Drawn Homeward

DRAWN HOMEWARD

 

Like the sea receding at low tide

I am drawn back forever from where I came

to where my roots lie deep in this sand.

The home I struggled to escape,

to those streets I return to in memory

to the streets where I played, and dreamed, and feared.

Where I learned of love and loss,

of hope and shame.

where the crash of the waves echoed both the roar of my laughter

and the wailing of my tears.

Strive as I may to escape this town

the place I never felt at home in,

yet the place that shall always be home.

I am drawn back.

 

Author's Note

A new piece I have been tinkering with,

Reviews

[Tate Morgan]

This tells in poetry of the life you led and the values you hold dear, i find it
gentle and kind It forgives the reasons for leaving and as with true love it forgives any injury. Very nice
We are all a product of our beginnings and that is where we need be to find ourselves

[SteveB]

Thank you very much Tate. You know what I think of your skills so your praise means a great deal to me.

[Sarah Khalil]

I'm always saying that I can't wait to leave this place I live, that it's not really my home - but the fact is, I've been living where I do now for 7 years, have become an adult here and come into my own. I dislike it immensely, and it's no good for me, and I will never thrive here. I've known the pain of leaving home and going far away, but this crappy place I am now, where my nightmares have been realized and barely a sliver of family remains - but where I have more than a couple roots in the ground - might just be home. Thank you for this thought-provoking piece.

[SteveB]

Thank you for your review.

[SyberRose]

This is so true...I like to think about where I grew up even though I wasnt crazy about it ha...and I was glad to leave... but still enjoy thinking of home and the happy times with my best friend...Rose

[SteveB]

Thank you Rose. The older I get the more peace I have with the old neighborhood. Which either is a sign of growth on my part or evidene that many are now dead.

[shythatway]

I'm a strong believer in 'the home is where the heart is'. Still, you're right. I think we're all drawn back, and you worded it so well. The duality in it. It's never "all good", never "all bad".. :)

[SteveB]

Thank you Shy. And I apologize that I did not thank you earlier.

[James Hanna-Magill]

Dear SteveB

First of all welcome to Writers Café. After a writing website closed that I was happy on I found this and have pitched my writing tent here. I find it the best around. So may you have a long and happy time on here!

Thank you also for your review and kind emails. They mean much to me and I hope you found my responses helpful in return.

I felt as a result, I might turn to your writing and do a review. I flicked through many of your pieces and then felt I was spoilt for choice. Take heart from that. Many pushed my emotional hot buttons and leapt off the page at me.

In the end, I settled for this.

For my sins I am Top Reviewer on this site and have been virtually all the time since I joined except for a week when I was hospitalised.

If that is so, it is because I enjoy reviewing and gain much from the words of others as I hope they do in reviewing me.

Just a little on how I review. I tend to review long and often in detail. But what a writer will always get from me is the emotional impact their writing has had on me the reader, the one looking at the screen and one at a time.

Having read some of your other pieces with which I identify immediately, I shall be back for more soon.

So to my review.

1) Structure / rhyme / rhythm / punctuation / style

Structure: One stanza of fourteen lines.

Rhyme: You choose not to.

Rhythm: Although the length of your lines vary, I could hear a steady beat when I read the poem out loud to myself a couple of times.

Punctuation: You punctuate fully and you only use capitals at the beginning of a sentence. This plays to my own preference, which is either to punctuate or not at all. It's just a matter of consistency. You follow the former route.

Style: If you take all of the above, this poem falls into a style which might easily be called free or blank verse - above all given your choice not to rhyme.

Also because of the way you punctuate (e.g. Sentences start where they start and end where they end - you are almost writing in paragraphs) it is a hybrid.

On the one hand it might be viewed as poetic prose, by which I mean writing in the form of prose but with the traits of poetry within it.

It however retains enough of a verse layout to perhaps end in the reverse territory, which is prose written in verse format.

In the end definitions are not that important. Poetry if anything should just be an strong, emotional expression of a writer's emotion and you have done that well here (see meaning and impact below).

In overview, I like what you have achieved here in terms of the nuts and bolts of the poem. It hangs together nicely.

2) Use of English: You keep your words relatively simple, rather than choosing more obscure and complex one. I feel that matches well not just the style of the poem but the message it delivers.

3) Allusion/ metaphor: You effectively use one metaphor throughout which is the use of sea and sand to back up your feelings as you express them about home. I find this an excellent allusion well deployed.

4) Meaning: This is always the writer's to own and the reader's to guess or in any case place their own interpretation on.

Some will make their meaning opaque, therefore leaving it more difficult for the reader to interpret.

Others are more transparent so that the meaning is more obvious.

This poem broadly falls into the latter camp. Both approaches have equal validity.

It is the draw of your home, as far I can see it, where you were born and brought up.

