Archive for the ‘poetry’ category

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Beneath It All

October 5, 2009

After writing post yesterday about Roman Polanski and Beef Inspections, thought about some poems that might connect.  Here’s one:

Beneath it all

Beneath the red over blue sky,
she walked a beam, its wood dark
as charcoal; just below it, gravel.  Still,
she held arms out
to her sides
as if balancing on a narrow ledge, in
a harsh wind,
pretending.  Pretending too
that she was still a little girl, while
also pretending to be older.
To be younger and older both
felt cute, like wearing,
with conscious insouciance,
a too-short skirt over legs
that had learned allure.
Sure of the man watching, she
pretended to slip, then
caught herself, smiling in mock
relief, the feel of control surging through her
like growth itself.
She had much to learn and
would have a hard time at it.

(All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

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Father Sonnet

October 1, 2009

The last few days I’ve written about parenting–engaging young kids and encouraging “make-believe”–and sonnets.  So today, I thought I’d combine all subjects.  (I don’t mean the “make-believe” comment to refer to the religious aspects of the poem, but the bedtime story.)   The sonnet is Shakespearean in rhyme scheme (and attempted meter.)

My Father

My father knelt beside my bed; his round head
reflecting the bedside lamp with the look
of lighting within.  “And the genie,” he said,
“came out of a big blue jar.”  Not from a book
were the stories he told me at night.
Always of genies who were big-blue-jarred
and did fairly little, only the slight
magic of minor wishes, often ill-starred.
Though the stories were just a warm up to
the bedtime prayer.  “Our Father,” that would start,
then straight out head for “hallowed”, “trespass” too,
unknown words, to me a spell he knew by heart,
invoking, croakingly, a wished-for will
that the blue genied jar could never fulfill.

(All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

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Pantoum – Hard hard hard: “Overheard on the Esplanade”

September 27, 2009

I’m tackling a different poetic form today – the pantoum.

Pantoums are sometimes compared to villanelles because they too involve repeating lines.  But pantoums are, to my mind, much harder to write.

As explained previously (see e.g. post comparing villanelles to banana pudding), writing a villanelle is largely a matter of assembly.   It takes preparation time, but once you get two reasonably resonant, flexible, lines (the ones that will be repeated), you can just kind of layer them.   (Like your pudding, your wafers, your bananas, your whipped cream.)

Writing a pantoum is more like setting up a house of cards–a house in which the same cards are used to build both the lower and higher levels.  (My attempts sometimes remind me of a clown stacking boxes to reach some high place; because of a shortage, the clown keeps putting the bottom boxes on top, until, slowly, she realizes she’s just not getting anywhere, at least anywhere transcendent.)

Pantoums also make me think of some Groucho Marx or Charlie Chaplin schtick in which the same coin or flower is recirculated (tied to his pocket etc.)   My brain here keeps picturing Roberto Benigni as waiter in Life is Beautiful, re-serving a light fish dish (abandoned by another customer) to the Nazi commandant with an ulcer by emphasizing the “fritti fritti fritti” quality of the mushroom omelette previously ordered by the commandant.   (Comparing a pantoum to recycled fish is probably not fair.)

The problem and also the magic of a pantoum is that all the lines are repeated.  The form is made up of quatrains.  Traditionally, it involves a rhyme sequence, though some writers dispense with rhyme.   Frankly, it is a type of poem in which “slant rhyme” or near rhyme works well to avoid a sing-songy quality.

It sounds more complicated than it is.   I’ve included a line-by-line breakdown, after my sample, below.

A note:  in reading, pay close attention to punctuation, which trumps line breaks.  (Meaning that pauses are only to be taken at commas, periods, dashes, etc. and not at line breaks unless punctuated.)  Sorry to sound churlish, but punctuation is particularly important in pantoums as it is one of the few tools for sculpting the repetitions.

(Sorry also for grim subject matter of poem.)

Heard on the Esplanade, a Pantoum

The woman cries
that she doesn’t believe it.
“Don’t tell me lies.”
She pulls away from him.

“That she doesn’t believe it—
Is that what you’re telling me?”
She pulls away from him
in the sun of the walkway.

“Is that what you’re telling me?”
Sky overbright on sleeves
in the sun of the walkway
twists the fall of fall leaves.

