Summer With You ☀️☀️

Summer With You

Slamming the yellow door, I think that is the end
My mother shouts that I’m ruining my life
I throw off the shoes you bought me for your dances
Burn the dress bloodied red after your whiskey disappeared

Most days the bed sighs unmade and the smashed dishes unfixed
You kept building sandcastles at the kitchen table
I open the windows and let the sand blow everywhere
You nail them shut and I run out the back door again

Some days I dream about swimming out to sea
Us mermaids sit on clamshells and comb our hair when we please
When the sailors come we dive under the water
And kick hard with our tails

Why don’t you go dancing again, my mother urges
You’ll soon see he’s the perfect gentleman
That hat he gave you was just lovely, duck
but I keep thinking about the dead birds in the box
and the bloodied feathers used to make it.

I bring you a nice cup of tea in bed
The sand has settled to the bottom and you ignore the clamshells in spaghetti
The broken glass on the shore cuts my feet still
And I’ve run out of cream for the sunburn

You go on about the beautiful weather we’re having
and I want to throw plates at you still
but I smile at the baby
and try to forget the summer I met you.

During the last week of term I was tasked with teaching a poem for 10 Literature, which ended up good fun. I do miss the creativity of teaching and digging into a text - most times emergency teaching is just glorified babysitting.

It was a blank verse poem by a guy called Roger McGough, set in the 1950's. It tracks a relationship from the honeymoon summer of love and the passion of the marital bed where the outside world fades away to jealous recriminations and the brutal domestic violence that attempts to control his wife, who he imagines quite the whore - whether she is or not. In one awful scene she sits passively and silently and he finally begrudgingly admits he is sorry for hitting her. In the end the shock of the poem for me was the fact they settle into a comfortable domestic arrangement - with a baby - with him still dreaming of this utopian summer of love. At no point is her voice present - she has very little autonomy due to the time in which she was living, when woman simply 'made do' and not leave a marriage despite how unhappy she might be. At one point she leaves him and he can only imagine her watching. telly at her mothers, as she has no imaginative life of her own, no dreams of her own.

The students were given a choice of doing a visual representation that captured mood and atmosphere, an analysis which explored the techniques of the poem, or a rewrite of key scenes or added scenes from Monica's perspective. I'm a big believer in giving students choice - it was up to them to play with the edges of the poem. Of course I can't share them with you here, as I don't have their permission, but I did enjoy creating my own creative response to the poem where I give Monica an imaginative life of her own.

I imagine her mother convincing her to go back to him despite her reluctance, and her dreams of independence free from not only him but all men. There's a few lines in the poem where they let birds die in a box because they're too in love and obsessed with each other to feed them, foreshadowing the later brutality. These are transformed into a hat he gifts her, where the mother sees kindness and the daughter is only reminded of her sacrifice, lost freedoms, and violence in the marital bed. I didn't want the poem to end with this easy comfort and resignation, but her resentment and the pain of being trapped in a marriage with a man she doesn't love. There's many images in my response that are plucked from the poem and looked at from a different angle - the dancing, the yellow door, the whiskey, the red dress, the broken crockery, the sea shore, the weather, the summer of their honeymoon.

image.png

I can't find the long copy of the poem online but there's an audio version set to guitar which you can listen to on youtube here. Here's my 'reading' of the poem and a creative addition by the subject, Monica.

Hope you enjoyed it. Riffing off the creative works of others can be a whole lot of fun and a great way to get to the heart of a piece - it's characters and values in particular.

With Love,

image.png

Are you on HIVE yet? Earn for writing! Referral link for FREE account here


Sort:  

Hey @riverflows, here is a little bit of BEER from @lxsxl for you. Enjoy it!

Do you want to win SOME BEER together with your friends and draw the BEERKING.

This is a tough one to read. I think there is a very real tension in these types of relationship. We are abused, yet in our minds we live in the old days. We live in the moments where our lover was "winning" us with kindness and real love. When they switch the cognitive dissonance is devastating. We can't hold two sides of someone in our mind. So we stay, unhappy, and influenced by not just the kind memory but by outsiders like the mother.

That is so true.. it is a cognitive dissonance. Domestic violence is a kind of trauma too and one reaction is to stay with what one knows. I also see this character as having no other choice in the world she lives in. It IS tough to read about abuse and it's not what I'd normally write.. but the original poem begged me to give her some kind of voice. I really appreciate your comment alot 💚💚

I have to admit, I literally needed to force myself to finish those six verses. They are pretty heavy on their own, but in light of your explanation they only get harder to digest. Reminds me of a discussion I've had with a friend about how being in love is nothing nice or desirable. In fact, it's debilitating in many ways, so much so that she claims it's preferable to be in a low-to-non passionate relationship, which is based more on respect, understanding, and support (a.k.a. a good friendship). Strange as it sounds, this is exactly what this poem brings to my mind.

Oh the original poem on which it is based is so 1950s and the main character is a prick and a half.

It strikes me the English language doesn't have enough words for love. Actual love between people should not be so torturous and brutal!

It's definitely a poem about domestic violence and the corruption of love.

Thanks for reading... Not many have the stomach for poems at all! I like writing them but don't get much engagement when I do. I suspect it's not because my poems are shit, it's just poetry is niche, and I don't write rhyming romances 🤪😉

Well, I have to admit, I am one of those who usually can't take poetry. Even with this one, it took me a bit of an effort, as I said. However, this time I really tried not to get dissuaded. Still, as you observed so well, it seems like poems are becoming an art form that people feel less captivated by, and I can't exclude myself. 😕

Totally. I appreciate the effort! This one isn't even one of my favourites. To be honest I'm a snob when it comes to poetry!!

Congratulations @riverflows! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s):

You have been a buzzy bee and published a post every day of the month.

You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word STOP

Check out the last post from @hivebuzz:

The 7th edition of the Hive Power Up Month starts today!
Hive Power Up Day - July 1st 2022
NFT for peace - Thank you for your continuous support

Lots of great images in there. And that last stanza:

You go on about the beautiful weather we’re having
and I want to throw plates at you still
but I smile at the baby
and try to forget the summer I met you.

Whew, that hits strong. Before reading the background text you wrote, that did give me an image of a 50s-type marriage where you are expected to stay even if there is abuse and hatred.

Great job! Oh and I agree with you about giving students choices. I try to do the same in my classes—which isn't always an easy thing when dealing with Japanese kids who have never been given a choice before and somewhat freeze up when actually given permission to pick their own path.

!PIMP


You must be killin' it out here!
@dbooster just slapped you with 1.000 PIMP, @riverflows.
You earned 1.000 PIMP for the strong hand.
They're getting a workout and slapped 1/2 possible people today.

pimp_logo


Read about some PIMP Shit or Look for the PIMP District

Oh yes, some kids want to be spoonfed: 'But what do you WANT me to write?'. It really takes a dedicated teaching culture to teach them to think for themselves, with inquiring, curious, risk taking minds, helping them understand that this kind of thinking DOES help them get the results they want.

I'm glad you got something out of it before you read the background - I initially explained it first, but I was hoping the poem would speak that itself. It's such good fun to get an original text and play with it - I know you do a great job with the haiku in this way. It's very satisfying to explore a genre in that way!