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I took it you were the dame dear auntie (I always wonder that this should be 'aunty'). I usually find the sign off most difficult and your final stanza here is a fine example of a close that feels just right.
Each line is poetic in it's own right, far removed from prose, giving a lush feel straight through.
I have failed to decipher the rockets thus far.
Such a beautiful contrast in the first bold, one that gives firework-esque radiance to the flowers, also enhanced by the ugly, almost trashyard feel the abandoned tires offer. The repetition of sounds (I think consonance, the term) makes it much more pleasing to the ear.Quote:
Originally Posted by AuntShecky
I know the italicized expression was to glorify the unwavering strength of the petals but it didn't do much for me. It seems out of place, although that may be just me.
The pink, ivory, purple image sets up a nice parallel, and perhaps subtle contrast? between the red, white, and oh-so blue image later. Perhaps edit out oh-so and leave blue instead? Oh-so seemed banal.
I very much enjoyed this posting Auntie!
Edit: I just realized essentially everything in the quote was italicized, so specifically the "Oh, how those soft petals...wavering" was what I refered to when I meant "italicized" expression.
Your last, Auntie, is poetically very different, an inspired combination of nature, poetry and your unique sensibility. The (very unexpected and good!) finale "smells" of satire or at least is a wink of an eye. Congratulations, from me, with my lasting thought, Bar
I assume one is meant to hear the echo of "The Star-Spangled Banner" in the background of this and I loved to keep the play of the two in mind as I read through this but like some others I was puzzled as to the identity of the "dame" - the Statue of Liberty?
Thank you Hawkman, deryk, Jerryb., Iceman, Bar and Prince for your comments re: #318.
Here I go "'splaining" again:
Hawk, perhaps the species of these honeysuckle are indigenous to the New World; the ones that grow wild near my past and present abodes-- come in both white and pale pink varieties, but they're all brown and spent.I forgot to check out the shape of the honeysuckle's leaves.
Here's the deal on the fleurs mentioned in #318, if I culled the info from the Google Machine correctly--re: the diff. between wild phlox and Dame's Rocket. If I've got it correctly, both come in a variety of pastel colors.
The wild phlox blossoms have 5 petals and the Dame's Rockets have 4. The leaves of the phlox are smooth-edgedand opposite each other but the dames rockets' are saw-toothed and alternate.
Speaking of phlox, there are several cultivated varieties, especially the small plants that are often used over here as ground covers for borders or small hillocks. That species is called "creeping phlox" which, upon first hearing the term, made me think was some kind of skin disease.
"Dame's Rockets" are the ones which appear in #318. Around here they grow on a trail first forged by a utility company. The electric company does a lot of work on the trail with bulldozers and the like, but seldom picks up the trash that people throw there indiscriminately. The wild flowers, raspberries, and strawberries don't seem to mind, though.
One more thing about #318. Prince nailed the connection with and the Star-Spangled Banner. (Wish yours fooly was as knowledgeable about "O Canada"!)
I believe he name of the flower came from the Old World, and origin. the name alluded to Our Lady. But the rocket part of the name reminded me of "And the rocket's red glare. . ." Just as the wild flower grows in disheveled areas, the word "Dame" can refer to both a noble woman and a gun moll.
In my ditty, the dame was just a generic "woman," not exclusively the speaker of the verse, but a mujer Americano just the same. (Not the "Statue of Liberty." though.)
Thanks again to all of you for your encouragement.
The next ditty is located here:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...36#post1039436
I posted a reaction to your last, Auntie, and it mysteriously disappeared somewhere... have you found it or it just dissolved into virtuality? Strange...
In any case, I enjoyed its pace and craft and while I thought that, seeing the situation, you may never "catch a break", I also felt your humour would keep you going. Best as always, Bar
In the Dark
Nothing shocks us anymore,
not deviant flukes nor freakish rewards.
One ship can lightly breeze
into a festooned, cheering port
as another obscurely sinks–
that’s taken as a given.
