Speaking with Shadows
January 7th 2009 16:58
Speaking with Shadows
Summer flowers fling darkness
behind them; or does the sun,
splashing yellow on the day,
shape the shaking shadows?
The apple's void-echo weeps
its woes that it can't provide
sweet life like its maker,
for nothing can feed nothing.
My faceless twin grips the ground,
cold with lonely horror,
but then I cheer him up:
for when the day fades to night
the light will flee from our eyes
and our shades will be one with us.
I wrote this after noticing how, on a clear, sunny day, all the shadows were very sharp and distinct. A tornado of thoughts followed this simple observation and culminated in the birth of this poem. I don't think I need to explain my thoughts, since I wrote them pretty clearly in the poem. And even if a reader doesn't get my thoughts, but forms his or her own ideas about the poem, then that's okay too. I want people to come away with different conclusions and ideas.
This is definitely a free verse poem. I always subconsciously make all the lines a similar syllabic length; it's like an involuntary muscle reaction, like breathing. I just like having the lines align somewhat...it just looks nice. In this case, most of the lines are somewhere from 6-8 syllabes (the last line being the only 8 syllable one). I wasn't too strict with my meter in this one, since it doesn't adhere to any specific rules...I generally try to have a nice flowing iambic going on (daDAdaDA), but sometimes I threw in dactyls (DAdada) and trochees (DAda). I try to stay away from spondees (DADA) because they interrupt the flow and call attention to themselves, and I think a poet should have a good reason for interrupting the flow.
Okay, so now I'll talk about punctuation, which I said I would talk about yesterday, but I completely forgot to. My verdict on poetic punctuation is that it should be used in two simultaneous ways.
Firstly, as a rest, like in music. For example, to me, a comma is like an eighth rest, or half a beat: short, basically a chance to get your mental breath, then continue. Semicolons and colons are like quarter rests, or a full-beat pause: twice as long as eighth (comma) rests, but still relatively short. Full stops (periods, exclamation/question marks) are like half rests, or a rest worth 2 whole beats. Twice as long as a quarter rest, 4x as long as an eighth rest, if there is a full half rest stop in a poem, there had better be a really good reason. Either put full stops at the end of a line/stanza, or at the end of one coherent thought, and only in a place where you want the preceding words and ideas to really sink in.
The second thing about punctuation with me, being a writer of prose (and a rather grammarian one), I believe punctuation should be used in poetry with the same grammatical rules as in prose. (Except commas...in poetry to me, commas are basically just a pause, like in music). Semicolons indicate that the following phrase or idea is closely related to the idea/phrase preceding the semicolon. It could be another thought along the same theme as the previous one, or a refutation of the previous thought. A colon indicates that the preceding idea/statement will be unpacked or taken one step further. And of course, a full stop marks the end of an idea, and that the following words will begin a new or different thought. Now I know a lot of people will disagree with me, saying that there are no rules in poetry, and that's okay: these are just aspects of my personal poetics.
I think that everyone should try to live poetry, really, not just poets (or people who write poetry). See, living life as poetry means that everything has meaning, and that everything is beautiful. Or as I like to say sometimes, aesthetically pleasing, since some things that I find attractive or meaningful might not necessarily be "pretty." For me, seeing everything through a lens of meaning brings a sense of fullness to my life. I am deeply contented, and I can often see the way things work together to make our world keep turning, in both the physical and spiritual/emotional sense. It makes me slow down and really "smell the flowers," to use an old cliche. In today's culture of hustle and bustle, I listen to more and more older people tell me that they wish they had enjoyed life more when they were young. A lot of them were so bent on being successful that they careened through their prime years being obsessive about their education and getting good grades and finding the right mate and all that jazz.
I say, just live. Everything will fall into place like it's supposed to. Go through school, have ambitions, yes; but don't let any one thing be the driving force in your life. Let life be the driving force in your life. Live poetry.
Summer flowers fling darkness
behind them; or does the sun,
splashing yellow on the day,
shape the shaking shadows?
The apple's void-echo weeps
its woes that it can't provide
sweet life like its maker,
for nothing can feed nothing.
My faceless twin grips the ground,
cold with lonely horror,
but then I cheer him up:
for when the day fades to night
the light will flee from our eyes
and our shades will be one with us.
I wrote this after noticing how, on a clear, sunny day, all the shadows were very sharp and distinct. A tornado of thoughts followed this simple observation and culminated in the birth of this poem. I don't think I need to explain my thoughts, since I wrote them pretty clearly in the poem. And even if a reader doesn't get my thoughts, but forms his or her own ideas about the poem, then that's okay too. I want people to come away with different conclusions and ideas.
This is definitely a free verse poem. I always subconsciously make all the lines a similar syllabic length; it's like an involuntary muscle reaction, like breathing. I just like having the lines align somewhat...it just looks nice. In this case, most of the lines are somewhere from 6-8 syllabes (the last line being the only 8 syllable one). I wasn't too strict with my meter in this one, since it doesn't adhere to any specific rules...I generally try to have a nice flowing iambic going on (daDAdaDA), but sometimes I threw in dactyls (DAdada) and trochees (DAda). I try to stay away from spondees (DADA) because they interrupt the flow and call attention to themselves, and I think a poet should have a good reason for interrupting the flow.
Okay, so now I'll talk about punctuation, which I said I would talk about yesterday, but I completely forgot to. My verdict on poetic punctuation is that it should be used in two simultaneous ways.
Firstly, as a rest, like in music. For example, to me, a comma is like an eighth rest, or half a beat: short, basically a chance to get your mental breath, then continue. Semicolons and colons are like quarter rests, or a full-beat pause: twice as long as eighth (comma) rests, but still relatively short. Full stops (periods, exclamation/question marks) are like half rests, or a rest worth 2 whole beats. Twice as long as a quarter rest, 4x as long as an eighth rest, if there is a full half rest stop in a poem, there had better be a really good reason. Either put full stops at the end of a line/stanza, or at the end of one coherent thought, and only in a place where you want the preceding words and ideas to really sink in.
The second thing about punctuation with me, being a writer of prose (and a rather grammarian one), I believe punctuation should be used in poetry with the same grammatical rules as in prose. (Except commas...in poetry to me, commas are basically just a pause, like in music). Semicolons indicate that the following phrase or idea is closely related to the idea/phrase preceding the semicolon. It could be another thought along the same theme as the previous one, or a refutation of the previous thought. A colon indicates that the preceding idea/statement will be unpacked or taken one step further. And of course, a full stop marks the end of an idea, and that the following words will begin a new or different thought. Now I know a lot of people will disagree with me, saying that there are no rules in poetry, and that's okay: these are just aspects of my personal poetics.
I think that everyone should try to live poetry, really, not just poets (or people who write poetry). See, living life as poetry means that everything has meaning, and that everything is beautiful. Or as I like to say sometimes, aesthetically pleasing, since some things that I find attractive or meaningful might not necessarily be "pretty." For me, seeing everything through a lens of meaning brings a sense of fullness to my life. I am deeply contented, and I can often see the way things work together to make our world keep turning, in both the physical and spiritual/emotional sense. It makes me slow down and really "smell the flowers," to use an old cliche. In today's culture of hustle and bustle, I listen to more and more older people tell me that they wish they had enjoyed life more when they were young. A lot of them were so bent on being successful that they careened through their prime years being obsessive about their education and getting good grades and finding the right mate and all that jazz.
I say, just live. Everything will fall into place like it's supposed to. Go through school, have ambitions, yes; but don't let any one thing be the driving force in your life. Let life be the driving force in your life. Live poetry.
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