The View From the Road

[Reilley]

THE VIEW FROM THE ROAD


If you had driven past our house
on that late summer afternoon
you could be excused for thinking
that we were simply two out of three generations
enjoying the westering sun
by sharing secrets and familial whispers.

If you had not seen me
a few short minutes before,
screaming on the grass
beneath the drooping apple tree
as my grandmother ran toward me,
or my grandfather shouting “Why Chuck?”
to my father’s disappearing back
as he rushed away, slipping into
his baby blue Cadillac with the redhead
smoking in the passenger seat,

if you had not seen my mother
cupping her hands under her face
to keep blood from ruining her new carpet,
or the ambulance that drove her
and my grandmother up the hill to the hospital,
it would be natural to assume that we lived
the kind of lives that were written about
in Highlights magazine.

From the road you could not see
the torn screen door, or the frame
falling over on only one hinge,
you would have no way to know
what went on behind it.

[Brigid Briton]

Hi Reilley, Wow, this is powerful and frightening since it goes on way more often than any of us likes to imagine. That image of the redhead smoking in the passenger seat is chilling. (So's the rest of it, but that somehow got to me)

I am suggesting a few possible changes, which I think might make the flow a bit better. (The blue as a suggested alternative phrasing to the beginning of the last three stanzas).

If you had driven past our house
on that late summer afternoon
you could be excused for thinking
that we were simply two out of three generations
enjoying the westering sun
by sharing secrets and familial whispers.

If you had not seen me (But you did not see me)
a few short minutes before,
screaming on the grass
beneath the drooping apple tree
as my grandmother ran toward me,
or my grandfather shouting “Why Chuck?”
to my father’s disappearing back
as he rushed away, slipping into
his baby blue Cadillac with the redhead
smoking in the passenger seat,

if you had not seen my mother (and you did not see my mother)
cupping her hands under her face
to keep blood from ruining her new carpet,
or the ambulance that drove her
and my grandmother up the hill to the hospital,
it would be natural to assume that we lived
the kind of lives that were written about
in Highlights magazine.

From the road you could not see (And you did not see)
the torn screen door, or the frame
falling over on only one hinge,
you would have no way to know
what went on behind it.

***

This is the sort of poem that stays with you for a long time. Good writing!

[saore]

Wow this is powerful, I like Brigid's suggestions.  

Sergio

[Reilley]

I like Brigid's suggestions too, but this poem has already been published twice in this format, once in Boston Literary Review, and once in my first chapbook.

Brigid, maybe we could use some kind of tag, or code or totem to suggest that a poem is "fixed" and not currently subject to editing?

[Brigid Briton]

Hiya Reilley,
What I would suggest is that you simply state the fact that a work has already been published, and where, if you choose, and that it therefore will not subject to editing. However, I would encourage people to still comment on areas of a poem they feel might be improved, just for instructional purposes.

Congratulations on being accepted to such an esteemed publication as the BLR!

[Reilley]

Thank you Brigid, BLR is a terrific publication.

You are right, the simplest thing would be to just state the piece has already been published, and critique is always a good thing! 

[SweetSilverBird]

Hi Reilley, old friend! I really have to say, I like the vantage point you are writing from. It feels new. Anything that spiffs up this centuries old art is much appreciated! I can almost imagine Tom Bosely reading it. You are the penultimate storyteller Reilley! <bowing>

[Fire Monkey]

An excellent poem - well presented. It says so much of how people think they see but how what is seen depends on where you stand.

[blackbird]

I realize the matter has been settled...this poem is good of that there is no doubt. This is actually my favorite kind of poem, the kind that makes me wonder late into the night and the next day even sometimes a week later as to what happened.....how did it come to that point. Was there another family get-together after that, was there an intervention (those are the worst) or was it all the redheads fault? Poetry that makes me ponder is food for my creative curiosity.
In my own thoughts on the aforementioned changes to the first lines, I don't agree. To begin a stanza with "but" or "and," just goes against my grammar-bone. We can get away with quite a bit in the modern world of "free verse" heck anything goes, and sentences are often started with such rules as these broken. However, a stanzas first line is like the usher of the poem taking you by the arm and leading you down the aisle for the big show. I think they need to follow a certain dress code. I can't see them in t-shirts and jeans like "but" and "and." A tall dark "If" suits a stanza fine...I very well could be wrong. I would like to read some feedback on the matter. Should a sentence start with "but," "and," or "because," these are three words I always try to hold on a tight leash. Is it okay to let them run?

