There was this old photograph,
edges faintly curling, paper peeling
apart from emulsion, image fading
into sepia nothingness as if cryptic
code verging on being lost. Just
another insignificant detail
of history, the true meaning
of which is so seldom understood
later–a child's face, perhaps five
or six, wearing a child's Stetson,
bad boy black, the chin squared
in its shadow, teeth set to a grim smile.
Emulating some Saturday cowboy,
eyes narrowed and squinting
as if peering into sun, dust, and chaos
of some long ago round up, but
that was only the surface,
the one peeling away. The message
inside was about loneliness,
the bruises and scrapes, the need
for a hero who would stay after
Saturday had gone, the house lights
down, but this was only a child
pretending in that old fashion
way of waiting on heroes.
7 comments:
This is good, though at times weighted down with being overly descriptive. Forgive this comment becos I know we are all trying to be as descriptive as possible but it made the poem long and slow in my opinion. And it dragged on. Perhaps this had something to with your lack of fullstops and your use of commas that really slowed the piece down. Because of the lack of fullstops it made the reading laboursome at times, like trying to catch my breath.
Though I say the description is too much at times there are times where the imagery is spot on and works well. I like this- 'image fading
into sepia nothingness' Great way to describe this. I also like this 'eyes narrowed and squinting
as if peering into sun, dust, and chaos'
I don't know if I was much help, but I tried. Thanks for this ;)
Odd how differently people read things.
To me the images were balanced the first paragraph needs some work but I know you can simplify this into without losing the effect and power of it.
'Emulating' needs to start a new thought with a new stanza I think.
Lose 'of' after chaos
lose 'but' after round up the comma states the pause.
Again 'Saturday' starts a new and final thought, another stanza I think.
Great piece.
Eve
i'm sorry if i didn't get things right. Us Europeans and especially us Irish never really get anything rights. I think it has a lot to do with the way we view things and the way we interrupt things different to a lot of other ppl. Though I understand Adams I really do at times.
I am really sorry
I'm almost positive that all Eve meant was that it's odd how different people read things differently. She's usually a straight shooter. If she thought you were a million miles off and wanted to tell you that I believe she would have said so. She's a bear like me after all. :D Well, a smarter bear than me almost certainly but still a bear. LOL
Just thought I should let you know that, Tiger. I can see good points in both comments and will rewrite this a bit soon. Thanks very much to both of you.
Okay, I did some work on this bearing in mind the comments from both of you. Hopefully, I didn't wreck it. LOL I left the original up so you can compare if you like. Thanks much.
Message
There was this old photograph, edges
faintly curling, paper peeling away
from emulsion, image fading into sepia
nothingness. A cryptic code
or just another insignificant detail
in our histories so seldom understood
later–a child's face, perhaps five
or six, wearing a child's Stetson
the chin squared in its shadow,
teeth set to a grim smile.
Emulating some Saturday cowboy,
eyes narrowed and squinting
as if looking into dust and chaos
at some long ago round up,
but that was only celluloid surface,
the one peeling away. The message
inside was about loneliness,
the bruises and scrapes, the need
for a hero who would stay after
Saturday had gone, the house lights
down, but this was only a child
pretending in that long ago fashion
of waiting on heroes.
PB...I got to this kind of late, but I read over your edited version and it looks a lot better, but...you took out the line that describes the Stetson as "bad boy black." That was a GREAT line. Put it back.
I like the double interpretations you can get from the first two lines of the second stanza. I would remove the "as if" from the third line of the third stanza. It will be stronger as a metaphor.
Nice work,
SB
Thanks, Sam. Leaving out bad boy black was an editing accident. Thanks for catching that! It must have happened when I was fooling around with the line breaks.
I've been fooling with this again and here's what I've come up with this time. Oh yeah, I kept the as if mainly because I just can't see how a kid of 5 or 6 would be at a round up. :D Thanks very much to all of you.
Message
There was this old photograph, edges
faintly curling, paper peeling away
from emulsion, image fading into sepia
nothingness. A cryptic code
or just another insignificant detail
in our histories so seldom understood
later–a child's face, perhaps five
or six, wearing a child's Stetson
bad boy black, chin squared below
the shadow, teeth set to a grim smile.
Emulating some Saturday cowboy,
eyes narrowed and squinting
as if into dust and chaos
of some long ago round up,
yet that was only celluloid surface–
the one peeling away. The message
inside was about loneliness or maybe
the bruises and scrapes, the need
for a hero who would stay after
Saturday had gone, the house lights
down, but this was only a child
pretending in that long ago fashion
of waiting on heroes.
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