Poems and poetry related posts
Winter’s War
You’re sneezing and you’re stuffully
and ache from bone to skin.
The winter night is cold without,
and you are cold within.
You build yourself a quilted fort
and pour a cup of tea -
you know to quickly win this war
good weaponry is key.
Chemical armaments consumed
you burrow in your keep
as tiny armies deep inside
do battle while you sleep.
New Year’s Day
The optimists cheer:
“Eat black eyed peas! They will bring you luck.”
The pessimists chastise:
“There is no magic today! It’s the same as yesterday.”
The pessimists are right.
Turning the calendar
doesn’t undo the past
and erase our mistakes
or relieve us of our responsibilities -
yesterday’s debts are still unpaid
yesterday’s problems are still unsolved
yesterday’s failings are still unconquered
The pessimists are wrong.
Often the difference
between feeling trapped
and feeling free
is having an excuse to believe -
that change can be made
that solutions can be found
that forgiveness can be earned
There is power in that.
Embrace it.
Claim it.
Snatch it up
and wring the magic from it until
good luck spills out
like foam from a champagne glass.
I’m currently working as a contract Technical Writer; it’s my first time working as a contract employee and it’s a little weird. The lack of benefits sucks, but it’s nice being able to walk away from work after eight hours no matter what’s going on – the contract is cleared for overtime but I can’t actually do it unless I’m given permission in advance. I think the thing I like most (but also find the most odd) is the lack of managerial oversight.
A Thanksgiving poem created for work
I worked a half-day the day before Thanksgiving because I was going to a congratulatory lunch for a friend who had found a new job and then I was going over to my parents’ place to do some baking. Rather than write all of that I had the idea Tuesday evening to write a Thanksgiving poem to make the sign more interesting. The idea came to me basically as I was getting ready for bed so I used my new tablet to compose the poem. Unfortunately I was distracted when I left for work the next morning and forget my tablet so I had to reconstruct the poem as best as I could from memory. For fun I checked my tablet when I got home and found I had gotten it 75% right. The poem below is a mash-up of the original and the reconstruction (the photo shows the reconstruction I used on my desk at work). In most cases I liked the original line better but I liked the “toasted” line in the reconstruction better. So much better that I used it for the title.
Toasted
Gobble! Gobble! Let’s run away!
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving day!
If you’re slow they’ll make a winner
of a festive turkey dinner.
Brined and dried and rubbed and roasted
‘til you’re pretty, brown, and toasted.
I guess, at least, this can be said:
You’ll see the guests are all well fed.
But better still is not to fall:
keep feathers, gizzard, beak, and all.
Gobble! Gobble! Let’s run away!
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving day!
One of our prompts last semester was to “test the integrity and possible effects of lines, try out as many free verse versions of a prose sentence as you can think of.” Rather than trying to come up with all new poems for the sake of the prompt, I thought it would be more fun to use text that wasn’t necessarily meant to be poetic and turn it into a poem by messing with the line length.
Since I was looking for a collection of short, random source blocks, Twitter seemed like the obvious choice; I scrolled through my tweets from that week and picked a handful to mess with. I used the provided hashtags as titles (for those that had them) and created hashtag titles for those that didn’t. I messed with case a little bit but left the words exactly as they were and, other than removing any emoticons, I only made minor punctuation changes.
Overall I like how the poems came out, but some definitely worked better than others. I found it interesting how you could change the rhythm of the statement in drastic ways just by cutting a thought short or letting it run on.
#ilikemyjuicejustfine
wha?
it’s fruit juice mixed with sparkling water
and
it helps MY thirst
just fine
#itslikeicanseethefuture
#itslikeicanseethefuture
should be doing homework
but
I’m wiped
so
I’m gonna go to bed and yell at myself
in the morning
for being lazy
#paul
my friend and I laughed
hysterically
and
saw actual past behavior
echoed
in the main characters’.
clearly
we
are
the
target
demographic.
#shamedthumbs
gaa!
“as compelling AS yesterday’s”
…
Stupid.
Thumbs.
Learn English more gooder…
You’re embarrassing me
What I Did
I sat down
upon the ground
and saw I’d lost my shoe.
“Can’t go ‘round,
left foot unbound!
Oh dear! What shall I do!?”
Quite bereft
about my left,
I walted in distress.
“Hateful theft!
(Though also deft
to manage the undress.)”
Fantful eyes
and hishful sighs
I retraced where I’d trod.
“Woe! No prize!
So, though unwise,
I’ll go left foot unshod.”
And that is what I did.
