It's Like

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It’s like "it’s like"’s become
a stand-in star for “uhh”
and “Umm”
No longer that most interesting of
prepositions, where two things unalike become
                  yoked together
in the violence of
                  imagination,
like ideas being yoked by
                  the violence
  of imagination
It’s like a tenor showing off his lungs
without a single note
It’s like a vehicle driving on
                                        no ground
(I find no ground for this tenor to drive
                                       
                          his vehicle)                 

It’s like a metaphor that never dies
because it’s never born
and yet the ghost
                somehow made it
                        out alive
It’s like John Cage’s 4′33″ or rather
it’s like the audience
and their waning patience
It’s like the pause
between the lightning
and the blunderbussing thunder
It’s like a bookmark placed before
the finished chapter in the novel
of the mind
It’s like the cherubim
                      that stops

        before the Door of God
Und der Cherub steht vor ||
Gott
          …and never goes on in.

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Firstly I'm not keen on the "uhh" and "umm" which do little for the flow. Just say "hesitation" is my recommendation. Also I see no real need to repeat the paraphrased quote (one of Auntie's favourites) almost identically, word for word. I simply don't get what you were trying to convey with it. Once was OK.

After this the poem picks up its stride and really starts to work, although I have a personal aversion to peculiarly placed lines. Sometimes it works well in context, but in this instance it just seems superflous. I have this nagging feeling that such graphical devices should be left to competent typographers and graphic designers. Poets should stick to poetry - LOL. (I know what I'm talking about here because I was trained in typography and graphic design.) OK, rant off :D

Apart from the reservations above, I appreciate and enjoy what you have done with your rant :D It has humour, truth and wisdom.

Live and be well - H

This is marvellous! It's like watching someone's brain turning cartwheels and catching itself each time it nearly stumbles.

I agree with Princemyshkin in that it has a kind of flow and roll to it. Makes your mind follow the curves to that place you get to in the end. I don't know it was rather enjoyable.

Thanks to Prince and ShadowsCool, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Hawk: Oh, you're such a mean (did I say mean? I meant keen; Or keenly mean, or meanly keen) critic that won't let me get away with all my fiendishly clever ideas! I'm going to have to start writing poems as if you're standing behind me with that look of a disapproving teacher whenever I try to get cute and mischievous. :D

Ok, I'll just simply say I disagree about "uhh" and "umm" since they begin to establish the assonant pattern of the short "u" in that section of the poem. The repetition of that famous Johnson criticism was a bit of a "can I get away with it?" move on my part. The idea was that I was trying to play with the difference between metaphor and simile: one IS and IN that, the other is LIKE and BY that--a subtle change I hoped subtly changed the inference.

Your comment about "peculiarly placed lines" strikes a note with me as that's something I've actually thought quite a lot about it. When I first encountered such a thing it was through Cummings' "Grasshopper" poem, and I initially took a dislike to it, and my opinion didn't change much as I read various shape poems and concrete poetry. Paul Fussell really gave a voice to my opinion in Poetic Meter and Poetic Form when he talked about the imbalance between the visual aspect of shape and concrete poetry and the linguistic art of all other poetry. But recently I read Furniss and Bath's Reading Poetry and it subtly began convincing me that there can be a poetic purity to such poems because what's being emphasized isn't necessarily the visual but the spatial, and our experience of form in poetry is intricately tied to its spatial appearance on the page, and the temporal aspect of reading poetry within its space.

So this is one of only two poems where I've ever experimented with such "peculiar line spacings." I must, however, defend them as being non superfluous, as every spacing has to do with its relationship with what's being said and its proximity to what's around it (the vehicle on no ground has "no ground"--an empty space--around it, eg), while certain words are lined up so as to create a similar effect of line endings (ie, emphasis on certain words that, in conjunction, tell much of the story of the poem, or "made it / out alive" are lined up between "born" and "dies" in the previous lines).

Actually, after thinking about this piece some more, the line I'm really unsatisfied with is the last one. "Goes on in" seems just too prosaic for what's being conveyed, but I can't think of anything else that works; walks, steps, strides, flies, floats, etc. all seem either too weak or too strong.... any suggestions?

Hi Morpheus. It's not that I didn't see what you were doing with this poem, except perhaps with regard to the repetition of the paraphrased quote (and even then I descry a motivation behind it) but for me it just doesn't work. It stalls the poem. Poetry is about language and the needs of the poem are paramount. This poem just doesn't need this device. In fact, given the drive behind nearly all of the rest of the poem, the line itself just doesn't match and comes over as a tad prosy. I accept the use of uhh and umm because actually it works rhythmically, or, at least, would, if you hadn't put in a line break :D

Visually the first half is a bit of a mess, an impression not helped by being set in what looks like Courier. (Ghastly font) I agree that some formatting in the arrangement of lines can be benificial - I liked the layout of your last poem, it worked well. But I'm not persuaded by any arguments based on "artsy" post-modern cant - as opposed to artistry, where the art is in the poetry. You have the artistry, all the other stuff just distracts from it. OK I know this is a subjective opinion, so we may just have to agree to differ :D I do hope you don't think I'm being mean, in fact I hope that nobody whose work I comment on thinks I'm being mean. Tough, certainly, but always honest, and, I hope, fair.

As for your queried line: "and never passes through." would do it for me :)

Regardless of my perhaps overly spouted views, this has the DNA of a good poem and I always enjoy a bit cut and thrust with someone as bright and talented as you. Hope you enjoy it too.

