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The Welder's Son

The welder’s son.

The Welder's Son.

A thunderstorm that ringed a city,
All night long it seemed to rage,
Although without delight or pity
They let the plane engage
Dark slick tarmac, and take flight,
The glow lamps of the runway lights,
Quickened and fused with jet black rage,
Of engine roar in fusion with the sound
Of human chatter, the old world alighting
From the diminished, final, lost ground.

Pity, and ecstasy lurched, in metal
Inside the heart-frame's knotted well,
White knuckled clinging on like limpets,
Shelling fevered nerves and ringing bells,
Vertigo, scarce considered, now a night long spell.
And landing, after brief sojourn,
To the dense thick sticky Singapore,
Then Brisbane lit up like a flame,
With a culture screaming raw,
All seemed, rough-hewn, quite unfinished,
He, like fabled Jack, reduced to watch it soar,
It’s towering presence, land of conquest,
Were these lost clansman that he saw?

Bailed north, by cheap late flights,
Above bright green paddocks stamped,
Like gaudy table mats unfurled,
He watched a strange new landscape dance,
Revealed in horizons, rebirth over and over,
They flew through limitless blue,
Expanding to a world, of greens and browns,
Great hinterlands and teeming, shores.
Where wide flat rivers, mud brown spew
Then to land in north Queensland,
Provincial towns bore him north,
To a cane paddock and a new life,
A family he barely knew, thus began,
The gentle undoing, and rebuilding,
Of something entirely new.

The lucky country, wide brown land,
All these myths he read them plain,
By slow education of the land,
In truth, a pleasure, and a pain,
Then the rain, the rain, fell in well spring,
Inversion of the earth to sky,
As though some great beast shook the earth,
And doing so, made it cry,
Into the flooding hearth and heart,
Of his new home in sugar cane field,
Greener than green, could ever be conjured,
In that sceptered land he left to yield.

For distance and the time that’s tethered,
Build a tyranny of the mind,
And in the old country, sits weathered,
A welder knitting his links in kind
Waiting for that glacial reunion,
And round the world they’ll reach entwined.

Style / type: 
Free verse
Review Request (Intensity): 
I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back
Last few words: 
A biography of sorts, a history of many who came to Terra Australis - looking for the dream. A re-write, its coming together - I think.
Editing stage: 

Comments

One of the issue with Free Verse is a tendency to use more words than are needed.

I enjoy the sentiment behind this work, but the language and structure make it difficult to read and kill the flow. Art is communication and the broader the audience, the more important it is to structure the work to speak to many types of people.

For example, I have recast the first stanza below, changing only the structure and the occasional slang and substituting one word for another; "Regardless" for "Although" because "although" is a weak word in this use.

A thunderstorm
ringed around that city,
all night it seemed to rage.
Regardless they let the plane
engage the tarmac and take flight.
The glow lamps of the runway quickened,
the night in jet, rushed around.
His maiden flight from the old world,
the first time ever,
left the ground.

Structure sets pacing. You, as the author, know how the work flows and pauses. The reader only knows what you present. By solidifying your presentation, you pull the reader through your work and instead of them feeling they are struggling to capture meaning, they are fed the imagery in a manner that makes them participatory in rather then a mere receiver of the story.

You, as the author, have to take any feedback and critique and filter it to determine what best servers your intent and design.

---------------------------------------------------------

Jonathan Moore

I can't remeber who said that, but this is useful crtique and I like what you did with the first stanza, reads a lot better. This is sometimes my process, and I will readily plough through an idea, which may be entirely raw, then work through the suggestions in order to decelop the poem colaboratively. Sometimes, this is how it works, in other pieces, I have taken the slower road, and sat on it, polished it then presented it. In this case, it's the former, as I wanted to get the piece out and see what sort of reaction it got. I was accutely away that it was overly verbose, and required refining, and your suggestions are very welcome.

Thanks.

Chris

Chris Hall - Tasmania

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

author comment

as usual good images and craft of sounds. In this poem I am not sure if the on-and-off rhyming works,as well as the often repeated word "land" and lesser repeated words "shell", "rain" etc

It is a sort of narrative poem, a little on sentimental side, ("lucky country" "sugared land")
A lot of different experiments going on here. That's good to get them out there!
I wonder if you could incorporate the rich symbolism of the welder to connect his journey to his craft. Just a thought.

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

by Donald Homes, where the origin of that phrase can be traced back to, published back in the fifties, a worthy read see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucky_Country
Hence the "myth" of the lucky country was built on the reapacious lusts of mineral resource exploitation, first and societal development, and cutrual reconcilliation and repair second

There was a bit of experiment - I will be refining though, and perhaps expanfing,. Thanks for the suggestion of incorporating the welder, some ideas about that one.

Many thanks for the suggestions.

Take care,
Chris.
PS - a small pile of interesting Antipodean poetry, among other things, is growing in the corner, soon bound for your shores.

Chris Hall - Tasmania

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

author comment

..

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

though images of airplanes, tarmac, and cheap flights seem to imply a more contemporary time, it is written in a style more like Hardy's "Far From The Madding Crowd" era.
Not a bad trick, but a little cumbersome to read. That might just be my limited taste talking.
I know you are a smart guy, so I know you know what you are doing, ..The writing just seemed cumbersome to me....like trying to hard.

But I do admire your abilities with words and images and coloring
compared to my plain speak, and limited utilization of poetic ornamentation.

so...all is still good!
never, ever let anything someone says disillusion you...especially me.
p.s.
Tasmania has always intrigued me ...its remoteness from here (New York) is soooo appealing.

sincerely,

Al

This is rough, it's a first draft, it will be polished up like a gemstone. The idea was to get it out there, and then develop it, which I've been doing a lot more of lately, mainly due to time constraints, I almost wrrite it in betwen jobs.
Yes, it is a fascinating and remote place, you would be astounded at the amount of space around you over here. If you have nothing to do but explore, it's a great place to be, and to think without all the noise, having lived in Nottingham, Edinburgh and London for a bit when younger I really appreciate the quiet now. All I have to do now, is find more time for writing :/

Thanks for the suggestions.

Cheeers,

Chris

Chris Hall - Tasmania

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

author comment
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