Nah, but it would be even more shameful if it were the other way around.Originally Posted by qimissung
Aha! so you are pate passing yourself off as chopped liver! For shame, Aunty!
Nah, but it would be even more shameful if it were the other way around.Aha! so you are pate passing yourself off as chopped liver! For shame, Aunty!
The following, which attempts to channel the spirit of "April Inventory" by W.D. Snodgrass and "The Reckoning" by Richard Wilbur -- with maybe a passing nod to the great Frank Loesser, as an entry in a recent LitNet poetry contest, is re-posted here for comments:
Hindsight
This strange myopia of mine
weakens my view in prisms of ways.
It strains my eyes when hours shine,
with its focus on the darkest days.
I can't see my way clear enough to shake
the sight of every dumb mistake.
I see more flaws than I can count.
The list gets longer. Wrongs arrange
themselves into a steep amount.
I'm blind to faults that I could change.
And I have felt at my heart’s core
a thousand needles, maybe more.
Past peers misread Marcuse off the shelves.
Aloof, I looked at them askance.
Now wealth has claimed their former selves,
while failure long since has seized my stance.
No doubt those folks have pity to share.
(Of that, this self has plenty to spare.)
The times I squandered, wasted, spent
chasing silly dreams or foolish men!
No dough, a deadbeat with the rent:
the same old me I've always been.
I could patch my wounds with duct tape and string,
or open my eyes and look at spring.
The blackbird with his rosy stripe,
the waking frogs down in the mud,
the forsythia so eagerly ripe
to welcome its early golden bud
all show that stale old winds have blown.
I'll force an April of my own,
and with each green spear that pokes its head
up through the ground that’s soft at last,
I'll soundly spank and send to bed
all the bad winters of my past.
For spring gives me another chance
to live -– without a backward glance.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last edited by AuntShecky; 03-24-2010 at 02:28 PM.
It's a splendid, splendid poem! (The Snodgrass, by the way is "April Inventory") in which, throughout, your humorous self-depreciation is leavened with wisdom, nowhere more elegantly than in that final
Bravo! Bravo! Oh, Bra[obscenity]vo!!!
Last edited by PrinceMyshkin; 03-23-2010 at 01:38 PM.
Hi Auntie,
This is really nice and I did enjoy it. The only flaw is that full stop in S2 L2. I thnk that if you fiddled a bit, lines 2 and 3 here could be tidied up to maintain the flow.
H
Thank you, Prince and Hawkman.
Actually, it dawned on me that I had confused "April Morning" (Howard Fast) with "April Inventory" last night when I was babysitting my grandson and didn't have access to a PC.
The worst of it is that I'd tried consciously to incorporate an inventory in my verse, which, by the bye, is part of a larger compilation called "Heart's Needle." Snodgrass used that title from an Irish proverb: "A daughter is like a needle in the heart."
It also makes me think, somehow, of acupuncture!
Last edited by AuntShecky; 03-24-2010 at 02:35 PM.
Certainly you could consider that a flaw. But I thought perhaps the full stop (or period) would be okay, since the line is an enjambment into line 3. I think both lines scan okay, both are iambic tetrameter, with the stresses in the right locations. I know there are still a couple of lines in the thing that have an extra foot.
It is a beautiful poem, Auntie.
"Remember, we are all in this alone." - Lilly Tomlin
As best I recall, the statement is "An only daughter is like a needle in the heart." To those who might care to look for the collection the line is the conclusion to an old Irish parable.
A Poem With a Preface
One of the unwritten rules of modern poetry is that form and content are so intertwined that a poem, like a joke, dissolves under analysis, hence the dictum from Cleanth Brooks about the "heresy of paraphrase." Because everything the reader needs to know is already in the poem – supposedly – it needs no prefatory explanation. That a poem almost always comes unaccompanied sometimes works to the detriment of its full comprehension and/or appreciation. As a case in point, not many know the story behind the red wheelbarrow in the well-known short verse by William Carlos Williams, but in step with the modern tradition, all that appears on the page is the tiny block of its familiar lines. The main title of this thread is “Anti-poetry,” a self-issued license to break the conventions. That’s why the posting today comes with the following long introduction.
Every year, Good Friday brings to me the realization that the remembrance of history’s most famous tragic death is fraught with melancholy. The happier antithesis of this is eternal gratitude for such a gift of incomparable Love (cf. John 15:13.) Closing out the trinity of these emotions is the undeniable -- yet ultimately impossible – responsibility to make one’s own individual soul worthy of redemption, or at least to live a meaningful life. Forgive me for the belief that the need for meaning is true for every human being in this world, and has absolutely nothing to do with one’s chosen religion or lack of it.
