Original Poetry

GentleReader9 · Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 8:06 pm Post subject:

Okay, Saffron, now since you were so patient with that, I'm back again and even more annoyingly, noticed something else. Sad

Sorry. It's the repetition of "stepped on," in the first line and again in the last line of the first stanza. Do you want to to use "stepped on" two times like that? Or do you want to think of another wording in one place? Or is it intentionally symmetrical?

GentleReader9 · Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 8:18 pm Post subject:

I also just noticed you changed your signature quote, Saffron.

I will miss the hungry, strolling gait of your mind in its Quixotic quest to become a heart. And perhaps the mind always was the thing poets mean by heart. (Kind of a Tin Man story in there somewhere.) The Field beyond Right and Wrong is still relatively new to me, not fully explored and not fully trusted, "beyond the Fields We Know," as Lord Dunsany said. It sounds like a place where the Tin Man might rust. But I'll bring lots of oil for him and follow you anywhere. So far. Wink

DWill · Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 8:13 am Post subject: Pezoetry

This comes out of far right field (or would it be left?), where I spend some time. I hesitate to call what I'm going to post original poetry, but it is original. I'm not a poet, neither do I write more than a few poems per decade. But I do like to close my eyes every now and then and see what flips into view, mainly images or little bits of wordplay. If I concentrate as much as I can without feeling that I'm working, I can get the images or phrases to cluster around a subject or feeling. Call this if you like proto-poetry. I call it pezoetry just because that is a bastardized word for a bastard form. It's not intimidating, though, just a tossing of the mind's dice. It's something anyone can play.

This segment came from recalling a long bike ride yesterday:

I was bike riding
That is to say, bike ridden
Two wheels are like two eyes, apertures
Calculus of shifting, gravity and wind, perfectly matched
Landscape: I love you and wave
Love to go with that flow
You have to learn to lean, you’re leaning into turns
Muscle motor or motor muscles?
Oh piston legs
The engine’s steady progressive huffing
Just add something digestible to the hopper above, you will make steam enough
The people in my life there only briefly
As if my whole life speeded up, barely time for a wave to the man burning a neat row of pine needles in his driveway
I’m there, I’m not there
No involvement in this revolvement
Does all this suggest to you a revolution?
Time to start the revolution

Saffron · Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 3:37 pm Post subject:

GentleReader9 · Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2008 6:24 pm Post subject:

DWill,

Ahh. You are so cool. Cool

Seriously cool. Saffron thought about your poem all day. I'm not going to tell you what I thought about it.... Whistling

.... Well, yes I will, a little. But only because I talk too much and I can't shut up.

You ride a motorcycle. And you write poetry -- yes, this is too poetry, and I accuse you of denying it not only out of modesty, but because maybe you think admitting to writing poetry will somehow leave you vulnerable. I am not saying you are being cowardly in this, but you are straddling something more tenously balanced, riskier, maybe even potentially more powerful than directly admitting to poetry-writing would be, with one foot on the side of modesty/courage and one on the side of creative bragging/cowardliness. Or maybe I just looked too long at the Tim O'Brien topic on going to war as an act of cowardice right before this. (If I am touching a sensitive spot try to take it as a caress and not a poke. And I will keep my "hands off" your poetry and stop projecting onto your motives if this is offensive. I know I am never more meglomaniacal and egomaniacal than when I apologize and grovel most, so I am probably projecting).

You. Write. Poetry. (Sing to the well-known tune of "Hah-huh. Huh-Hah-huh.") And it's good. So write more.

DWill · Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2008 5:49 pm Post subject:

You are going to find this really funny, I think. I'm not bothered at all by your analysis of what I'm about in posting this with such a disclaimer; you could certainly be right about coyness, at least (though too generous about the product). At any rate, thanks. But I have never ridden a motorcycle and probably never will. I used to have a bicylce avatar, in fact, but that was before you signed up. No, I am all about bicycles, can become rapsodic on the subject without much provocation. I'm evangelical about bicycles and may find a way to ride to my funeral on one.
Will

GentleReader9 · Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2008 9:27 pm Post subject:

I stand so completely corrected, it's embarrassing. It's as if someone had come and pointed out to me that that paragraph near the beginning of the book On Being Certain was not actually about a kite, but was a paragraph of notes stolen from Burton's wife's dream journal, her attempt to recall the fleeting sequences of the early morning hours. Disorienting, but I believe it. My fantasy that out there, somewhere on the Eastern seaboard there is a cool, poetry-writing, motorcycle-riding, intellectually astute DWill who feels too shy to admit it is not only exploded, but exposed in public to be a part of my imagination, not you. But actually, I think bikes are cooler than motorcycles. So you're still cool. And you still write poetry. I should re-read it since I misinterpreted some things and I should revisit why you call it something else.

Saffron · Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2008 9:59 pm Post subject:

GentleReader9 · Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2008 11:11 pm Post subject:

Thank you, Saffron,

for the lovely poem fragment, the support and validation, but most of all for the constant natural grace of your voice. Somehow I always seem to manage to get into dicey misunderstandings when I speak to the gents. I feel I can count on you to catch me in my wild spinning, like a gentle updraft. As I read your words, my perspective shifts softly, this way, that way on their calming, downward drift, settling at last like one of the gorgeous flaming leaves you use as your avatar, grounded in the clear, bright outdoor daylight, nestling into the simple, elegant carpet of your comforting words. (See, I have a fantasy Saffron, too. And I adore her.) Very Happy

Saffron · Posted: Tue Oct 21, 2008 5:41 am Post subject:

Saffron · Posted: Tue Oct 21, 2008 5:51 am Post subject:

Forgive me DWill, for I am taking the liberty of reposting the poem you posted a few months back.

It's one of the sunstruck games we play:
Making castles from the wet brown mortar,
Building walls so thick and spires so high
That you and I could live there
If the tide would stop for us.

But the fun is waiting till we're an island,
Then wading ashore to look out as the great leveler
Laps sliently, seriously at our work,
Blurring it to a trace, as we laugh.

And it matters little now that fall will come
To turn the beach cold and spoil our fun.
For you taste like salt and wear the August flowers
That bloom upon the bluff.

I think mermaids and sea-men don't know time.
So who's to say what's inevitable?

DWill · Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 8:47 am Post subject:

DWill · Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 9:36 am Post subject:

Saffron calls this "Sunstruck Games," which might be a better title. I told her that I'd remembered some more words, and she asked if I would re-post.

IN SUMMER

It's one of the sunstruck games we play:
Building castles with the wet brown mortar
When the tide is out,
Making walls so thick and spires so high
That you and I could live there
If the tide would stop for us.

But the fun is waiting till we're an island,
Then wading ashore to gaze across the strand
Where the Great Leveler laps at our work,
Blurring it to a trace with a seriousness
That raises diluvian laughter in us.

And it matters little now that fall will come
To turn the beach cold and spoil our fun.
For you taste like salt and wear the August flowers
That bloom upon the bluff.
I think mermaids and sea-men don't know time.
So who's to say what's inevitable?

Saffron · Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 10:31 am Post subject:


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