Poetics by Praxis

Chimney Swifts

It was this same time: an early winter.
Columns of black birds undulated
across the paling sky at evening,
soundless. I’m grown. Where I live now, the cold
will bring snow. But there, then, it meant only
less light, moderate cold, damp sadness, robbed
of lucidity, framed in magnolia,
yella pine, and papery blades of grass.

I know now that you had spent that whole day
packing, pacing, retreating upstairs to
your round brass ashtray: like a whispering
bowl, a quarry of crumbling granite, and
filters turned the color of weak sun-tea.

I can see the jet-black, perennial
birds, not perched like others, but clinging on
tightly to red brick, any horizontal
surface, like a magic trick, or a child
in a new place, pleading to be picked up.
(more…)

Original post by Whitney

A portion of the long poem, The Throne of Labdacus.
by Gjertrud SchnackenbergWhat is: a leaking through of events
From beyond the bourn of right and wrong;

What is: a sequence of accidents
Without a cause,

Or from which the cause
Is long-lost, like a ruthless jewel

Missing from an archaic setting’s
Empty, bent, but still aggressive prongs.

Topics for Discussion:
- meta-formal qualities: “a ruthless jewel”(li.6) is the title of Section Eight of this long poem
- couplets, unrhymed, roughly iambic with heavy substitution: the first and last couplet have 9 syllables (one short of pentameter), all of the rest of the lines fall even shorter than this (down to dimeter, line 4) the poem is questioning “what is” incompleteness? Hence, the couplets themselves are incomplete
- This poem is also in dialogue with the last poem: the couplets prior to this section have exact masculine rhymes and convey how the story of Oedipus was circulated through Thebes “in a whispering poetry” (p.6,li.27), ending with the un-rhymed pair, “simply a making known-/ Making known what is.” (p.7,li.41-42).
- Therefore, Schnackenberg sets up this short “lyric” within the long poem, as a questioning and probing of exactly that which poetry is NOT: “a sequence of accidents/ Without a cause”
- The poem leaves the reader with an incredibly strong image of form itself, however, and Schnackenberg is consistent with providing these images throughout her work: the setting of the ring, devoid of a jewel, implies a frame narrative without the intention, the completion, the beauty that would make it a poem

Original post by Whitney

Storm

The glass is weathered yet untouched
by hands; eyes feel all the coldness.
Words become harsher as I clutch
wooden pane and try to relax.Times of happiness and love
seem never to unfold again,
I am left waiting for the dove
to make its mark on all humans.

As a child, I am so young
my parents’ fury and dismay
hits my soul constantly sung
as the leaves outside decay.

Sounds of anger and betrayal
echo along my neck, I grasp
the pane with strength, my all.
The last sound I heard was a gasp.Thundering yells shake my small mass
my mind stripped of innocence.
Outside the wind carries in its clutch
a leaf letting it fly aimless.

Original post by sfinn2id

Miss Coca-Cola 1943

For my grandmother, Isabel Blackwell Roberts,
1925-1977

“Passion moves inward,
striking and blighting the deepest cellular recesses.”
- Susan Sontag, Disease and It’s Metaphors

Her own figure stitched in by a woolknit,
striped bathing-suit, her fingers enclose
the waist of a coke bottle, dark and fit
as a tiny dressmakers’ dummy, poised
for another stretch of fabric. I hold
you now, framed: shorn dark curls, long legs, parted,
painted lips, sunlit collar bones: the mold
that cast my father, then separated.
I wonder if you blamed “the dishwater”
when he noticed your papery skin, hands
painted with bruises, and the matter
of collecting black curls from the wash-stand:
like thin threads, shredding, five years of holding
the poison’s name, the cancer unfolding.

Original post by Whitney

Storm-revised 

The glass is weathered yet untouched
by hands; eyes feel all the coldness.
Words become harsher as I clutch
all the pane and try to regress.Times of happiness and love
seem to never unfold again,
I am left waiting for the dove
to make its mark on all humans.As a child, I am so young,
my parents’ fury and dismay
hits my soul constantly sung
as the leaves outside decay. Sounds of anger and betrayal
echo along my neck, I grasp
the pane with strength, my all.
The last sound I heard was a gasp.The glass is weathered yet untouched
by hands, eyes try to grasp kindness
outside; the wind carries in its clutch
a leaf letting it fly aimless.

Original post by sfinn2id