within the streets that
rise so high or
steep decent is
where we stopped
for ‘sho-co-lat’
a french cafe
inside a maze of tables
sat the two of us
and warmed us both
as Swiss October
drizzled and
we smiled and smoked
our cigarette
to knowing I
would soon be gone yet
hoping I could stay
life and times of r w miller
poems, musings, random thoughts and observations
I appreciate the notion of spelling out chocolat … chocolat in French is decidedly pronounced in three syllables, but I bristle at the use of ‘s’ in the first syllable, ‘sho.’ With the ‘s’ spelling, the ‘o’ is stressed, ‘shO.’ In French, it is definitely ‘CHo,’ the ‘o’ is a whisper; and given the poem’s title, you are expecting the reader to understand that you are somewhere in Europe … your usual word play falls flat here. I don’t think that you intend to be quite so Southside.
Yes, a French café would be found in Switzerland … would one stop for a chocolat in what seems to be the afternoon? No. Oh, I know that it isn’t meant to be literal, but someone who has spent a lot of time in a French café knows that one orders a café, a glass of wine, or an aperitif. Chocolat is a breakfast drink. I wouldn’t want you to lose ‘cho co late,’ but …
And then the cigarette … the one shared. This is what connects these two together? Oh come on, there’s got to be something more than that. Something is missing.
Miss Moran, apparently this poem doesn’t do it for you. First of all, I don’t speak French. I hyphenated ‘sho-co-lat’ for pronunciation. And contrary to your explanation, I heard no hard ‘ch’ sound – from anyone – which is why I spelled it the way I did. And while you seem to think that Europeans would not stop into a cafe for hot chocolate in October while it’s raining and, maybe, 50 degrees out, you are most assuredly wrong. This is not a Romantic poem; it’s a romantic poem. It does not describe tourist season in the Alps. Nor does it describe a sunny, summer afternoon on the Left Bank. It describes the last few moments together that happen to be on a cold, rainy day in Lausanne. I don’t recall if it was morning, afternoon, or evening, but this french cafe (v. French cafe) was serving plenty of cocoa that day and time. As for the cigarette, it wasn’t meant to tie the two together. But it was the last shared event. While I may have blown your expectations with a poem set in Europe which does not match the American vision/experience of hanging out at a French Cafe, I cannot apolgize for violating your rules for what one drinks or doesn’t drink at a cafe. It seems to have redirected the reading and, therefore, the flow. My nuances are too obscure, perhaps. rwmiller
rwmiller, not to belabor the point, but you cannot possibly know what my experience is or isn’t in terms of the goings on in a french café in Switzerland. With that being said, not being clear on your intended meaning, I relied on my personal experience to fill in what I found to be distracting elements of the poem. I do not presume to think that this poem is romantic because of its setting. On the contrary, what makes it Romantic, capital ‘R,’ is the fact that someone is leaving and that there is hesitation. In my experience, any hesitation that comes with leaving is Romantic. Whether that person is a friend, a child, a parent, or lover, leaving is a heart-full experience. If this isn’t the case with your duo, why write the poem? So two people spent some time together, sucked on a cigarette, it rained, and well, see you later. Is that the obscure nuance you refer to in your response? And to the other points, I have spent a lot of time in a café and I have never ordered a chocolat. I asked a European friend about the chocolat drinking, and she told me that in the town where she did some graduate work, Caen, the American students would all tramp over to the Café Touriste for a cup of hot chocolate. When I visited her there, we didn’t go. This same friend, a PhD candidate in French, said of your ‘sho,’ why is he dumbing down the use of French for his reader? I thought, aha! Exactly. She recommends that you put the word in italics to emphasize it. I also spoke to my sister about this very important point apparently as I have asked everyone that I know about it, and she remembered that in Spain, chocolat is a standard drink at the café; and that her mother-in-law, Dona Elba, celebrates the tradition in Puerto Rico by making special pots of the stuff for parties. True, I have had some. So maybe … you’re right there.