If I should be so bold as ask
how to grasp the power to discern
what separates graceful sheep
from hapless goats, wits will chafe,
with each response as opaque as fog,
an impenetrable head-shake or shrug,
the clear truth, warned the New England sage,
as hard to catch as light. Still
I'd really like to know
why seeds, planted with promise, fail
to germinate, or at best do not raise
their stunted status, shunned by the sun.
Don't for a second think
the significance of losing
the garden I loved
has been lost on me. Yet–
I really want to know
why this vague desire
for rarefied fruit remains.
It twirls around the mind’s staff
like ivy; or nagging music:
the persistent query
of a plaintive horn
while wry woodwinds clang
in futile cacophony. It bangs
on the door to the existing room,
where the question’s all but drowned
out by the trumpeting blast
of a Ganesha who dares
the world to ignore his blatant stench.
Meanwhile the power outage looms;
we might as well unplug, disconnect
from even attainable desires –
let alone some yacht, or flower-
flagged country digs.
But all at sea
in a motor-less craft,
how about a hint, a clue
to steer through this chilling
vacuum late at night, so
to spot the faintest spark,
neither blinking nor revolving
before it all disappears
off the coast of tomorrow:
is that too much to ask?
I'm dying to know.
An eloquently lyrical lament, Auntie. We look back to review the hopes and dreams of our youth in the knowledge of the present and imagine the future with trepidation. Ultimnately we endure and stay the course with faith or fatalism. I don't think there are any easy answers, only fellow travellers and friends we meet along the way. Great poem.
Live and be well - H
My extended metaphors wilt unwatered beside a lengthy Shecky x
Hit.Quote:
Originally Posted by AuntyShecky
In a lot of ways, this is what this reader fears. Maybe his poetry/prose doesn't get better. Maybe making it through college isn't enough. Maybe it all ends sadly spoiled or maybe it never was the promise we'd thought it'd be.
Thanks for being terrifying.
J
The first stanza does a beautiful job of setting up a contrast, whether intended or unintended, of the spectacular versus the unnoticed, as developed in stanza four. Shipwrecks receive much more attention, yet a plant's failure to "germinate" is much more complex. I loved the contrast.Quote:
Originally Posted by AuntShecky
The poem as a lament (not that it would be anything else to this reader) is excellent. I resonated with this poem, as while the subject of our laments may be different, the sentiment is captured wonderfully.
Thank you for sharing.
Thank you, IceM, JerryB for your nice comments, and Hawkman and Jack of Hearts, I don't know how you both did it, but your responses seem to echo quite closely what I was thinking, but not explicitly stating, in #328. I wrote it before the proverbial you-know-what hit the fan couple weeks ago, but the premonitions were uncanny.
In case anyone is interested, the "New England sage" is, of course, Emerson, and the specific piece of music reference in the fifth stanza is here.
Sorry that I overlooked this when it was first posted. It was written with your heart's blood, wasn't it? One feels that all the way through. Would that writing it had brought some comfort to you.
Oh there is a new offering in this thread. I am evidently late to read it. And it's late at night, too. So I'll keep it for my tomorrow's treat and these lines are only to say I'll return. If in this hard time you manage to write, I bow low before you, dear Auntie.
A very lively thread in the Poetry Games and Contests
forum reminded me of a little ditty from Ought Eight, inspired by a famous American painting, reproduced posters of which hung in many a dorm room a number of decades ago.
In any event, here she is, a retitled retread which we like to call
Ekphrasis
I serve consolation by the cup,
and if both towering urns run dry,
there are plenty more grounds
waitin’ in the hopper.
Easy there, Skip--
she’s taken,
I told myself.
The twin triangles
of my crazy lid
like a dunce cap worn all wrong
can’t stand up
to the mystery of the fedora.
The dame with her hair
smoldering like a torch,
her dummy-upped guy,
and the lonely eagle
near the end
of the counter
wonder what they'll have.
With our backs turned
from the empty street
we've already decided
to ignore the empty stools.
You give a very special life to the painting! Your allusion, through the conversation of outside observers, to the painting's young woman's beauty is great and, altogether, I was able to actually see the scene before I went to look it up on the web. For, I must confess, I didn't know Jo Hopper (well, generally, I know very little, I'm afraid). Thank you for sharing your knowledge and letting me discover the painter and his art.
