The Mirthful, Sometimes Dolorous Adventures of Poem

[PrinceMyshkin]

Poem Goes on the South Beach Diet

Poem owes its beauty
at least in part
to the excessive words
that lie discarded in its wake
that preened or postured or pled its case:
the high carbohydrate adjectives,
the fatty metaphors, the overly sweet
similes...

In every fat poem
there’s a lean one
trying to get out.

[windblown]

After reading the third line of your poem I asked myself what might have happened to you, the master of reduction and elegant slimness, but the next line made clear where you were headed. Well, discarding is the one side of the process, the other side is such a slim poem's challenge to the readers who have to fill the empty spaces with their own ideas and sensitivity. The fat poem stands solid and overfeeds the passive reader.

[AuntShecky]

I guess what we poets manque should attempt to do is to write a lean poem in which not a single syllable is wasted. To quote Spencer Tracy to Katherine Hepburn: "There's not much there, but what's there is 'cherce.' "

[qimissung]

I love this line: "the excessive words that lie in its wake that preened or postured or pled it's case...", and it is this personification that give this poem its delicious life; you are an absolute master of description.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Breakfast is Poem’s
favourite meal: a lightly toasted
villanelle, a sonnet
over easy, some dark-brewed
Terza Rima

Epics, of course, are only
for dinner or some
Homeric feast

And Poem is careful
not to over-eat: too much poetry
or perhaps the wrong sort of it
can clog the mental arteries.

[~Sophia~]

I'm a bit late to this party but I want to say I really love your Culinary Poem poems! After reading, I'm quite full and content. A 5 Star gourmet meal!

[PrinceMyshkin]

Poem is indifferent to praise,
she’d have you believe.
She (who can be masculine or feminine
depending on the phase of the moon)
writes only for the honour
of the form, the power
of the line-break
which, when aptly applied,
can snap a heart in two.

But all the while, as she writes,
to the left and right
of her computer screen
is an imagined horde,
hungry for her every word!

And she is happy to feed them
so long as, once they’ve eaten,
they raise their voices,
pronounce her name,
followed by Hosanna! Hosanna!

[~Sophia~]

Hosanna! Hosanna! In the highest. That one is just terrific!

[PrinceMyshkin]

Thank you sincerely.

Yrs
Mr/Ms Poem

[PrinceMyshkin]

Poem feels the edge of something
pending.

It is neither happiness
nor doom or rather
it might be either
of those

or neither, something else, something
that will change
everything, something
it can’t hurry along

but it must wait
as patiently
as it awaited birth
having no idea, then,
of what was coming,

when it didn’t even know
what waiting was, when
there was nothing but
the slow, steady wish-wash
wish-wash wish-wash
of being.

[PrinceMyshkin]

There are times when Poem
would gladly give a tercet
or a sestina for someone to talk with:
a brother or sister Poem,
a lover would be best

but lacking any of those
he summons up one or another
of his poemlets: Sandra
or Eli, Augustina or
Blue-for-real

and he talks with them:
chiding them at times
for neglecting him
or cajoling them
with tales of his sometimes
crazy happiness.

“Have any of you known
such happiness?” he is apt to ask:
“Such that you could found
a church on it and staff it
with an entire presbytery
in rich, motley attire...”

[PrinceMyshkin]

Poem receives the news
that a friend of his has taken a turn for the worse.
Not her first such turn
but almost certainly
her next to last.

How many turns
does one take
before we come full circle
to what we were
before we were conceived?

Donna?

Donna?

How I will miss you, my friend...

[~Sophia~]

Sorry Prince,


http://i604.photobucket.com/albums/tt122/Sophialid/card21.jpg

Grieve not,
for I am still at your side, laced through your ribs,
reaching for your heart
...susan mrosek

[PrinceMyshkin]

Many, many thanks, dear Sophia....

[qimissung]

Poem waited for the night
Apprehension lurked, certainly
Perhaps fear waited, too, as quietly and silently as a nun in the corner
But mostly it was with resignation, a nurse in white
Calm, capable, knowing, who stood beside her bed

And in he came, her latest lover
The one who always remembered
With roses of the palest pink
The color of the gauzy dawns she would not see
The color of the shells she would not find

He handed them to her lovingly,
Though she knew there were others
Who had captured his attention.
Yet, always he came to her with the night
Pensively she ate the tender petals,

Felt them melt, begin to burn, a fire coursing
Through her veins and marrow and bones, the hollow of her hair
And while she idly wondered how long she had to wait
Heard God murmur in her ear
“They also serve, who only stand and wait…”


For Prince and CDN

[PrinceMyshkin]

