.
Small bright pink anorak bobs along above the wall
little Asian girl riding on her Dad's shoulders to see snow
Into the park full of shouting boys, the Dad laughing in the snowflakes
falling thick and fast around her big smile
.
Monday 2 February 2009
Moment, February 2nd -- by Zephirine
.
.
Small bright pink anorak bobs along above the wall
little Asian girl riding on her Dad's shoulders to see snow
Into the park full of shouting boys, the Dad laughing in the snowflakes
falling thick and fast around her big smile
.
.
Small bright pink anorak bobs along above the wall
little Asian girl riding on her Dad's shoulders to see snow
Into the park full of shouting boys, the Dad laughing in the snowflakes
falling thick and fast around her big smile
.
31 comments:
Sunny, 28°C, South-easterly breeze.
Refreshing stuff, Zeph.
How very lovely this is. Very like Asian poetry, the compressed image, picture tells the story.
Heaven always blesses poetry (and snow).
enjoy the snow, Zeph. I'm jealous, but then I don't have to deal with the practicalities.
Yes Zeph, really like this pic piece, tempted to say 'been there done that' but I could never phrase it as delicately as this, good job you've got mittens, now you'll just have to join their tails through your sleevsies
File, I've warned the catz, another few weeks of this and they're mittens for real!
Offie: gee, thanks:) Actually it's bright sunshine today, so there.
BTP, thank you. I started to try and make the poem longer and then realised there was no point:)
Munni, very odd here, like an unexpected holiday season. Luckily I don't have to trek out to anywhere, thank Dog for email!
yeah Zeph, comments like that from the big O should definitely be moderated, couldn't you change it to Fog, -31c with storm warnings?
Anyway we're due for a few days of positive temps here (at bloody last) so at least I'll have a chance to send back all that knitted woollen underwear I got from the UK for xmas, knitted thongs I ask you...
screaming squealing cardboard sleds
flying riding hillside sliding
from peak to base red cheeked face
the somalis meet the snow
i live in a very multi cult hood and near a steep
hill in a park,,plenty of cardboard boxes from the local supermarket,,plenty of people who never saw snow before,,
card board boxes go REALLY fast,,its a long steep hill,,the screaming is from adults
snow expected on the southeast
west stays warm, always an injustice.
Guitou.
Zeph,
Liked this one so much I felt like taking it for a spin--hope you won't mind! In a poem this small, every syllable has to do its job, nothing should need saying twice, and at the end of my test drive this was the poem for me:
Small bright pink anorak bobs along above the wall
little Asian girl riding on Dad's shoulders to see snow
laughing in the snowflakes in park full of shouting boys
I sympathise, mon filou, proper lingerie should be hand-woven from coconut fibers. Tell you what, give me your bra size and I'll send you a little something to go with the woolies.
yes 3p, it's tin trays in our hood and the screaming is from the ambulance sirens
sorely in need of a hair shirt M.le O, but a coconut hair bra will do; 122 EEE with conch shell underwires please and thang you
BT, thank you for the suggestion. This is one of those that just got written and not thought about much, and it is a little woolly - especially since I then got worried about the use of 'Dad' on its own, recalling patronising usage by doctors ("and how is Mum?"), or even possibly giving the idea that it was my Dad, so I added 'her' and 'the'.
On the other hand I feel a few things have got lost in your more spare version... the snow was falling hard, which we don't quite get from 'in the snowflakes' (though 'thick and fast' is a cliche which I should have avoided!) ... the little girl was smiling as one might expect, but the father was laughing and it's as much about his enjoyment as hers, in yours the 'laughing' seems to apply only to her. I also wonder about 'in park' which sounds a little odd, maybe in your version I'd suggest:
laughing in the snowflakes, the park full of shouting boys
If it had to be that much shorter, I would lose the shouting boys who were only background noise, but I don't feel any need to limit it to three lines.
And I would like to keep 'into the park' for the sense of movement.
Trying to lose 'thick and fast' is difficult, though, what do snowflakes do that isn't a cliche? :)
So I might improve it like this:
Small bright pink anorak bobs along above the wall
little Asian girl riding on Dad's shoulders to see snow
into the park, boys shouting, the Dad laughing,
snowflakes falling fast around her big smile
I tried 'flakes falling fast' but thought it was too much, though it would be good not to have he repetition of 'snow'.
3potato4 great poem! I really liked the last line, yes, people do react amazingly when they first meet snow. Like the way we all are in the sea, I suppose, jumping about and splashing each other. (Apart from Offie, of course, who rows with grim determination)
...when the ambulances have all left for ER and the surviving human bullets have gone home for hot chocolate and marshmallows, there remain a few hardened souls on and around the ice at the end of our road; for fillete
Figure Skating at 5 y.o.
In the rhythm of sha-shoo
sha-shoo, sha-shoo, sha-woomph
she pushes glides, she pushes glides, she pushes
flies in silence
and crashes on
a single bony buttock
but there are moments of
liberation, ice melting on
the surface of glaciers
her face is a snow field;
pearlescent in the evening
crisp, dappled by incident
refreshed again by morning
in the negative world of night and snow
I search for scents of elegance
it is a seasoning of me as I realize
that this
is a dance of courage
and that perseverance from a distance is
grace; figure skating at 5 y.o.
Hm, lots of 'ings' in that new version now I read it again.
Dog, this potery can be annoying.
Lovely, File.
What a lovely pic, and something I did made it leap to full screen size, and even lovlier. Specially as we have had no snow at all here in the Far North.
