Poets’ Roundtable
The August 4 meeting was notable for the excellence of the poems. Not a single exception. There were but six of us. Nonetheless, we ran overtime due to the quality of the work and discussions. None this had to do with my joy in hearing myself talk now that I have my hearing aids although it did seem that I talked a lot.
- Welcome
- News and Jabber
- The jabber part...I used to write a blog about writing poetry. It was pretty good but a few years ago I got away from it. I may renew it. At any rate, I thought it would be interesting to write an entry about something I re-discovered in my writing the assignment for this meeting. I had gotten pretty well along and new I was closing inon the end of the poem although I didn’t know how it would end,something I never know until it is done. The poem, however, refused to reveal how it wanted to end. I tried several versions but none measured up to the rest of the poem. This is a common problem among writers. Many years ago, a writer I knew, a woman of exceptional talent, suggested one of my poems would be better if I brought the beginning into the ending. I tried this with the assignment poem and it was what the poem had been asking for. This is a tactic I have often used and needed reminding of. So, when you are perplexed by how to end a poem, go back to the beginning and listen to what it wants to tell you about the ending.
- Regarding know your words
One of my favorite pieces of advice is "Know your words." One of my favorite sites for researching words is Onelook.com. Below is a sample of the results when I searched the word "rainbow." Needless to say the results gave me everything I could and more.
Jump to: General, Art, Business, Computing, Medicine, Miscellaneous, Religion, Science, Slang, Sports, Tech, Phrases
- The following poem was included in an article by “The Sun” that while focused upon the poet reflected British occupation with the placement of smart meters throughout the country to be completed by 2020.
Meters - by Carol Ann Duffy
Found by torchlight fingering gloom
inside the cupboard under the stairs
or in the hall, clamped to the wall;
in kitchen, garage, utility-room,
in bedsit, bungalow, semi-detached,
tenement, high-rise, council flat,
The Rochdale Electric, K. & J. White,
Ferranti, James and Graham & Co.,
measuring energy, consumed and used
by gas-oven, wireless, 2-bar fire,
40-watt lightbulb, 13-amp fuse...
for the whumf of the flame on the water-heater
it was shillings or florins into the meter.
Shillings or florins into the meter
in London, Liverpool, Llanystumdwy,
Perth, Prestatyn, Prestwich, Poole,
for the weekly bath, the hard-boiled egg,
too near the fire, the corned-beef leg,
the gramophone, the Christmas Tree lights,
the pan on the cooker simmering tripe,
Hoover, kettle, twin-tub, lamp,
sheets, shirts, steaming, damp
under the iron, the television
newly-installed for the Coronation...
then the luxury of central heating
and quarterly bills and a meter reading.
Quarterly bills and a meter reading
by the man from the Gas, Electricity Board,
polite, peak-capped, alert for dogs,
checking the digits under the disc,
the whirring wheel, the soft tick
of monitored moments skyping, googling,
downloading, scanning, Facebooking;
out at sea the wind-farms churning
air into profit, the salty breeze
powering the big flatscreen TVs,
the underfloor heating, costs mounting...
the kilowatt hours burning, turning,
meters, like monks in their cells, counting.
Like monks in cells, the meters, counting
well-thumbed, numbered days and nights
beneath the energy-saving lights
as though murmuring prayers, clicking beads
to the switching On and Off of needs;
each private, domestic revolution
circling the time of its own extinction
when mechanical meters, old Latin tomes,
stand behind glass in hushed museums,
gun-metal grey, silvery, black,
from household gods to artefacts...
while digital, internet meters glean
that History's bill to the Future's green.
History's bill to the Future's green.
The following two poems by the recently deceased Jim Northrup, a Native
American poet, I found on the Bomb Magazine website, an interesting place for creative posts.
Shrinking Away
by Jim Northrup
Survived the war but
was having trouble
surviving the peace
Couldn’t sleep more than two hours
was scared to be without a gun
nightmares, daymares
guilt and remorse
wanted to stay drunk all the time
1966 and the VA said
Vietnam wasn’t a war
They couldn’t help
but did give me a copy
of the yellow pages
picked a shrink off the list
50 bucks an hour
I was making 125 a week
We spent six sessions
establishing rapport
Heard about his military life
his homosexuality
his fights with his mother
and anything else he
wanted to talk about
At this rate, we would have
got to me in 1999
Gave up on that shrink
couldn’t afford him
wasn’t doing me any good
Six weeks later my shrink
killed himself—great
Not only guilt about the war
but new guilt about my dead shrink
If only I had a better job
I could have kept on seeing him
I thought we were making real progress
maybe in another six sessions
I could have helped him
That’s when I realized that
surviving the peace was up to me
From “Shrinking Away,” Walking the Rez Road (Voyageur Press, Stillwater, MN, 1994).
