MURMURATION

been meaning to write this one for a year or two .. there are beaches of black sand in some parts of the world .. here one goes a little crazy .. like starlings when the form a murmuration

Rise up, you beach of ink black sand

Rise up! Rise up! O how you stand!

Hot swirl about us, boiling storm

Reforming in this breathless air

An E, an L, a V, an O

A billion letters on the wing

A murmuration made of lives

Reforming into lines of verse

Reform! Perform! o how you storm!

Hot blinding jetness in our eyes

Dark primacies materealise

To know themselves at one with all

We settle into words-made dust

Stretched, endings, scattered on black sand

~

Reviews

[Gary H]

Is an interesting contrast between white and black. 'Reform! Perform! o how you storm' sounds like Shakespeare trying to rewrite Othello, 'O monstrous! Monstrous!' Iago replies 'Nay, this was but his dream.' (iii.3 line 423/24) But the 'dark primacies materialise' as Marlyn Manson.

[R J Askew]

Bloody hell. Is it you!? Just like old times!

[Fabian G. Franklin]

I like the incantation like a prayer to the muse. Don't all the sounds in our minds reform like the blood rushing through our own bodies echoes in a conch shell when held to the ear? Maybe we will scratch out our souls in the black sand on some desolate beach just to have them washed away by the tide...or maybe they will be memorized and memorialized by a wandering beach comber who passes our thoughts along on the island breeze with strains of calypso music. I hope the treasure seekers are out there.

[emmajoy]

Two years past, mea culpa.. not reading before.

What a musical realisation of movement. ne'er mind its title, its beginning, end and in-between!

You've turned the bar at a strangely manoevred angle with this. Taken this reader into another movement. 'Saw a nurnuration recently- went from meadows distance, from wires hidden behind trees. Took space by surprise. Sometimes erratic, almost in flighted step.. almost.

But for you the sweep of black sand becomes joined at feathhered hip, moving this way that in an extraordinary synocpated whole, not a stranggler in sight! Read your words twice, closed eyes, saw - as best i could. Thought back to my experienced vision! One sees what one wants maybe. Your words have always reached that much higher than the line on which most writers put their pen!

Hope your present work brings amazing success.

[R J Askew]

Thank you Miss G. *bows*

[emmajoy]

Hadn't reviewed you for ages.. so bad, so casual. A fascinating and clever re.enactment of...

[...]

Like calling to sky. Words are desire and try seduce highest above. Romantic and deep and rough. Great combination.

[barleygirl]

I never heard the word murmuration before, so thanks for the new word! I've also never seen black sand before, but your vivid description gives one an idea of how it might look & feel. Your words feel strident with many exclamation points. I'm not sure what ELVO means or stands for, maybe an author's note would help.

[R J Askew]

Cheers Barleygirl .. ELVO is LOVE all mashed up in the wildness of the flight .. though the flight is such that everything falls back into place :)))

[barleygirl]

Thanks for clarifying . . . nice touch!

[Beccy]

I remember as a child, my sister and I being taken to Lanzarote by our grandma. One beach in particular remains locked forever in memory. It was at the southern tip; sand as black as sin, just like the clouds of sparrows when they form a murmuration, and the rocks pools were filled with all sorts of fascinating sea creatures. Though we visit Fuerteventura frequently now, (our parents have a holiday home there,) I've never been back to Lanzarote; perhaps I will take Charlie there someday soon.

Loved this explosion of a poem. Beccy.

[Stephen]

Very nice. i enjoyed reading this poem. Thanks for sharing

[Helena]

I really liked this poem. It was lively and intriguing. I fancied the words were jumping out at me. A truly good write Mr. R. J. Askew!

[James Hanna-Magill]

Dear R J Askew

Hello.

I was led to read you by another, who need remain nameless.

And I am pleased I was.

To understand the writing, I need to understand the writer. They are one.

My point of view.

I do not know you from Adam, except for your putting two key things on a page, your profile and your writing.

I wanted to review this piece because I wanted to review this piece of your many. There is much from which to pick.

So let me try and understand you before I review this piece as it is on here for review.

Let me form a bond as writer to reader, and reader to writer.

I always feel the need to.

In my needing to understand you, perhaps you need to understand me too as a sample reader or else you will not know from what angle I am coming.

The notion that we write to all readers is at times in a crowd of newspapers true. Otherwise in art it is perhaps foolhardy, unless we are talking pulp fiction.

Each reader is unique as is the writer.

