, but you have literally designated where to be the sun, which is just silly (do I want to read anything this closely?).

Although frantic conveys a kind of "high-speed activity", there is (and I'm not just making this up) also an "unpleasant" emotional connotation (maybe you want those kids to be on the sun after all?).

For metre, I scan "IP" with a fourth-foot inversion.

unknowingly consumed by freedom won

I know darn well that it ain't that kite being consumed by anything, and the idea of criticizing English itself, as opposed to what's merely written in it, is becoming more attractive the more I think about it (how far can I get in any direction with any mindset?), but I am also in enough agreement with Harry to say I'd rather be reading something other than unknowingly consumed by. How might "preoccupied with spoils of" grab you? "inheritors of freedoms that were won"?

{hope you don't mind my noodling}

across this killing ground, where, bathed in light,

I can't help it, I'm gonna speculate that killing ground has evolved beyond "a cliché" and might now be in the realm of the compound noun [dining hall; slaughterhouse], not that that makes it any the more "fresh" (were your vista less expansive, you could try "abattoir"...heh, pardon my French).

I've about made up my mind that I know why I'm perfectly content to leave where "unstressed", whereas I got all snooty about a here, just a few lines ago.

Now, how do I explain it?

{I can't, not quite: it's got something to do with sound}

Let me just say, then, that this line scans "IP", straight (somehow).

Resuming with (definitely [imo] a cliché) bathed in light:

their shadows lengthen on the gleaming sand

The paradoxical juxtaposition of light and shadows makes me hiccup. Please, permit those shadows to do something more exciting than (become another cliché) lengthen, preferably on sand that is anything but (a cliché) gleaming. What comes to my (trying-to-be-oh-so-helpful) mind: "their shadows do not penetrate the sand" (which may be dull, but it gets rid of both lengthen and gleaming, and it's only a f'rinstance).

riddled with things they don`t yet understand.

Harry took care of the "confusion"-business, so I'll quirk an eyebrow at your (of all things) keyboarding technique: that stroke you've stuck in don`t [still] is not an apostrophe [see "At The Old Bailey"].

{heh, and now Chris (Hi, Chris) has got his c&c in, but I'm gonna pull a lazy and refuse to edit mine to include references to his, beyond this; see what I'm like, eh?}

A closing thought on structure within this single-sentence format: things get pretty stringy after the second colon [line 8]; perhaps a couple of semi-colons in front of the wheres [lines 10 (after sun in line 9, really) and 12] would be of rhythmic (as well as logical) benefit? If you like that idea, you might also like the sound of pushing that second colon back a bit, in front of here, which might turn out to be a kind of dramatic construct, associating those two wheres even more strongly with the here of Omaha Beach, but I may be hallucinating.

"Be all that you can be", and all that jazz.

Thanks for posting, Conny.

------------------
\\//_    -    cyn

[This message has been edited by cyn (edited 10-06-2002).]

[Harry Rutherford]

cyn has been posting some really good crits in Scansion Mansion. There were several I thought were Picksworthy, but I had to Pick just one, and I went for this. Detailed, insightful, entertaining - what more could anyone ask for?

Harry