Another week, another meeting. (Feb 14th)
Attendees: FB, IE, CW, JT (new member! woo!)
Discussed: The Girl Who Has Nightmares (NG submission); NYC ('85), Text (CW poems)
My friend sent in a piece of writing she'd penned at 3am, so I thought I'd bring it along to Fas and see how we handled it. It was poetry, of sorts, with an aim that it might be one day converted into song lyrics. As such, it was bound to a series of metres to get a sense of the musicality of the piece, and included not one but two separate refrains. Perhaps this was where it essentially fell down - that too many different ideas of form and rhythm were being played with and integrated into a piece that only really had one pained message.
Where the first piece might have struggled with form and content, Colin's poems stood, quietly, unimposingly, as excellent examples of poetry working the way it should. Personally I loved them both, and I'm aware that I might wax too lyrical in their praise. But the economy of language and the choice of style and form complemented the ideas behind the two poems, and indeed heightened the sense of an idea well and simply expressed. A delight to read, a delight to dissect.
And, happily enough, Text was a little about romance, and the hope or disappointment it can cause, which left us grinning at the end of our Valentine's Day session.
I agree with Brinkles, Colin's poems were masterfully restrained. Well-structured, terse, loaded. Like a satisfying potato-skin starter.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, it should be noted that comparisons were drawn with a) Robert Frost and b) that lovely William Carlos Williams poems about plums ('This is just to say')
Oh, and Evanescence.