In what might be called artistic writing (if such a notion exists) we do not write in the end for the whole, but for each part thereof, in my personal opinion. But whatever we are seeking to express, we need to remain true to ourselves, otherwise it is an act of futility.

Are high street newspapers and their audience different from the artistic? Probably? Certainly? I think so. Do you?

In your profile, you paint a picture of a successful career where you are a purveyor of words, be they yours or those of others, be they in London or elsewhere, be they published or unpublished.

Reuters. I know a few who wrote for them.

You paint yourself as a wordsmith. Be it in this piece or in your other writing, or in your profile.

That you certainly are and with merit.

You career in summary as you display it? These are the points you try to get across in your profile: 'Lancaster'; Law degree'; 'Fleet Street'; 'Geneva and Vienna'; 'OPEC'; 'The Baron ' Reuters'; 'Reuters was a news factory where words hurtled at you like trucks on some vast highway. It made me yearn for more poetic forms of expression, something with a beating heart.' (You make my point?); and then you tell the tale of your maturation to fiction writer and to poet.

It is funny that you learn more, and it applies to me most, from what people do not say than what they do say. Your writing on here fills part of that gap but I am sure not all. It is how it is. But the fun lies in seeking to fill in the gaps.

You might have noticed that many words in, I have said nothing about this piece of writing. It is my habit, forgive me.

Who am I your reader in forming a relationship or you with me?

My key words: 'Brought up in Belfast'; 'Graduate in Modern and Mediaeval Languages from Jesus College Cambridge'; 'Mergers and Acquisitions Consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers'; Travelling the world largely US / wider Europe to do deals'; 'Bilingual in French and English often doing deals in Paris, one a £1billion deal working in Avenue Kleber one of the spokes just off the Arc de Triomphe, along with the Champ Elysées, leading meetings with the directors of the largest French Utility company, in French, in the offices of Rothschild; 'Finance director of the major part of a FTSE 100 company; 'Nervous Breakdown from overworking'; 'Diagnosed with late onset Bipolar Disorder; ' suffered 10 years of consistent loss until this moment and it keeps on going relentlessly''; 'surviving'; 'writing as an outlet'; 'already published not self but with a desire to get a novel out, on here an early draft 'Split''; 'Happy to report I still suck in the air before during and after I get to sleep and blow it out in precise order in between'.

And still I haven't said a word about this piece.

Excuse the colloquialism, but is this all just 'willy waving' a term we might all find in the 'Sun' but not necessarily in the Daily Telegraph, unless the journalist's words slipped past the eyes of the editor, when both have had too much to drink the night before?

With a smile.

Do you know what our biggest connection is? You had to write to measure within the confines of a job for press. You had little latitude. There were always borders and little room for self-expression.

I did the same. The routine of having to write essays for the board of directors of the company seeking to make a purchase and relying on me to tell them whether it was worth it or not was a consistent bind. But I was often seconded to work for companies where I was not constrained by issues of liability and could be more me and say freely what I wanted to. But to the extent I could, I tried to make my rather monotonous reports art. But for me what I do here, now is a release from those ties that bind and I in my writing can say what I want as in my reviewing as long as vaguely educational and kind.

I know something about you and you about me now.

And I still haven't said anything about this piece.

But now I will:

Form: 14 lines. The start of a sonnet?

Rhyme: There is some, but it is not your intention as far as I can see, if you follow Wordsworth cited below.

Rhythm: Ah now here's the point. Everyone of your lines seeks to have 8 syllables - short, long in four pairs. This is what I think they call 'Iambic Tetrameter' the best example of which is Wordsworth's 'I wandered lonely as a cloud.'. What you do here is laudable. Whereas many wish to free themselves from strict form, you let yourself go whilst maintaining rhythm.

But Wordsworth in 'I wandered lonely as a cloud' uses 4 sets of 6 lines where the rhyme in each is ab ab cc. See above. You don't.

But what is a review worth if it does not pick?

There is one line here, where, unless you have a healthy imagination and actually have had sufficient to drink so as not to notice, the line: 'Dark primacies materialise' strays into nine. Mind you, if you have been drinking you might be able to slur your way past it. And I assure you I have not had a drop to drink today. Yet! Actually joking aside, often the only way you can measure beats or iambs is by reading it aloud. And in the end I can get myself to 8 here too.

