the truncated version

[fflo]

Didja ever hear tell that at one point Marianne Moore, in her varyingly-long versions of "Poetry," thought maybe it should stop after not just the first 4 lines, but only the first part of the first line---

  I, too, dislike it.

?  I think I heard that some time. Anyway the idea's been coming back to me recently, as the title I've had in my head has had more than one poem (or beginning of poem, anyway) attached to it in these past coupla weeks, but all that's sticking is the first line. Should it stop there, I ask myself (and now the poetry people among ya), or could the struggle to flesh it out be worthwhile? It's such an aesthetic minefield, its milieu all heavy/Big. (I like to think I could keep it from the maudlin/mawkish, trite, general/Big, but I might be kidding myself about that.) Here 'tis:


    Valediction, Overdue

  Finally, it's just a town


("Scrap the whole thing" is certainly also a suggestion I'd not be offended by.)

Comments

[vjsmom.livejournal.com]

Flush it out!

Even if it does end up as "maudlin/mawkish, trite, general/Big,"the process is worthwhile. Plus, all of the aforementioned pitfalls are subject to disagreement among readers. Your "trite" might be someone's "profound." (Or vice versa.)

Flush it out!

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Can't help but notice the (unintended?) subtext of your choosing "flush" over "flesh" ... haw!

[vjsmom.livejournal.com]

Yeah, yeah. I did mean to write flesh. I was just having a dippy/brain not functioning day.

[disclaimerwill.livejournal.com]

I think it's nice the way it is. Unless you think of another line or two that you think really needs to be there, I'd say leave it and call it finished.

I like poems (or songs) that have only one line besides their title. It makes those single lines seem extra weighty, yet they have a nice breezy feeling because there's so much "negative space" (so to speak) around them.

My favorite is a translation of Basho's frog haiku that reads:

The old pond
A frog jumps in
Plop!

[fflo.livejournal.com]

sweet! or some better word for what that "plop!" does for me

yeah, i do dig the pregnancy of the understated. so much so, sometimes, that i fear i overstate by the size (or stage?) of the pregnancy of the understated. esp in lj entries... !

one good thing about being finished with it there is that i'd be finished with it now. you know, add a period & call it done.

[disclaimerwill.livejournal.com]

Heh. The appeal of being done is a mighty one indeed, innit?

I'd elaborate, but... Eh, I'm done. :)

[fflo.livejournal.com]

:]

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

it appears to me that this is formally and aesthetically ok as a one-line poem with that title. i would suggest a substitution of 'finally', perhaps even play with more words than one, such as 'at last' or ...

i think there's some element of temporal and logical buildup in here, so i can't tell exactly if there's a priority for either or what.

not to argue with the premise and the exigence, but i wonder if 'just' will sustain the project for very long :). speaking from personal experience (in which no town ever went back to 'just').

[fflo.livejournal.com]

i like 'finally,' as it has (sort of) double meaning, in my ken, here. the 'after all that' primary denotation, and a ---oh, hell, i don't know if i can get it out before this meeting i'm running to... a 'when it boils down to it' or 'when it all reduces' thing. is that the kind of thing you're talking of with 'temporal and logical'?

'just' doesn't hold both its 2 main takes in this case, which is not so much a shame as maybe a reason not to pick/use it, if i'm bein' brief/pregnant.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

'finally' to me implies 'anticipated' and 'long-awaited' at the same time. whether the valedictory was anticipated, i don't know.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

yeah, i think that's the standard meaning, and it's meant there. the other is the reduction to essence one. 'blah and blah and, finally, it comes down to blah"

ach, i know not how to talk of these shades

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

what of leaving the qualification out for now and seeing what happens -- how it opens up the line?

[fflo.livejournal.com]

if it goes on that certainly seems a possibility worth pondering

"now" has sometimes opened the next line--- the now of the implied "now that" with a "you're" next...

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i guess 'overdue' is something to consider there. will have to think about it...

[am handling my own poetic issues at the moment:]

[fflo.livejournal.com]

the overdueness is in the title, after all

hmmmm

[paperkingdoms]

I think it's worth trying to flesh out if there are other images / more content hovering around in your head, wanting to take form and jump into the poem... but I also think there's no harm in leaving it as is -- either as a completed work, or as a fragment. I know that sometimes I've ended up with things I like after fighting through them... and sometimes I'm left with a poem featuring two or three lines that really deserve to be part of a *better* poem.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

ah yes--- and then there are the lines that are great lines but don't ultimately belong in the poem at hand: always a heartbreaker

i appreciate your thoughts here. heck, maybe part of the problem is that there's so MUCH imagery/content hovering... i'm sure you know how that is!

distillation for later reading back into bigness--- it's kinda like making those condensed "add water" capsules that pop up into a dinosaur sponge or a lunar rover washcloth.

[vjsmom.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but those great lines can lead you--maybe into a poem that is much different than the poem you started to write. Frankly, I think it's a decision you should make for yourself. If you feel it's done, then it's done. If you don't, then keep working on it. Maybe that approach is too simple, but hell, why overcomplicate it?