Enjoyed the poem too, and very much liked File's. Pearlescent is a beautiful and seldom used word.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKiujDWRBAM
tombe la neige,
thanks Zeff, mims, achieving full ballerina/figure skater status is a painful process, boy do you gals set yourself tough challenges, fillet (by comparison) just wants to be a rocket!
Madame B just drifted past and declared that having considered the matter, she has decided that your original version of your snow poem is superior to BTP's nose-under-the-tent pedantic-revisionist version. "Your version loses some of the happy feeling," quoth she. "Syllables aren't everything!"
As she is the final arbiter of all things critical in this house, it appears the case is now closed.
Tres bien:) I'd still like to find a way of losing 'thick and fast' though! I shall revisit it later.
Zeph,
Well as you appear to be graciously summoning the jury back into the court re. "thick and fast" (and as Madame B is sleeping, thus the mouse will play), I've dug this one back out from under the drifts, slapped on snow-tires and chains, hot-wired it again, and tried this:
Small bright pink anorak bobs along above the wall
Little Asian girl riding Dad's shoulders to see snow
Flakes falling thick and fast now, and so they go
Dad's laughter, her big smile
Into the park full of shouting boys
"Thick and fast", I now see, is integral, not only for the visual density but for (maybe even more important) the sound-echo picking up "pink anorak" (your double interior rhyme, subtle and nice, maybe the key to the poem); and "Flakes" too must stay, as also caught in this same small yet embracing sound-web; and the laughter and smile, as per Madame B's wise contention, are also essential to the total feeling and so losing them would be losing the poem.
But this time I've smuggled in "now, and so they go" to amplify the rhyme (though hopefully not over-amp it?), and tried to pilot the whole thing toward the final surprise of finding the park full of shouting boys: all three kinds of delight and wonder (little girl's curious, Dad's pleased, boys' unrestrained) all thus retained--so that, at the ending, these several responses are shown to be as different in their ways as little girls are from dads and dads and little girls are from shouting boys... yet everybody still coming out equally a winner (and we readers too), in your wondrous common "Moment".
(And by the by, I've taken the liberty of capping the first letters of the lines: to my way of feeling, that tactic emphasizes the lineation; and for me--as this What's a poem and what's not? issue has been occasionally chatted-about around here lately--it's the lineation that is the beginning of the making of a poem, the foundation from which the house of surprises is gradually built: I see a poem as a frame containing a series of stacked units, like the storeys of a house, built on one-by-one as the structure goes up... and up...)
Ignore all this, of course, if it's no help. But I do think that the fact the poem inspires, or anyway seems to invite, such small fits of craft-play, is in any event a good sign. When a poem is both good AND short, I'll always commit it to memory and carry it about with me through coming days and weeks, as a kind of pocket-talisman, to now and again rub and fiddle with (and this one, as I think I've told you elsewhere, helped me occupy some anxious waiting time at the clinic the other day.)
In short then, Zeph, thanks again for the ride!
(And by the way you know, I hope, that these comments are friendly and on the side of the poet and the poem... and I must admit I do think any time a poet on OS confesses to being caught up in a bit of playfully-serious wrestling with his/her poem, it may well better honor the poet's courage, and the poem's quality, to go along and pay a bit of further attention to it and not chatter off too soon to the tropics--or the underwear-- much as we all may wish we could go...but then again I'm always more interested in the formal making of works than in the background coffee-shop chatter--you know me Zeph!, have we not discussed this in private before?)
Zeph,
Oh my, please don't mind that I'm continuing to love your little snowmobile (why am I reminded of Prince's Little Red Corvette, exactly the opposite sort of vehicle?) so much that I keep sneaking it out of the lockup for another quick go. Do understand that, for me, this is the purest form of respect--and the least a wonderful poem deserves, in my view. (That is, honoring and not desecrating it--and also, as best one can, revealing the joy it brings.)
Well, BTP, in this particular coffee-shop we can usually have a serious discussion at one table and some chatter about coconuts at another, without either drowning the other out:)
I prefer this version to your previous, more pared-back one. We have both the laughter and the smile, and yes, perhaps the flakes have to fall 'thick and fast' because that's what they do, like rain pouring. No other expression is better. Also then we can have 'flakes' without getting three f's, so no need to say 'snowflakes'.
You've also cunningly reduced the flurry of 'ing's which took over my second version.
The only thing I miss is that mine ended on the smile, having (I hoped) a more lingering effect because the line is shorter than the others, while yours ends with the boys which may give them a little too much importance.
I think yours might be rather nice with the last two lines reversed, thus:
Small bright pink anorak bobs along above the wall
Little Asian girl riding Dad's shoulders to see snow
Flakes falling thick and fast now, and so they go
Into the park full of shouting boys
Dad's laughter, her big smile
maybe?
Re capital letters, I don't know yet how I want to use them, sometimes I feel a poem wants to be all lower-case but I have no rationale for it. With this one I did half-and half which isn't a good solution.
Nice to have your input BTP, workshopping doesn't always work on the comments threads but this was a suitable little poem to kick around:)
Kick around gently wearing furry slippers, of course.
Zeph,
Nice solution.
And were I a poem, I'd daren't ask for a better way to be kicked.
a little give and go gets the pretty goals
the reversal of the last two lines
was first time back of the net
nice one cyrils
Tombe la neige did't work when i first did the link.
Now it does....
I feel obliged to post this. I'm Welsh and we are at war tomorrow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a_T3U1rg2I
'Tombe la neige' features in a film I really like; 'Vodka Lemon' which is set in a very very snowy part of Armenia. I can't find a clip which has the song in, annoyingly, but I recommend the film.
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