Let's not get down into qualitative and quantative meter, or alternative notions of trochaic (long or stressed syllable followed by short) or dactylic (long or stressed syllable followed by two short). Yet! One of my favourites? Edgar Allan Poe, and his poem 'The Raven' which is Trochaic Octameter - 16 beats to the bar in places pointed (long short in 8 pairs). Listen I have only just started and have written enough already. And I am not even sure what I am talking about! Who am I to be sufficiently qualified to speak? I am just an amateur and not a professional. Let's just leave it this way, Iambic Tetrameter!

But if you are rigorously following a particular poet's form, style, rhyme and rhythm I would love to know. Educate me please. I like learning especially from the intelligent, though I can learn as much from the Robin who sits outside my conservatory every morning looking as if he wants to come in. You can learn much from anyone or anything. I am one such.

Use of English: What language do you use? Actually fairly normal everyday English apart from a few words: 'primacies' and not just the title but used in the poem 'Murmeration'.

'Primacy' being most important. Tis what it is. Ah but much better a play on words themselves perhaps in my eyes. Or is it not, given spelling differences?:

'MurmUration' 'The act of murmuring' or 'a flock of starlings'. However you spell it 'MurmEration. Sadly the spelling with an 'E' gets no mention in the 'Shorter Oxford English Dictionary' but with a 'U' it does. It isn't even an alternative spelling. However if you trawl the internet you will see lots of 'E's. This is one of those places where I just lie on my back and froth at the mouth. Why the difference? I have searched high and low to find out why. But I can't. I really don't understand the English language anymore. Do you? Maybe it is an Americanism. The Americans are 'u'ist' ... color (colour); honor (honour); Savor (savour)!

Can you explain to me the different spellings? As I say education is all. I hope to offer you as much as you offer me.

Forget the English usage nonsense, it still remains for me a play on words between 'murmuring' your words and 'a flock of starlings' as you put it in your own introductory words.

Then let's have a go at what you spell 'E.L.V.O. Are you spelling love in you own way? Is this a character from literature I do not know? Is this a variation on the name of an Elvis Presley, you know; or as one online dictionary amusingly puts it:' ELVO: Een Leven Vol Onbegrip (Dutch: A Life Full Invalidation; organization for those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder)' !!!I am absolutely certain you meant the last, cough! I don't know. Only you do.

And so to the crux of the matter: MEANING.

Meaning to whom? To you? To me? To your best mate? To any reader?

In my or anyone's personal case the meaning can only be mine / theirs. Whatever you mean to say in your profile or here, it is but a sophisticated guessing game. And I can't guess. Your profile is not like Wordsworth, Keats, Shakespeare, Poe which, in standard Penguin or Wordsworth Classics, actually go to the trouble of writing you a book on the writer before you hit your first line of verse. See I have only your few words of eloquent prose by way of profile to judge.

I understand therefore Wordsworth better than I do you.

All readers have the right to their own interpretation in verse, whereas in Reuters you are tying to describe fact; in the Daily Telegraph with a conservative point of view or in the Sun whether you can find a girl with tits to back the story!

So what do I get from this?

Words:

'There are never enough, even in flocks of starling words 'to say what you mean and mean what you say'.

Whether you intend another meaning, that's your choice. The reader will take what they will take. It is not their job to understand you. It is their job and mine to interpret you 'a ma facon'!

One of these days, I will nudge myself more towards Proust and 'A la recherche du Temps Perdu' where it is all stream of consciousness with no punctuation except a full stop every five pages.

One day I will get there. I will get there soon.

R K Askew?

I am going to thank you for being you and for this piece.

Why?

You have stimulated my thought patterns, more than most, and I think I like you a lot.

Clearly what I have just written is personal. No-one else, except if they are bipolar like me, or in fact anyone else could have written this. Why? because I am unique as you and all of your readers.

I have a book in edit here, Split, told in novelistic form which I mean to get published. It has already been read by David and Jane Cornwell the 'Le Carres' and David / 'John Le Carre's' agent Johnny Geller of Curtis Brown who read it after its first six month draft and who liked it but clipped me round the ear and told me to go away an tidy it up. All that in 2010. I think in getting back to him, I may be supplying my homework late. But I do mean to, if I can just muster enough energy where as bipolar every day the act of sucking breath in and blowing it out is problematic for me. See above!

Split is 'creative non-fiction'. It is 'fact told in novelistic fashion'. It is a novel 'inspired by fact'

For me it is a noble cause for the mentally ill. It seeks to demonstrate to those with mental health disorders and those that love them, they are not alone in their sufferings. And it seeks those who know nothing but walk away, to understand and not reject the mentally ill; to destigmatise.

