[i]Facera---To Do [/i]

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SivaRamanathan
Posts: 1168
Joined: 14 May 2011, 20:30

[i]Facera---To Do [/i]

#1 Post by SivaRamanathan » 19 May 2013, 08:25

This photo-file---
many times removed from reality,
hot-hot throw up of golden orange fire-stuff
ethereal and looming
like Popocatapetl at work.


Turnaround here,
as static as the Diu Fort
there are scenes of farmers
enacting suicides and que vive?


We are 'au courant,'
feckless of this friction,
lethargic as an adhesive traction.

We also strive
to observe and forget.

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Billy
Posts: 1384
Joined: 22 Jun 2006, 10:56

Re: [i]Facera---To Do [/i]

#2 Post by Billy » 21 May 2013, 04:51

Well, Siva, this is a hot little political poem. I like the images. I'm not sure I quite get the last two lines. I feel like I'm getting it wrong. Are you sure "strive" is what you mean? Or maybe I'm not getting it yet.

SivaRamanathan
Posts: 1168
Joined: 14 May 2011, 20:30

Re: [i]Facera---To Do [/i]

#3 Post by SivaRamanathan » 21 May 2013, 09:16

Billy
I wrote this after reading a news paper cutting.
See this link
https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j ... yeGlFQ_STQ'
It is not easy to forget..We have to strive to forget.

Michael (MV)
Posts: 2154
Joined: 18 Apr 2005, 04:57

Re: [i]Facera---To Do [/i]

#4 Post by Michael (MV) » 22 May 2013, 10:00

Facera---To Do


like when the stock market crashed - the great depression
here the farmer's market



We are 'au courant,'
feckless of this friction,
lethargic as an adhesive traction.

variations:

lethargic as self-adhesive.

lethargic as quicksand.


lethargic as a photo shoot
put to rest on a living room table


^^ w/ that stanza I hear the lyric from "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House:

"My possessions are causing me suspicion but there's no proof
In the paper today tales of war and of waste
But you turn right over to the T.V. page"



This draft is too wordy, not edited to a minimalism;
yet it's also underdevolped to be an otherwise poem.



"We also strive
to observe and forget"

^^ reminds me of Tennyson's:

"We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."


should we forget,
or should we remember so as not to forget what we have learned



Below, 2 poems after a photojournalism.     8)   Michael (MV)


1/ "War Photograph" by Kate Daniels


A naked child is running
along the path toward us,
her arms stretched out,
her mouth open,
the world turned to trash
behind her.

She is running from the smoke
and the soldiers, from the bodies
of her mother and little sister
thrown down into a ditch,
from the blown-up bamboo hut
from the melted pots and pans.
And she is also running from the gods
who have changed the sky to fire
and puddled the earth with skin and blood.
She is running--my god--to us,
10,000 miles away,
reading the caption
beneath her picture
in a weekly magazine.
All over the country
we're feeling sorry for her
and being appalled at the war
being fought in the other world.
She keeps on running, you know,
after the shutter of the camera
clicks. She's running to us.
For how can she know,
her feet beating a path
on another continent?
How can she know
what we really are?
From the distance, we look
so terribly human.


2/ link: http://poetry.about.com/library/bl0306ibpchm.htm

 


 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

SivaRamanathan
Posts: 1168
Joined: 14 May 2011, 20:30

Re: [i]Facera---To Do [/i]

#5 Post by SivaRamanathan » 22 May 2013, 20:52

Thank you Michael for the coaching.I agree with you.It is too wordy.I have seen your poem and read it many times previously.

SivaRamanathan
Posts: 1168
Joined: 14 May 2011, 20:30

Re: [i]Facera---To Do [/i]

#6 Post by SivaRamanathan » 22 May 2013, 22:13

Michael
I am not able to edit this immediately.Maybe early next week. I would like to keep your lines

lethargic as a photo shoot
put to rest on a living room table

Michael (MV)
Posts: 2154
Joined: 18 Apr 2005, 04:57

Re: [i]Facera---To Do [/i]

#7 Post by Michael (MV) » 23 May 2013, 22:09

Hi Siva,

You are welcome to those lines.
I would not have discovered them, if it had not been for your poem in progress.

Reading & critiquing are also part of the creative process.

in the spirit of workshopping & creativity

8)

Michael (MV)

SivaRamanathan wrote:Michael
I am not able to edit this immediately.Maybe early next week. I would like to keep your lines

lethargic as a photo shoot
put to rest on a living room table

FranktheFrank
Posts: 1983
Joined: 02 Mar 2016, 18:07
Location: Between the mountains and the sea

Re: [i]Facera---To Do [/i]

#8 Post by FranktheFrank » 30 Jul 2016, 22:16

The last two lines are fine with me, easy to understand - strive to forget. No disrespect meant to other comments.

In other words so horrible we want to forget, so horrible we cannot forget hence strive.

This is a very fine poem, Michael's comments brought it out much more for me. That Vietnam journal entry of a very famous or infamous photograph is so touching.

I don't recognise any standard form of English usage in the title, three dashes then a word, is it Morse code perhaps.

SivaRamanathan
Posts: 1168
Joined: 14 May 2011, 20:30

Re: [i]Facera---To Do [/i]

#9 Post by SivaRamanathan » 01 Aug 2016, 20:23

Frank
I wanted to put the title in italics. That 'morse code should be deleted. We had to write a poem from the last word of a poem sent in the chain.I got these words.


Siva

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