Sky overbright on sleeves
he holds onto.  Her, she tries to tear,
twists, the fall of fall leaves.
All pretend not to hear.

He holds onto her.  She tries to tear.
“Tried to rape me,” rings out.
All pretend not to hear.
“How can she, how can she not—”

“Tried to rape me,” rings out.
“Don’t tell me lies.
How can she, how can she not?”
The woman cries.

(All rights reserved, Karin Gustafson)

Now for the truly curious, here’s the breakdown:

For notation purposes, “A” and “B” refer to the end rhyme of the line.   “A1” refers to a specific whole line (which is repeated) and which uses the A rhyme;  “A2” refers to another specific whole line which also uses the A rhyme. “B1” is a specific B rhyming line; “B2” another specific B rhyming line.

A1
B1
A2
B2

B1
A3
B2
A4

A3
B3
A4
B4

B3
A5
B4
A6

A5
B5
A6
B6

B5
A2
B6
A1

A pantoum can have any number of quatrains as long as the patterns are maintained.

If you’d rather count octopi than repeating lines–check out 1 Mississippi at link above or on Amazon.

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No Rest For The Weary – Metered Feet

September 24, 2009

Went to bed at one a.m.  and woke up at five.  (The way in which ten cups of strong tea remain in your system never ceases to surprise me.)

I am not someone who particularly touts the benefits of sleep.  It’s great stuff, but the fact remains that there are only 24 hours in the day, and, when you have a day job, only so many (other) hours can be spent unconscious.  (That’s a joke, boss.)

Nonetheless, I do think that, over time, sleep deprivation can put a serious dent in creativity.  Great swathes of the sleep-deprived brain are spent on questions such as what is your husband’s cell phone number again, and where did you just put your purse, socks, apple, keys, and, most importantly, that fresh cup of tea?   Under those circumstances, it’s hard to make space for new combinations of brain waves.

As a result, I decided today to write about something kind of technical, which is meter in formal poetry.  Ta Da!

Or rather:  taDa taDa taDa TaDa TaDa.

The above, by the way, is my version of iambic pentameter, probably the most common form of meter in traditional English verse.  (I base this statement on the fact that iambic pentameter is the form of virtually all the lines of Shakespeare’s  plays, other than the prose dialogue of his commoner characters such as the Rude Mechanicals in a Midsummer’s Night Dream. )

There are variations.  But before going into these, I want to take a break to thank another blogger, Patrick Gillespie, who writes Poemshape at wordpress  and who kindly wrote about my poetry and blog: http://poemshape.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/another-poet-childrens-writer/.  Gillespie knows a great deal about poetic meter.  And although he inspired me to continue with this subject, I had oddly already started writing about this morning on the subway.

So:

If rhyme gives a kind of music to poetry, meter is what makes it dance.   Ironically, meter is measured in “feet” (sort of like toe-tappings.  Also, like the English system of distance measurement.)  A line which is written in “pentameter” has five feet.

A “foot” of poetry generally varies in length between one and three syllables.   (Two is probably the most common.)

There are various terms for the specific rhythm of a “foot” of a poem. An iambic rhythm is a ta-Da, with the emphasis on the second syllable.  A trochaic rhythm is the opposite of an iamb: Ta-da.  (A better example may be “Dada” as in Marcel Duchamps.)   A spondee is a foot with two syllables of equal stress as in “graveside”.  (Sorry for that one.)   Two types of feet which use one long syllable and two short unstressed ones are dactyls and anapests. (What comes to my mind is “Heidigger”, a dactyl, although a perhaps better, example is “Pattinson”.)

It’s all kind of complicated.  Which is why I tend to write poems using a syllabic count rather than using meter based on “feet.”  (Perhaps I should have told you this before the long explanation.)

Yes, it’s cheating.  And lazy.  But using a syllabic count is quite helpful to a striving poet, particularly when sleep deprived.

When writing formal poetry, I also aim for pentameter, because that length of line seems very natural.  To reach an approximation of pentameter, I try to keep the lines between 9 and ll syllables (though 12 can also sometimes work).

Keep in mind, if you try this technique, that a syllabic count really is not same as a count of feet.  You need to be careful that you are not reading the line in an odd or contrived way in order to get it to sound “right.”

