Sunday evening, a headache most of the day, read Larkin listlessly. Often the poems pass me by, I am lacking something that should help me appreciate them more.
Struggled with a mutilated poem - one line out of two deleted, we are to replace it. Someone at class said, don't worry about the meaning so much, listen out for the rhyme and rhythm, see what you can do with that. It's a great strain. Hopefully it should lead to a development of a better ear. Because the poem reads so mysteriously- it's hard to tell what it's about - I find myself tending to purple prose. To counteract it, have decided to act decisively: many words reoccur - the poem is long - and lists of affiliated words might help, a la Dylan Thomas, eg with dark, night, back, moon, shadow, star, silence, with cold, ice, snow, white, shard, bitter, freeze, and so on. Shall see whether playing with them will provide more inspiration.
The first lines are:
Glassed with cold sleep and dazzled by the moon
(a missing line)
I looked and saw under the moon's cold sheet
(missing line)
and so on. Tricky and stretching, for me.
Resumed the automatic writing exercise today. Always an effort to get back to routine.
No comments:
Post a Comment