Free Poem

I'm sort of at a loss for how to explain this one, aside from that it was very loosely inspired by Elena Georgiou's "Book of the Things I Put Down My Bra" (yes, there's a title and a half for you).  I love poems that make pop culture references, poems that don't pretend we poets live in a loftier world without awkward and uncomfortable realities, poems that quote other poems or songs, poems that aren't entirely in English.

So, here's one with pop culture references, nasty food references, quotations, Latin (I knew those four years in high school would be useful someday!), science references, gambling references... in list form.  Trying to evoke emotion without being excessively emotive with very little success.  And with a title! At long last!

YOU IN A MOMENT (ODE TO THE JUNK YOU LEFT BEHIND)

I.

The mix CD full of music

I only loved because you did-

George Harrison hugged

Dylan song after song on that

long November night,

14 hours of charged company

on the car ride home.

II.

Your cloud grey sweatshirt

still hanging next to my jackets-

warm on the

long November night

spent in quiet, charged company;

the interpretation of nightmares.

III.

The lingering imprint of your

love- love?- on my mouth- tang of

coffee and onion rings, aphrodisiacs on that

long November night,

entangled in charged company,

only place still serving at 4 a.m.

IV.

Three unopened jars of peanut butter,

nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love-

donations to the feed-an-affection-starved-college-student fund begun on that

long November night,

hormonally charged company,

sticky mess we made and have become.

  

V.

The hitch in my throat, catch in

my breathing- your face reappears

in my dreams and my photos of that

long November night,

thunder-cry charged company,

black sky flashes of you.

VI.

The aromatic white goo, formerly

freshening air- clinging to the seat of

your old jeans and your old words, brought out for that

long November night,

hazelnut charged company,

sense of a memory.

VII.

A deck of cards, played so close to the chest they

were covered in blood with each

beat of my heart, hands clean of hope that

long November night,

secretly charged company,

whispers of disremembered pasts and futures.

VIII.

The shiver of your voice,

sweet wispy hums, vivamus atque amemus- drama,

as if those nights were inexhaustable- those

long November nights,

aggressively charged company,

cavern collapse, colony disorder yet to come.

Paula Meehan

I don't like writing poetry inspired by other poets because I'm not really sure what that means.  In this case... I was vaguely inspired by the mood and structure of "A Stray Dream," but I'll leave it up to you to interpret whether or not that inspiration was actually reflected in the poem, because I don't know.\

The air is bloated, thick with rain,

The heady funk of decay, autumn.

I trail you on the tidal flats, footsquelch,

Angry I’ve been left behind, a child to your six foot four,

Angry that we’re strangling one another

With silence, only the sullen splash of the gulls.

I can’t recall why I followed you here-

Something to do with clearing the air, I’m sure-

But now I can’t breathe.  You want

Everything I don’t have to give you.

The wind breathes heavy in my ears,

Weighting the quiet- I know how this will end.

In the kitchen, you will brush past me,

eyes only for the tea kettle.

In the hallway, you will nod, turned sideways,

and rush for the door.

I will drown in the dead air.

Blank Verse

I appreciate the freedom that NOT having to rhyme in iambic pentameter gives, but... well, blank verse is still a struggle.  The lines are longer than the ones I would write naturally, and it's difficult because of the way the lines sound when I'm composing them in my head to not end-stop all of them.  I think that's because, prior to having written the next line, it's hard to imagine what thought I could continue in the same rhythm, but I tried.

I don't particularly care for blank verse. I didn't before I wrote my poem, and I don't after.  Something about the rhythm in combination with lack of rhyme, though easier to write, I find incredibly jarring; I kept tripping over the words trying to read aloud both my own poem and the poem within the text. I think this is because my brain keep anticipating a rhyme that never arrives, and the constant re-shocking makes it bizarrely difficult for me to focus on anything but how irritating the pattern is.