Live long in prosperity and wellness - H

damn, this was a good one. I see you are moving away from your more classical influences and adopting many modernist ones. The word play, the ciphers, the unsettling earnestness of thought, and yet the beautiful images remain, the structure as impressive and chaotic as the alps, yet as precise, where every jut of rock of a few centimeters out of place not only would be noticed but ruin the entire sculpture and let it crumble, but it doesn't crumble it is like the alps.

I have said this before but I must re-affirm it, you have talent, genuine damn fine talent, and you ought to go to a publisher and get this talent published. For certain you are a far better poet than the current uk Poet laureate.

Alex: Awww, you spoil me! :D A sincere thanks for your kind words, although I certainly haven't abandoned my classical influences and formal poems; did you read my rather foolish attempt to imitate Keats in Ode to Comfort? I have been thinking about submitting something to Poetry Magazine, which I enjoy reading. But, hell, they only accept about 3% of all poetry submitted. I feel as if I'm aiming for the moon when I haven't even scaled the mountain.

Hawk: I didn't mean you were actually mean; you're mean like my mom was mean when I was 3-years old and she wouldn't let me put stickers on the TV to make it prettier.

What I will disagree with you about is that poetry is JUST language. Poetry is language in form, and what that form brings to our experience of language in semantic, temporal, and spatial terms. You say this piece doesn't need peculiar line breaks, and maybe you're right, but I kinda felt it was boring when I had it written in regular lines on the page. The extra formal challenge provided by choosing which lines to displace and where is something that interested me in this piece the way it normally wouldn't appeal to me it all in another one. So, we may just agree to disagree there.

As for the repetition of the quote, I think I agree with you. It was something I wanted to try and I don't think it works the way I wanted it to. I'll have to rewrite that and think of something else to plug in there (the poem is actually in two symmetrical halves, line-wise). I actually line-broke between "uhh" and "umm" because if I kept "umm" on the same line then that would've established a strong 3/4 rhythm in couplets. I felt that by line-breaking and delaying the rhyme that would displace that somewhat... maybe I could just reverse them and move "umm" back on the previous line, but before "uhh". As for the courier font, I write my stuff on Microsoft Word in Times New Roman, it was just made into courier when I tagged it with the Code button on the forum; so talk to the mods about that.

"passes through" is an interesting substitution. I think I wanted "in" because of the echo with "Cherubim," but I can't think of anything good enough to use where I could keep "in" so I may just have to go with something different, and "passes through" is better than anything else I've come up with yet, so thanks.

Ahhhh! The limiting nature of simile.

When I was in grade school still basking in my innocence, I once questioned why the poet wandered lonely as a cloud not as the sun. My teacher reprimanded me. That's how I found out how restricting simile is.

Why it's like a tenor not a soprano? The latter has a pair of lungs too. Can seraphs not stop before the door of god? Why can't it be not like "The Artist Is Present" of Marina Abramovic, if you are into silence or stillness as art?

Simile in a poem is very restricting if not opened or loosened like in this series:

......
Like John Cage's 4'33",
Like "The Artist Is Present" of Marina Abramovic,
Like Jose Garcia Villa's "The Emperor's Last Sonnet".

The series suggests inclusive continuity, and the absence of "and" is the absence of finality.

I don't reject simile at all. It is useful in a prosey sermon of an eloquent pastor, in a work of a novelist who can't find the exact word to describe what he wants to show or tell, in a piece by an essayist who wants to compare and contrast.

Yes, I use "like" and "as" in my poems but only in a situation where a thing I compare myself with is the only one that exhibits it as in my love poem written when I was a child:

"I sting like a bee
to protect my honey."

If beetles sting and make honey, I would have included "like a beetle" too.

To be honest MS it put me in mind of young people that start every sentence with 'it's like' and then multiple 'like' between words and end them with 'yeah and like'. I just pondered on that really and wondered where on earth we're all heading....

it's like... know what i'm sayin'?

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Originally Posted by miyako73

Ahhhh! The limiting nature of simile.

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Well, personally, I think simile and metaphor are amongst the most essential tools in a poet's repertoire. A great metaphor lasts forever (though it eventually becomes a dead metaphor over time).

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Originally Posted by miyako73

Why it's like a tenor not a soprano? The latter has a pair of lungs too. Can seraphs not stop before the door of god?

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Hehe, because both are allusions, actually. The whole bit with the tenor is playing off IA Richards' analysis of metaphors and similes in terms of tenor, vehicle, and ground. Likewise, the cherubim is a reference to a line in another poem that was made famous by one of the greatest pieces of music in the history of the world (I quoted the original German directly).

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Originally Posted by Delta40

To be honest MS it put me in mind of young people that start every sentence with 'it's like' and then multiple 'like' between words and end them with 'yeah and like'. .

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Originally Posted by cogs

it's like... know what i'm sayin'?

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Actually, you're both dead on with that thinking, Delta and cogs. This piece was completely inspired me hearing some teenagers going "it's like" every few seconds and never actually saying what the thing they were referring to was like. Hence, the tenor with no vehicle or ground. Every simile I make in the poem is related to the idea of using "it's like" without actually creating a metaphor (ie, "it's like" stands in for "uhh" and "umm," and basically "means" the same thing, which is nothing except to be a placeholder, a bookmark, for a complete thought).