The Writers Block

Latest version--

Reflections on America in a Time of War

I'm walking in D.C., kicking through fallen
sycamore leaves that have drifted down
after the days of sweltering weather,

sycamores, plane trees, reminding
me of London and prim Victorian squares
worldwide, a species of tree I don't like:

scabby-trunked trees, just plain ugly
but fitting to my mood--do I care
if they lose those russet leaves?

And I think of the correction my
barber made to my impression
that he's Jewish: no, not Jewish,

gay. A former Vietnam-era
U.S. Navy sailor who served, unlike me,
with my cushy student draft deferment;

he's fussy and knows more
than I do, and has slept
with more men than I have

but he has no parents gassed
at Auschwitz or Treblinka.
I'm gazing across the Potomac

toward Arlington Cemetery
at Robert E. Lee's pillared mansion
that has overseen so many military burials

after the victorious Federals began to plant
their dead in Lee's backyard so he could never
go home again; the cemetery rocked by scandal

with lost remains and missing tombstones.
But gay and straight, Christian, Jew, all served.
I watch two sleek helicopters rise up,

bank and fly down the river
in the direction Britain's men-of-war sailed
in 1814 when they forced the surrender

of Alexandria, and the way the Rebel
ironclads might have come in one of history's
great what if's. We're a nation once more

at war, a nation at war with itself.
Don't ask but do tell. Do tell. White
stones inscribed with crosses, stars,

but, hey, nothing to identify the gay.
More rusty leaves drift down upon
the ashes of our soldiers.

Christopher T. George

Second revised version of a poem originally titled "Not Jewish, Just Gay" --

Reflections on America in a Time of War (Not Jewish, Just Gay)

I'm walking in D.C., kicking through fallen
sycamore leaves that have drifted down
after the days of sweltering weather,

sycamores, plane trees, reminding
me of London and prim Victorian squares
worldwide, a species of tree I don't like:

scabby-trunked trees, just plain ugly
but fitting to my mood--do I care
if they lose those russet leaves?

And I think of the correction my
barber made to my impression
that he's Jewish: no, not Jewish,

just gay. A former Vietnam-era
U.S. Navy sailor who served, unlike me,
with my cushy student draft deferment;

he's fussy like a gay Jewish man
and knows more about theater
than I do, and has slept

with more men than I have
but he has no parents gassed
at Auschwitz or Treblinka.

And I'm gazing across the Potomac
toward Arlington Cemetery
at Robert E. Lee's pillared mansion

that has overseen so many military burials
after the victorious Federals began to plant
their dead in Lee's backyard so he could never

go home again; the cemetery rocked by scandal
with lost remains and missing tombstones.
But gay and straight, Christian, Jew, all served.

I watch two sleek helicopters rise up,
bank and fly down the river
in the direction Britain's men-of-war sailed

in 1814 when they forced the surrender
of Alexandria, and the way the Rebel
ironclads might have come in one of history's

great what if's. We're a nation once more
at war, a nation at war with itself.
Don't ask but do tell. Do tell. White

stones inscribed with crosses, stars,
but, hey, nothing to identify the gay.
More rusty leaves drift down.

The ashes of our soldiers.
The ashes of the Jews.
The ashes of the gay.

******************

First revision of a poem originally titled "Not Jewish, Just Gay" --

Reflections on America in a Time of War

I'm walking in D.C., kicking through fallen
sycamore leaves that have drifted down
after the days of sweltering weather,

sycamores, plane trees, reminding
me of London and prim Victorian squares
worldwide, a species of tree I don't like:

scabby-trunked trees, plain ugly
but fitting to my mood--do I care
if they lose those russet leaves?

And I'm gazing across the Potomac
toward Arlington Cemetery
at Robert E. Lee's pillared mansion

that has overseen so many military burials
after the victorious Federals began to plant
their dead in Lee's backyard so he could never

go home again; the cemetery rocked by scandal
with lost remains and missing tombstones.
But gay and straight, Christian, Jew, all served.

I watch two sleek helicopters rise up,
bank and fly down the river
in the direction Britain's men-of-war sailed

in 1814 when they forced the surrender
of Alexandria, and the way the Rebel
ironclads might have come in one of history's

great what if's. We're a nation once more
at war, a nation at war with itself.
Don't ask but do tell. Do tell. White

stones inscribed with crosses, stars, crescents
but, hey, nothing to identify the gay.
More rusty leaves drift down.

The ashes of our soldiers.
The ashes of the Jews.
The ashes of the gay.

