Trident Offering, fall '77 Options

[Guest_Brahms_*]

Silken ash reflected on our sol takes its toll.
It purifies, sweeping over green land
climbing up hills and washing down ravines.
This ash circles over the Sound, Cascades. and Olympic mountains.
Boiling saltwater scours old cedar canoes
and carlots of Mazdas.
This land and all of its life is consecrated.

[Guest_Jox_*]

Hi, Stephen,

As with your previous poem I have to admit not understanding all of this. Nevertheless, here goes...

I take it that this is a volcanic eruption? The lava flows have settled and the ash is following? If I'm right I cannot quite understand the boiling sea.

What is sol please? Soul, sun or something else..?

Carlots of Mazdas? Mazda cars - lots of them? On the quayside maybe? As with your previous poem (Welsh) this offers a startlingly modern note amid the timeless rest. Oh, yes, and how does the ash consecrate the land please?

I like the flow(!) and the rhythm of this I but really have tried very hard to understand and failed. I think I'm just too dense at the moment. If I did not like the poem I would not ask but I do like it - can you help by explaining your poem to one dense but trying-hard critic please?

[Michelle]

Hi Brahms.

This may be a regional poem
as I notice Jox's response.

I'm offering a few suggestions
for your perusal.  This as a very
poignant poem for me - I remember
this time.

Silken ash reflected on our sol takes its toll.***I feel that you are trying to say that the sun in blocked out - suggest using 'sun' and rephrasing
It purifies, sweep{ing}(s) over green land
climb{ing}(s) up hills and wash{ing}(s) down ravines.
{This} ash circles {over} the Sound, Cascades. and Olympic mountains.
Boiling saltwater scours old cedar canoes
and car(space)lots of Mazdas.
This land and {all of} its life is consecrated.


This poem has so much potential.
I wish you all the best with it.

[Guest_Brahms_*]

Hello folks, thank you for your responses.  These words were dashed
down in the parking lot after the church sermon about the building
of the local Trident base, back in '77.  The 'sol' was my fun substitute
for sun, drawing from high school French.  The force in the poem is
about the force of a nuclear bomb attacking our new Trident base
just across from Seattle.  I love the natives here, so cedar canoes
with put in as well the newest car on that '77 market- Mazda.
The act of the nuclear bomb is so total, and I thought I would
draw it similar to that symbolic act very important in some churches-
communion.  I just hunched all that, and wrote it down, and drove
back home.  

This is the best group I ever have shared with,
Thank You All.

Stephen Brahms

[Michelle]

I was thinking about Mt. St. Helens erupting.

I should have known it wasn't '77.  Sorry.

[Guest_Jox_*]

Brahms and Michelle...

Thank you Stephen for your explanation - just what I was looking for. I never guessed at what you meant and I found the nuclear war scenario very interesting. As I previously said, it is a great sounding poem and now enhanced by understanding what you meant.

Michelle, you have no need to apologise.

I, too, thought of volcanic action - and now that I see you are the NW Coast and Stephen is Washington (I am assuming both USA) the Mt St Helens eruption fits well, too - though I had reservations as I indicated. The fact that you did not fit 1977 to the date really matters not; this is not a history examination.

The reason that you have no need to apologise is this: when an artist creates something they give it into the World - very much like a human child. With parents and children, the former try to shape the latter. But, once out there - on their own, in the real world, children interact with others in a vast number of ways which their parents could never have imagined. It is just the same with a work of art. Once the artist has given it to the World we may interpret it - view it if you like - any way we wish. My problem was that my volcanic interpretation had inconsistencies. Stephen's explanation does fit better than mine as it overcomes those inconsistencies. However, I shall also remember the poem as making me think of a volcanic eruption. This does not mean I owe Stephen an apology. I might owe him thanks (Thank you, Stephen) for creating something which I enjoyed interpreting and can enjoy even more now I know what he intended. Nevertheless, never be sorry for enjoying art the way you see it - you are half the contract and the artist is half...

