Washing up at the Red Lion - Writers Forum

AndyH · 02-07-2005, 01:57 PM

This is about my wonderful job I have at the moment.

Washing up at the Red Lion
The Red Lion pub, Grantchester, Cambridgeshire, 6/2/05

My hands reek of onion
and washing-up dregs
chunks of bread, meat, potato
in dirty brown water.

Cooks shout and pans clang
and gossiping waitresses
dump skyscraper cities
of glasses and plates.

For hours on end
I hear nothing around
save the clunking of dishes
and sloshing warm brown.

I look at my watch
and it's 2:39.
My cut, peeling palms
(from sizzling pans
grabbed a second too soon)
move Shiva-like, onwards,
just five hours left.
My watch shows 2:40
yet I feel that already
my eyes start to haze.

Pawn · 02-07-2005, 02:53 PM

This is a nice little poem. You've got the situational description down, there's no doubting that. One could hardly say that it was packed with deep reflection, nor remarkable poetic form, but I think that for what it is it's solid enough.

AndyH · 02-07-2005, 03:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pawn

This is a nice little poem. You've got the situational description down, there's no doubting that. One could hardly say that it was packed with deep reflection, nor remarkable poetic form, but I think that for what it is it's solid enough.

What can be deeper than the grinding reality of life itself? There are many themes touched upon, spoken by the everyday voice, but there nonetheless: our relationship with time, for example; or in a social context, showing the kind of lives people have who do this for a living (I'm glad I am only doing it as a gap year job, and don't have to pay all my bills and food with the 4 pounds 85 an hour). Wordsworth wrote many poems about social issues, and I think it is important not to miss out the everyday (in his time he was frowned upon for his depiction of everyday scenes highlighting social issues such as 'The Cumberland Beggar' or 'The Idiot Boy').

After all, what are reflective poems about? Trying to say something about human endeavour and dynamics, about where the human race is going. That includes issues about how our society is divided, socially and economically.

I've been quite deliberate with the rhythm, i.e. anapestic trimeter. Whether it's remarkable poetic form is up for grabs, but what is for sure is I have written it with an eye on rhythm, so it's not just prose with line breaks or something.

European_Son · 02-07-2005, 03:32 PM

You've just summed up why I despise most employment... constantly fighting the sense of time, which never flies by, but instead decides to flow like cold syrup on a mission uphill. Hours pass by in a dull grey blur and what is achieved? Apart from a measly wage at the end of the week that gets frittered friviously away on wants rather than needs?

It's not an epic masterpiece that will live on forever, but I don't think it was intended to be. It has conveyed the intended message rather well. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Pawn · 02-07-2005, 03:34 PM

I'm not sure how specific to this work you're being in your reply. Are you trying to suggest that this poem is, through the everyday, a poem about time, or socio-economic division? Or do you merely expound the virtues of the everyday? The former I would question, while the latter would have my unmitigated agreement.

AndyH · 02-07-2005, 05:24 PM

Time does sometimes not flow so slowly - on your day off

Pawn, I get the feeling you are not so keen on poems that do not overtly refer to deeper issues. This is one of the oldest divides of poetry, art, literature, thinking: it's classic v romantic, objective v subjective, 'truth is beauty' (Keats) v 'art is art because it is not nature' (Yeats). Many poems I write are low-key in their poetic voice and not overtly reflective or abstract, yet nonetheless they are covertly so. I think there is a link between poetry and art, poetry and cinema. I try to give a snapshot, and the reader takes from that snapshot what meanings he sees within it.

Pawn · 02-07-2005, 05:51 PM

I believe that latter quote is Goethe, actually. I ran a search on it, unconvinced that Yeats had written it, and Goethe seemed the most likely culprit. Personally, I believe him to a greater extent than I do Keats.

Do I dislike that which does not overtly reference profound ideas? This is a difficult question to answer, because in frankness just about everything ever written is such a form. However, the reason I don't call this poem profound, or acknowledge even its covert tendencies, is to do with how stimulating I find it. To imply the strangeness of human interrelations with time is to gesture vaguely in the direction of an ocean of meaning. I barely pause at the implication. This poem is three stanzas of atmosphere with a touch of meaning for spice. It is real, it is true. You write quite well what the experience of working in a kitchen is like, and you touch upon the relevant issue concerning time. But does that make it a covert philosopher? Hardly.

What I'd term physical poetry is beautiful in itself. Poetry about the simple subjective experience of percieving an object. This is primarily that: it is primarily about a time and place. What really fascinates me, and what I prefer to write, though it may not be evidenced through my recent work, is the combination of that with the very abstract and emotional. This provides the reader with a true attempt at communicating a subjective moment in its completeness.

Then there's the purely metaphysical, like 'Never Be Still', which is a form which gives potential to actually explore an idea. Not to just gesture at that ocean of meaning, but take an angle on it, turn it round and muse on a viewpoint.

So, to answer your question, all forms of poetry interest me, but I stake my tent next to the guy who's trying to tell me what the hell his life is like, and setting my brain alight while he's doing it.

AndyH · 02-07-2005, 06:01 PM

I looked it up to check and Yeats did indeed say it, very much with his own twist on Goethe's quotation. My volume of Yeats's poetry discusses the link between Yeats's poetry and Goethe in detail.

Anyways, I see your point very well, I understand you much better now I think. You've given me some food for thought for future poems. I look at my poem again and try to see the emotion, and I do - yet the emotion is almost more like a lack of emotion. It is a poem about the lack of emotion, the accepting melancholy at the situation.

Pawn · 02-07-2005, 06:07 PM

Run, progress is coming!