I've been reading train-related ghost stories recently. It's really been getting me in a railway spirit. I haven't been on a train in years. (Light rail not included.)
Anyway, it reminded me of this poem that I wrote some years ago. I can't remember if I published it here before. It's not on the blog now. It describes a real experience I had.
I've written hundreds of poems, but I'd say I'm actually happen with a dozen at most. This is one of them. It was published a few years ago in The Lyric, a traditionalist verse magazine in the USA.
I am quite proud of this poem because I think the question in the last stanza is an important one. Who has the best perspective on a place, a situation, or anything else? An insider? An outsider? Somebody else?
I think this applies to a lot of things. For instance, Catholic Ireland used to be seen (arguably) in a rather romantic and sentimental way by the Irish themselves. Today (inarguably) it's seen through a filter of cynicism and disillusionment. Which is right?
It's not a perfect poem by any means. The second verse is a bit awkward. But "holiday fizz" is good, I think.
I also like poems that take a very ordinary experience and find meaning and poetry in it. That is the idea behind the Suburban Romantics manifesto.
Anyway, here you go.
(Whenever I offer poetry or anything to do with poetry-- online or in an interpersonal situation-- I brace for apathy. I was at a coffee morning on Thursday and I ventured to express my views on the decline of poetry to a colleague, since she had recently given a presentation on a poetry-related theme. After a few minutes of listening to my captivating theories, she announced she was going to get more coffee and didn't come back. Oh well. I keep trying.)
Work Day and Holiday
I sat alone on a morning trainA new world gleamed past the window pane
And seven free days stretched out before me.
We came to a town, and suddenly
A crowd of commuters filled the carriage
En route to office and factory,
To lab and station and school and garage.
Soon each was lost in a mobile phone
A laptop, a book, or a magazine.
A handful, glued to their earplugs' drone,
Stared out at the vista so often seen.
I sat there, robbed of my holiday fizz,
And thrust in the role of the raw outsider.
But which of us saw the place as it is--
Was it them? Or me? Or both? Or neither?
A uniquely modern poem..Well done (genuinely not condescendingly)
ReplyDeleteI only recently heard of Victor Daley when reading a Henry Lawson biography; not sure whether he's better known in Ireland or Australia. Or a memory lost in apathy?
Thank you so much, I really appreciate that!
ReplyDeleteI had never heard of Victor Daley at all. Most interesting. I would say he is definitely lost in apathy, though I wasn't very drawn to the single poem of his that I looked at ("A Sunset Fantasy").
I really like this poem. Also I think it captures part of the struggle in human life, that often there is so much wonder around us that we tend to start ignoring it so that we can actually be productive. The problem is when we start denying that it exists. I worked for a while in the United State's Capitol Building and this happened to me, the first day I was awestruck by the building, but as time progressed I began to ignore it. I never got to the point where I would deny it was amazing, I just stopped paying attention to it. However, I think in general people who live in a more mundane place forget that their mundane is someone else's exotic and that there is real beauty around them. For this reason I am glad to live in a place with all four seasons, it makes it harder to ignore the beauty - although people still do. It reminds me of Chesterton's fable about the two boys in the garden who stumble upon a fairy who grants a wish to one each. One desires to become a giant and so does and sees that the world diminishes, the second wishes to become small and so discovers that his own garden is filled with wonder. This hit home to me on a trip to Ireland where a relative asked if we were disappointed with Ireland. No, I was not disappointed in the least. Ireland is much more versatile in scenery and history than the US, which I learned is quite shocking to Europeans. There may be beauty in the Great Prairies in the Middle of America or in the fields of Ohio, but it becomes quite monotonous to drive (see I-80 through Nebraska) and with the destruction of Native American mounds in the 19th Century, there are no ancient ruins to break up the long stretches of highway. America is beautiful, but it is also big and has areas the size of Ireland that have no major geographic changes, because the top of the continent was scraped flat by glaciers. While I am downplaying America's beauty, I hope I kind of made my point. Often the grass is greener on the side you are not on. (I admit it is a bad analogy, because the grass is literally greener in Ireland). Anyway, to me Ireland is the more exotic and for them America is the more exotic.
ReplyDeleteNo, I see your point entirely, and it's very eloquently made. Actually it's exactly the whole point of my poem so that pleases me very much!
DeleteI'm glad you weren't disappointed in Ireland. I'm always worrying that Americans will find it a let-down, given the romantic image of Ireland they often hold. At least there are some Irish things that can't really be affected by secularisation and globalisation, which is our landscape and climate.
Regarding the constant danger of taking things for granted, my favourite Chesterton quotation is this one: "There runs a strange law through the length of human history — that men are continually tending to undervalue their environment, to undervalue their happiness, to undervalue themselves. The great sin of mankind, the sin typified by the fall of Adam, is the tendency, not towards pride, but towards this weird and horrible humility.
This is the great fall, the fall by which the fish forgets the sea, the ox forgets the meadow, the clerk forgets the city, every man forgets his environment and, in the fullest and most literal sense, forgets himself. This is the real fall of Adam, and it is a spiritual fall. It is a strange thing that many truly spiritual men, such as General Gordon, have actually spent some hours in speculating upon the precise location of the Garden of Eden. Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed."
Thanks for your comment!
I will admit, I may just be easy to please. I enjoyed just practicing my Irish by trying to read the Irish part of the signs before the English and driving into the Irish countryside and just seeing what was around. We found a Ogham stone and the monastery where St. Finnian started out doing that.
DeleteIf I was disappointed in anything it is that it is evident that America has culturally colonized Ireland in a lot of places and it isn't even the good parts of American culture. I heard way too much American pop music in grocery stores and saw too many advertisements for Black Friday (The American shopping day after Thanksgiving) and Wicked. (The Wizard of Oz is a good part of American Culture, Wicked is a perversion of it.)
I'm not sure there is such a thing as "too easy to please".
DeleteI've often said the same thing as yourself. I think there is enough America-bashing on this side of the Atlantic, I love America, but it is indeed all the BAD parts of America that have been exported here. Not Gideon Bibles in hotel rooms, spelling bees, "sir" and "ma'am", or politicians invoking God. No, we have McDonald's and hip-hop instead. We're in the bizarre situation of having Black Friday (a recent introduction) without Thanksgiving.
NB: Noticing American cultural colonization was more saddening than disappointing, because I knew to expect it.
ReplyDeleteI'm just back from my first trip to Yorkshire. I loved the train trip there and back, but primarily because the landscape reminded me so much of Ireland. I'm now feeling a little guilty that I was lost in a reverie of association, rather than appreciating the landscape "for itself", but maybe such a notion is nonsense and there will always be memory, association etc.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's a whole other poem-- one for you to write!
DeleteIf it makes you feel better, I'm kind of touched and reassured that you do feel so homesick for Ireland. I've often wondered if I would. I hope I would.