Thursday, October 02, 2008

Thanks for all your helpful comments, most pointed out that there seemed to be two poems in the first draft and it wasn't blending well.

Here's draft two, hope this is an improvement.

The Greenock Blitz

[post removed]

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is great. For what it's worth, I like it a lot.

By the way, may I link to you?

Marion McCready said...

thanks sb, I'm glad you like it. of course you may like to me, and I'll do likewise!

Anonymous said...

That's very good of you.

Jim Murdoch said...

This is much better that the first draft. I was struggling with it so I'm glad to see a reworking. I don't like the line 'The Greenock hills, the ambushed hills' because you don't mirror the opening stanza due to that 'sugar beet' line. You might lose the line 'twilight fog descends' or you could combine the two –

'The hills are white now, twilight fog descends'

Either way I'd have a look at these two stanzas. Other than that, it's quite evocative. The Churchill is perfect.

Marion McCready said...

thanks for that jim, I think I will do that, there was too many 'Greenock's' in it anyhow.

James Owens said...

I agree with the revisions you've made. This is better than the earlier version. In fact, there's not a thing here I don't like. I love the way early lines come back at the end, but not exactly -- more like theme and variation -- especially "airbrushed" becoming "ambushed." A sense of history, and the speaker's position in it.

The stanza
"a boy runs his finger along
railings, rising to his tongue
the taste of rain"
is very evocative for me. Are these rusty railings? The taste of rain and rust?

Marion McCready said...

thanks james, I'm glad you like it and I like the rust idea!