In all sincerity, kindness and caring but with a small nugget of humour for us all on another dreary day.

If we didn't smile, we'd cry.

Well written

James

[Tate Morgan]

Jesus Congrats on this one You are often not given the kuddos due you that obviously ends today Congrats on the Magil award my friend
Sincerely
Tate

[R J Askew]

Greetings James. Thank you very much for your marvellous review. I will give you a proper response anon. Am just off for a swim - gentle backstroke. That said, I had to fix the U issue first. *bows*

[James Hanna-Magill]

Swim well. Take care. In your own time.

[R J Askew]

Alas, I was a little late for my swim and thus ran into the congestion caused by the four o'clock swimming class for five year old children. Still, a swim always settles the restless spirit.
You are right about many things in your comments. I esp like your thoughts on reader uniqueness. So true. The writer is only half the story.
I don't think too much about high street newspaper and the mean average. I've never really known what's going on, even when I was in the midst of a news factory. I often feel on he outside of everything. This often made me feel a little idiotic. Now I don't care about fitting in, so all is fine. I've never really thought of my creativity, for what it is, as art though. In some ways, it is more like combat. Writing a metaphysical verse sometimes feels like an intensely physical act.
I esp like the way you talk about having fun amid the gaps and toying with the whole experience to be had from a few lines of this and that. It is brilliant to read such a brilliant response to something written by a stranger.
I salute you for your acute eye on the syllables. Thank you for saving me from my spelling infelicity. I had not read the verse for a while and wondered if I'd deliberately worked 'mer' into the word. But on reflection I think not, it was plain wrong. And I am the very last person to ever knowingly submit to a linguistic abusage from across the Atlantic.
I wasn't following a particular poet on form. I just have a liking for tetrameter, I don't know why. Going all the way into rhyming couplets or other more subtle rhyming schemes can end up as a triumph of form over meaning.
Speaking of which...
Moving slyly on, I can't deny that 'mat/e/ri/al/ise' is indeed 5 syllabs. That said, that said... I like always like it when there is a dropped or extra syllable in a verse. It is a sort of minor rebellion against the form. Were I reading it I might end up pronouncing it 'yal', mat/er/yal/ise. I will consult my voice coach on that one.
I wonder what you will make of this. I found that I wld write several free verse poems of increasing wildness, sometimes quite long. And then become disgusted with them and write a form verse. I came to notice that the form verses were more civilised than the free verse ones. I even noticed a sort of pattern: 5 free verse poems to 1 form poem. It was as if the wild verves were a necessary preparation for the form. They were almost more devilish and the form poems more with the angels. I am not bi-polar, but this writing approach always struck me as odd. I then ended up just writing short verses in form. I believe there is beauty in form and I love it. It seems to be in some way akin to the primacies of Nature, satisfying to contemplate.
Of course notions of form and beauty are not always fashionable in the tyranny of fact based reality in which we mostly operate, especially if we are victims of the SS (Success Syndrome).
But the great benefit of being on the outside of the cultural present is that we can do precisely as we please.
I promise I will have a look at some of your words in the next couple of days.
And - I have to ask - might the initials of the person who sent you my way be BL?

*bows*

[James Hanna-Magill]

Dear RJ Askew

Thank you for such a lovely, detailed, long, imaginative and thought provoking response to my review.

Of course you now leave me with a major problem.

Your response itself is even longer than your poem and is in itself another piece of writing, so that, given who I am, my response to your response to my review of your poem may easily end up being even longer than the sum of all the parts to date!

Given who I am, I often find self-mockery my most redeeming feature!

I have this funny feeling what I am about to say will be long, but I shall make every effort to keep it as clipped as possible in relation to some of the points you make. Moreover at least to give the impression this is detailed logical thought, when it probably isn't. I shall hide behind numbered points.

Here goes:

1) This is the longest point I make (the rest are much shorter) as it relates strongly to some of your own words. I react to your notion of feeling an outsider in life, perhaps a rebel and never quite fitting in. My thoughts are I have always sought (either actively or a lot to most of the time I think subconsciously) to be a rebel within the confines of the etiquette of daily working and home life, putting my full focus on things that meant something to me and nothing on anything I regarded as meaningless.

