Ode

Like I said in my last post, I've used The Making of a Poem before, for a poetry class in undergrad.  Unfortunately, I didn't realize I was going to be using the book again and left it in the States.  My lovely mother kindly went burrowing through the entire contents of my former apartment, currently housed in my bedroom at her house, and dug it out, so it is currently en route from America, and I still don't have it to refer to at the moment.

I do vaguely recall the odes from the text, however, and I did a bit of my own digging around online to find some other odes for reference.  I love Allen Tate's Ode to the Confederate Dead regardless of its clearly coming down on the "wrong" side of the American Civil War; the language and imagery of the monuments and cemeteries erected post war are haunting and lovely, and helped get the ideas for my own ode stirring.

When I began the ode, I seriously considered an attempt to write it in accordance with one of the more traditional ode forms.  In fact, I wrote a full stanza of a Pindaric ode before I realized that it was in no way capturing my feelings about or any real sense of the topic.  It was too clumsy, so I stopped and started again.

I'm much more satisfied with the mood of the retry, but I'm not certain it's done/ended in the right place.

Ah, and just as a final bit of fun... an Abecedarian, expressing just a smidgen of my exasperation with semi-current American politics.


ARIZONA

All belong, can dream (except fools).

Go home, immigrant joke,

knowing little- meaning nada-

of patriotism.

Quietly relinquish

sweet time united.

Very wary-

xenophobic, your zeal.