Breathe in the night garden
Alison Chisholm inhales a delicate poem where a garden settles for sleep
As a writer, you can never rely on serendipity – that amazing happy accident when things come together; but when it happens, it’s a big bonus. It can be something as simple as the perfect word popping into your head at the right moment, or more complex, such as where inspiration for writing a poem is channelled by chance input from another source.
This is what happened for poet Susan Clark of Holmfirth, West Yorkshire when an exercise was set by Holmfirth Writers’ Group, writers in all genres who would normally meet at the local library, but were driven onto Zoom by the coronavirus restrictions. Last May, members were invited to write on the topic Breath or Breathing. Susan explained: ‘Usually I have to think for a long time before tackling the group’s weekly topic. With Breath however, I knew instantly what I would be writing about: an experience I’d had the evening before, during dusk in deepest lockdown – which I had intended to write about anyway!’
When inspiration and prompt came together, it was a simple task to craft a poem that interwove the language and imagery of breathing with the tranquillity of the garden at dusk. This route into the subject introduced a touch of originality to a theme that has been tackled many times before.
It’s often the case that a single, frequently handled theme can be pepped up and given new life when it is linked with some unassociated factor. Linking twilight and breathing provided the fresh slant.
The free verse approach is gentle and insistent, although it’s interesting to note that the poet has placed a single rhyming couplet at the end of the opening stanza. As this device sets up an expectation, in the reader’s eye or the listener’s ear, that the same pattern will appear at the end of each stanza, it may be a good idea to adjust the lines unless there is a special reason for the unexpected rhyme.
Because rhyming chimes most strongly at line ends, it would be more subtle if a simple reversing of the phrases were used. (The internal full rhyme of grey / day is distinctly more subtle). Changing the last line to the other night I sensed a breath
would keep an element of internal rhyme, remove the question of unfulfilled expectation, and allow for a more delicate slant rhyme at the end. There would be the last-word hint of extra emphasis on breath, which would reflect assonance with settled feather and eye-rhyme with leaf, creating a pleasing conclusion to the stanza.
This reversal of the phrases, of course, doesn’t work if the exchange creates an inversion and skews the syntax of the line. Happily in this case there’s no problem, and nothing is lost from the meaning conveyed.
Slant rhyme is the poet’s most valuable tool for ensuring that free verse is true poetry, and its application in this poem is exemplary. Assonance is used most effectively. Look at grey exhaled
in the second stanza, and peace / sleep / released
in the third, for good examples. But perhaps the most interesting use of assonance is in the middle of the poem, where the short -i sound is used. This staccato monophthong surprises in a poem that uses for the most part longer, more languorous sounds. Four of the six -i sounds in disappearance drifted in / dissolving all solidity follow the consonant -d, a plosive consonant that might appear to hiccup in the smooth flow of language. That is not the case. The alliteration works well, but also the lines revel in lingering sustained sounds of -s, -n, -l, and the paired -f and -v, softening the wording sufficiently for the repetition of -di to be mesmeric rather than strident.
The shape of the poem on the page is a subtle underpinning of the theme. Stanzas of similar length, with a shorter line in the middle of longer ones, give a visual impression of restful breathing. Whether this was intentional or another example of serendipity doesn’t matter. The effect is there, understated but adding to the combination of factors that help the poem to communicate its message.
In a descriptive poem about a garden in the evening, it’s difficult to keep the wording original. All the things you want to say have been said before, and even the inclusion of the linking factor can only cover so much new ground. Susan Clark mentions an issue: ‘I had a problem with the phrase whispered in the rustling trees which I feel is quite clichéd – but I couldn’t get beyond the fact that that was what it sounded like!’
That’s the trouble with a cliché. It becomes hackneyed because it’s the perfect way to express something … then we hunt around for a more original alternative, and may have to settle for second best. Sometimes you can subvert a cliché simply by changing the words over. That would give rustled in the whispering trees, which also sounds familiar but carries the twist well. Because the subject of the line is Time, it might work to use a time-related verb, eg.
Time counted down through whispering (rustling) trees, or maybe try a garden image such as Time wilted in the whispering trees. At the end of the day – to use a cliché – your poem must speak out in the way you think best. It’s worth reading a number of alternatives aloud, and then making a decision. If the cliché feels like the best option, it’s better to keep it in than compromise the poem.
Breath may be a gentle poem, but it has images rich enough to paint some rather beautiful pictures. If Susan Clark is continuing to develop the piece, it could be useful to tighten the wording just a little. As an example, cutting every non-essential definite article from a poem gives the language a more poetic feel. In the final stanza, the five uses of the could be reduced to three by changing the peace to this peace and cutting the definite article before
evening. Tightening the second line of the poem to as stillness feather-settled, changing from a child at sleep to a sleeping child, and cutting as if from the final line, might be more dynamic. Again, it’s worth reading the piece aloud to listen to the effect of such changes, rather than just altering them by the eye on the page or screen.
Whether there are to be any further tweaks or not, Breath remains a delicate but memorable piece of writing. It creates a picture to delight the reader, and, for its writer, to fix the moment forever.