It seems to me, I have always sought to be unique and not to fit in with the in crowd. I was however highly respected in my career and I think most people found me vaguely charming and disarming. Indeed in my uniqueness, I think I was always trying to protect the underdog or those needing help, and to give them help and thereby be a fresh breath of air to humanity rather than cruel, self-satisfied and uncaring. What they call a Rescuer. Maybe it's in the face of the cruelty of Ireland where I was brought up at the height of the Troubles in the seventies. I don't think my seeking to be unique was any form of snobbery. Not sure. See below on bipolar disorder. But yet...

When I was 19 and in a French Bible College in Paris for a year (yes my history is complex) I used to debate intellectualisms with the many talented, cosmopolitan (in the sense that they came from every French speaking part of the world you could imagine) students and lecturers there, some whom were related to a local university and even one who was professor of theology there and much published.

One time I remember whilst washing dishes after the normal communal meals, having a conversation with one of my best friends. Pretty raw at that age, I remember saying to this very good friend, 'I refuse to fit in'. His response which has always stayed with me, he was a lovely much older guy (naturally in French), was to smile at the earnest youth I was and say 'James, therefore you fit into the category of people who don't fit in'!

I think it is a bipolar concept. One of my pieces of writing I like most, but is at the same time outrageous, is 'Mania' on here which tries highly graphically to explain the aggression of bipolar highs and the grandiose notions of self importance that come with it. You needn't review. It is one of my pieces which are way outside my average output. You will find much more normal on my first page.

2) Briefly Murmuration vs Murmeration. I find it interesting as a linguist by origin.

3) As for 'materialise' yes of course, that is the problem word which may take you into 9 syllables and not 8. But the reason I got it in the end, voice coaches apart, was because of your 'mat/er/yal/ise', 4 syllables instead of 5 and so you get to 8.

4) I like your comment of form over meaning. How can that often make us all trip up, me above all where often in poetry I do seek some form of rhyme. But I like to smash my own barriers! But I do write pieces I like to call poetic prose such as my 'Green' on here.

5) I note you have no writer in mind.

6) 'Success Syndrome'. Now there are words I can relate to. However I think they put me down in the local mental health clinic as having on top of bipolar disorder 'OCPD' (for which read perfectionism) and where they often tell me smilingly directors of most large companies are one chromosome away from being arch criminals!

7) As for BL no. But it would be unfair to them to tell you the source. Take this as an intriguing gap and that there are many on this site who respect you enormously.

8) and finally 8) (Iambic Tetrameter?). In response to the issue of what you write and what I do. I think I try most forms of writing under the sun. There are two pieces of short prose on here where I like the fact I smile at life, whereas often I don't: 'The Lightness of Choux Pastry' (a discussion on the meaning of life) and 'On Writing Freely' where I take off P.G. Wodehouse. Both are on page 5 of my list.

Sorry for the length again.

You need not review unless you so wish. But if you did (choose your poison) I would be pleased if you did.

Can I suggest you curtail your response to this note if you choose to make any, otherwise you will never get that swim and I will drown you in another sea of my own prose!

With a smile and my kindest regards

James

[R J Askew]

Hi James .. will make a proper response at the weekend.

[James Hanna-Magill]

In your own time and if you so wish RJ. That would be 'nice' a highly underrated word in the 'English Language' which means much to me. The common or garden or above clichés are not always revered. But I have an enormous amount of respect for clichés as they would never have made it to be so unless they had some serious underlying meaning for the entirety of the human race. They do to me. Take care and talk soon. I look forward to it. James

[R J Askew]

I like the 'rescuer' notion very much and have to say I can't even imagine what effect the troubles would have had on a young mind. As for the comment about 'one chromosome away' - marvellous! Now onto a review or two ...

[R J Askew]

I forgot to say, I smiled at your wise friend's comment about, 'you fit into the category of people who don't fit in'.

[Alessander]

Very intense, and loud.
It's an "ecstatic" poem which shakes the dust off the slumbering audience.

I really like its energy.

I also know what beaches you speak of.
I went to a beach in Mexico that had dark (not completely black, but pretty close), and I had to literally run across the sand it was so hot.

That was the first time I ever encountered that. In L.A. we have beaches, but they're light brown, and ppl sunbathe in it.

Not so on black sand beaches, though perhaps the ones over the pond differ.

[R J Askew]

Cheers mate. Thank you.

[Thaddius]

Adore your style, it's all this passion and dark gusto, without the forced end rhymes that ruin most of the lesser executions of this style I've seen on here. Really a pleasure to read