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great lines
Posted: Fri May 10, 2019 7:50 am
by Tracy Mitchell
Sometimes I get taken by a poetry passage. Here is a morsel from Eliza Rotterman:
. . . .
if I have a body it is rarified as air at thirty thousand feet
if I have a moon it bears the cold fresh of snow
I left at midnight and heading west
it stayed midnight a long time
. . . .
This feels equal to a three day seminar.
Thought I would share.
Re: great lines
Posted: Sun May 12, 2019 6:23 am
by Dave
I agree Tracy, those are superlative lines. Simple and yet so intensely sensed.
Dave
Re: great lines
Posted: Mon May 13, 2019 3:52 am
by Gyppo
Tracy Mitchell wrote: ↑Fri May 10, 2019 7:50 am
Sometimes I get taken by a poetry passage. Here is a morsel from Eliza Rotterman:
. . . .
if I have a body it is rarified as air at thirty thousand feet
if I have a moon it bears the cold fresh of snow
I left at midnight and heading west
it stayed midnight a long time
As someone who mainly writes prose those last two lines could serve as the central premise or motif for an entire novel.
The thought of it 'staying midnight for a long time' has, for me, echoes of empty railway stations at night, when the last train has gone and a lone passenger with an equally empty soul, with the last remnants squeezed from his toothpaste tube of hope, waits interminably for a morning train which may never arrive.
From there it's easy enough to imagine the rusted rails, the weeds growing tall between the sleepers, the broken glass in the waiting room windows, and the slowly dawning realisation this is the end of the line and there will be no dawn.
Not sure I could spin an 80,000 word thread from that single image/emotion, but it's been filed in the 'maybe' drawer of my memory cupboard.
Gyppo