I include below another example of a villanelle.  I chose this one because it describes the aging, sleep-deprived brain, although the meter is not that great and may not qualify as as “pentameter.”  The second repeating line: “as pink as dusk (not dawn), the half-light of the day” is a bit long but just about works because,  arguably, it ends with two “anapests.”

Villanelle to Wandering Brain

Sometimes my mind feels like it’s lost its way
and must make do with words that are in reach
as pink as dusk (not dawn), the half-light of the day,

when what it craves is crimson, noon in May,
the unscathed verb or complex forms of speech.
But sometimes my mind feels like it’s lost its way

and calls the egg a lightbulb, plan a tray,
and no matter how it search or how beseech
is pink as dusk (not dawn), the half-light of the day.

I try to make a joke of my decay
or say that busy-ness acts as the leech
that makes my mind feel like it’s lost its way,

but whole years seem as spent as last month’s pay,
lost in unmet dares to eat a peach
as pink as dusk (not dawn), the half-light of the day.

There is so much I think I still should say,
so press poor words like linens to heart’s breach,
but find my mind has somehow lost its way
as pink as dusk (not dawn), the half-light of the day.

(All rights reserved, Karin Gustafson)

Do check out1 Mississippi, my children’s counting book, Going on Somewhere, my book of poetry, and Nose Dive,  comic novel.

Also, I am linking this to The Purple Treehouse today, where C.C. Champagne is talking about syllables in poetry.

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Subway Sonnet – Train Chemistry – Light That Cannot Be Broken Down For Parts

September 23, 2009

Molecules (poem by Karin Gustafson, drawing by Diana Barco)

I updated this post for the dVerse Poets Pub prompt for poems about trains and am also linking to Victoria C. Slotto’s blog liv2write2day relating to poems about light.     This poem is not a new one, but it was written on and prompted by the subway on a Monday, thinking about a beautifully sunny Sunday before.

This is a sonnet, a variation of the regular form 14 1/2 lines rather than the requisite 14.   I added the extra couple of words at the end to combat that “patness” that sometimes results from a sonnet’s final couplet.

Molecules

Yesterday in the dim fluorescence
of subway car, I thought of molecules.
They seemed, in that greyed light, the essence
of life.  I saw them stretched in pools,
sometimes seemingly limpid, other times
volcanic, fervidly swooping me
abubble, then mucking me into slimes
of laval woe, a test tube of to be
or not to be.  Today, I’m by the sea,
and water, vaster than pools, sparkles
under light so immense it cannot be
broken down for parts, yet its particles
raise up the non-molecular part
of me, what refuses to lose heart,
no matter–

(All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

(The drawing above is by my dear friend Diana Barco, who illustrated my book of poetry called “Going on Somewhere,” available on Amazon.)

Check out 1 Mississippi at link above also.

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More on Unwinding – Sonnet

September 22, 2009

Yesterday, I posted about stressful Mondays, and the unwinding of that stress (or at least of some of it) by a view of sky and river.   That post was somewhat comic (I hope), but I realized I also had written a sonnet, Shakespearean,  of a slightly more serious nature on the same subject.  The poem doesn’t actually deal with Mondays, but it does describe some of the unwinding offered by the flow of sky and water.

Post-Eden

Before the sky, a lovely pale, a boy,
tall on glistening grass, tosses a ball,
and I wonder why it is that joy
is not simply inhaled.  Is it the Fall
that keeps us from feeling how it lines
the air we breathe?  Is it that first loss
that keeps us toiling within the confines
of our skins, unheeding unhidden cost?
A soft haze, like a blessing, nestles on
the sea, mutes the horizon, brings the far near.
So much within reach.  The brain wrestles on
its hardscrabble way, yet slowly fear
unwinds, diminished by sky, sea, view.
An inner hand makes the catch, more too.

(All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

(I am linking this sonnet to Gooseberry Garden’s poetry picnic.  They have a very active and supportive poetry community.)

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Speaking of Fireflies

September 20, 2009

I posted an earlier poem re fireflies, but here’s actually a nicer one:

Porch

The porch pulled them to its side,
invited nestling upon shaded planks,
recalled cool soft times, clover in fields,
the day she cut his hair, and then they picked
out smooth flat stones,
and lined them along its surface, thick with
years of knobby deck paint.  Against it,
the stones shone like perfect moons to plant upon
winter table tops, reminders
that nights sown by fireflies
were going on some where, some time.