Commentary
What I Did is a free-form rhyming poem although the rhyme scheme and structure is (very) loosely based on a Petrarchan sonnet. The poem is presented in three pairs of triplets where the first set of three lines provides the poem’s plot and the second set of three lines contains the speaker’s monologue, commenting on the situation. Each stanza is built from sentences of three, four, and six syllables and the rhyme scheme of the triplet pairs is AABAAB. The voice of this poem is lighter and sillier than I usually employ in my poems, which makes for a good contrast with the rest of the “round up” collection, but it’s also an interesting compliment to the sonnet form that inspired it because a sonnet’s form and rhyme scheme are tightly controlled and strictly regulated whereas What I Did is basically nonsense.
Tides
The serenade springs lightly from your mouth
slipping and sliding along the ground
until it crashes gently at my feet –
a honeyed, silver wave
lapping lightly at the shore of my soles.
Held fast by chains of trust,
I watch without fear as it rises.
from shoe
to shin
from shin
to shirt
from shirt
to shoulder
Until I am drowned
in sugared hate.
Commentary
Of all the poems I wrote last semester, I think this is my favorite.
Tides, is a prose poem but it has no prescribed form and plays with the presentation of the words on the page in an attempt to evoke the feeling of a rising tide. I think this poem uses the empty space of the page in an interesting way – more so than any of my other poems to date. I am also very pleased with the repetitive “sh” sound that sounds like waves lapping on the shore but I think the best part is that the poem starts off sounding like a positive poem but has a surprise twist at the end.
The poem is one of the few I’ve written that is based on personal experience. I wrote it after I received an unexpected, emotional slap in the face from someone I thought was my friend and I was shocked by the level of derision and judgmental indifference that her words contained. My hope is that the reader will not see the venom of the last line coming and also experience a symbolic “slap in the face”.
This week I wrote a sonnet for the second time in my life and I can honestly say that the second one did not come any easier than the first. When I posted the sonnet for my classmates to review, I made a joke that sonnets are my kryptonite because they don’t come together as easily for me as less rigidly structured poetry; the sentiment is sincere, but it’s not meant to imply that I don’t enjoy writing them – although I can and do frequently declare that I hate them when I’m neck deep in the middle of it (it’s a love-hate relationship). Writing a decent sonnet is a pretty steep challenge for me, but it’s a worthwhile challenge; as with anything else, you can’t grow as a writer unless you push yourself beyond the current limits of your skill. Before I continue, here is the result of last week’s labors:
Ignis Fatuus
In the twilight of sleep our spirits drift
lost; forced from Nod but not ready to leave.
Unfinished stories fade as plot threads shift
and slumber’s aid withdraws. The sprites will weave
new tales to hold defeat at bay and rack
the mind for feeble arms that fight regret
and fuel their waning flame against attack
by sharp awareness, lest the ghost forget
the joy of dreams’ embrace. The change is slight
but will ensnare the airy light. Still, loathed
confinement only limits lucent flight;
the fragile robe of fancy shredded, clothed
instead by heavy flesh, the soul is caught
undaunted – burning timid, small, but hot
What makes the process of writing a sonnet interesting is how it changes and refines the message of your poem if you work within the restrictions of its form rather than fighting against it because it won’t let you say what (you think) you want to say. When I started my sonnet, I had a very different image and tone in mind; the subject matter was essentially the same, but the original sketch for the poem – which was not written as a sonnet – cast the wil-‘o-the-wisp in a more nefarious role. When I tried shoehorning the words from my sketch into the shape of a sonnet, the result was abysmal. It wasn’t until I started working with, and leveraging, the inherent structure of a sonnet that the poem started coming together. A sonnet is a very rigid form: 14 lines, prescribed rhyme scheme, and iambic pentameter. Deviate from that and you don’t have a sonnet… well, not really. There are plenty of stellar sonnets out there that do, in fact, deviate from the prescribed form but to quote Elizabeth Bear, those are professional writers on a closed course – not a would-be writer creeping down a dirt road in a jalopy that could fall apart at any moment.
The poem really didn’t come to life until I made a connection between the form of the sonnet and the imagery in the poem; like the flame, my words were being confined by the “heavy” rules of the sonnet. Something about recognizing that parallel opened things up and made the form of the sonnet feel more like a storytelling tool than a pair of handcuffs. The poem is meant to depict a very specific moment of confusion – that moment when you first become aware of the fact that you’re dreaming but you haven’t quite left the dream yet – and I tried to echo that disconcerted feeling by using enjambment1 through most of the poem. As a result, although it is written as a traditional Shakespearean sonnet, the poem feels more like free-verse sonnet; the lines do rhyme but the prescribed rhyme scheme is overwhelmed by the enjambment and fades into the background. It’s only in the last four lines or so, when the subject has woken up and the confusion has abated, that the lines come closer to being end-stopped2 and the fact that the lines do actually rhyme comes to the fore.
