Afternoon Itinerary / To Beat the Blues
To beat the blues
To Fanny’s
Not there
To Trieste
No one but George
I’d want to see
To coffee at the Capriccio
After stopping to say hi
To the librarian
My friend
To the art gallery
Before that
Back to The Trieste and Fanny’s
After visiting the flutist on the street
I’d passed an hour and a half earlier
To the museum to tell
Jerry to tell him about Clara’s visit
To Tangiers for her threesome
With Kerouac and her boy friend
She’s an old ‘thrill seeker’
I told her at Sacred Grounds
The other night
Back home,
Still with the blues.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/11/2021 01:11AM by petersz.
A good theme, Peter, for this tightly written little journeyscape, which holds interest from beginning to end. I like the way the lines swell out in the second half, and then shrink back again; and the way the last line links back to the first.
Those two lines make all but the first two words of your title redundant.
Some punctuation in the middle seems a bit odd. You might do better do omit all the commas, and let the lines carry the sense enriched by the slight ambiguity as to where the enjambments are intended.
I thought flutist was a typo for flautist until, to my surprise, I found flutist recognised in in the SOED. A further surprise is to read that flutist, which looks like a modernisation, dates from the mid-17th Century, whereas flautist dates only from the mid-19th. Those Victorians did give themselves airs!
Cheers,
Ian
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/10/2021 10:34PM by IanAKB.
Ian, for some strange reason I was aware of the flutist/flautist history, which is what made me choose 'flutist.'
I thought I'd take a gamble on the redundancy issue because I liked the redundant phrase both as part of the title and as a first line. Maybe the aesthetics of that choice won't be agreeable to all readers, but thank goodness for that diversity.
Finally, I agree that the commas are not particularly necessary to the piece, so I am revising the piece following your advice.
Thanks for another careful reading,
Peter
Very staccato.
Doesn't "I'd passed" contain a measure of redundancy? Picking nits as was ever my problem.
Strong? Not really, Peter, but well in the mainstream of your work. That ranges from poor to excellent and this is well-placed.