Poetics by Praxis

This one too.

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 17:13:04 +0000

Thoughts on a break

There is just one thing I wish to pursue:
but you said that I’ve got to go.
I can’t just forget about you

when I was so sure that I knew
how much I wanted to be your beau:
There is just one thing I wish to pursue.

We have so many things to do!
I’ve made too many plans, so
I can’t just forget about you.

I can’t see it from your point of view
but I’ll try to honor your request, though
there is just one thing I wish to pursue.

Unmindful acts that I wish I could undo,
but I think we can work it out, so no
I can’t just forget about you.

Just know that my heart has always been true
and I will do all that I can to show
there is just one thing I wish to pursue,
I can’t just forget about you.

Original post by Klyphe H.

Fibonacci: forms in nature. forms in poetry?

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 07:34:53 +0000

In my “free time,” I do stuff like listen to podcasts from BBC radio (England changes you)…and I came across this bit on The Fibonacci Sequence, on the programme “In Our Time.” What is interesting to me about this chat, specifically, is that it began to intersect some of my ideas about creating an “invented form” for Seminar: Poetics by Praxis, and my thoughts about form, more generally, and naturally embedded roots for poetic form, specifically. Winter trees, in particular, make me think of strict forms existing in nature, which may be borrowed from, or mused upon for creating formal poetry…Levertov has this to say in her essay, “Some Notes on Organic Form:

For me, back of the idea of organic form is the concept that is a form in all things (and in our experience) which the poet discover and reveal. There are no doubt temperamental differences between poets who use prescribed forms and those who look for new ones—people who need a tight schedule to get anything done, and people who have to have a free hand—but the difference in their conception of “content” or “reality” is functionally more important. On the one hand is the idea that content, reality, experience, is essentially fluid and must be given form; on the other, this sense of seeking out inherent, though not immediately apparent, form. Gerard Manley Hopkins invented the word inscape to denote intrinsic form, the pattern of essential characteristics both in single objects and (what is more interesting) in objects in a state of relation to each other; and the word instress to denote the experiencing of the perception of inscape, the apperception of inscape. In thinking of the process of poetry as I know it, I extend the use of these words, which he seems to have used mainly in reference to sensory phenomena, to include intellectual and emotional experience as well; I would speak of the inscape of an experience (which might be composed of any and all of these elements, including the sensory) or of the inscape of a sequence or constellation of experiences. (more…)
Original post by Whitney

revised sonnet Mon, 03 Dec 2007 21:47:40 +0000 Miss Coca-Cola 1943 For my grandmother, Isabel Blackwell Roberts (b.1925-1977) “Passion moves inward, striking and blighting the deepest cellular recesses.” - Susan Sontag, Disease and It’s Metaphors Your young figure cinched in by a woolknit, striped bathing-suit, your fingers enclose the waist of a coke bottle, dark and fit as a tiny dressmakers’ dummy, poised for another colored fabric pin. I hold you now, in frame: wet-bark dark curls, long-legged, painted lips, sun-sketched collar bones: the mold that cast my father: born squalling, your third. I wonder if you blamed “the dishwater” when he noticed your papery skin, hands painted in bruises. Later, the matter of collecting black curls from the wash-stand: dyed flax-threads, shredding, five years of keeping poison a secret: the cancer’s unfolding. Original post by Whitney Heroic Couplet revision Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:33:07 +0000 Naucrate at the Death-scene of Icarus ”In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.” (Matthew 2:18) Hand spun, now crumpled, wings hang like gentle sails, harnessed with leather to his genteel back. Hair, deep as night, lies in folds, laced through with weeds, on the sky-runner’s quiet brow. Red shadows, like winter trees, stretch across in congealing, rusted rivers. Limbs, traced in blood, pooling red seas that gather beside him. I inherit Gaea’s¹ wrath as mother to him, still and quieted. Time pardons none, not even the dead, a berry stain of bruise spreading, smearing youth’s pinked, glowing cheek. None desiring him now. None knowing the strength of his arms to serve his own sublime, fool-hearty aims. The women don’t come wreaths, rose-wound. Erota², playing her zither, cannot be found. Where are the sandy-footed Mourners with sable hair? Beauties promised by such strength? Not here. Not here to comb his soft flesh for feathers, nor to wipe salt dust from his skin. Not here. I alone, his chattel mother, beside his cobbled bed, kneeling, tears mixed in blood. For cover, I raise his mound of lichened rocks, but cannot move him. The boy’s body speaks in arched and lengthened lines toward the sky. Closed eyes, slackened fingers seeking beauty even in death. He reaches for the sun, the rapture of Muse-beauty killed my son. ¹ in Greek religion and mythology, the earth, daughter of Chaos, both mother and wife of Uranus (the sky) and Pontus (the sea). She helped bring about Uranus' overthrow by the Titans, because he had imprisoned her sons. ² Muse of lyric poetry. Original post by Whitney Revised Free Verse Poem: “Chimney Swifts” Tue, 27 Nov 2007 05:16:19 +0000 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 Chosen Poem IV (finally posted) Tue, 27 Nov 2007 00:18:45 +0000 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 quatrain revised #2 Mon, 26 Nov 2007 20:57:56 +0000 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 Photograph Sonnet Tue, 13 Nov 2007 06:13:17 +0000 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 Quatrain- revised Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:53:40 +0000 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 2nd chosen poem- Frost Mon, 29 Oct 2007 02:58:40 +0000 The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION:- 4 stanzas with 5 lines- All lines are capitalized, no variation in length or indention- ABAAB- Iambic, 4 meters, some anapests - Strict form, narrative or lyrical poem- able to relate to the reader, reader becomes the narrator - Use of imagery and description to place the reader- Rhyme scheme plays with idea of straight roads/paths- Poem is about choice of paths in life and decisions - Use of capitalization in the first word - Very steady sound and use of words - Lot of punctuation at the end of lines very little enjambment Original post by sfinn2id