February

Unnoticed beauty:
ocean waves in winter,
the curve of your cheek.

- George J. Dance, 2023

Commentary for those who need it:

This is a revision of an old poem I wrote and posted here in 2009. It's still on the group; I considered deleting it, but decided there's no need as it's obviously an older version. (It was posted before I started using my middle initial.) I also published it in print form in a 2015 book.

My reason for revising it is that it recently came up that a couple of people didn't understand the poem. IMO, if a reader tells a writer that he can't understand something he's written, a reader should take that in and look for an explanation. Sometimes it's just a stupid reader, but it can also be that the poem is unclear. So I looked at it, and decided that indeed the idea I was trying to express ws not clearly expressed.

That idea, for those who need it spelled out, was a simple thought that came to me one day. Here I was, sitting at my computer day in and day out, and missing out on the wonderful things around me, the natural world and my wife. (The two images of LL2-3 are meant as synecdoches for both.) Nothing "profound," or intellectually deep, but it hit me as a revelation or epiphany at the time, so I wanted to see if I could express it in the poem.

This revision incorporates an abstraction, "beauty", which one is never supposed to do in modern poetry, a rule that can be traced back to Ezra Pound. However, that's a rule I've never subscribed to. In fact, there have been many good poems that depend on abstractions, which is enough to refute Pound's rule. That point was made by Northrop Frye years ago; I don't remember the name of the essay I read it in, but I do remember that Frye's counterexample was Byron's "She walks in beauty" (which, ironically, uses the same abstraction that I've used here).

On Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 2:24:23 PM UTC-4, George J. Dance wrote:
> February
> Unnoticed beauty:
> ocean waves in winter,
> the curve of your cheek.
> - George J. Dance, 2023
>
>
> Commentary for those who need it:
>
> This is a revision of an old poem I wrote and posted here in 2009. It's still on the group; I considered deleting it, but decided there's no need as it's obviously an older version. (It was posted before I started using my middle initial.) I also published it in print form in a 2015 book.
>
> My reason for revising it is that it recently came up that a couple of people didn't understand the poem. IMO, if a reader tells a writer that he can't understand something he's written, a reader should take that in and look for an explanation. Sometimes it's just a stupid reader, but it can also be that the poem is unclear. So I looked at it, and decided that indeed the idea I was trying to express ws not clearly expressed.
>
> That idea, for those who need it spelled out, was a simple thought that came to me one day. Here I was, sitting at my computer day in and day out, and missing out on the wonderful things around me, the natural world and my wife. (The two images of LL2-3 are meant as synecdoches for both.) Nothing "profound," or intellectually deep, but it hit me as a revelation or epiphany at the time, so I wanted to see if I could express it in the poem.
>
> This revision incorporates an abstraction, "beauty", which one is never supposed to do in modern poetry, a rule that can be traced back to Ezra Pound. However, that's a rule I've never subscribed to. In fact, there have been many good poems that depend on abstractions, which is enough to refute Pound's rule. That point was made by Northrop Frye years ago; I don't remember the name of the essay I read it in, but I do remember that Frye's counterexample was Byron's "She walks in beauty" (which, ironically, uses the same abstraction that I've used here).

PS - I'd like to thank a very special and wonderful woman for their feedback in this regard.