There are elements about this poem that I really like, but I’m not entirely happy with it either and for now I’m going to put it away so I can, eventually, come back to it with a new perspective (also, my other homework and writing projects are piling up). One thing I do know is that whatever other changes I may eventually make, it will remain a sonnet. If this poem were not a sonnet it would not have the same impact. It’s the interweaving of enjambment and rhyme, their cross-fade within the poem, that gives the last few lines their emotional weight. The content of the poem would work in another format, but the voice and tone of the poem would be very different.
Form matters. We tend to think about writing as being word-centric, but it’s not. Words may be a writer’s most crucial tool, but without form they are just ink on a page. It’s the combination of the two that makes writing an art form. It’s the reason good writing takes practice, and it’s the reason I’m still behind the wheel of a jalopy.
The first sonnet I wrote was a Petrarchan (Italian) sonnet and can be read here.
1 Enjambment is fancy writer-speak for when a phrase or sentence in a poem is split across two or more lines and the line breaks do not occur where the natural flow of speech would expect them to (i.e., where you would naturally pause when reading the poem aloud).
2 End-stopped is the opposite of enjambment; when a phrase or sentence in a poem stops naturally at the end of the poetic line.
Snowfall
Downy sprites fall and gather together in
plush, tempting piles, but touch them
and they cut with crystal
blades that will only
be dulled by
the ever
warming
sun
struck,
the skeletal
grip loosens grudgingly;
defiant even in defeat,
the icy angles collapse into
stubborn heaps of grimy slush while
life crawls free of its frigid blanket.
Some Commentary
This poem is inspired by the fact that it snowed on my last day in Massachusetts while visiting family. It was the first time I had seen falling slow since leaving Maryland (20 years ago at the time of this posting) and I spent over an hour sitting or standing by one window or another just watching it snow.
Serenade
Pushed by gentle breezes, buoyant stars
float through the warm, humid air
while wistful palm trees and muted waves
are rendered imperceptible by a chorus
of geckos chirping in the lanai.
Shards
Ruthless cold presses against the air until
it cracks and shatters; the sharp edges cut
gashes in the night sky and stars gather
in the wound. Their pale light pools then
spills unnoticed across the skeletal copse.
Commonality
You dine under the stars
(the longer the better)
to intersperse the lean meat
with cubes of fatty meat.
A single dish –
A style of cooking –
A kind of meal –
A culinary common denominator –
The circus like swirl of activity
in exceptionally tasty lamb.
To See the Future
Who set down in writing –
this thing which is come to pass?
Seers? Experts? Anybody?
These… loose sentences and the
nonrestrictive clause are a cliche,
and a fuzzy one,
meant to set off an abrupt break
(or “interruption”) for repeated action.
Confusion and ambiguity result,
and a common blunder is thinking:
“They are related in thought.”
They are not…
but parallel to that mistake, it pits
you
vs.
yourself.
It’s best to avoid the difficulty altogether –
adopt a more common mark of
deductive thought and foresight,
and shape your future with purpose.
Some Commentary
The source text for Commonality is The Barbecue! Bible by Steven Raichlen. All the lines in the poem are direct pulls from the source text – specifically the section entitled Mechoui Mystique and the surrounding pages/recipes. The phrase that birthed the poem was “a culinary common denominator”. In the source text, the author was discussing a specific cooking style that is common throughout Morocco, but for me there is something inherently soul satisfying about sharing a meal and that phrase called to mind food in general and communal dining. The reference to fatty/lean meat is an allegory for all the potential differences among the various participants and the fact that when we sit down to dine together none of those differences really matter; the resulting blend of humanity is greater than its constituent parts. Commonality is meant to evoke images of the fellowship that develops through a shared meals as well as depicting a specific meal (lamb).
The source text for To See the Future is The Elements of Style (4th Edition) by William Strunk and E. B. White. It’s not entirely a “found” poem because I added some words and phrases of my own – the last two lines do not come from the source text. I struggled more with To See the Future than I did with Commonality because I selected the source lines for the poem randomly (using my dice!) so they were more disjoint and less interrelated. The line that finally got the poem started was “Seers? Experts? Anybody?”; taken out of context, it made me think of fortune tellers and set the topic for the poem. Unlike Commonality I had set an arbitrary restriction for this poem that I had to use all the source lines and some of them simply would not fit unaltered so, in order to make something useful of the source lines without altering the source text, I allowed myself the option of joining the source phrases with original words/phrases provided the majority of the final result was still “found”. In the end, 36 out of 92 words (slightly less than 40%) ended up being original.
In my experience (slight though it is), found poems have a tendency to be very abstracted because it’s the arrangement (and potentially the punctuation) of the words, not the words themselves that belong to the author. But that’s part of what makes writing them fun.