Follow the link above the poem to “Bomb”, a pretty interesting site for creative writing and other things
REZ CAR
It's 24 years old.
It's been used
a lot more than most.
It's louder than a 747.
It's multicolored and none
of the tires are brothers.
I'm the 7th or 8th owner
I know I'll be the last.
What's wrong with it?
Well, the other day
the steering wheel fell off.
The radio doesn't work
but the heater does.
The seats have seen more
asses than a proctologist.
I turn the key, it starts.
I push the brake, it stops.
What else is a car
supposed to do?
--Jim Northrup
- The Current Assignment
- I found this interesting and had some trouble following my own assignment. Having written a poem for it I forgot about it. Then, while away, I was writing about a poem written by the brother of an old girlfriend. This turned into a fair piece and I literally stumbled back into the assignment when the five senses came naturally into the woof of the writing.
- The Next Assignment
- A found poem. I have a link to a wonderful article describing found poems, how they work, how they are found. https://static01.nyt.com/images/blogs/learning/pdf/2010/NCTEarticle.pdf.
- I want a particular kind of found poem, call it a newspaper poem poem. Select any newspaper or combinations of papers. that follows the following rules:
Once you have collected your words and phrases, here are some some rules for creating the poem itself:
–Each poem must be 14 or fewer lines long.
–You may give it your own original title if you like.
–The poem itself should use no more than two of your own words. The rest of the words and phrases should come from some article or articles published in The New York Times, past or present.
–You might choose to write in a traditional poetic form, or not.
–Remember that in a poem, every word, space and mark of punctuation carries meaning, so have fun experimenting with line breaks, repetition of words, alliteration, assonance, shape or anything else that enhances what you’d like to say.
Sample with a link to the article it came from:
Iisha – holland,Mi, 18 April 19, 2010 · 2:01 pm
Every Girls Dream
Little girls sketch wedding dresses in crayon,
Couples in their 90s still tell stories of how they met,
Telling “How I met your mother”,
Explaining “The big bang theory”,
Modern family began to fall.
Romantically challenged,
Beautiful women with no confidence,
made even more painful
by the waves of laughter.
It can not even be said,
Romantically challenged.
You may expect to see this exercise again sometime.
- Next Meeting
- August 18, 2016
- Other Notes
Comment on the assignment: The poem lifted from The New York Times [8/4/16., pp. A1, A2, A3. While attributing choices made, I discovered that two lines of the poem cannot be sourced. Now I have to reread p. 2 and 3 to find these words in context between lines 4 & 7. -- an unintended memory lapse.
ReplyDeleteDear friends, Solved my own problem. I had done all of the work; what I had forgotten is that I had jumped in the middle to the last page of section 1 of the Times, to page A24 where I had underlined the unattributable missing two lines. So I was lost for several hours trying to find two lines that do not exist on the first three pp. G
ReplyDeleteGerard, why waste time searching for two line of your poem that cannot be
ReplyDeletefound within the parameter [pp. 1-3] that you had set for yourself. That you
decided at one point to check out the p.24, the last page to section A of the
New York Times doesn't seem to be the worth the time invested in finding
the sources for two lines that fill in the last two lines of the first stanza.
You would be excused for inventing whatever conformed to your intent
in was in your "found" poem….friend on Line, Paul.
Proper attribution is key but somewhat difficult given the restrictions in the assignment. I found it difficult to know what to do when the line I was using was one quoted from another source and finally decided that it just won't matter much in the end unless my brilliant piece of lifted lines is stolen for publication. I just cited the entire news article I drew from.
ReplyDeleteI do not know many like you who go to the trouble of searching an assignment to leave as many references as you do. Those who might have done what you did, still living, who were known to me as friends, are down to one who no longer uses the internet because too many of his students wanted to know his views on this and that. So, he quit the internet altogether. Now, he leaves me bizarre, short messages on my low cost. pocket phone, which I don't hear and read all too late to answer.
ReplyDelete