Those bigger birds with tail of red,
All appetite and attitude,
Are soaring slowly overhead
Alert for chance of sex or food.
At this time, two, more often one,
On rising air from heated ground,
Conceal themselves inside the sun
To take their prey without a sound.
What poet can resist their stare?
These noble souls are wingéd kings.
The wicked beak, the fiery glare–
But let’s consider other things:
Above this dog poo freshly piled
You see another flying beast
Not one bit less the creature wild
In flight above its next big feast.
And there above the jasmine bush
A ball of pheromone and flies
Their flight an acrobatic rush
Victorious sex! The winner dies!
But shit hawks do not move your pen.
The feathered fliers get the play;
Of eagles write, revere the wren.
I think it wrong. I’ve had my say.
(The bees, of course, are sugar hawks.
I’ve said as much in other talks.)
Great rhythm and flow, I
Great rhythm and flow, I like the rhyming couplets, they work and don’t appear to be forced, but then I am a fan of rhyme when it’s well done.This has been thought through really well. :-)
Kaz
It’s impossible to smile on the outside without feeling better on the inside.
I really liked it. One thing
I really liked it. One thing I would say is that your transition from very elegant langauge to then talking about shit, is little bit harsh and I dont feel it helps the poem. You may want to make the beginning less…fancy??
Keep the bit at the end btw, it made me laugh.
Kieran
“Mind, how you go!”
- Roger McGough’s poem for LSD Awareness Week
The poets attitude toward
The poets attitude toward poets is evident. S/he thinks them too focused on ‘higher’ values, and disapproves.
The elegant passages up to L12 lead the reader into a kind of trap. One is led to expect a paean to nobility, but with L13–which really should be set apart with something more substantial than the mere dash–one is brought suddenly to earth, where flies and shit claim attention.
Parallels are drawn, and they are indisputable. Fly and hawk alike pursue food and sex; both are able fliers. But one is taken as symbol of virtue, and the other is not. This contrast–which reflects how the reader has been instructed–is the deep theme, and I think it a worthy finding by this poet.
The argument is compelling: we favor the eagle over the fly–and the poet asks us ‘why? Not waiting for our answer, the poet ends the poem abruptly, with ‘I think it wrong,’ but we are left with the thematic question to answer for ourselves. How, exactly, is the hawk more noble than a horsefly? Thence, how is ‘noble’ superior to ‘humble’?
The poetic scheme is almost childish. Tetrameter? Iambs? Abab? Could it be any simpler? Why?
The poet is dropping a think bomb here. The aim is to put some lines into the reader’s head in memorable shape, and the simple rhyme scheme serves that purpose. It’s a nice call, but this critic wonders whether the simple rhyme scheme might not have attenuated the useful insight of the theme.
The extension of the poet’s mild rebuke (of the conventional use of raptor metaphor) with ‘feathered fliers’ is a questionable move. It could, in some readers, mitigate the effect felt up to L22. On the other hand, it might enhance the effect, with some readers. This critic, however, thinks it a risky poetic maneuver; it puts a positive gain at risk, for a rather small possible additional benefit.
what compels you to be so verbose in reply?
that seems to me more particular than your poetry itself,
frankly, my friend, isn’t better too say “thank you for your input” than to download a monologue that no-one in their right mind would bother reading?
cheers,
Jess
Actually, I was reviewing the piece there, Jess
I thought it’d be fun to pompose at my own poem.
fair enough
still ave got a lot of words running around in that intriguing mind of yours
cheers,
Jess
Yeah, I'm wordy
I have been since I was six months old. That means I’ve been droning on in the manner you find so annoying for over sixty years, laying down these riffs of speech that pass with me for music, a happy humming that reflects my generally sunny mood.. Even my first spoken utterance (reported to me by my mother) was a complex, rambling thing, nearly perfect in its meaninglessness: “Ma-ma-ma-ma-Da-da-da-da-shit.” And, you will note, I continue in that vein today. If nothing else, the noise I put out is a PREDICTABLE feature in the lives of those about me, and some find it soothing.
I used to be not merely a windbag who never stops spewing words, but a windbag who spewed out unending strings of Latinate polysyllables, interlarded with foreign phrases used out of their proper context. Even I was put off by that, so I reduced the ‘permissible vocabulary’ a lot. I’m still a thundering bore, but i’m a comprehensible bore, most of the time, and I thank Sir Winston Churchill for his influence in that transformation.
Thus, though I take the point of your several observations on the way I talk as well-meant suggestions that I speak otherwise, I will almost certainly continue to use a lot more words than you would in a given situation. We have profoundly different views on how words are to be spent. I buy ‘em cheap, and use ‘em by the carload.
Hi skump..
you are wordy.. but the poem is really written well
by the way.. loved the line…
but shit hawks do not move your pen.. all part of this fine
thing called life..thanks for the read.
Richard