5) Impact. Now this is where you catch me and I start to relate highly on an emotional level.

I am Irish and left home at the age of 18. I am now 53 and have rarely returned over the years except at irregular intervals to visit family.

Yet however long I have been away, I have always loved bumping into other Irish people, who like me chose to leave home for other parts of the globe. And there is a part of regret in me about why I left and for so long. The call of my place of birth.

The way I find it effectively expressed is: 'You can take the boy out of Ireland, but you can't take Ireland out of the boy.'

There is always the possibility of this being for you a metaphor for some other part of your life. But I think not.

To convey how deeply I relate to this poem and to demonstrate the spark of recognition, let me do that by picking up the lines which affect me most.

6) Favourite lines: I think in this case I may end up quoting most if the whole of the poem back at you. But if that is what it takes to show you how strong a message this poem has for me, I may have no choice.

First lift:

Like the sea receding at low tide
I am drawn back forever from where I came
to where my roots lie deep in this sand.
The home I struggled to escape,


As I say the allusion is a powerful one. But where you smack me right between the eyes is in your last line. 'The home I struggled to escape.'

I was brought up in Belfast during the seventies and the height of the Troubles which was an on-going war between two parts of the Irish community.

On the one hand, nationalists sought for the North and South of Ireland to be re-joined and to move the power of the English government from control of the North. These normally Roman Catholics and on whose side the terrorists were the IRA.

On the other hand, unionists sought for the North of Ireland to remain separate from the South and to remain under English rule. These normally Protestants and on whose side the terrorists were the UDA and UVF.

Daily both side shot and maimed each other in tit for tat killings and bombings. Slaughter and bombs going off surrounded and engulfed my early years. I hatred the spirit of 'no compromise' between the two parties.

Also I was brought up in a very strict Protestant family, where all of my father's focus was on our Christian upbringing and corporal punishment was a regular corrective demonstration of God's wrath at my misbehaviour.

By the age of 18 / 19 I was never so glad as to get the first flight out. I spent the next two years either working or studying in France before spending much of the rest of my life in either England or other parts of the globe.

'Escape?'

Yes indeed!

Yet the reasons for your escape do not seem clarified.

But do you need to clarify them for me?

No. You will have seen how I react using my own personal experience. The writer is always only ever having an intimate conversation with one reader at a time. And response will only ever depend on the relativity of their personal experiences.

The one word 'escape' here simply set my mind racing. Hence my huge reaction.

Second lift, and the heart of the poem:

to those streets I return to in memory
to the streets where I played, and dreamed, and feared.
Where I learned of love and loss,
of hope and shame.
where the crash of the waves echoed both the roar of my laughter
and the wailing of my tears.

This is very eloquent verse and peaks loudly to me and the endless comparison between the good and bad times you use to describe your formative years. I feel the same. I believe those who have moved away from home always will. Not all of my childhood was doom and gloom.

'played' 'feared'
'love' 'loss'
'hope' 'shame'
'laugher' 'tears'

So well expressed and redolent of my own feeling about Ireland.

Third and final lift:

Strive as I may to escape this town
the place I never felt at home in,
yet the place that shall always be home.
I am drawn back.

Your conclusion. You end as you begin and I come back to my own words: 'You can take the boy out of Ireland but not Ireland out of the boy!'

7) Overview: A well structured poem in free verse with a perfect central metaphor and hugely impactful for many. Accomplished writing.

I hope you find something in this review of help to you. Reviewing is not for its own sake. It is to assist and not hinder the writer.

With my warmest regards


James Hanna-Magill

[SteveB]

Thank you so very much James. I apreciate your review very much. It shows that you took the piece seriously enough to read it and ponder it and what more can a writer ask of a reader. I also appreciate that the review was in depth. One of the purposes of being here is to improve as a writer. That is only possible when honest criticism is given pointing out strengths and weaknesses.

[James Hanna-Magill]

My pleasure, James

[Rita L. Sev]

We may leave home, but it never leaves us... Very nicely done!

[SteveB]

Thank you Rita

[Sami Khalil]

I like this poem and its imagery...Thank you for sharing...:)

[SteveB]

Thank you for taking the time to read it.

[Sami Khalil]

My pleasure...:)

[Rogue]

I found something of myself in this one. As a young adult, I had gladly set off and away from where I grew up. Have lived what seems a lifetime happy to be away from it and only returning for visits here and there. Now I find myself thinking about returning there for good more and more. Perhaps this is a sort of coming full circle..

Nicely written piece. :)

[SteveB]

Thank you. For me one of the things of getting older is that the more I try to escape the past the more it seems to pull me back. Not necessarily with regret but with a realization that the things we tried to escape from made us who we are.

[Rogue]

Yes, exactly.

[crystalo]

Motion of mind in one place
Awesome

[SteveB]

Thank you for your review.