[Brigid Briton]

Hi blackbird,

I love your usher's dress code as an analogy for what is and isn't permissible in poetry. I think that standards have loosened about everything. That doesn't mean one way is better or worse than another, only that there is more freedom for people to raise their own poetic voice.

I obviously don't think that starting a sentence with "but" is a cardinal sin. But, you have strong poetic instincts and a good grounding in the English language and I respect your opinion.

Since Reilley's poem was already accepted for publication, it's clear the the Boston Literary Review (wow!) found it just fine the way it was.

Sweet Silver Bird and Fire Monkey should weigh in on this discussion since they tend to be more traditionalist than I.

I hope you'll take your usher idea and turn it into a poem!

Brigid

[blackbird]

Brigid,

Thank you and I may try it, I hadn't thought of it before. Now knowing me the way I almost do...lol it will rattle my brain, cause me to take extremely long showers (I do my best thinking there) and take over the chalkboard in my little ones room, I can't tell you how many times I hear, "Mommy....you aren't playing right! That isn't what I said let meee have the chalk!" Thanks for the push...and Reilley..for the spark, he is quite good..I am still pondering the "view from the road." I really am not fond of the redhead in the car. Not sure what that's all about..just a bit of my crazy coming into the light.

[Fire Monkey]

Actually, the idea that we have loosened the rules in modern times is a mistake when it comes to such word usage - well, depending on what one calls 'modern' I suppose. Poetry has always followed it's own rules when it comes to grammar and many things done by the great poets of the distant past would bring a frown to most English teachers if you did it in their class in an essay.

There are many poems that start the word "And" which seems like a logical impossibility since the word insists that something came before - but that is exactly why it is done - to imply a continuation of a story that is not in evidence so that the reader is force to image what came before based on the context of what is written now and the poet does not have to bore us with a long drawn out history to get us to the point of the poem.

One example that leaps to mind, the first line of the first stanza of Prithee, "And is it so, once more, thou art returning?" Now that could have been written better grammatically, but it would not have been nearly as effective. I'm not suggesting that grammar is not important in poetry, only that the rules are more fluid and in fact not entirely the same. By starting with the word "and" there is the implication of an entire story that comes before and leads into the poem.

Poems are as much about being felt as being read, they are more than just the words in logical and precise format on the page. Sometimes the choice is not because of best grammar but because of best emotional impact. Sometimes it isn't about what the poem "means" but what it "feels". Now in written English one does not start a sentence with "but", although you do hear it in spoken English, however, in poems it can sometimes lend a strength which is hard to produce in a single word when following strict prose rules of grammar and that is one reason why poetry does such things. Prose can use as many words as it needs but poetry must pack more into the space.

Another example of how poetry does not follow the same rules that prose does would be things like this by E.E. Cummings:

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Now that is formatted exactly as he published it and it is the opening stanza of a poem that not only is published but is one which was used in 3 separate poetry courses I took in school starting in grade 10 English and then in a Music and Poetry course I took in grade 12 and again in a first year Poetry course at university so it seems that the same people who would have failed any essay I wrote if I had written it like that felt that in poetry it was not only acceptable but worthy of study.

[blackbird]