Your wonderfully painted poem reminds me of the fine film "Fat City" based on Leonard Gardner's novel. The final frame is rivetting when Stacey Keach whirls around on a bar-stool and stares blank-eyed at the rest of the customers or at us or at his future - a truly Hooperesque moment.
Your « overheard » and poetically related outside whispers inspire new life to this famous painting! Your originality never tires, Dear Auntie.
Your excellent poem brought to my mind another example of ekphrasis, by an Israeli painter, Marcel Chetrit who created a series of impressive paintings inspired by B. Britten’s War Requiem, some of which are available on You Tubes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZqEo7JA38U and another fragment right after this.
A stimulating subject, ekphrasis, and I think you'd like to read about musical ekphrasis, please look at
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~siglind/ekphr.htm
Hope you're doing fine, Auntie, warm thoughts, Bar
Excellent! You captured the mood of the pic and left me in doubt I'm the dude watching that couple....
Lovely writing Aunty
I like your little allusion to the painter's name, Aunty, and overall, a lovely, mysterious piece, as the painting, itself.
(First new one in over half a year.)
Volt
The world’s wires have split; they’re all disarranged.
The cold has cracked the lines, too stiff to mend,
with darkness casting shades where no shades blend.
The sun, so dim and limited in range,
has lost its erstwhile warmth to powers strange
enough to lure the day toward early end.
The light lies low and lies to souls of men
that puny hopes are powerless to change.
A good conductor turns, accepts the charge
to zap us with a bolt– a sudden surge
of energy, electrified, on fire.
This tiny cosmic corner then grows large
as solstice, yule, and year connect and merge
to spark the clarity of bright desire.
God, this is beautiful! One can feel the joy you must have felt in composing it. And the discipline of your structure is submerged beneath the seemingly effortless flow of thought.
Your first in half a year, and another jewel in your lyrical Crown, Auntie!
It reminds me that as of tomorrow sunlight will be more generous every day, just like the Hanuka candles we light for eight days (as of today): one more each evening.
But it's also this extraordinary moment of gathering energies that Christmas and New Year bring with them...
You achieved a wonderful Sonnet here, on the Italian scheme, one that can successfully compete with a Milton's or Millay..!
Amongst your never ending errands, your art and sunny nature did theirs and brought into being the fulfilement of your "bright desire" and a contagious optymism for us the readers.
Visit here more often, Dear Auntie, and I wish you a beautiful, enlightened Year 2012!!!
Bar
Your first in half a year, and another jewel in your lyrical Crown, Auntie!
It reminds me that as of tomorrow sunlight will be more generous every day, just like the Hanuka candles we light for eight days: one more each evening.
But it's also this extraordinary moment of gathering energies that Christmas and New Year bring with them...
You achieved a wonderful Sonnet here, on the Italian scheme, one that can successfully compete with a Milton's or a Millay's..!
Amongst your never ending errands, your art and sunny nature did theirs and brought into being the fulfilement of your "bright desire" and a contagious optimism for us the readers.
Visit here more often, Dear Auntie, and I wish you a beautiful, enlightened Year 2012!!!
Bar
Hi Auntie. With regard to Ekphrasis, I'm fairly sure I commented before, but if I didn't I certainly should have. I love this poem as much as I love the picture. It flows so well and it's brushstrokes are as mticulous as the artists.
I like your latest offering too. It has such good pace and rhythm and is an appropriate offering for the end of the year. one thing I might suggest though that you replace that (S1 L8) with whose. As it is the hopes seem to be free floating and I feel that if they belonged to the afore mentioned men it would make marginally more sense.
A lovely sonnet though, with an echo of Grey's Ellergy in luring the day "toward an early end."
Thoroughly enjoyed. Thank you
Live and be well - H
Thank you, Prince, Bar, and Hawkman for your kind responses to this thing.
It's a mere extended metaphor, "violently yoking" two "disparate" concepts together, the contemporary modern energy grid with ancient rituals revolving around the Winter Soltice. Chose the Italianate form in an attempt to get the volta, along with a conscious effort to use hard consonants found in the languages of Northern Europe. Those Latin roots have a way of sneaking in, though, as well as one from the Greek--kosmos.