Poem waited for the night
Apprehension lurked, certainly
Perhaps fear waited, too, as quietly and silently as a nun in the corner
But mostly it was with resignation, a nurse in white
Calm, capable, knowing, who stood beside her bed

And in he came, her latest lover
The one who always remembered
With roses of the palest pink
The color of the gauzy dawns she would not see
The color of the shells she would not find

He handed them to her lovingly,
Though she knew there were others
Who had captured his attention.
Yet, always he came to her with the night
Pensively she ate the tender petals,

Felt them melt, begin to burn, a fire coursing
Through her veins and marrow and bones, the hollow of her hair
And while she idly wondered how long she had to wait
Heard God murmur in her ear
“They also serve, who only stand and wait…”


For Prince and CDN

You had the decency to privately request permission of me to post this. I read it tearfully, as I responded to you, and I wish I could show it to Donna. You and she would have loved each other, I have no doubt. On her behalf and for myself, thank you so much!

[Pendragon]

How true is it that poetry often lacks
Pruning of words that choke out meaning
Grievous words that causes the reader to react
With haste to stop the flow of reading
Compact structuring, even in forms,
Requires sometimes much re-writing
To discover what goes beyond the norms
That captures attention and make the work inviting
A tree unpruned bears but little fruit,
And the fruit it bears scare worth the eating
So works of poetry unedited become moot
The reader stops before one finishes the reading
Use subtle tones to show your feelings and beliefs
And when using vocabulary, best be brief

Pendragon

[PrinceMyshkin]

Poem waited for the night
Apprehension lurked, certainly
Perhaps fear waited, too, as quietly and silently as a nun in the corner
But mostly it was with resignation, a nurse in white
Calm, capable, knowing, who stood beside her bed

And in he came, her latest lover
The one who always remembered
With roses of the palest pink
The color of the gauzy dawns she would not see
The color of the shells she would not find

He handed them to her lovingly,
Though she knew there were others
Who had captured his attention.
Yet, always he came to her with the night
Pensively she ate the tender petals,

Felt them melt, begin to burn, a fire coursing
Through her veins and marrow and bones, the hollow of her hair
And while she idly wondered how long she had to wait
Heard God murmur in her ear
“They also serve, who only stand and wait…”


For Prince and CDN

You had the decency to privately request permission of me to post this. I read it tearfully, as I responded to you, and I wish I could show it to Donna. You and she would have loved each other, I have no doubt. On her behalf and for myself, thank you so much!

[~Sophia~]

When our heart flies toward Heaven,
time stands still.
It does not interfere.
*
by Sri Chinmoy

[PrinceMyshkin]

Poem slopes along the slush-
covered sidewalks of his beloved Montréal,
reciting one of his favourite, recent oeuvres
(and thinks, ‘How lovely to refer to it
as an oeuvre and not to worry
about being thought prétentieux!’):

Something about a back door to heaven,
and he thinks: Fugg, that’s good!
I’m good! He wonders if
anyotherbody realizes
just how good he is!

[~Sophia~]

Something about a back door to heaven,
and he thinks: Fugg, that’s good!
I’m good!


Yes you/he are/is!

[qimissung]

agreed! :)

[easyeverett]

Prince, you have created verbositites as secular weight and rid us of that
nusance in the same formatt. Excellent disassembling of fatty rhetoric though
it pains my Irish soul to do so. lol. easy

[PrinceMyshkin]

Prince, you have created verbositites as secular weight and rid us of that
nusance in the same formatt. Excellent disassembling of fatty rhetoric though
it pains my Irish soul to do so. lol. easy

Oh, you Irish! When the good Lord (or whoever) created the English language, I think He or She meant the Irish to demonstrate to the rest of us how to use it. Is there an Irish- man or woman without music in their every utterance?

[a_little_wisp]

Prince, you have created verbositites as secular weight and rid us of that
nusance in the same formatt. Excellent disassembling of fatty rhetoric though
it pains my Irish soul to do so. lol. easy


Easy, you said mostly what I was never able to exactly say, still am trying to say, about Prince's poetry, minus the bit about it paining the soul, but that's because I'm not Irish - I'm Scots-Irish.

You're too awesome, Prince. It shouldn't be allowed. But then where would be?

[PrinceMyshkin]

Poem is writing a poem!
He is aware of himself writing a poem! In fact
that is the subject of the poem he is writing!
I am Keats, he thinks, I am Yeats, I am
Roethke, Rilke, Wallace Stevens,
I am Wm Carlos Williams! I am
pretentious as hell and I am
real! My God! How real
I am!