*************

Original version--

Not Jewish, Just Gay

I'm walking in D.C., kicking through fallen
sycamore leaves that have drifted down
after the days of sweltering weather,

and I think of the correction my
barber made to my impression
that he was Jewish: no, not Jewish,

just gay. Though he might be fussy
like a Jewish man and knows more
about theater than I, and has slept

with more men than I have. . .
I'm gazing across the Potomac
toward Arlington Cemetery

at Robert E. Lee's pillared mansion
that has overseen so many burials
of our serving men and women,

as two sleek helicopters rise up,
bank and fly down the river
in the direction the British sailed

in 1814 when they forced the surrender
of Alexandria, and the way the Rebel
navy might have come in one of history's

great what if's. We're a nation once more
at war, a nation at war with itself.
Don't ask but do tell. Do tell.

More sycamore leaves drift down.

The ashes of our soldiers.
The ashes of the Jews.
The ashes of the gay.

Christopher T. George

Christopher---

two things.

first, big time congrats on your recent IBPC success.


second, suggestions for a poem that i already like very much---the vague echo of robert lowell's civil war poem about the dead black soldiers of Boston---their memorial fallen into ruin---



The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.


.....

Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.

.....


On a thousand small town New England greens,
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.





The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year--
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns . . .



.....


The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.



the drifting ashes that conclude your poem.


i like the leisure with which the poem is told---but maybe...


I walk in D.C., kicking fallen
sycamore leaves drifted down
after days of sweltering heat.

I think of the correction my
barber made to my impression
that he was Jewish: no, not Jewish,

just gay. Though he might be fussy
like a Jewish man (jewish men are fussy?)

on occasion and knows more
about theater than I, and has slept

with more men than I have. . .(gay men are promiscuous? Doty had the same partner for years...Ashbery, too)


and says he will not die
until the curtains are changed,


(old joke attributed to oscar wilde at his death)



I'm gazing across the Potomac
toward Arlington Cemetery

at Robert E. Lee's pillared mansion
that has overseen so many burials
of our serving men and women,

as two sleek helicopters rise up,
bank and fly down the river
in the direction the British sailed

in 1814 when they forced the surrender
of Alexandria, and the way the Rebel
navy might have come in one of history's

great what if's. We're a nation once more
at war, a nation at war with itself.

(not so much---ain't viet nam)


Don't ask but do tell. Do tell.

More sycamore leaves drift down.

The ashes of our soldiers.
The ashes of the Jews.
The ashes of the gay.



the ending dips close to the sentimental....


what if you pause for grilled peanuts? the sweet smoke almost like burning paper?



fine poem, no matter what you decide to do.


mojave

I'm walking in D.C., kicking through fallen
sycamore leaves that have drifted down
after the days of sweltering weather,

[A new poem to critique, to dissect, take apart, examine and fit back together, hopefully in the right order. Like those inept surgeons that don’t know anatomy and fit a leg back on the wrong way round, or saw off the wrong arm. Or like the ones who take out 40 yards of gut and can’t get it back into the space allocated for it, are there two sets of gut they wonder, scrambling frantically not to step on the bits. Here the poet sets the scene, Washington? Or so it seems, Autumn or just sweltering weather that has made the trees wilt and drop some leaves, it is picturesque and poetic but do we need to know the leaves have fallen, could they do otherwise? And is drifted significant or is it just an aside to help the scene, time will tell.]

and I think of the correction my
barber made to my impression
that he was Jewish: no, not Jewish,

[So the poet’s subject is prone to faux pas or is it faux pa for the plural? He stepped on a queer’s toes, I hope he did not hold a razor to the subjects cheek.]

just gay. Though he might be fussy
like a Jewish man and knows more
about theater than I, and has slept

[so the mincing gait made you think Jewish, and the poor man is torn between being victimised as a Jew or as a queer, what is the worse?]

with more men than I have. . .
I'm gazing across the Potomac
toward Arlington Cemetery

[One could think the subject had also slept with men, but it could also mean he has never slept with a man. He gets bored with dwelling on the unsavoury and lets his eyes take him to something more palatable, the Potomac river. There is history in this stanza, unless you had never heard of or read on the American civil war one would not know that the late General Lee’s mansion at Arlington was requisitioned by the victor’s and turned into a national cemetery for heroes and the fallen dead. There seems to me to be an immense pride in this sentence, and yet a sadness brought out by the remembrance of the first industrial war when one nation split and instead of negotiating for ten years choose 6 years of rape, killing, maiming and destruction of a nation over some half baked rhetoric on both sides. The scars are still visible in America today, there was no glory in it, there was no honour it was just a waste of time and a massive amount of human misery. Later bourn out in the poem, the author agrees that this war set the tone for the nation and they ran to war at every opportunity. And the British man in me says, thank God, the alternative was goose steppers in Pal mall. It’s not fair someone might say, he’s read the rest of the poem and now is going more than this stanza says, but you see, this is what this one stanza brought out in me.]

