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The Second Language / Discussion
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Your works evoke a special emotion and sensation like few others can summon. A memory, too.
There are hyacinths and honeysuckle and roses — wild roses, proper roses, beach roses, not those inbred monstrosities with too many petals for pollinators to get through, real roses — that do climb and briar pon the benches on campus — the benches cloaked by bushes, veiled by curtaining redwood. The meaning is clear by the last stanza, don;t you worry — but even if it were not, I would still be mighty pleased to have read this work. It has a smell to it, an emotion, a sensation caressing like petals on my cheeks when I fell asleep under the cherry blossom trees for all of five minutes and awoke with the imprints of sun dogs in my eyes and my crow friends listing on the ground nearby, hoping for treats — it is a delight and an honour as always, carolynn, to live through your world, see through your eyes however briefly, rainbow-glass'd. The technical side: the language evokes an old familiarity with Old English, in its many forms, and a half-known hybrid of Italian and German and English and French and Spanish parsable to most, readable to none. This is to say: it adds even more emotion, depth, understanding to the work, has a tone to it that this work would be sorely remiss without. Lovely, carolynn. Lovely.
-Styg
What is life if not the contrast between what has been and what will become?
i don't always follow what exactly is being communicated, but this definitely shimmers with a certain essence.
poet
as others have said the poem is truly very striking. the work lends very well to being read aloud, and more than most poems is structured in such a way that the sounds lull the senses and yet make the meaning clearer still when read aloud. the interpretation of all poetry is naturally fuzzy and fuzzier still when it is written with courage and novelty but all interpretation is dependent on what the poem communicates, and it communicates many different meaningful things to me for every line. thank you very much for sharing.
There is an old person on the bench next to you. Their smile radiates kindness like the morning sun, and they know you better than you know yourself. This feels like a record of that wonderful conversation with someone you'll never see again. Well done, Carolynn.
Time-honored +1.
I mean as soon as you open this poem you know you're in for something. The way you chose to write it just creates this crazy aura about it. I think the intended interpretation is that there is someone talking to you on the bench, but I also couldn't help but think about the possibility of it actually being spoken normally, but it being muffled somehow so it's harder to parse. It's like we're within a membrane, straining our ears to parse what's being said outside of it. Where, and I think this works for both the interpretations, the perception of a language barrier despite the same language being spoken is the point.
Something about the Egyptian goose being a species that was brought to the USA to be ornamental also speaks to me as its possible reason for inclusion in the piece. The remains of geese are present in this poem, their "old rake," being unsure what is in the sky, heads of geese and meat and butchery. But then there is the Egyptian geese, alive and well to be painted. For me the geese represent queer people in some way. However, I have a hard time deciding if this whole Egyptian goose thing is meant to be negative or not. I could see it as queer people surviving no matter what, and the you in this poem is there to witness that and experience an awakening. I could also see it as saying the ones that get to survive are ones who could be considered palatable, even pretty to the onlooker, the you, until the you joins them at the end while not being in that palatable group.
And the way the ending positions the situation as victorious and brave but also invasive was really powerful and imo a big source of the shimmery-ness that some of my fellow commenters mentioned.
It's a really beautiful poem that I've loved thinking about for the past several days. I definitely don't claim to understand it but I also think I do. It at least has brought me a lot, so that could be an understanding, in a way.
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