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Monday 10 September 2007

Poems Not To Be Read Aloud: 4 -- by File

Orion
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[Yep, you'll need to click on the pic to read it]

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16 comments:

Zephirine said...

Love this, File. My favourite of this series (so far!)

Anonymous said...

Ooh, no, I don't like this. Too chilling by far. I got shivers just in the first few words. Hardly needed to know the outcome.

But, I guess that's the sign of fine writing.

So in a strange way, thank you File, but I fear this will bring nightmares.

Maybe come back to it tomorrow in sunlight.

offsideintahiti said...

Very dextrous.

Anonymous said...

I went back in daylight to view and read this again.

It still gives me chills, and my little Mousie refuses to look at the screen when this poem is up - though she's quite happy with the other ones.

I think it is nightmare territory. Sorry File, if this seems negative, but then if you write frightening stuff, expect your audience to be scared.

Anonymous said...

I've come back to this several times file, trying to find something intelligent to say about. No luck, so far, although I've liked it more every time.

That particular way of combining words and images is something I've never seen before.

Well, maybe I'll find something more to say next time.

Great stuff!

Anonymous said...

However much I come back to this, it remains scary. Just the words without context are bad. Laid out, like a corpse in a coffin, it is just chilling and spine-tingling, and raises the worst of memories.

Anonymous said...

mimi - look up Orion. It's still scary but in a legendary way...

file said...

thanks guys

Mimitig, stop torturing yourself! Your nightmares are my dreams but you don't have to keep reading it if it upsets you!

Tony, shouldn't be too hard on yourself either, it could well be that there is NOTHING intelligent to say about this, looking forward to reading some more of yours...

Offie, Oh man!

still think the last line needs a bit of 'ruthless cutting'

offsideintahiti said...

Yeah, sorry, I was just trying to be clever there. Hardly ever suits me.

The truth is, I agree with Zeph. I think this is your best so far. Or at least the one I like best. Highly original idea, well executed, sombre and restrained, eerie and airy, and I think it's best if I refrain from any facile puns involving celestial bodies at this stage.

Orion is a big favourite of mine. Probably because it's one of the few I can identify with ease (especially here, where Ursa Major sits upside down near the horizon, very strange) but also because it's such a cool figure. And you've managed to change the way I look at it. At least for a while.

I always pictured him as the hunter. And that's the story I told little Offspring. At one stage, she insisted on going outside every night, before going to bed, to check if the Pleiades were still there. She was genuinely worried that the hunter might have killed them.

You've obviously tapped into something that resonates deeply with us, even though city lights have disconnected us from it lately, and you've done it very well.

I had some pretty good night skies to enjoy when I was living in the Irish countryside, but it's only when I came to Polynesia that I became acutely aware that we have one sun during the day but thirty billions of them at night.

offsideintahiti said...

Oh, and don't touch that last line. You've done a stellar job.

(Couldn't resist long, could I?)

Zephirine said...

I'd always seen Orion as a kind of big solid Herne-the-Hunter type figure (btw is there a French version of Herne?) but now I shall forever see him as a lean dark restless punk killer. So you've changed my way of seeing things Filo, isn't that what poetry's for?

file said...

offie, just meant "oh man" as in French for hand (clever just doesn't suit me either!)

O/Z, it's really rewarding reading these comments, thanks a million, when you write pieces like this you dream of people connecting with them personally and it's the best payment when they do

I might even do another one

Zeph, do you remember that Paterson pote harping on about looking at things without their names? There's so much written about Orion that I wanted to get a fresh perspective for myself, really glad I've managed to get it across a bit, I agree, that attempt is what poetry's for

Anonymous said...

File: my nightmares are not torture, and no need to worry. I have chosen to engage in some writing, not least your own, here, that is challenging and rewarding.

Although it might sound strange coming from one who won't see 40 again, but this summer of exchanging creative work and the comments on same have been a huge growing-up process.

I thank you all.

Anonymous said...

file- I liked it so much that I've re-read the others. Now I love them too. Go on - do another.

Mimi - 40? I think I remember that. You're right. I don't think I'd even finished anything before posting here. Who'd have thought that Ebren's cheekiness on GU would lead to this?

offsideintahiti said...

Filou,

I've re-read it again once more (I've stopped counting), and although it's very different, I think it would sit nicely alongside your piece on sea areas.

"Oh ma(i)n" was awful, I didn't even get it.

file said...

Tony, great, I will!

Offie, genius idea, the affinity between the sea and celestial bodies which I'm sure is only too clear on a dot in the ocean