(All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

Check out 1 Mississippi at link above or on Amazon.  Review it if you have one!  If not, get one!

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The Burden of Childhood Specialness – Firefly

September 20, 2009

I really am almost done with writing about The New York Times September 14, 2009 article by Alfie Kohn, “Mind:…” about the hazards of parental praise and punishment.   (You may be sick of it too.)

However, one fellow mother and blogger recently commented on the issue of praise as discussed in the article and my posts.  She found it hard to think of praise for children as problematic.  (Sorry, I’m oversimplifying her comment.)   She worried that not praising children might cause them to feel bad, particularly in the context of praise given to others.

I didn’t mean to condemn all praise for children!  But I do think parental praise can become problematic when it conditions a child into a reliance upon a sense of specialness.

Yes, of course, every child is special.  (Unique, God’s creation, like a snowflake, etc.)

The specialness I am talking about is not a child’s uniqueness so much as his or her “bestness,” “gold-star-ness,” “very very good-girlness or boyness.”

A security blanket of parental praise, especially combined with precocity, can be a potent combination for a child.  While the parent, in praising, may mean simply to acknowledge the child, and perhaps, excite and exhort him or her into making continued efforts (and, unwittingly to continue being a great reflection of the parent), the child may confuse this specialness as a condition for parental affection, and even for his or her own validity.

As the precocious child grows up, the child’s sense of specialness can shift from glow to burden.  The world has many many many special people.   (Thankfully!)    Someone who is used to the repeated confirmation of their sense of specialness by well-meaning, compliant, eager parents may have a hard time achieving plain old contentment (i.e. sufficiency) as they move into a heap whose top can hardly be seen.  The failure to feel special may feel like failure itself.    (My fellow blogger, kindly commenting, suggested self-awareness could help with this;  but feelings are feelings; they are not always mitigated by rational thinking.)

Anyway!  I realized today that I had a poem about this very issue:

Firefly

As a child, I was told that I was a star,
whose brilliance would light up the world like a jar
filled with fireflies.  In the place I grew up,
we’d crouch in dark grass, catching them in the cup
of a hand that they quickly transformed into heart,
a roseate, luminescent, star part.
From palm, we would pour them into our glass,
so we could catch more, faster than fast.

Then, everything changed. Maybe it was the time
when the man I had loved would no longer be mine,
or when all the freedom I’d anticipated
could no longer be fully emancipated.
Jobs couldn’t be quit, hours must be put in,
the soiled re-washed, the fanciful shut in.
My erstwhile fresh talent now seemed like old rot,
I had to be happy with what I had got.

Now, when I think back to that life as a star,
I see less of the firefly, more of the jar,
the air holes on top we made with a pick
used to pry nuts from shells, a sharp metal stick.
It tore holes that were cutting, jagged beneath,
and could easily pierce an insect’s bright sheath.
I think of those holes, the sharp underside
that ceilinged that glow, that unreasoning pride.

(All rights reserved.  From Going on Somewhere, by Karin Gustafson – available on Amazon.)

PS – I am relinking this post to Victoria C. Slotto’s blog liv2write2day, to answer her prompt about singing one’s self.

PPS – for a much more lighthearted view of young adulthood check out my comic teen novel, NOSE DIVE.

Categories: parenting, poetry, Uncategorized
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Spenserian Sonnet (Still Not Keats)

September 18, 2009

Last night (well, very early this morning), I posted an example of a Shakespearian sonnet, which is probably the most common form of sonnet in English.   Another variation is the Spenserian sonnet, named for Sir Edmund Spenser, (author of the wonderful wondeful Faerie Queene.)

Spenser (1552-1599) was born and died a little before  Shakespeare (1564-1616).   Although their lives overlapped, my very brief research has informed me that the group of Shakespeare’s sonnets were not published until 1609 well after Spenser’s death.  They were apparently without Shakespeare’s permission.   Two were published a bit earlier, but likely also after Spenser’s death in 1599 (also without Shakespeare’s permission.)  (And this was well before the internet.) 

