Comments on: Great Orme, August 2006

By: Room without doors

Room without doors — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 16:22:31 +0000

I thought there were three themes that linked through this poem, a sense of time, death and the strength of unrelenting nature. I liked the lyrical quality of the poetry, the feeling of solitude and especially how you created a very visual picture of the sea- something I love:
Drags wave after wave on rock below;

also:
And a tarpaulin of sea smooths

The most haunting images for me were those of death:

Out here the dead whisper louder
Than the living shout,
also:
Hours from anywhere and
Just a second from deathâ€™s
Forgetfulness, gravity holds me in stasis
and:
Follow the dead creatures of its birthing

I loved all the poetry in these lines which seemed for me to hold the essence of this poem, the poet with a vision of life and death wrapped into almost a battle to hold the ground in the wild landscape that seems to capture and transfix the voice of the poem, stronger than man who seems human and vulnerable.
The last stanza provides an answer to this dark vision:
Half way through our stone and flesh lives;
With faith holding the past and the future together. I thought this poem was outstanding with images that melted with the landscape and gave me a feeling of timelessness and a sense of natures strength and how the landscape changes over time. This poem appealed to me a lot as it achieves a sense of timeless awe, man becomes a fragment against the cliffs almost clinging for survival in front of such a cold and unforgiving world, beautiful, yes but also dark and inviting – catching a sense of time, of death in life and of vision. One of the best poems I have read recently with structure and depth that was enchanting and brilliant to read.

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 00:04:32 +0000

Thank you, Louise, for your thoughtful and perceptive comments on this poem. I found that as I wrote the poem I did move from a sense of being out of place – somehow discordant, trespassing – to a sense of seeking to assert my ego (hanging on like a bleating and determined god), and through to a sense, finally, of, if not peace, at least belonging as a part of all these processes around me, becoming part of them.

Your response made me feel that I had succeeded in communicating the key messages within the poem, thanks for taking the time to comment.

By: Louise

Louise — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 09:02:59 +0000

It is strange how effective and evocative the 2nd and 3rd lines are in stirring thoughts of the ‘ancient’ and past, without actaully referring directly to them so early inthe poem – the theme is evoked again unmistakably at the beginning of the 2nd stanza, and carried through with subtle use of vocabulary and diction (‘keep counsel’, ‘birthing’, the reference to ‘gods’). In all of this, too, there is a swirl of references which underline the time and timelessness somehow, with the refs to gods, sea kingdom, world, hours, seconds, death, moon, waves, rocks, existence etc. There is also, though, an element to this poem which keeps us in the here and now – the ref to ‘tarpaulin’ seems a bit out of place – a bit ugly and modern, and the goats ‘hellos’ is very prosaic amongst all the references to the wilds of nature and the element of time. This, for me, is not enough of a presence to make it intrinsic, but much more discordant. I love the ‘dandelion-clocked’ and ‘birthings’, and the heather ‘forgiving’ is very much part of why the first few lines are so powerful, i think. Overall I feel in this the author’s feeling of self among the powerful – it is not the huge elements of the wind, sea, moon, time etc that are overwhealming – rather the author’s not insignificant presence among them – as equal part of them and this is summed up in the poem’s final line. This itself is a refreshing take on a ‘man and nature’ poem.