Along with this, I somehow recall that Thomas Merton once wrote that reading the newspaper is a penance. Pick any “current” event describing the suffering of one or more of our fellow human beings. Often one’s reaction plunges into judgmental mode, a tried and tired-true ranting against “the cruelty of nature” or in most cases, the cliché about “man’s inhumanity to man.” But occasionally, something about a specific news item or two will strike a different nerve, kicking in a pang of shared guilt. This comes despite our inability to prevent the tragedy from occurring or even to offer succor as way of assuaging the inevitable sorrow, both the sorrow experienced by the loved ones of the victims and, of course, our own. And in spite of that nearly-universal powerlessness, we ask ourselves, how can we allow such a thing to happen? Why can't we do better?
Two recent news items struck me with their startling similarity, though the women which each report concerned couldn't be more different. About a month ago I saw an AP article that took only an inch of space in one of the back pages of the local newspaper. The item said that a the body of a 60-year-old woman had been found in her rural house in a tiny town in western New York State. Although sad, that news in itself is not especially remarkable, until the article explained that the woman had been dead for over a year. The report said the deceased did indeed have relatives living close-by, and that she hadn't picked up her mail in over a year, about the same time her utilities had been shut off. It was only by happenstance that a couple who were inquiring whether the property was sale that the woman’s body was found. The second story, which received considerable media play during this Holy Week, occurred in Massachusetts, where a teenaged girl whose family had recently emigrated from Ireland, did not receive anything resembling a warm welcome from her new classmates in her adopted country. Instead she underwent what can only be described as mental torture, as her male and female peers harassed her both to her face and through on-line social network sites. School officials were allegedly aware of the bullying but did not try to stop it, to the point at which the girl took her own life at the age of 15.
The long prose passage above is the background for this piece of verse, called
Perpetual Care
Their backgrounds completely veered
a couple hundred miles, and a distance of years--
four and half decades, to be exact.
They had little in common, beyond the one thing
all of us hold in common.
They didn't even know
each other, but they were twins,
spiritual siblings, sisters of the soul.
Neither could have been aware
the chimera called up by attention,
the lack of it or the excess
of the wrong kind.
Both must have known, as all
of us know, deep down
that everything, every day,
every youthful hope
has its end, and that the end
comes early or later, but for all
always too soon.
Once, there may have been a time
when each might‘ve spun her respective
dream, and each, perhaps cuddling
upon her loving mother’s lap,
may have marveled at a world
new to her: the predictable
phases of a changing moon,
a bird’s greeting to the unspoiled
morning, the invariable cheer
behind an immaculate, blue sky.
I felt a cold shiver reading this, such neglect.
A carefully chosen subject with a poignant message from you, AuntShecky. Thankyou.
"In pure mathematics infinity has no measureable fractions and recording its duration is pointless. We are present so that the future can become the past. The Universe is inside something really big, but we don't have to worry about that."
Yours Truly.
Hi Auntie, I read your preface to the poem and was equally moved by the poem and the reason for it. It is a very good poem but I do have an observation.
I wonder if the second and last stanzas would not be better exchanged. the sentiment at the end of S2 reads like a conclusion, whereas the the end of S3 leaves me expecting more... In view of your stance on anti poetry, was this intentional?
Happy Easter, and may Ēostre’s hares bring you eggs of hues to gladden your heart.
H
Last edited by Hawkman; 04-03-2010 at 07:07 AM.
I want to say that I disagree with Hawkman's suggestion re altering the order of the 2nd & 3rd stanzas. The openness, the eternal possibility (and mystery?) of that "immaculate blue sky" makes for a splendid ending in my view to this immensely compassionate poem.
Maybe it's because I have read and adored virtually all of Flannery O'Connor's stories and novels, that I am sensitized to the sky as symbol and as possibility. There is the "pathetic fallacy" of course, but in virtually every one of O'Connor's narratives, the sky is sketched in in a few vivid strokes, and it is unquestionably the same naturalistic sky we all see - but it is, always, something much, much more.
Bravo!
Last edited by PrinceMyshkin; 04-03-2010 at 04:07 PM.
Aunt Shecky- To this poem I must say I was deeply moved. You have expressed the brutality of humanity quite well. I usually try to stay "secular" on the forums, but given the subject matter of your poem, I feel I can express how important it is to me to remember the spirit of the Easter season.
Thank you Dr. Cambridge, jersea, Prince, and Hawkman for your replies. And yes, the order of the three stanzas was absolutely intentional.
A/Sh,
I've just posted a long comment on your well penned, rather tragic poem. But I must have made a wrong mvt and now all is gone. So again -
I was telling you that I found the final lines so perfect!
the predictable
phases of a changing moon,
a bird’s greeting to the unspoiled
morning, the invariable cheer
behind an immaculate, blue sky.
I was also suggesting that you consider (but it's only my humble opinion, as we say, to take or to toss) compressing a little the following lines which would thus gain in poignancy:
Both must have known, as all
of us know, deep down
that everything, every day,
every youthful hope
has its end, and that the end
comes early or later, but for all
always too soon.
perhaps sth like:
Both must have known
that every day, something
ends and that the end
comes, early or later,
always too soon.
I read and re-read your poem, loved it very very much.
Warm regards - Bar
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