Spenser’s form is slightly more strict than Shakespeare’s.  A more limited rhyme scheme requires the poet to stick to the second set of rhymes of each quatrain in beginning the next quatrain.    This makes for a series of couplets throughout the poem and not simply at the end:

A
B
A
B
B
C
B
C
C
D
C
D
E
E

 

The couplets interspersed in the poem can create a beautiful echoing effect.  However, as in the case of the Shakespearean sonnet, that darned couplet at the end can be a real problem.   (See yesterday’s post concerning the difficulty of ending a sonnet without sounding like you are neatly “summing up” all that came before.)

Even so, a sonnet is a fun, flexible, form. 

A couple of pointers:  (I pass these on, not as a sonnet expert, but as a sonnet lover.)  

The rhymes (and meter) make music.   I believe this music works best, however, if it subtle,  almost a kind of murmuring, rather than a series of “bada-bings.”    (Remember you are writing a sonnet, not a limerick.)

The subtlety can be achieved by using run-on lines; these are lines in which the thought or sentence does not end with the rhyme at the end of the line, but in which the thought or sentence runs over.  This means that these is no pause at the end of each line, unless it is called for by a comma or period.   

 The use of run-over lines requires that some care is taken with respect to punctuation.  (Readers! please follow the punctuation.) 

Additionally, I like NOT to capitalize each new line as I feel that encourages a kind of pausing at the end of the line, and to discourage a more flowing read.   

Spy Games

We played spy games galore in the basement.
Running spy games with the boys, our bent hands
guns, till sweating we lay down on cold cement,
shirts pulled up, chests hard.  Not much withstands
the leaching chill of earth, the deep down sands
beneath a childhood basement, except perhaps
the burn of nipple, the future woman’s
breasts.  Our spy games just for girls had traps–
some of us played femmes fatales, poor saps,
while the leader girl was Bond–0-0-7.
She hung us ropeless from the bathroom taps,
then tortured us in ways that felt like heaven,
the basement bed our rack, what spies we were,
confessing neither to ourselves nor her.

 

(All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

 

 P.S.  Check out 1 Mississippi.  (It’s neither Spenserian or Shakespearean, but it will teach your child to count.)

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Sonnets!

September 18, 2009

Sonnets have fourteen lines.

Count ’em.

Sometimes they are combinations of eight and six; sometimes four and four and four and two; sometimes strange intersections of four and six, eight and two (only adding up to fourteen.)

I have been thinking about them since hearing about Bright Star, the new Jane Campion movie about Keats.  (I haven’t seen the movie yet, so can make no recommendations.)

Keats wrote great sonnets, even developing his own form.

Even so, I tend to stick to Shakespeare’s form.  (Shakespeare, of course, wrote really great sonnets.)  His form is extremely easy to remember, and relatively easy to write, as it uses a broad assortment of rhymes.

If I’m feeling more ambitious, I’ll try Spenser’s format, which is similar to Shakespeare’s, but uses a more limited rhyming pattern.  (I’ll explain each in the next few posts.)  I have never written a sonnet in Keats’ form (though I intend to try.)

Shakespeare’s form is set forth below.  Remember, under conventions of poetic notation, a rhyme ending a specific line is denoted by a capital letter, so that the first set of rhymes is denoted as “A”, the second set of rhymes as B, the third set “C”, etc.

Shakespeare also uses iambic pentameter.  (More on that later.)

A

B

A

B

C

D

C

D

E

F

E

F

G

G

The biggest problem with a sonnet is often the final couplet.  It tends to have a very pat, “summing up” quality, that is hard to escape.

I do not to want my final couplet to sound like the “moral of the story”. Breaking the lines up so that they run over and do not pause at the end of each line can help in this regard.  Humor is also useful.

A subject matter which is not easily summed up, also creates a certain tension that can temper the patness of the final couplet.   Here’s one, for example on a self-administered, informal breast exam.

In the Stairwell

Descending the building’s stairs, she feels her breast,
fumbling beneath her bra to get to skin,
palpating (as they say) but in a mess
of here and there and not all within
the confines of an organized exam.
Silly to do it here, not time or place,
someone else might come, have to move her hand,
and yet fear seems to justify the race,
as if by checking each time it crosses mind,
especially checking fast, she can avoid
ever finding anything of the kind
that should not be found.  And so, devoid
of caution, but full of care nonetheless,
she steps slowly down the stairs, feeling her breast.

(All rights reserved, Karin Gustafson)

Check out 1 Mississippi at link above.

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