Because we all want to write more poems.
Off Des Moines Memorial Drive
That improbable canyon
A gouge in the landscape of the south end
Of Seattle, about a mile long,
Not as wide as a city block.
at it's center, an unnamed creek
Feeding into the Duwamish
River eventually,
Feeding me and Curtis and Donnie with
Trout that came from who knows where.
Fatty and fried on the stovetop.
Feeding us with blackberries and thimbleberries and
Oregon grapes my dad said were poison,
But we ate them anyway.
- Neil McKay's Shared Poems
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Comments
Neil McKay
March 21, 2013
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Trying to take Richard Hugo's
Trying to take Richard Hugo's advice and use a "Triggering Town" to spark my poems. Seattle is easier to use than Bellingham I guess because I'm still in Bellingham.
Neil McKay
March 21, 2013
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I don't really know where I'm going with this.
You are seeing the writing process here.
Clayton Medeiros
March 22, 2013
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Like it a lot
I like the poem a great deal, it moves, I feel part of the place as I read it even though I do not know the place; yet, I know the place and the sensibility from my own childhood.
I like it best without the last three lines, they change to tone and the mood, they change the focus on detail and childhood to a more abstract consideration that did not add anything for me. I think you could end with "But we ate them anyway."
You might consider a series of poems about that time and place. I know this is easier said than done.
Neil McKay
March 22, 2013
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Clayton you are right. I am
Clayton you are right. I am taking out the last 3 lines. My attempts to tie things up in a nice tidy bow tend to water down my poems. I've written a lot of poems which I improved simply by removing the last few lines.
Neil McKay
March 22, 2013
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I have written a lot of poems
I have written a lot of poems about that time and place. I've mostly moved on to more recent places. My Ellensburg, Stilliguamish and Reach Island poems are an attempt to capture a feeling with a "triggering town"
Clayton Medeiros
March 23, 2013
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Series
I think it is the nature of poets to put in the "Aha" lines more to satisfy us than to satisfy our readers.
There could still be an opportunity for a series of "place" poems for lack of a better term. They could go with some of the photographs you have taken as you did with the recent Issuu book.