at Robert E. Lee's pillared mansion
that has overseen so many burials
of our serving men and women,

[This stanza is explanatory, and in my opinion superfluous as the preceding stanza had done the work already, at least to the educated mind]

as two sleek helicopters rise up,
bank and fly down the river
in the direction the British sailed

[Are helicopters sleek or noisy, do they shine as they fly, maybe, is it important, well it sets the age I suppose. And like the helicopter the poets subject let his mind wonder with those helicopters into the past, into history and his thoughts drift from one war to the British war where the nation said, ‘Stuff the British, lets be American.’]

in 1814 when they forced the surrender
of Alexandria, and the way the Rebel
navy might have come in one of history's

[I found this stanza confusing even knowing a little of that British victory, it’s not clear to me that the American ships had any opportunity to inflict a defeat on the British, but there you are it shows how much I know. I thought it digressed from the main thrust of the poem, an aside really.]

great what if's. We're a nation once more
at war, a nation at war with itself.
Don't ask but do tell. Do tell.

[This stanza come to the poet’s impression of his country, it’s obvious he deplores the waste of war and yet it is incongruous to deplore the loss of a victory in the last stanza, there cannot be victories in war without pain, death and massive suffering. The last stanza is his quandary, deplore the cost of war or groan for lost victories. His penultimate line in this stanza is to ask us for our opinion and I just gave it.]

More sycamore leaves drift down.

The ashes of our soldiers.
The ashes of the Jews.
The ashes of the gay.

[And now we see the simile of the sycamore leaves drifting down, like dead soldiers and civilians, how sad, and somehow he marries this with the fallen wounded of minorities in America, and likens them to the fallen Jews of Nazi Germany and finally the fallen wounded from the gay community, or as they used to call themselves years ago the ‘queer community’. As a statement on the folly of war I think this is a great poem, as a simile at the injustice of the treatment of gays I think it stretches the point somewhat, but the Jewish comparison is fair. Hatred leads to war, victims are often innocent, scapegoats abound and like the Jews the gays are now the hated ones. Only Jews ended up in inglorious deaths from starvation and Gays are just reviled and beaten up, a few are killed. The reader is tempted to bring up all the other injustices in the world and not just mention Jews and gays, but a poem can only do so much.]

I actually enjoyed reading this poem, it was easy to read. There were some interesting poetic features and they were well executed in my opinion. I enjoyed the history and agree American is a warlike nation. I think the free world is glad America is a warlike nation, if it was not so we might have succumbed to any of the myriad ism’s of the 20th century world. I liked the ease with which the poet could turn our thoughts as his swivelled and meandered through the centuries and places and we thought nothing of it. In the end though the poet cannot hide his pride in his nation and what they have achieved, I think he quite rightly shows that the experience of its first war set the scene for other wars, and although he deplores the losses of the American civil war or the war of the states he realises that that war taught the nation about winning even if it destroyed most of the south in doing so. That civil war gave the nation a history and experience that led them into the 1st and 2nd WW and on to winning the cold war and then onto world domination in trade and influence. It could be said to be a tongue in cheek regret that war has given America so much for it is by war that trade is now dominant and with it power and influence. I don’t think he would give that influence up easily. He regrets the cruelty to the Jews and somehow weaves this logic to apply to gays, as he calls them. In effect he went a ‘bridge too far’, like at Nijmegen, if he had stuck to war and Jews he might have carried it off, as it is it just doesn’t sit that well.
Nevertheless he demonstrates the poet skills par excellence.

Ieuan ap Hywel

Thank you, Bernie and Ieuanaphyw, for your kind reflections on this one. You will see that I have substantially overhauled this one as some observers were having trouble putting the pieces together. I think it is a bit more straightforward now but may still need work. In any case, thank you both for your input.

Bernie, thank you also for your kind congratulations on my IBPC recognition in the May results. I appreciate your interest and support, as ever! Thank you, friend.

