a figure from clay he made.
he fashioned a figure from clay.
(hard to see
until i
take
myself the wheel--
how earth under
hand tears into skin like steel
wool un strung
how hungry grit
'brades skin and dreams of
smoothness-not)
from this
lump
unconvinced of.....lines
or grace--
from this
clay
he made
the shape
he made the make,
he smoothed the shape
and figured clay
with hands like mine
for seven
days
2 comments:
the second half of the poem is perfect. i love "lump unconvinced of lines or grace --" although i feel that it would give the word lump a bit more momentum to place from this" closer to it. "from this/ lump..." and "from this/clay." the rest is great. i like the sense of a repeated texture of words layered on top of each other like shapeable material. in the first half of the poem, i was wondering how it would be if you take out the "how's" to give more force to what's happening when u take the wheel, to make it feel like it's happening now. also, maybe "i myself/ take the wheel"? i think the syntax there is a bit crunchy. i love "hungry grit/ 'brades skin and dreams" and i feel as if that could go on its own...although the ambiguity there is actually great...not sure if "dreams" is a noun or a verb. if it is a verb, i feel as if there could be another word there that's not as cumbersome as "smoothness." maybe...just "dreams of smooth?" "dreams of silk?" also, a question: is "smoothness-not" supposed to be one entity, or is "not" a kind of negation of that? tell me about what you wanted in that stanza. i also really like the first two lines - the end of the poem mirrors the sense of repetition well, although it's not really repetition because you're not saying exactly the same thing, you're creating layers of things that may mean similar things. great!! and ::catullus face:: fathinating.
so, i suppose the subtext is that i was thinking of how hard it is to work with clay- and how painful. and that lead to thinking of the creation, or the story of creation...i hope this poem reads sort of frantically, b/c i wrote it feeling scornful and awed at once.
y'know, i actually don't think the whole middle of the poem should be where it is-- it seems to interrupt the flow of the first two lines with the last part...i have to work on this, though. 'cause otherwise the symmetry between the two outside parts is a little too precious.
i guess i've been wanting to play around with thorny structure and grammar to really make myself (and dear reader) work. thus, the reflexive pronouns and awkward negations. but, as this is really about clay, it should be less angular, i think. more amorphous.
i agree with taking out the "how"s; maybe if i make it: "hard to see/until at the wheel/ earth under hand tears..."
as for 'dream' (hahah) i didn't realise the ambiguity there until you pointed it out...i kinda like it, but "smoothness-not" (which i did want to be some entity negated) has got to go, yo.
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