Sea Shell Game 3

[John McManus]

Hi everyone, for those of you who have taken part in games 1 and 2 you know what to do. For any newbies that want to join in then please feel free to do so. All you have to do is tell us which poem you prefer and why. I hope you all enjoy these poems.


Monday bleeding down to money

Peter Yovu

a man in a crowd in a man

John Stevenson

[Vida]

HI John,

Difficult choice.

Monday bleeding down to money

Peter Yovu

a man in a crowd in a man

John Stevenson

I usually pick the haiku that brings me more questions and that I know I'll read again and again. This time I can say that about both poems.

When I read them the first time, these two haiku looked very different for me. Now I think they both place the needs of a person against the needs of the society. How much we lose and how much of us stays while among others.

In Peter's haiku, the man is lost to the money-making. He leaves at home all his dreams, needs, wishes, otherwise said: his individuality.

The man in John's haiku, I imagine is at a game or in a theater, he's with the crowd, part of the crowd, he is the crowd. Is there something left from his individuality at that moment?

I think I'll go with John's haiku, but as I said in the beginning, I like them both very much.

Best,
Vida

[John McManus]

Hi Vida, thanks so much for getting the ball rolling on this one. I am so glad you liked both poems, and I for one enjoyed your thoughts on them.

warmest,
John

[Mary Stevens]

Hi, John.

This is a fun game!

I like both of these poems, but prefer John Stevenson's; it stays a while and takes me somewhere else.

I had to work my way backwards into the poem. I started thinking about the disparate characters inside myself. All the different internal voices and goals and needs—many times attempting to make themselves known all at the same time. How often I find decision-making difficult because I have to choose which need to satisfy first or to the exclusion of another. The internal tapes of what others might think of me and how I should act in a given situation. One can feel lonely in a crowd. But one is never really alone, even when no one else is physically present. I often wish I could be alone in my own mind! In the poem I see a man standing in a crowd with his own crowd of selves inside him. Stevenson doesn't say it linearly, like I just did. He makes me work for it. That feels satisfying. More meanings will probably surface as I (and my many selves!) toy with the poem.

[John McManus]

Thanks for joining in Mary! I enjoyed your post very much.

That's now one vote to each poem. I get the feeling this is going to be a tight one!

warmest,
John   

[Köy Deli]

Thanks for joining in Mary! I enjoyed your post very much.

That's now one vote to each poem. I get the feeling this is going to be a tight one!

warmest,
John   

I think Vida and Mary have both said they prefer John's? So 2 to John so far . . .

Peter's I am reading as a treatment of the old familiar monday morning back to work blues trope - and John's little word play as the mob rule/identity trope, or Poe's  grand malheur, or Steiner's Heilsamist. . .

I am still thinking about this - Peter's I like for the sonics and the play on words and idioms -  the movement from Monday - Money, and the life-sapping dryness of having to work in a job where it's all about 'bleeding money' - the role and rule of 'bleeding money' over so much of one's life - bleeding conveying a sense of suffering through the work-a-day week where it all comes down to bleeding money. I like this a lot as a one line poem, but for its form and abstraction and authorial language I am not sure I like it as a haiku/senryu . . .

I will come back with my vote after thinking some more about this.

[Chris Patchel]

It's rare that I don't like a poem by John S. but 'a man,' though thought provoking, feels like an intellectual exercise. 'Monday' also takes place largely in the mind with little engagement of the senses, yet it does engage me aurally and emotionally.

My vote goes to Peter's.

[Köy Deli]

Peter's I am reading as a treatment of the old familiar monday morning back to work blues trope - and John's little word play as the mob rule/identity trope, or Poe's  grand malheur, or Steiner's Heilsamist. . .

. . .I will come back with my vote after thinking some more about this.

After some more consideration, because it gives me more 'ors' to think about, I vote for John's naughty little any ol' hole at an orgy.

Well being exists only
When in the mirror of the human soul
The whole community is reflected
And when there lives in the community
The strength of each individual soul.
Rudolf Steiner

[Adam Traynor]

Both have an element, as Peter Yovu himself might say, of playfulness. Yovu's plays (in part) with words and John Stevenson's plays, in part, with our minds. That may be the same thing. Yovu's poem seems to say that, contrary to what may often be asserted about haiku-- that it is not about language and that language calling attention to itself simply gets in the way-- he seems to say that language itself is a living thing which bleeds, and maybe even that the language of business reduces a living thing to a commodity-- bleeds it down to an object.

Stevenson's poem, also seemingly a poem of the mind rather than of sensation, also plays with language. Is it language or is it the nature of perception to lead to a hall of mirrors, a kind of Escher inner-outer landscape. Stevenson's poem almost feels to me to represent the experience of schizophrenia, where outer reference and self reference get confused. Maybe less dramatically or clinically, it is akin to the child's experience according to Maurice Sendak: "I'm in the milk and the milk's in me".

Both do what they do well. For me it's a tie.

[dthaase]

What marvelous haiku.  The are both so well crafted.  My vote however is for John's poem.  I had a visceral response after reading that and then upon reflection found even more depth.  The attention to awareness has a profound playfulness to it which I admire.  I tok the haiku to reflect on the communal realities of the individual - with a nod to both the individual as well as external experience.

[John McManus]

Thanks for all your thoughts everyone. It's been a while since we have had any more votes or thoughts so I'll call this a landslide victory for John's poem with four votes to one.

Thanks to all that joined in.

warmest,
John