To Suth, with love

[ilovelucy]

Okay, partner...

I see your pair of aces and I raise you....

Show us your hand...

(Please post a poem of yours or too...these jokers need to see some inspiration!)

[Persephone]

I used to write poetry. Now I write "works in progress." But here's one that I haven't really done anything to except just dash it off. Maybe someone will have a helpful critique...or at least maybe others will get some confidence to post their scribblings.



Hush, you say. Like a little baby
who feels safe though she’s never
felt the cold before. Hush. Like a stray
puppy that can never survive unless it
stops to listen for the storm.

I want to tell you what this feels like,
this question I’ve been sketching
around us.

There is no question, you say.
I’ve only imagined. Again.
And I picked the colors
of its inflections more carefully
than I ever will the couch
we sit on as you tell me
to ask what we are having
for dinner, not why.

There is no dissection
of steak and salad,
no bifurcation of wine
and blueberry cobbler,
no careful study of a look,
a touch, a mood,
to explain why sometimes
things are so good and yet
something, someone—
we don’t know which of us
or for what reason—hurts.

There is no question, you say.
Love is a battlefield,
but we are not the casualties.

I want to say that I can’t
think of the word
that I would say as I share
your silence.

Hush, you say. Hush.
Like a kitten curled sleeping
on the back of a Chow. Hush.
Like a child who has memorized
if not understood “this too shall pass.”

Don’t talk, just listen.
Don’t ask, just feel.

I listen to the beat of your
heart and mine like drummers
marching around and around
and around themselves.

Hush, you say.
This too shall pass.

[ilovelucy]

yes.

:)

[Persephone]

I was taught in school that poetry should be much more "crafted" than this and that it should be much more intellectual and cynical even. I guess I'm not a very good student.

But then maybe that could be a topic for discussion for us. What is poetry "supposed to be" anyway?

"He'd sell a rat's asshole to a blind man for a wedding ring."

~Brautigan~

[Satan]

I used to write poetry. Now I write "works in progress." But here's one that I haven't really done anything to except just dash it off. Maybe someone will have a helpful critique...

How about this: Too much kneading makes the bread unpalatable. Bet your Mama just 'dashed off' biscuits, too. :)

I always overworked my poetry until I strangled it to death. ::)

OK, if I have to find something to nitpick about (for the sake of 'Socrates' reproof' ;))...

"And I picked the colors
of its inflections more carefully
than I ever will the [colors of
the?] couch we sit on as you
tell me to ask what we
are having for dinner, not why."

Or did you literally mean 'pick the couch carefully'?

[ilovelucy]

Well, there is an understanding which comes from reading poetry and from life and from a certain sensibility with words which I feel is closely alligned with artists using color and light and form to create what they do....

I have had many poetry professors over the years and the only ones who seemed to help were those who wrote poetry themselves..such as you....:)

Poetry is primarily an insane desire to make life and its experience beautifully fulfilled in words on a page....twist and turn it, churn and burn it, build it up and tear it down again....revel in it, hate it, defy it, deny it, struggle with it, rectify it, sanctify it, crucify and objectivify it.....it's life....in words all our very own...

[Persephone]

I used to write poetry. Now I write "works in progress." But here's one that I haven't really done anything to except just dash it off. Maybe someone will have a helpful critique...

How about this: Too much kneading makes the bread unpalatable. Bet your Mama just 'dashed off' biscuits, too. :)

I always overworked my poetry until I strangled it to death. ::)

OK, if I have to find something to nitpick about (for the sake of 'Socrates' reproof' ;))...

"And I picked the colors
of its inflections more carefully
than I ever will the [colors of
the?] couch we sit on as you
tell me to ask what we
are having for dinner, not why."

Or did you literally mean 'pick the couch carefully'?





I wondered about that myself. I guess I should decide what I meant and clarify it. Thanks for pointing that out.

When are we going to see some of your poetry?

[Persephone]

Well, there is an understanding which comes from reading poetry and from life and from a certain sensibility with words which I feel is closely alligned with artists using color and light and form to create what they do....

I have had many poetry professors over the years and the only ones who seemed to help were those who wrote poetry themselves..such as you....:)

Poetry is primarily an insane desire to make life and its experience beautifully fulfilled in words on a page....twist and turn it, churn and burn it, build it up and tear it down again....revel in it, hate it, defy it, deny it, struggle with it, rectify it, sanctify it, crucify and objectivify it.....it's life....in words all our very own...


Excellent definition. Maybe I'm just not depressed enough to live life the way my poetry teachers taught. :)

[ilovelucy]

bad,

I would hope those who are obssessed with their rear ends would find poetry as the best viable means to express themselves..less dangerous that way, to be sure......

