Archive for May, 2008

XIV

Don May 22nd, 2008

XIV Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”   

            I think this was my first experiment with, or at least approach toward, that wonderfully versatile form the Irregular Ode.  The Irregular Ode is a lyric poem in praise of some idea or specimen of beauty, using meter and rhyme but varying the rhyme scheme and line length at will.  There are also various regular forms that use repeating stanzas.  The ode was a favorite form of the Romantics.  Wordsworth is at his best in “Tintern Abbey” and the “Ode on Intimations of Immortality,” and Keats raised the form to its ultimate perfection in the odes to a Skylark, to a Grecian Urn, and to Autumn.  Here I combine a fascination with natural lighting effects that would continue to occupy me with a certain youthful energy, the disappearance of which could lead us to further classic motifs such as ubi sunt? 

 ONE WHOLE DAY 

The bricks of the library have a different hue

Given by early rising sun.

It won’t last the whole day through,

For sunrise soon is done.

The world will be a bit more dead

And bricks not rose but merely red.

Apollo ‘cross the sky will tread

Until, no longer o’er our heads,

He crawls into a well-earned bed;

With sunset-golden clouds he spreads

His blanket.

My friends follow and rest their heads

But I’ll stay up a while instead

To watch the stars ‘til they come out

And a gentle ray is the sun’s first scout

And I know that my vigil is through.

The bricks of the library have a different hue

Given by early rising sun.

It won’t last the whole day through,

For sunrise soon is done.

The world will be a bit more dead

And bricks not rose but merely red;

So not that one whole day has fled,

I at last will go to bed.

(But not for long while this day’s new,

For it has something for me too!)

Donald T. Williams, PhD

XIII

Don May 20th, 2008

XIII Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”   

            Here’s a poem that shows one of the things free verse can actually be good for: extended onomatopoeia.

 MEDITATION: NOISE 

I

a quiet never have I (but inside)

know—snowmmmblanketsmmmworldbut

notquietmmmHONNK!  shut up,

world, your language is obscene

II

wind through trees or shutters or

around corners or just

wind–conversation of starlight—

surf, seagulls, anybird

merrily jumpiness of frog (PLOP)

into pondily ripple (SPLASH) rain

drops and snowflakes and your breath

on my cheek: the nice sounds,

the soft sounds, the

peaceful sounds.

III

down from dream into

actness of live (BLAAHT)

curse it (SLAM) shut up,

world, your langue is

obscene

Donald T. Williams, PhD

XII

Don May 17th, 2008

XII Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”   

            Spring came at last and brought with it my third sonnet—not yet a very good one, but less awkward, and showing an increasing level of comfort with the Shakespearean form, despite still a good bit of cheating.  But the quatrains function as paragraphs and the couplet is starting to have a little of the punch that the Shakespearian couplet is designed to have, aided by the ironic reversal of the normal relationship of life and death in the last line.  Experience right now teaches us that with death all life must end, but the historical Resurrection of Christ, boosted by the repeated pattern of Spring, allows a better hope (and a more interesting ending) for people of biblical faith.

 SONNET no. III 

Today the snow begins to melt away

And slush and dirt will come to take its place,

Leaving mud where Sun was wont to play

At making bright the whiteness of earth’s face.

The path which booted feet must go to tread

Will fill with mire whose suction holds them back

Until the walking fills his soul with dread

Whose pathway takes him o’er the ruined track.

Though bright and cold like swords Snow strikes our eyes

And, lifting spirit, fills the heart with song,

On leaving makes a world that we despise,

Whose dirty, drab-dead sickness lasteth long.

                                    But this must be e’er leaves of Spring begin!

                                                It is the Law:  with life all death must end.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

XI

Don May 16th, 2008

XI 

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on “the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”  

Free verse, as we have established, is not free and is usually not enough.  One way of adding some semblance of form to it is by the expedient of an acrostic, as in this impression of a girl I met, Nancy Joy Johnson.

N ever in my universe,

A t least to my knowledge,

N ot on the line between before and after or

C rossing the path of any otherwise existence

Y ou have been until today.  Nancy

J oy is a good name for you, for

O ften after you walk away I laugh myself into

Y on land of green trees.

            Later I would combine the acrostic with real forms like the sonnet.  Now, that is a challenge! 

Donald T. Williams, PhD

X

Don May 15th, 2008

X             Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on “the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.” 

            O.K.  This next one shows I was still in the cummings period.  But I still think it has interesting imagery, and I still get the chill from it that I got that night.  The form of a poem is a receptacle for experience, a locket in which can be preserved both personal and cultural memory.  Even free verse can rise to that sometimes.

 Night in Imladris 

Tree . . .

wearing stars for rings on branching fingers,

misty cloud for shawl,

we stand and grow

together

for a moment

Donald T. Williams, PhD