Recently, I asked you to tell me which of these was better: The crow drank its fill from the snow’s melted puddle, sprayed rainbows flying away. OR The crow drank its fill from a puddle of snow, sprayed rainbows flying. The response was heavily in favor of version 2. A.S. suggested that the poem could be made into a "formal" haiku like this: The crow drank its fill from a clear puddle of snow, sprayed rainbows in flight. I like that. No-one suggested a title, so I'll give it one of my own. Here's the final version: Snow Crow The crow drank its fill from a clear puddle of snow, sprayed rainbows in flight. Can you think of further improvements? Categories All
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I want to point out two things in today's post. The first is Connemara Wadsworth's excellent poem: "Cows in the Apples" from Lily Poetry Review, which you can read by clicking the pic above. The second is why this poem is so excellent. Of course, as usual, space prevents me from doing more than grazing the highlights. This time, I'm not even going to try to do that. Instead, I want to focus on one aspect of the poem: adjectives. Typically, adjectives ruin a poem. Or threaten to. In this case, like an experienced lion-tamer, Wadsworth makes perennial poem-killers like: "perfumed," "angry," "sweet," and "wet" jump through flaming hoops of originality. How does she do this? First, she hazards an original conceit: breakaway, rebel cows. Second, she drops a surprise adjective: "obedient" in the first line and then proceeds to work against this strong word for the rest of the poem. Wadsworth also bundles each of the potentially banal adjectives with another poetic device. For "perfumed," she uses an alliterative connection to a strong verb "plant." For "angry," she couples the word with the unexpected "bees" which is, of course, a bit of anthropomorphizing. Finally, with "sweet" and "wet," she chooses to slant rhyme them in the closing line -- a line so well executed it should be quoted, along with its accompanying stanza: before they swagger down the road, happy drunks licking bits of sweet apple off wet lips. In general, the rule of murdering your adjectives is a good one. If, however, you can do tricks like this, then you are free to color with even the shortest of crayons. Categories All David M. Pitchford is an exceptional poet. He's written thousands of poems in varied forms on myriad themes, almost always with inventiveness and aplomb. If you click the picture above you'll go to his "Thousand Poem Challenge" blog, no longer current, but full of gems. Scrolling down the abandoned blog, one of the first brilliancies you'll find is: "Kentucky February Snowfall." Let's look at the opening stanza: deep blue rhythm of arctic winter grasps in chill fingers southern haven belies comforts, jails them in frosted winter world when to end? when to end? for warmth they pray though to whom none can certain say, they pray and curse and burn more fuel, wood, gas, coal smoke and steam escaping impotent to heat the world and its arctic sky snowing slow. Note that the entire stanza accelerates like a ball rolling down a steep hill, becoming more and more urgent, even verging on despair with the repeated "when to end? when to end?" and then coming to a perfect close on the word "slow." This is like gunning a Lamborghini to the edge of a death-cliff, then turning it around on a dime, no -- kissing it around -- to a stop, where it shines in moonlight. After this deft volta, Pitchford describes the first inklings of spring -- early signs of winter's death. These are stirrings in the mind and soul, mysteriously timed to and forever joined with the seasons, nature, and the earth. The second stanza is smooth and lyrical, slow and triumphant, leading to affirmation. The repetition of the word "vernal" in the second (final) stanza is perhaps an oversight or, more likely, an echo of the repetition-device in the first stanza, modulated to reflect the inevitability of rebirth and spring. Last notes: Pitchford's logopoeia here is flawless. Particularly in the first stanza. And the poem's closing word is perfectly chosen, don't you agree? Categories All "Roadworks" by Jeff Gallagher is a fine poem posted recently at Amethyst Review. Click the pic above to read it in full. What's impressive about the poem is the way that Gallagher uses language like a light by which to uncover the sacred ritual behind the ordinary world of things. The first stanza reads: The high priests in their hard hats stand round the ruptured gravel, numbed by the spell of an old tree that has wounded the pavement. Gallagher's use of alliteration in the opening line: "high", "hard", "hats" promotes a tone of austere authority. The construction workers are priests. As they repair the road, they become angels doing holy work: As the congregation of cars backs up along this pilgrims’ road, machines fill the cracks, the shrine is rolled flat and anointed with tar. Yet, they seem unaware of their true role. Despite their work, the closing stanza acknowledges that "the cracks will reappear" and that the forces that move nature and human impulse remain shrouded in Divine mystery. It's enough to participate and contemplate. And perhaps offer solace and repairs. Which is what a good poem does. Gallagher's beautifully sustained symbolism, congruent imagery, and careful diction creates a sense of sacred surrealism, a topic and aesthetic idea that I'll return to again in this blog. I consider this a gem of a poem and hope you do, too. Hit talk above or below to let me know what you think of this or any other poem or topic. Categories All "Delay in white corn" is a wish I'd wrote it poem from Camille Ralphs, a poet who continually challenges and fascinates me. The poem's from 2017 and it generally comes up at the top of Google when you search for Camille Ralphs poems. You can read the poem by clicking on Camille's picture above.
