I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time. SONG OF THE LARK is one of my favorite novels. Cather’s prose has haunted me since I was in high school. I kept feeling–there is a poem buried in here.
Bought myself a second hand paperback.Started cutting out sections and pasting them into my journal. Breaking those sections into poems.
My rules: subtract but don’t add; keep text in same order.
Here are the first three poems–there are nine in total.
***
Song of the Lark
#1
Seen from a balloon
Moonstone looked like a Noah’s Ark town
Set out in the sand
Lightly shaded by tamarisks
And cottonwoods. The frail
Brightly painted desert town
Was shaded
By the light-reflecting
Wind-loving trees whose roots
Are always seeking water
Whose leaves
Are always talking about it
Making the sound of rain.
The roots
Break into wells
And thieve the water.
#2
She took up one of the white conch shells
that bordered the walk
and held it to his ear.
“You hear something in there?
You hear the sea; and yet
the sea is very far from here.
You have judgment, but if you are fooled
it is the sea itself.”
The sound startled.
it was like something
calling one.
#3
There was a picture
her picture
nobody cared for it
it waited for her.
That was a picture indeed
“The Song of the Lark”
flat country, early
morning light
wet fields, the look
in the girl’s heavy face.
They were all hers.
The picture was “right”
a word that covered
the almost boundless satisfaction
she felt
when she looked at the picture.
Whatever was there
was all hers.