Let me put it this way. Imagine robots programmed to do housework (I'll buy one!) They are shown a poem. They have no idea what it means - even the simplest, most obvious three line poem, say. So the art has no value, save to its creator. Now, imagine poems being read by a variety of people in anthologies or here, on MM. We all bring ourselves to the poems and we all see something slightly - or very - different from each other and from what the artist intended. No apology necessary. The artist has honoured us and we have honoured the artist. The only apology would be if we, like robots, brought nothing and took nothing.

Stephen - glad you like MM; I do, too

I have decided, I really do ramble on too much!

Cheerio.

[Guest_Brahms_*]

Yours is a most highly valued ramble, thank you.
The description given for viewing poetry is supurb,
again thank you.  I am most glad for your joining
this poetic table.  Best cheers to you,

Brahms

[Guest_Jox_*]

Brahms, Cheers also to you!

[Aphrodite]

Silken ash reflected on our sol takes its toll.
It purifies, sweeping over green land
climbing up hills and washing down ravines.
This ash circles over the Sound, Cascades. and Olympic mountains.
Boiling saltwater scours old cedar canoes
and carlots of Mazdas.
This land and all of its life is consecrated.

Hello Stephen~

How are you? Great, I hope. I enjoyed your poem very much and your wonderful use of metaphors. I read the other responses and appreciate the way your reflected thoughts are expressed in this vivid poem.

One thing, in the first line do you mean "soul", rather than sol?

Boiling saltwater scours old cedar canoes
and carlots of Mazdas.
*****wonderful description.  

Nice to read you, Brahms.

Take care~
Aph~Lindi

[Guest_Brahms_*]

Lindi, the 'sol was a worked connection between the
brightness of a nuclear bomb and that touch during
the communion act, the soul

Pax to thee,
Brahms

[Morgan le Fay]

Hello Brahms!

I enjoyed this very much.  This definetly is a contemplative prayer.  Lovely!  As you know I'm also from Washington state and I too first thought that this was about Mt.St.Helens eruption.  :upside:  :blush21:  Then after reading your explanation I see it is not.  It could really work for that though.  :)   I had forgotten all about the Trident base but don't tell my hubby, he is a former submarine sailor!  :oops:

I so enjoy your vivid descriptions of the Northwest!  The pictures you paint with your exquisite words make me long for home.  That is where my heart is.  :sun:   This really does read like a prayer.  I loved it!

Love and stuff,
Morgan le Fay
Mistress of Magic  :wizard:

[Guest_Jox_*]

Morgan. Brahms,

Digression: Small world.

Background: Trident missiles are designed and built by the USA. However, one other country does have them - the UK. We take the US design and (I believe) re-engineer it. Also we build our own boats (Royal Navy word for subs) to carry them, here in the UK.

My father was an engineer working on the nuclear reactors for the Royal Navy's fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. The last job he worked on? Starting the project for the reactors of the Trident boats.

One amusing item... the left-wing local council of the city, in which the plant that builds those reactors is located, wanted to turn the city into a "Nuclear Free Zone". Great title - with a nuclear reactor design and manufacturing plant in the middle - and one which makes nuclear reactors for nuclear-missile firing nuclear submarines at that!

Morgan - I have no idea how those men serve as sub-mariners on those boats. In the RN they pay more because it is so claustrophobic and isolated. Don't think I could do it.

Cheerio, Jox.

[Arnfinn]

Hi Stephen


Yeah!  I read your piece, and had no idea what it was about.....though I  thought the construction and metaphoric language translating a force of some kind was intrinsic to the theme. Yea........I'm in Australia.

When I read the explanation...........fell into place ......got the picture on the reread.

E.A. Housman,


Even when poetry has a meaning,
as it usually has, it may be inadviseable
to draw it out........
Perfect understanding will sometimes
almost extinguish pleasure.


Regards


Arnie  :troy: