O what a blow that phantom gave me

I was attracted to this by the title. It rang a very loud bell in my mind but I wasn't sure if I'd actually read the book or not. Having now looked it up on Google, I'm pretty sure I haven't read it, but I'd like to. A short review I've just skimmed describes the author - Edmund Carpenter - as "A maverick who explored the borderlands between ethnography and media over fifty years ..." and says he "... looked at the revolutionary impact of film and photography on tribal peoples". That helps me a lot in making sense of the poem, I think.

On first reading, these lines were my way in:

"... Because from a/ gust, a creak, a rustle I made/ the man who killed me."

I concluded at that point that I was probably reading a dream poem - though the lines have a wider resonance as well, since, to a degree, we 'construct' our real-life fears from the bits and pieces of the culture we inhabit. (I'd also add that, for me, these are the first fully 'poetic' lines in the piece, and I mean that in a very positive way - though if you ask me what I mean by 'poetic', I won't be able to tell you.)

And 'movies', of course, is a major clue. I wish I knew Carpenter's book, but I presume this refers to the fact that film informs and shapes our imaginations. (I've always wondered if people dreamed differently before the advent of movies.)

Given that I'm reading a dream, I like the abrupt - and initially confusing - change of focus from the ghostly pursuer/murderer to Finn's lover. (A woman? A man?)

These lines compound the complexity of the poem's contradictions:

" ...aching to penetrate into my/monochrome life instead of/being stranded here,/a ghost in a dream."

"... a ghost in a dream ..." So doubly unreal? - Perhaps in waking life as well as sleeping?

I don't claim to understand the poem fully. That's OK with me. I believe poetry is allowed to be challenging: its job is to spark the imagination of the reader, and as you've demonstrated here, imagination definitely doesn't operate according to logical, denotative rules.

I do have a reservation about the piece as a poem: I wonder if it's fully-formed. Ted Hughes published a collection (was it 'Moortown'?) where he deliberately kept the poems 'rough'. That is, he stayed with his more-or-less spontaneous originals and refused to give them the secondary polish and tightening he usually applied after the first rush of writing. He was using poetry as a kind of diary and wanted to preserve the initial freshness. I think this piece may be a bit like that. It isn't, perhaps, perfect poetry, but the images will stay with me for quite a while, I think. They'll stick in my mind.

(incidentally, 'jimmyjoyce' is my alter-ego here. I'm also 'polynices'.)

Once again you were able to set a mood just as important to the poem as the words. Each and every time I'm impressed with large range you have. No poem has the same voice. I'm never bored. Love ya!

love reading you, keep up the good work!!!!

your "new" friend