Between Poems

[PrinceMyshkin]

Between poems, you are nothing.

But you are never
between poems, really.
You wrote one
a few minutes,
a week or a month ago
and several fistfuls of them
before that,
but the contract was always the same:

You may write this next poem
provided you give up any certainty
that you will ever write another.

And so
you apply yourself even harder
to your job,
hang out at your cafe or bar
or seek another one,
you fall in love
or out of love,
you write letters to the editor
but forget to post them.

And you wait.

[Angelic Devil]

I love the idea your sending out in that poem. Somehow reminds me of "Virginia Woolf" and Death Of A Moth, both talk about the writers, in two different concepts. Except hers are more hidden and abstract, but yours is more contemporary. I'd suggest using more difficult vocab, but that's a personal opinion.

Keep the good work up!

[PrinceMyshkin]

I love the idea your sending out in that poem. Somehow reminds me of "Virginia Woolf" and Death Of A Moth, both talk about the writers, in two different concepts. Except hers are more hidden and abstract, but yours is more contemporary. I'd suggest using more difficult vocab, but that's a personal opinion.

Keep the good work up!

That maybe your personal opinion but I suspect it is shared by many, who have heard or been taught that poetry is inherently difficult and obscure, that the writer conceals his or her thought as best he/she can and it's up to the reader to decode them.

I go the other way. If I can't make a poem out of the words I use in everyday speech, I'd as soon not make it at all. I'm hopeful that my line-breaks and the juxtaposition of words or ideas that do not always occur together make for a "poem" (whatever the hell that is!).

[Angelic Devil]

That maybe your personal opinion but I suspect it is shared by many, who have heard or been taught that poetry is inherently difficult and obscure, that the writer conceals his or her thought as best he/she can and it's up to the reader to decode them.

I go the other way. If I can't make a poem out of the words I use in everyday speech, I'd as soon not make it at all. I'm hopeful that my line-breaks and the juxtaposition of words or ideas that do not always occur together make for a "poem" (whatever the hell that is!).

lol sorry, was just passing on what my mind was thinking^^

[PrinceMyshkin]

lol sorry, was just passing on what my mind was thinking^^

Good grief! Nothing to apologize for! What else could you pass on but what your mind was thinking? Please thank your mind for me.

[Lokasenna]

Interesting and enchanting as usual Prince. You have an uncanny knack for seeing things from unconventional perspectives.

[qimissung]

I agree with the precept: and you wait (and observe, may I add?); AND: you are uncanny!!! :)

[mmaria]

I like the beginning:

"Between poems, you are nothing."

A poet lives when he plans his poems, when he writes them and when he tries to corrct them. When it is finished, he can only wait for another inspiration to come from somewhere. Sometimes it seems that it will never come, but it always does. As it says:

"But you are never
between poems, really."

Great and true!

[PrinceMyshkin]

I agree with the precept: and you wait (and observe, may I add?); AND: you are uncanny!!! :)

Thank you, but there are moments, you know - yes, entire moments - when I’m quite, quite canny!

[Lynne50]

I have to agree with PrinceMyshkin. I don't think you have to use difficult vocabulary to write a good poem. Have you heard of Billy Collins? He was the Poet Laureate for the U.S. a few years back. He writes such simple poems, that on the surface seem very basic, but as you reread them so many different levels come to light. His poem entitled Introduction to Poetry is wonderful.
Quote--... I want them to water-ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore......

But all they ( students of poetry) (Lynne50's insertion)
want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
Billy Collins, Sailing Around the Room

[PrinceMyshkin]

I like the beginning:

"Between poems, you are nothing."

A poet lives when he plans his poems, when he writes them and when he tries to corrct them. When it is finished, he can only wait for another inspiration to come from somewhere.

The inspiration for my poem came from a question someone once asked W.H. Auden: How did he feel when he finished a poem?

"Like someone who might never write another one," he replied.

Of course you can pretty well count on writing something, something passable, something that looks like a poem in some of its outer aspects, but those that have a touch of magic in them, well, you can't count on those. They're gifts...



"But you are never
between poems, really."

Great and true!

I'm afraid you misunderstood what I intended by those lines. To be between poems means that you are certain there will be another one. But, I think, your best chance that there might be is not to be waiting for it but to get on with whatever else matters to you.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I have to agree with PrinceMyshkin. I don't think you have to use difficult vocabulary to write a good poem. Have you heard of Billy Collins? He was the Poet Laureate for the U.S. a few years back. He writes such simple poems, that on the surface seem very basic, but as you reread them so many different levels come to light. His poem entitled Introduction to Poetry is wonderful.
Quote--... I want them to water-ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore......

But all they ( students of poetry) (Lynne50's insertion)
want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
Billy Collins, Sailing Around the Room

Many thanks, Lynne, both for your opinion and for this economical, seemingly effortless, witty poem by Collins. I'm not much familiar with his poems but will look them up.

