How Did It Go

[BobBradshaw]

How Did It Go


To return to the cottage your family rented each summer
    is like crossing into a foreign country,
the warm sighs of waves rocking against the shores
   drowned out by a nearby club’s punk rock band.   

You return to a sky no longer dusted with constellations,
   but to one lost in a fog of city lights.
Is this where you and Sally crooned Beatles’ songs?
   Here, where lyrics are lost in a haze of dangerous noise?

To return, you were sure, would invigorate you,   
    but your soul remains as washed out as the night sky.
As you did fifty years ago, you wander outside for a smoke.
    The stars have vanished, like the nightingale.
Can you still mimic its whistle?  How did it go? 

[Michael (MV)]

 
Hi Bob,


I have read & experienced this poem several times now - it is currently on my short list for the October IBPC, which we will be begin preparing for next week.


I like the resonance of "How Did It Go" - the echo of "where did it go" & why, and it's inevitable


a memory poem &, Blakean, too, song of innocence then song of experience - awareness


It recently has occurred to me that I shouldn't expect the past to be relived - the difference between re-live & remember

reliving the past - as in trying to bring back the past - is going backwards & artificial - memory as karaoke


remember to relieve
not relive

in remember-mode we can revise
make right
and move on
to the Vision in full light


Initializing each stanza with "return" is effective

the ensuing contrast - the letdown, the shift - is effective too to the poem's communication.


Recalls to me Jane Kenyon's "Otherwise" & "Let evening come"
Yours is not as psalmic, b/c your is created by Bob


The cadence in the finale doesn't move quite right - but then maybe that is quite right for this poem


workshop-share:

The stars have vanished, like the nightingale,
you whistled along with? How did it go?


regardless so far this poem is on my short list - if it doesn't get published before then



Michael (MV)
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 

[BobBradshaw]

I appreciate your kind words, and putting the poem on a short list for October. Thank you.

[FranktheFrank]

Bob
I have taken my time in responding to your poem, I like some of your ekphrastic poems
and I like this quite reflection poem. No nits.

You do have that quiet style and your poems are low key which suits the mood here.

Michael is keeping it in mind for the IBPC, I nominate it, but I am still unsure of the
formal process.

If needed I can nominate in Palaver too.

It would be helpful Michael if you had page that explains exactly how the process works or should work.

[SivaRamanathan]

Here, where lyrics are lost in a haze of dangerous noise?

Maybe you can remove the question mark here,Bob.
Saw this poem only now.Excuse me,I was away from our group.

S