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The Pen is Mightier than the Sword

Wednesday's Ashes


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Wednesday's Ashes

 

Wednesday's ashes

have left an itch on my skull

on the bones

down under my skin.

My forehead is clean.

There's no trace of the smear

the priest pressed there

over my nose.

No stain.

No streaks.

No pieces of cinder.

Nothing at all

but this itch in my skull

on the bones

down under my skin.

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You write such skilled poetry it's hard for me to comment. I tend to read it on many levels...

 

To me, this begins the thought train that Ash Wednesday isn't just an external ritual, but a guide to something deeper. The thoughts multiple from there...

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This was the last thing I read before sleeping last night. Its rhythms and repetitions haunted my thoughts for quite some while. I've come back to it a few times since - and I want to read it without the line 'over my nose'. I can see in 'nose' a connecting assonance with 'bones' which comes before and later.... but still, for some reason, my idiot brain wants to skip over this line directly to the more powerful 'No' lines - which read to me as three hammer blows echoing the 'There's no trace of the smear' line.

 

Hmmm - I'm well aware that this may make no sense at all. Here's a grain of salt Cyril, I give it out along with all my attempted crits. :)

 

C.

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There's no need for the grain of salt, Cerulean. You're comment is right on target, that line is unnecessary and only serves to weaken the blunt and direct movement of the following sequence of definite negations. In fact, reading the piece outloud again I was struck by how quickly my voice passes over its syllables as if they were little more than placemarkers. Thank you for pointing that out.

 

Let's have a look at how it reads without the line.

 

Wednesday's Ashes

 

Wednesday's ashes

have left an itch on my skull

on the bones

down under my skin.

My forehead is clean.

There's no trace of the smear

the priest pressed there.

No stain.

No streaks.

No pieces of cinder.

Nothing at all

but this itch in my skull

on the bones

down under my skin.

 

I do like it better this way. Time to let it percolate a bit and see if that change suggests any others.

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Quin-Now that's a list I'd love to read.

Cyril, I've been restraining myself from commenting for a while, because I can't make the criticism you do, but...ce la vie

 

I notice that whenever I read this, I almost make a stanza break between lines four and five. The break between them feels large. I think I like that, and I bet it's intended, but it interests me.

 

Definitely a poem that leaves me asking questions, like why does it leave an itch.

 

Glad I read it.

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Thank you all for such thoughtful comments and feedback. :)

 

Gwaihir, your sense of things shifting from line 4 to line 5 is accurate.

 

Perhaps the simplest way to explain it is that the cadences of the first 4 lines are the typical cadences I employ when speaking in a reflective key. The next several lines however, are the blunt statements of factual assertions. There is another shift at the end of the piece as assertion revisits reflection. I wish I could say that all of that is planned, but most of it originates in my own natural patterns of speech.

 

On a technical note, the first 4 lines make use of swifter moving combinations of syllables. In particular I use a number of anapestic units [2 unstressed and 1 stressed syllable] – such as ‘on my skull’ and ‘on the bones.’ I tend to use these a lot in reflective moods as they move quickly and can bring a reader deeply into a set of ideas in a series of swift motions that are barely noticed.

 

The ‘No’ statements, on the other hand move very slowly as they rely on putting stressed syllables close together – ‘No stain’ and ‘No streaks.’ These work well when one wants to slow things down and direct the reader’s attention to something specific and hold it there.

 

A general rule of thumb – groups of unstressed syllables tend to move swiftly; stressed syllables grouped together slow things down.

 

Again, I did not set out to design the piece this way. Much of it naturally took this shape. A little knowledge of how combinations of stressed an unstressed syllables work allowed me to tighten things into the shape the piece ultimately took.

 

As for the itch ..... figuring that out is the reader’s job. B)

Edited by Cyril Darkcloud
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