Thank you Fire-Monkey!
I do so appreciate your well-thought and well explained answer to my question. I have given it much more consideration, of course after I jumped in the water with my drawn out misguided post. I feel like I'm standing in the  water with my deflated Wonder Woman tube and that white gunk smeared all over my nose under a sign says "No Swimming!"  An exaggeration :PI know, but I am quite irritated with myself. Not enough to keep quiet I assure you 
I sat and read through some of my favorite poems, and I can see I am guilty of forming a thought in my head simply because it made sense of whatever I was saying at the time and then let it grow roots.That is what I think my other half does when he doesn't want to fix something Lol, (actually I am sure he does this....I have proof!) but that is him....not me. Ha, I stand corrected. Gratefully so.
Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabelle Lee," is one poem that I know by heart, in fact I used to carry it with me tucked in a pocket in my wallet. When I needed to believe that in a dark and grisly world there was the possibility of such a love that a man would not, could not be swayed from. No one more dark and grisly than Mr. Poe I think, and yet his words
"neither the angels in the heavens above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee."
Let me just say, hmmmmm to be loved...
My point being, (I truly am working on getting there faster)
throughout that poem in particular, the one I can recite and carried for so long it did actually disintegrate, there is not one but five sentences that start with "and." Two of those are at "ushers position"  being the beginning of a stanza (for shame)I am lighter for the weight of this illusion to be lifted. 
Inspired this afternoon, by Fire Monkeys gentle yet, whipsmart comment...
Promise to Preview
And.. I Thank you all for indulging me this moment
Because with your words comes such real enjoyment
Before tapping "Create Post" like a nail in my posting coffin
I must try the preview button, thus saving face more often....
Yes.....preview... take a look... as though I actually could
Catch the errors, even editing out the thoughts that would
Wreck havoc with their need for common circumspect 
But oh such a simply glorious, yet decadent concept
The very idea of -Check Myself- ahh... quite brilliant
Nervous, for a critic, I'm tough.. relieved, as a writer, I'm resilient
I come here hoping to learn, I long to say, just enough
 And to have the option to think before I dare speak.
That I may bow out gracefully I shall use it tout de suite!

[Brigid Briton]

Hi blackbird,

Don't worry about it. Nothing is cast in stone around here. I think we should all probably reflect before we write, however, that's not always the way writing works. I think that sometimes in the excitement of connecting with other people who just might share a commonality of interest with us, we just want to jump in and play the game.

And, really, that's how we learn isn't it? By just jumping in, perhaps wishing we'd done this or that differently, but, hopefully, learning from what we may consider our "mistakes".

I hope you will leave all of your posts up "as is" because if you change something, that makes the comments of others who posted after you irrelevant and someone stumbling onto the discussion later on will wonder what in the heck was going on.

That said, I want to point out to you that there is also an "Edit" button, right up by the "Like" (or thumbs up) button, which allows you to make changes in what you post.

So, in the future, if you say something you really think is horrible, (and I, for one, don't think that you did that at all) you still have the option to change it after it's been posted. I would hope that you and anyone else choosing to use the edit button would keep in mind how it would change the flow of the exchanges on the thread.

For example, if there haven't been any subsequent comments, editing your post doesn't change the thread at all. On the other hand, if there is a subsequent comment saying, "I strongly disagree with what you said" and you delete what you said, well, that makes things confusing. It's actually preferable to do exactly what you did and that's leave your original comments up and then retract or modify them later in your subsequent post. That's way more interesting.

I'm glad you're thinking about poetry. I like that in a poet.

[Fire Monkey]

We have all said things which we thought at the moment Blackbird and then realized later that it was not quite as we thought. No crime or shame in that. [at least I hope not or I'm in trouble ] I think the most important thing is that we keep an open mind because that is how we continue to learn. The only real 'crime' is a closed mind. Poetry is such a broad field with so many aspects to it that all that can be said to be written in stone is that if the words move you and have power then it is good and if they don't then it needs work. As someone once said, a poet is someone who can make you feel what they feel inside - if a poem does that then I'd say any rules really don't matter unless you are specifically trying to write a particular form of poem.

But then, I'm a radical who has never gotten along well with rules and authority so I'm not sure if you should be talking with me ... I'm sure someone wouldn't approve

[Gwen Dubeau]

This is a deep and meaningful poem. I think many people only see from the outside of the door. Only way to know someone, is to look into their life from all angles, knowing your presence may make a different. Good stuff Chris! Cheers. 

[eiken]

Reilly,
When I read a poem like this that makes my heart race and my breathing stop, I just want to cry. I found this profound and truly identified with the chaos of life behind the doors. I loved the opening verse that lured me into the warm, loving environment and then the whack of reality that ensued was just horrendous. Superb writing