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

[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