Again, I'm grateful for the three of you for sharing your critical expertise and please accept my warmest wishes of the season.
Auntie
Deleting History
Amid stony suspicion
and core-deep fear
neo-Luddites fail to grasp
the brazenness of cyber magic
flouting the laws of physics.
How delightfully unnatural
for somebody to occupy two spaces
at once: mind and senses in Manchester
while cozily posed–-still here!--
on a basement chair in Sheboygan.
Any tracks, like elongated footprints
in the snow, will follow the hot demand
to disappear– pfft! - as if they’d never
planted themselves anywhere before.
Likewise that mysterious term “Restore”
can cast a spell poised to hearken
to an earlier date. Time
Travel sans a wormhole or a rocket,
but “retro” just the same.
Oh, if only to re-set this little life!
If only to blank up the platform
for a miraculous restart,
escaping the bio fallacies,
every eggy-faced bêtise,
the ego slammed by a thousand
invitations lost in the mail
and opportunities which failed to load,
the cache of gold that shunned this fool
it took for Kryptonite or virus-borne Plague.
What if this oddly alchemic mix
of silicon, algorithms, and wire
could squelch Joyce’s nightmare,
to wake up from the bad dream
copying files every blessed day?
Who wouldn’t want to witness
such a liberating End,
solidly free of cataclysm
as it opens up a future
with hopelessness scrubbed clean?
With just one click,
watch the green segments
race across the narrow box
going, going --
An original New Year poem Auntie :D Ah, that miracle of absolution, Cntrl> Alt, Delete! thus may one pass through the beaded gates of silicone heaven shriven and pure , unencumbered by regret or the burden of our sins - lol Trouble is, one throws out the baby with the bathwater. The more advanced the computer, or the older one gets, there just so much more to back up!
Live and be well - H
I have read and re-read your poem Auntie and some of it still remains a bit cryptic to me (perhaps only to me.. - like:
"escaping the bio fallacies,
every eggy-faced bêtise,"
or S3???)
though I did get the sigh towards the end, as you would expect it, I believe.
This stanza spoke to me beautifully:
What if this oddly alchemic mix
of silicon, algorithms, and wire
could squelch Joyce’s nightmare,
to wake up from the bad dream
copying files every blessed day?
It is always challenging and rewarding to read you Auntie, it forces one to ponder your personal questioning which reflects something of the universal and which we can't, as you masterly do, put it into words.
Thank you a lot and - a happy new year to your and around you!
Bar
I enjoy a good cryptic crossword Auntie ( BTW I have never asked why Auntie and not Aunty?) (Or maybe thats an angloamerican thing, with your fawcetts and your drapes etc).Anyway, I digress, you are an artiste Ms Shecky (could i ask your age and your marital status?) (ungentlemanly I know, but you have read my stuff) I enjoy reading you, for I know from my time here that I am in the company of a craftswoman and like others I greatly enjoy your analysis when you choose to comment. You have also taken a laid back approach when I have choosen to take the piss and for these reasons I have grown to appreciate your prescence here. Shall we get a room? lol. Hold on, back to the poem, I got the delete to trash type references, but overall sooooo cryptic I could be blowing sand from egyptian scribblings. There is nothing wrong in that, I for one enjoy reading something I know I will never decipher as when you write it I know it has a meaning I am just not getting. More power to your elbow Auntie and please, pretty please answer my questions.
best wishes
jerryB
Thinking & Talking
Think about a woodland pool
beneath leaves gone or green or bronzed.
Talk about how sun, air, and water
all blend to nurture life’s beginnings.
Think of nourishing bits and sweets
captured hard. Then talk about
what’s left to savor
beyond chewy clouds of bread.
Hearthstone reliefs and lights;
a touch of warm, familiar flesh
both firm and soft, both to and from
our mirrored selves, full-grown or small:
think and talk about all these.
Think about corporeal cuts
and a stiffness in the soul.
Talk about buoyant breath
and liberated pain.
Think & talk, talk & think,
think, think & talk some more.