I tried at one point to write it as a prose poem and then break it up into ten syllable lines and see if it worked- I think it was successful for some lines, and actually allowed me to get three and four syllable words in, when I'd never managed to before.  Some lines definitely had to be deconstructed to fit the rhythm, though, which was frustrating.

Originally there were another 5 lines to this poem, but I couldn't figure out how to end it when they were present. They may make a reappearance if ever I come up with something.

THE GIANT

The light breathes soft along the craggy rock-

kaleidoscopic dancing with the cliffs-

pliés amidst the coming winter clouds

and cries impatient harmonies with wind,

with waves, both drumming heavy on the coast,

the crashing clash, the symbols of the sea.

Such forceful urge to push the pillars down

and break the bridge that rides atop their weight-

Could small conspiracies of air and dawn

collapse the work of eras long elapsed?

Sleeping Habits Journal

Saturday
Determined to be in bed by 11PM.  Get in bed at 1AM.  Last check time at 4AM.  Awake at 7AM.

Sunday
Don't even pretend to be trying to go to bed at a reasonable hour.  In bed at 3AM.  Awake until 4AM.  Confused by Daylight Savings Time (spring forward, fall back, right? And why is it a week earlier here than in the US).  Up at 7:30AM, thinking it's 8:30AM, until 10AM, when I encounter flatmate in kitchen.

Monday (Halloween)
Get back from pub at midnight, up talking to flatmate until 4AM.  In bed at 4:30AM.  Asleep very quickly.  Awake again at 5AM.  And 5:30AM.  And 6:30AM.  Out of bed at 8AM.

Tuesday
Exhausted.  In bed at midnight.  Asleep by 1AM.  Awake at 5AM.

Wednesday
Nap from 2-3:30.  In bed at 2AM.  Awake at 7AM.

Thursday
In bed at 1AM.  Asleep by 2AM.  Awake at 7AM

Friday
In Belfast, sharing twin bed with roommate from undergrad.  Uncomfortable.  She snores and is a bed hog.  Spend most of night staring at ceiling, hanging halfway off mattress, with no blankets.  Asleep at 4AM, up at 7AM.

Saturday
Equally uncomfortable night sharing bed.  Giants Causeway in the morning, so actually have to try and sleep.  In bed at midnight, asleep at 3AM, awake at 7AM.

Sunday
Very very delicious INSANELY spicy Indian food baby is not happy.  Awake until 5AM, up at 8AM for train back to Dublin.

Open Form

I love Langston Hughes.  I especially love "I, Too," so I was glad to see it was included in the text.  I am aware of how terrible an idea it can be, conventionally, to have one word lines in a poem, but they are used to great effect here, to drive home the point, to emphasize the hope for tomorrow, the fullness of spirit in spite of the painful experience of being black in the US before the Civil Rights Movement.

Williams's "Spring and All" is not my favorite of his poems, but it is one in which I think the form particularly suits the subject matter.  The shorter, clipped stanza really capture the scant, apparently lifeless nature of these fields, and then, later, of the tiny glimpse of spring coming soon.

I have mixed feelings about Ginsberg.  I appreciate the truth of many of his poems, but there's only so much dark, biting imagery I really want to read at one time, and he tends to triple that.  That said, I think the massive block structure and long lines of his poem fit the subject's irate and ranting nature; it is certainly better suited to this form than to anything rhymed or with regular meter.

I tend to prefer to write poetry in open forms, at least when I'm drafting.  Often I find after they're written that certain poems might be well suited to more regular forms, but when it comes to getting the ideas down, it's easiest for me to not be constrained by meter or rhyme schemes.  In fact, this is how I wrote my sonnet- first in open form, then fitted to sonnet form.

I do find, though, that not having the sense of history and connotation other forms have makes it difficult sometimes for me to know whether or not the open form in which I choose to write is really serving any purpose.  That's definitely the case with my poem for the week; I spent a fair amount of time rearranging line breaks, and then un-rearranging line breaks, and then messing around with stanza breaks, and I don't know if it was to any real end.  I definitely appreciated the alleviated pressure to force my word choices to fit with particular rhyme schemes or meters, though.