All the best

Chris

Hi Chris:

Ambitous poem, no doubt. Evangelical in tone. I think Ieuanaphyw gave you an excellent crit, to which I would add that if you're attempting to compare the Holocaust to the bigotry gay Americans experience in the military, it is over-the-top.

I do appreciate the play between Jew/gay as it pertains to the barber's comments, but your ending seems more contrived than effective.


Ken Ashworth

Hello Kenneth

Great to hear from you, Kenneth. I always value your opinion.

Chris

Hi all

I have revised this one again. The gay, un-Jewish barber has been restored to the piece along with some other thoughts and ideas. See what you think. Thanks in advance for reading. I appreciate the help.

Best regards

Chris

Chris,

'I do not know how you like your liquor, straight up or with ice and water.' So, do I go about it shyly or charge? I not in a bad mood, but I may sound like a scubby-trunked tree.

I think you get into the trees and leaves a bit too long before you get into the meat of the story, which, as introduction, the barber story is plenty. At most, I may start with likening the bad mood with not liking the trees and merge the three first stanzas into one.

I do not know the relevance of mentioning "he is fussy like a gay Jewish man" except it sounds like the narrator's personal bias based on himself, which seems implied, a projection, but, still, does it support the poem in any way? Again, a few stanzas where it could be one, since the new title is about America in Time of War.

I do really like the part about the barber Jewish gay guy, and barbers, do they still have that reputation of being gay? It is a side-effect observation on my part.

Given a more compact introduction on the narrator, his mood, the thoughts of tree and barber, this is where the story begins to stick to where the title points.

And I'm gazing across the Potomac
toward Arlington Cemetery
at Robert E. Lee's pillared mansion

I like the tone and cadence through these three stanzas and the historic facts that begin to unfold. I hit a bump on the road at the mention of Christians and Jews, homosexuals and heterosexuals, and wonder what about white and black, atheists, and so on... I may just skip that mention altogether, since you do come back to it at closing and it has a been established as a preamble of something to come (with the gay barber).

"Two helicopters rise up" (not sure why "I watch" is needed) and, this is a personal reaction, a thought of jelly fish stinging with "men-of-war" so I may leave out the hyphens to avoid that. Peeves.

I watch two sleek helicopters rise up,
bank and fly down the river
in the direction Britain's men-of-war sailed

The next two stanzas seem somewhat wordy, going in circles, could be more compact. I like the "what if's," though. "We're a nation once more at war, a nation at war with itself." (An example of what I mean). I may be not catching the effect of repetitions in this stanza--a serious matter begins to slip into questions of language usage, "Don't ask but do tell. Do tell."

I was looking forward to something more significant and ran into a wish for distinct identification of "the gay," as if they were not equal to all other soldiers who fought. The singling out begins to have the opposite effect in me as a reader than what seems the intent of the poem--this is a problem because I begin to think of satire and I do not really want to go there as a reader, not with this theme. Great beginning line, "White stones inscribed with crosses, stars," and then, letdown.

Here, recognition, in italics, and again, I refer to what I mentioned earlier, what about atheists, Buddhists, white, black.....

I think the poem has great narrative parts overall and clear pictures, it is informative and the inner monologue is good, only too long in parts that cause deviation from the main theme. The stress on the gay men may be justified somehow, but not the way I read it, which ends up having the opposite effect. If the narrator were the main focus, a gay man feeling sour about his personal situation and the poem were about him and his point of view as a Nam veteran, it would be more effective, but it does not quite do that--maybe it wants to do that--I would like that, but that is just me, a more poignant focus than a grouchy narrator who does not like sycamore trees.

Why do I feel like a sycamore tree now? Am I too harsh?

I am glad you changed the title, too.

pen

Hi pen

Many thanks for your thoughtful comments which are very useful to me. I appreciate you telling me what works for you and what does not, so your detailed remarks and suggestions will be helpful to me when I consider further revision.

All the best

Chris

Hi Chris,

Hope you are well. This is a delightful read. I especially liked the risk you took, drifting from S2 into S3 in a strangely nonchalant way. I think the piece is a tad long and would like you to consider ending with... but he has no parents gassed/at Auschwitz or Treblinka which I think are fantastic lines, dimmed, in my opinion by the long drawn end!

Enjoyed the lines that follow S7 but I think the poem is done by then and those lines could be another poem. For you to consider. Regards. Sachi

Hi Sach

Doing pretty well and hope you and yours are as well.

I am glad to receive your comments on this poem which as you say is on the ambitious side. Glad you like the piece. Thanks for your advice re a possible revision. Let me consider your suggestions.

Best regards

Chris