[Persephone]

bad,

I would hope those who are obssessed with their rear ends would find poetry as the best viable means to express themselves..less dangerous that way, to be sure......



Twisted sumbitch, isn't he? But he's so cute... :)

And he did have a point with that Brautigan quote...as I'm sure he meant to...poetry is a memorable image brought to us in words, is it not?

And he did have a point with that Brautigan quote...as I'm sure he meant to...poetry is a memorable image brought to us in words, is it not?


Poetry is only poetry to those who can feel what the poet captured in thought, not necessarily his/her own thought, in other words, a stimulus to something you either wish you felt or wish you would never feel again.

[ilovelucy]

Yea,

I can buy this...Ever read the ....(BALLAD?) OF THE BALL TURRET GUNNER by Randal Jarrell?

You definitely do not want to go there and do that....

[Persephone]

And he did have a point with that Brautigan quote...as I'm sure he meant to...poetry is a memorable image brought to us in words, is it not?


Poetry is only poetry to those who can feel what the poet captured in thought, not necessarily his/her own thought, in other words, a stimulus to something you either wish you felt or wish you would never feel again.



This is quite astute. It's sort of a twist on TS Eliot's idea of the "objective correlative." The idea that thoughts are objectified in images in poetry to as to stimulate correlating thoughts in the reader. But I don't know that it can really be that objective. People bring their own meanings to things, their own experiences, and their own associations.

[Persephone]

Poetry is only poetry to those who can feel what the poet captured in thought, not necessarily his/her own thought, in other words, a stimulus to something you either wish you felt or wish you would never feel again.



This is such an interesting way to put it. "Wish you felt or wish you would never feel again." Do you ever read a poem and think that is how you do feel?

[Satan]

I wondered about that myself. I guess I should decide what I meant and clarify it. Thanks for pointing that out.

Then again, you might leave it to those who actually have an imagination to make of it what they will. ;)

When are we going to see some of your poetry?


Don't hold your breath. I haven't written any in years, so what I have written seems naive and idealistic in retrospect, especially as cynical as I've become. A hundred years ago I might have been considered a decent poet, because I'm partial to poetry that has rhythm at least, if not rhyme. It seems that both are against 'the rules' nowadays...

[Persephone]

Don't hold your breath. I haven't written any in years, so what I have written seems naive and idealistic in retrospect, especially as cynical as I've become. A hundred years ago I might have been considered a decent poet, because I'm partial to poetry that has rhythm at least, if not rhyme. It seems that both are against 'the rules' nowadays...


I don't know about that. Depends on whose rules you are going by. There is a group of poets known as the New Formalists now who are making something of a come back for rhythm and rhyme. I like poems with very measured rhythm. I'm just too lazy to write them most of the time. Rhyme has its place too, though it can come across as pretty contrived if it isn't done well.

Sometimes. I often wonder if the poet was sharing the same thought, realizing everything has many different meanings, none being shared exactly by another...which makes me question "Am I alone?" or is everyone else?

<passes spliff>

Holy shit. Man, that's deep. 8)

[Satan]

I understand that. There's a fine line there. The WORST poetry is filled with rhyming monosyllables. :P

I understand that. There's a fine line there. The WORST poetry is filled with rhyming monosyllables. :P


Don't they call that "Rap" these days?

[Persephone]

This is such an interesting way to put it. "Wish you felt or wish you would never feel again." Do you ever read a poem and think that is how you do feel?


Sometimes. I often wonder if the poet was sharing the same thought, realizing everything has many different meanings, none being shared exactly by another...which makes me question "Am I alone?" or is everyone else?




I'm not even sure when I write a poem myself that it means the same thing to me when I go back and read it two months later that it meant at the time I wrote it. Emotionally, psychologically, we are all in a state of flux. If words strung together on a page mean something to you about the way you feel and think, they have done their job. That is all they can do. You are not alone. And yet we all are to a degree. This separateness, for lack of a better word, is what makes us interesting to one another. There is always something to strive to understand. We need that.

[ilovelucy]

Suth..I like this because I feel the same. What I see in a poem or a short piece I have written rarely matches what others see in it....Sometimes, I gain more from the commentary because others help me to see certain possible "meanings" or readings of something which I had not considered...The thing we create is never within our control. It goes beyond us, really and lives in itself....

I wish I could write better. I am a teacher at heart and therefore, it is hard to be singular about writing...hard to be apart from others and very difficult for me to believe in my own merits with so many talented around me.....

Do write more and share with us sometimes if you will, Suth. You have such a wonderful gift, not just of language, but something about the way you see life....

Yours sincerely,

lucy