I am wanting home-

light, listless snow tumbling

over the blaze of light, of life, the dying leaves,

the brisk, crisp sigh of the wind, cool autumn crunching,

soft snowflake caught in the faces, the fur

of the blundering dogs, the ebullient dogs,

my mother, clothed for winter before Autumn ever closes,

the screech of the owl piercing the sky,

brilliant in a night lit only by stars.

I am wanting home-

close comfort of dark evening roomlight,

sense of space, safe even when the world outside threatens

to tumble in, depth of breath brought only by total calm,

love in, love out.

I am wanting home.

Sonnet

I wrote four and a half sonnets this week, mostly painfully cloying- it took a lot of fooling around (and the first 3 poems) to get past the sing-songy iambic pentameter that was rattling around my head when I started.  And then I continued to write in sing-songy iambic pentameter anyway.

I don't like writing in such popular forms.  They make me nervous because almost anyone who has completed secondary school can pinpoint exactly where you've screwed up (or at least thinks that they can).  Also, because of the plethora of amazing sonnets that already exist, there's so much pressure that all my attempts just start to feel irritating and overdone when I reread them.

That said, I did actually come out with one with which I was mostly satisfied, eventually.  I find that forcing ideas into iambic pentameter and rhyme tend to lead me into archaic syntax, which reads kind of strangely when the language is not particularly archaic, but make of it what you will.  Suffice it to say that I am less unhappy with this one than I am with the others.

The final couplet was a real struggle- "together" throws the rhythm off in the first line.  Unfortunately, try as I might, I couldn't come up with another word that meant what I was trying to say at all, even with utter disregard to syllables.

The last mistake, the perfect biting flaw

in every hope that trickled from the start

to morning, March the 18^th- then you saw

the peppermill, thrown freely like a dart,

the arc so clean as it sailed through the air.

The gasp, the beat, sharp crack as it came to

collide beside your head, your fearblown stare-

it startled me, the pain on which you drew.

Your face, its beauty pale outlined in shock,

pressed me to grasp at last what I had lost-

the wonder that you’d brought my life, my rock,

I’d wrecked it then, my hopefullness the cost.

Alone together for so long- my heart,

my bones don’t remember alone apart.

Found Poem

Having written an incredibly unsuccessful villanelle in the past, I decided to go for the found poem this week.  Unfortunately, my first few attempts were also incredibly unsuccessful, mostly because I was sticking so rigidly to the text that everything just sounded ridiculous and uninteresting.  Also because the texts I kept picking were ridiculous and uninteresting.  But I have two of them here, because I'm not sure if either of them work, but they're very different and the methods by which I went about creating them are different.  And one is probably more correct than the other.

I ended up drawing first from "Shooting An Elephant" by George Orwell and possibly interpreting the directions a bit too loosely.  What struck me most about the original text were the adjectives used to describe the death of this elephant and which also seemed to describe the feelings this death evoked in the elephant's shooter.  They're incredibly strong and not at all the kind of adjectives I'd ever use in poetry, so naturally I felt compelled to use them and almost nothing else, hence the loose interpretation.

I'm not sure how successful this is.  I didn't pull out full lines, or even more than a few short phrases.  I just felt as though globbing all the adjectives together in one place instead of spread out throughout the text strengthened the experience, but I could be completely wrong about that.  Also, I'm almost certain it makes no sense outside the context of Orwell's text, and therefore probably doesn't work.

The other was pulled more directly from an op. ed. piece in the New York Times on Ron Paul's facial mishap at a debate.  Funnier, and with only very minor editing to lines (to keep it grammatically sensical).  I'm possibly not very good at humor in poetry.  Possibly because I'm not very good at humor in any writing.  But the article was so ridiculous it lent itself to an attempt at humor in a poem.