[Virgil]

For me the word "contract" really empowers this poem. Amazing how one word that is not typically used in this context can make a poem.

[ampoule]

Between poems, you are nothing.

But you are never
between poems, really.
You wrote one
a few minutes,
a week or a month ago
and several fistfuls of them
before that,
but the contract was always the same:

You may write this next poem
provided you give up any certainty
that you will ever write another.

And so
you apply yourself even harder
to your job,
hang out at your cafe or bar
or seek another one,
you fall in love
or out of love,
you write letters to the editor
but forget to post them.

And you wait.


I truly love this my Prince. I think in poetry. At least that's the joke I tell myself. So, when I am between poems I am nothing. And there are times I get very scared that there won't be another. Sometimes I think of falling in or out of love for the poem's sake...bad bad, naughty girl. I should find a cafe instead.
You see, this is what I love about your poem, I'm in it. All of us are in it. Thank you.

Oh, and I love that 'contract' thing, too.

Oh, oh, and Billy Collins...thanks Lynne50 for bringing his name up. His wife better be on guard if I should happen to move to his area, which I'm not, but still, she better be careful.

[Lynne50]

You can find some of Billy Collins poems on Youtube. His poem, Forgetfulness is read by the poet himself and there is also animation for it. Quite good.

[PrinceMyshkin]

For me the word "contract" really empowers this poem. Amazing how one word that is not typically used in this context can make a poem.

Amazing, too, how a really conscientious reader not only looks under the hood but goes straight for the carburetor! Thanks.

[Silas Thorne]

Yes, so true! (if I'm getting it ;)) I feel that all the times in between are necessary training for when the action hits. :) There's the next time, when you really learn something, or that line comes from somewhere and flows out of you, but you can't always hold it in a neat cup. For me sometimes the deer runs and you have to catch it, even if that means you have to seize its neck between your teeth and get blood on you.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I truly love this my Prince. I think in poetry. At least that's the joke I tell myself. So, when I am between poems I am nothing. And there are times I get very scared that there won't be another. Sometimes I think of falling in or out of love for the poem's sake...

Do you mean there are other reasons to fall in or out of love?!


bad bad, naughty girl. I should find a cafe instead.
You see, this is what I love about your poem, I'm in it. All of us are in it. Thank you.

Finding a regular cafe is not a bad idea. For me it's something of a Pavlovian reflex. I bring my spiral notebook in with me, take my usual stool at the counter, slap the notebook down on the counter and very soon a first line or phrase comes along.


Oh, and I love that 'contract' thing, too.

Oh, oh, and Billy Collins...thanks Lynne50 for bringing his name up. His wife better be on guard if I should happen to move to his area, which I'm not, but still, she better be careful.

Thanks, Ampoule!

[PrinceMyshkin]

You can find some of Billy Collins poems on Youtube. His poem, Forgetfulness is read by the poet himself and there is also animation for it. Quite good.

I did check that out, Lynne, and enjoyed both the reading and his calm, understated way of delivering it. Thanks.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Yes, so true! (if I'm getting it ;)) I feel that all the times in between are necessary training for when the action hits. :) There's the next time, when you really learn something, or that line comes from somewhere and flows out of you, but you can't always hold it in a neat cup. For me sometimes the deer runs and you have to catch it, even if that means you have to seize its neck between your teeth and get blood on you.

Speaking ONLY for myself, I feel that waiting for the next poem - which usually means waiting impatiently - means that it will come a little too early, that there will be a delivery of somewhat 2nd-hand, remaindered stuff that gets cobbled somehow into the appearance of a poem but lacks the spark of the unawaited. Perhaps the ability to NOT write a poem is the greatest skill the would-be poet requires? See Keats' "Negative capability."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_Capability

and in other places.

[a_little_wisp]

Thank you, but there are moments, you know - yes, entire moments - when I’m quite, quite canny!

:lol: Oh my goodness, Prince, sometimes your comments are as fun to read as your poems. I too have had entire moments of canniness. No one believes me, but maybe I should stop trying to put the pot in the microwave and the milk in the cabinet.

ANYWAY, the POEM is also spectacular. So if we're never between poems- and I agree- are we ALWAYS poets? :D

And you know what, you're right here too: Just like we should live every day as if it was our last, so too should we treat every poem we write.

[PrinceMyshkin]

:lol: Oh my goodness, Prince, sometimes your comments are as fun to read as your poems. I too have had entire moments of canniness. No one believes me, but maybe I should stop trying to put the pot in the microwave and the milk in the cabinet.

ANYWAY, the POEM is also spectacular. So if we're never between poems- and I agree- are we ALWAYS poets? :D


Thank you. Perhaps in future I will simply comment on the poms I would have written.

And no, between poems, we are not poets but ballerinas, heavy-machine operators, run of the mill schlemiels!. And as such, we may be preparing to be poets.

