Upon Julia's Clothes

So I was actually not planning on responding to these prompts but intended to wait till after Tuesday to blog. However, I became interested in the challenge of modernizing Upon Julia’s Clothes even before I had read it. However, after reading it I was no longer sure if I was up to the challenge! It’s really hard to do considering its brief length, and the fact that it contains very little “story” but instead is basically just imagery. Furthermore, the imagery is so great and concise that you don’t really want to mess with it. Furthermore, I did some research on the poem and it seems that while many critics disagree on the exact meaning of the final lines, they do all seem to comment on the very subtle fishing metaphor of fisherman, bait, and prey. To an extent I think that this qualifies the poem as metaphysical but makes it very difficult to try and change anything. I also don’t really know how to “modernize” imagery language as modern language tends to be a tad barren in that regard. In the end, I don’t know how successful I was in putting it in basic modern language but I did try and make it a little more of a prose narrative. So I decided that my main challenge was to try and somewhat modernize the poem while still retaining the ambivalence of the ending and the fishing metaphor. Thus, here is my feeble attempt . . .

. . . And I have no doubt that countless people are rolling in their graves . . .

Upon Julia’s Clothes

While dressed in silks, Julia passes by. I cannot help but notice the shimmering liquid flow of her clothes. I cast my eyes and see it trembling as it breaks free; and I am lost in the splendor.

As a side note, I wrote this last night and then logged in this morning and saw all the other great rewrites and seriously considered not even posting mine! You guys even made yours rhyme!