cathyw
Junior Member
Hello. I am glad I signed up for this so I squeeze in time to read and write and contemplate.
Posts: 64
|
Eden
Jul 16, 2024 9:43:49 GMT -5
Post by cathyw on Jul 16, 2024 9:43:49 GMT -5
Eden’s Salvation I grew up in Eden, hence my authority on the subject of Paradise, and the fact of its present demise—not the town, but the idyll.
Indeed, these are the end times viewed from a hammock under a chestnut in a heat dome sipping a Tang Margarita through a straw.
Cain came by the other day asking to borrow an electric fan.
I told him I lent mine to his brother and he cried right there on Mom’s welcome mat—the one that says, “Come Back With A Warrant.”
A tornado struck Eden yesterday—Genesis winds blew over the earth and parted the water—a roof flew off a barn where just-like-that a cow landed in the farmer’s lap.
Eve, from next-door, whose kids and grandkids (except one) live in her split-level house, says that the one that left is a child genius.
Her current husband bet the ranch on that kid saving the whole lot of us.
The neighbor on the other side is building a barn that might as well be an ark with the way he’s measuring thrice & cutting once, re-reading wiki-how’s 15 steps to a post-and-beam.
He shouts across our lawns that he’s lined up cows in his imagination 2x2 (if Noah would have made that mistake!) filing into a posh cēment milking parlor and softly bedded stantions.
A tree of the knowledge of good and evil still grows at the corner and its apples fell to the earth and someone smart called it gravity but still folks fear they’ll roll off the edge.
Some immigrants stumbled off ships, got their names re-spelled, and went forth to Eden to multiply and call the roads by their old names, even the one that dead-ends in the woods.
Here, the cricks are lush with frahgs and threatened newts and hellbenders and mudcats and the biggest crick is the Eighteenmile.
Everyone in town has a gun in the front closet and a small dog with a big bark.
The guy going door-to-door for re-election loves to praise the fact that at night, cars and spring doors go unlocked and storm doors stay wide-open to cool things off.Attachments:Eden as prose.docx (16.55 KB)
|
|
|
Eden
Jul 16, 2024 17:12:20 GMT -5
Post by susank on Jul 16, 2024 17:12:20 GMT -5
I love this. The biblical references work because I imagine that even if you are not familiar with the original, a reader could figure out some of the references. The opening is excellent, but I would cut the qualifier, and instead start with just "I grew up in Eden, hence my authority on the subject of Paradise, and the fact of its present demise"
I want a Tang Margarita (actually, it sounds gross, but I am terribly curious...) Such a clever detail
I could go line by line, but I won't. The tone is terrific, balancing Bible with present horror, but in a gentle, slow summer way.
|
|
|
Eden
Jul 16, 2024 17:15:21 GMT -5
Post by bluebird on Jul 16, 2024 17:15:21 GMT -5
I LOVE this! So much fun. I actually laughed out loud on the 4th line that ended "Come back with a warrant!"
You have a wonderful natural rhythm displayed in this poem...it kind of gallops along all wild and free. It is unique, original and inventive or so it seems to me, and it even has a sly edge of political savy. Best of all, nothing is over-done....it all stays in the realm of laughing at ourselves fun.
We want more.
Karen (Bluebird)
|
|
|
Eden
Jul 17, 2024 11:13:20 GMT -5
Post by denise on Jul 17, 2024 11:13:20 GMT -5
Hi Cathy -- I'm with Karen on this one (right down to the laugh-out-loud moment)! I enjoyed this so much. My one suggestion would be to consider exchanging the last two stanzas so that you are ending on the single line which effectively does describe the demise of a (perceived) idyll! Enjoyed this very much!
Denise
|
|
|
Eden
Jul 17, 2024 16:16:12 GMT -5
Post by denise on Jul 17, 2024 16:16:12 GMT -5
Cathy -- sure wish I could have kept participating in today's session but had to leave just as you were finished reading your poem. Would love to know if you decided to keep it as a prose piece (which I missed when I first responded above). I also misread how it was presented above thinking it was couplets when my guess it is actually long lines??? At any rate -- I enjoyed it very much. Best,
Denise
|
|
|
Eden
Jul 19, 2024 11:21:24 GMT -5
Post by Gerry on Jul 19, 2024 11:21:24 GMT -5
Cathy, i very much appreciate the fact that you handed in a pretty raw poem, and that it holds up. I do think you over play the book of Genesis here--not every thing needs a biblical reference because we get it. Used too much and it can be a distraction (let me see how she's going to get it in this line. I am neither a fan of the single block prose poem or the lineated version--I think you can get the most out of it by having it be a multi paragraph (stanzagraph) prose poem. It's sort of what you're getting from the long roll over lines, but you can get more by combining some of them. Still, I like very much what you're doing, and glad so much for some of your explanation before you read the poem in class (east of Eden!). This is close...
|
|