[firefangled]

This is exactly the way it is...hurry up and wait...and the grumbling deep down...the plates of invention shifting...the big secret our own minds keep from us until they are good and ready.

Bravo, Prince for putting this into words poetic. The first line as true as any ever written.

[PrinceMyshkin]

This is exactly the way it is...hurry up and wait...and the grumbling deep down...the plates of invention shifting...the big secret our own minds keep from us until they are good and ready.

Bravo, Prince for putting this into words poetic. The first line as true as any ever written.

Thank you. May I quote you a poem with the truest last line I've ever written? This came about during a time I was writing poems for children, had become fearful that they were becoming facile and gave myself a mental instruction that the next one I wrote would have to come from a deeper, possibly darker place, and out popped:



I Wish Aunt Emily Were Back at Home


I wish Aunt Emily were back at home.
She went away about a month ago.
She said she'd phone.
She never did.

I guess that where she went
There aren't many phones.
I know she's not afraid
To be alone.

She's an adventurer.
She's very tall.
She's my favourite aunt.
I wish she'd call.

That's all.

In my view it required just one alteration. What had originally been: "I guess that where she went / There aren't any phones, became "I guess that where she went / There aren't many phones," the intuitive reason being that the kid narrating this knew only what his parents had chosen to convey to him and if they'd said "there aren't any phones" he might have guessed that she was dead.

And I realized after a while that the poem was about the recent, premature death of my younger brother. Indeed, for several weeks after his death, I'd had the feeling that the only reason I wasn't hearing from him was that I had stupidly forgotten his phone number.

So "That's all" was my own, helpless shrug in the face of his death or of death in general.

[ampoule]

I Wish Aunt Emily Were Back at Home


I wish Aunt Emily were back at home.
She went away about a month ago.
She said she'd phone.
She never did.

I guess that where she went
There aren't many phones.
I know she's not afraid
To be alone.

She's an adventurer.
She's very tall.
She's my favourite aunt.
I wish she'd call.

That's all.



I love this, and honestly, I never thought Aunt Emily had died. I really thought she had gone away on an adventure, or somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind, that she might have been asked to leave, maybe even gone away to have a baby or something.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I love this, and honestly, I never thought Aunt Emily had died. I really thought she had gone away on an adventure, or somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind, that she might have been asked to leave, maybe even gone away to have a baby or something.

Well, it's only my conjecture that she's dead. Writing, as best I could, from the mind of this 12 or 14 year old boy, I was dealing with how much of the 'actual' world is communicated to or withheld from us by well-meaning adults. To the child narrator, Aunt Emily's long absence, without communications, is as if she were dead, though he can't or won't allow himself to confront that possibility.

I'm still trying to grasp the reality that my brother, who died at the age of 37, twenty-eight years ago, is no more.

[qimissung]

This is exactly the way it is...hurry up and wait...and the grumbling deep down...the plates of invention shifting...the big secret our own minds keep from us until they are good and ready.

Bravo, Prince for putting this into words poetic. The first line as true as any ever written.


This is practically a poem itself, firefangled-and so true!

[PrinceMyshkin]

This is practically a poem itself, firefangled-and so true!

The dude you're referring to would have to take a graduate degree in how not to write poetry, or to offer generous, insightful critiques!

[PrinceMyshkin]

I love this, and honestly, I never thought Aunt Emily had died. I really thought she had gone away on an adventure, or somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind, that she might have been asked to leave, maybe even gone away to have a baby or something.

Well, with some hesitation, I offer this later poem:



Aunt Emily is Back

Aunt Emily is back
From the North Pole,
Where, I hear,
She followed a bear!

I swear,
She's not afraid of anything.
"Were you," I asked her.
"What?" she said.
"Afraid?" She nodded her head.

I couldn't believe it,
But then she went on:
"I was afraid that while I was gone
You'd grow up and forget me!"

"Aunt Emily!" I said. "Or else,
You'd lose a freckle or two.
May I count them?" she asked,
With a toss of her hair.

"Of course," I said. So she did.
And they were all there!

[ampoule]

Oh, I LOVE this one Prince! I feel just a hint of Shel Silverstein in these.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Oh, I LOVE this one Prince! I feel just a hint of Shel Silverstein in these.



Shel Silverstein
was neither gold nor green
nor, despite the name that had become his own
was he a stone!

But if you really want a laugh
about one mile high
look up Alligator Pie
by Dennis Lee
for a genuine tee-hee-hee!

[PrinceMyshkin]

Interesting and enchanting as usual Prince. You have an uncanny knack for seeing things from unconventional perspectives.

Thank you. Of course anything I write seems perfectly conventional to me, but occasionally I will notice some aspect of conventional wisdom that I had long accepted without examining it and I will see how narrow, rigid and smug it is, and my mind goes into reverse.