This is an improv of the piece "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden. The piece is a stanza form so I took the trochaic pentameter approach. I hope this scans right. I took the line "driven out the cold."
We can wonder about everything and
nothing except about winter. You had
driven out the cold as I was vermin,
hoping someone forgot about blanketing in
something unlike stars, of colder essence-
permanent of snow and hapless never.
So hey, I enjoyed this. What I liked most is this negating movement you handled, in my opinion, rather subtly in "We can wonder about everything and nothing..." and again in "something unlike stars." It's a movement I'm trying to work on myself so I like to see other successful attempts at it in order to see what works. Of course, there are moments where the form muddies the work. In places like "as I was vermin" and earlier in "except about winter" could be easily condensed in later drafts for powerful, sonic precision. I think what's central here is this idea of permanence and the attempt to blanket one's self in something permanent, which the speaker admits is "not of you, of me, of we." I also wonder what "we" is and how that lends to the fragility of the relationship? My guess is that the breaking lies mostly within the speaker who views his/herself as "vermin" but is ultimately a meaningless guess until further information is supplied in a future draft.
ReplyDelete