Though some may declaim
against the limits of thought,
and damn endless speech,
its cheapness and its glare,
preferring baseless feelings
and free-floating affects
without cause or cure–
while prizing the mindless noise
of Action! above all--
keep thinking, keep talking.
For each cottage comfort
and showy manse, every ill
that ever met repair, and all
machinery and lore running
round the earth,
think & talk & talk & think
think & think & think about how
anything & everything begins:
thinking & talking,
talking & thinking.
Hi Auntie.
There's a lot to like in here, particularly Stanzas 3,4, 6 and 9. S 1 has a few punctuation problems: Line 2 needs a comma after 'leaves', as it reads awkardly as is, and line 3 doesn't need a comma after 'and'.
I find the refrain:
"Think & talk, talk & think,
think, think & talk some more."
over stated in the think department. I feel sure that by cutting the first think in the second line of this it would improve the flow somewhat. Same goes for penultimate verse.
As for the poem itself, the overall reflective tone has a delightful dreaminess, but also an edge. This contrast works well, I feel. As I said, lots to like.
Live and be well - H
Aunty! dear Aunty! Except for the intelligence and feeling that runs through this, I would hardly recognize that it was by you! There's something somewhat more free about it, more uncaring about the strictures of rhyme or rhythm...
It's wonderful, so thoughtful, so... confiding.
I loved S2 Aunty and after reading some of ramblings in a certain sophisticated thread, I was particularly taken by this poem. I love the urging nature of this piece and snatches of thought.
Thank you Prince, Hawk, and dear Delta for weighing in on this thing.
As a way of 'splainin': I see how an appositive situation might occur in l.2; however, I deliberately left out the comma, maybe to keep open a possible ambiguous shading for "leaves," which then fades with the little series that follows, a participle accompanied by two adjectives already separated by an "or"; hence, no comma needed.
As to the repetition of "think"-- fully intended to have more weight, in a quantitative way, to establish its supremacy over "talk." Yes, both form a partnership, but not 50/50, more like 40/60 or 25/75. Though the product may appear to some as desultory, I did try to be diligent about the word choice, and to my fractured mind, at least, can justify the presence of every single one. For instance, there was a reason for "corporeal" rather than "corporal" that has nothing to do with the extra syllable. Same with "machinery" and "lore" (rather than learning or wisdom or law, the latter pronounced similarly to "lore" in this here neck o' th' woods.
Thanks again, though, for the constructive, thoughtful criticism which I do appreciate greatly.
I have just savoured it all, dear Auntie, I read it as an ardent/urgent appeal for communication between us humans... I'm also reminded of how Word was at the beginning and how, once uttered, it became World!
Love to read you always, dear Auntie!!! Thank you for your inspiring words!
Good thoughts from Bar
Hello Auntie Fawcett Majors. I read this in two opposing ways both of which are probably wrong. I read it first as a percieved uselessness of thinking and thinking and talking doomed by inevitability (that may well just be me .. lol) and secondly as somebody giving advice (maybe a kindly aunty) to think more and to take time to do so.
Had me thinking so thought I would talk to you about it :D
cheers
JerryB
Thank you, Bar and Jerry. Bar you came very close to one of the intended aims of this thing. Jerry your second interpret. aligns with that of yours fooly.
PS -- "Fawcett Majors" ? "Tis not the double-surname of the long-maned actress? I was flattered until I remembered that a couple of years she went to the other realm, the Great
Vault of Syndicated Action TV Shows in the Sky.
‘Bye Lines
It seems I'll never smoke enough
to spark success. I need a puff
of what it takes to write this stuff:
epics with a Nibelung ring,
bacchant bachelors on a fling,
well-tooned penguins who dance and sing;
chicks lit up by some guy’s bright eye,
the worldly wiles of a novel spy,
a twisty whodunit? (Not I.)
Sharp how-tos for investment tools,
show biz tell-alls, cable news fools,
vampires, zombies,* teen wizards, ghouls:
none quite fits my creative quirk.
Guess I'm just the wrong type of jerk,
not cut out for this line of work.
* Except for "Zombies on Ice"