No way to do more in a blog post than to point out some highlights of the poem. Let's start with the most obvious feature: the "broken" lines and stanza form. Ralphs wants us to feel like we're looking at a relic, like we're reading a stone tablet that's been cracked, yet all the pieces are carefully preserved. She invites us to imagine this not only as a template for brilliant poetry, but for the universe itself. Despite the broken lines, the poetry flows and flowers as naturally and beautifully as... well, a field, of course! Let's look a little closer at a small sample; say, lines 2-4. They read: flecked thousandly w/ hacked stalks open waves of scrambled sod one uncut corn tract mills & grinds itself pale on the eye engraves Virtually everything here is new. Diction, meter, imagery, punctuation, grammatical construction. The only thing vaguely familiar is the setting, sentiment, and figurative language -- all of which are best described as archetypal. And still it all flows without flaw. These are the keys, I think, the starting keys anyway, to exploring Camille Ralphs's poetry. She's found a way to reinvent things that's quite exciting and inspired. Underneath the novel surface are deep, abiding rhythms of nature, human love, and the soul. I'll be blogging about her more in the future. Until then, let me know what you think of "Delay in white corn" by hitting talk above or below. And check out her book: Malkin. Southshore The first sailboat I ever saw looked like an angel floating over thoughts of God. In a recent post I asked if you thought "Southshore" was a poem. The response was a unanimous: yes. I happen to agree. It's interesting to ask ourselves why. The presence of a simile is one obvious aspect, but similes are common in prose and in everyday speech. The stanza shape vaguely resembles a sail full of wind. The meter is irregular and mostly iambic. Let's see what it looks like in prose: The first sailboat I ever saw looked like an angel floating over thoughts of God. Is it still a poem? You tell me. One reader mentioned that they prefer metaphors to similes but they didn't elaborate on why. Can we rewrite the poem with a metaphor instead of a simile? Yes, it's actually quite easy. Southshore The first sailboat I ever saw: an angel floating over thoughts of God. This streamlines the poem and cuts out "looked like," which functions here more like punctuation than diction. I think the poem is improved this way. Notice how "floating over" now actually floats over? Thanks, E.B., for the nudge! What do you think? Yes, I'm the author of "Southshore" and I wrote it as a bit of marginalia to fill up a nook of space on a page in my working notebook. Categories All Click the pic above. Read my Sea Poems. Hit talk to tell me what you think of them. Categories All I consider Sylvia Plath to be one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century and I promise, if you continue to read this blog, you'll hear a lot more about why. So this post might seem a little weird because I'm going to bash all over one of her poems. No, it's not a pre-Colossus hiccup, or a thesaurus-driven villanelle from her Smith College days. It's a Confessional poem, straight out of her prime, from July 1962. And its a howler. The poem, "Words heard, by accident, over the phone," is an important poem for Plath addicts and specialists because it describes a crucial life-event and the beginning of the dissolution of her marriage to Ted Hughes. Other than that, the poem has a literary value approaching zero. Anyone can have a bad day, that's true. But that's not what happened here. I think the answer's much simpler. Plath developed a method over the years for writing poems and this is an example of her writing without her bag of tricks. She was apoplectic about Hughes's cheating and dashed the poem off like an angry letter. Here's the first lines: O mud mud, how fluid!---- Thick as foreign coffee, and with a sluggy pulse Speak, speak ! Who is it? Gone is the usual Plath inventiveness with conceits, diction, and figurative language. All that survives is the "confessional" theme of adultery, which she dully compares to mud, foreign coffee and ... "the bowel-pulse." The poem goes on to talk about mud for six more lines, then briefly compares the old land-line telephone to a tentacle (as in her poem "Medusa") before returning to images of mud: "Muck funnel, muck funnel". Repeating the drab phrase is another glimpse into how impotent Plath was without her method. I'm not saying Plath was anything less than a genius or that this one poem proves my point. There are others. But blog-time goes quickly. So tune in later for more. What I'm saying is Plath created a métier, a method for writing powerful poetry. This is her not using it. Click Plath's picture above to read the full text of "Words heard, by accident, over the phone." Hit the talk button above or below to let me know what you think of this or any other Plath poem. Categories All Give me your honest opinion. Is this a poem? Southshore The first sailboat I ever saw looked like an angel floating over thoughts of God. So, is it a poem? If so, do you feel it has merit? If not, what should we make of it? I'll give you my opinion later. I'll also tell you who wrote "Southshore." And why. Until then, you tell me what you think by hitting the talk button above or below. Categories All |