Spring Night

Spring night
I close my eyes and roll the windows down
The breeze brushes my insomnia away
And brings aboard all the
Scents of evenings past
Cut grass, willow leaves, the space between
The midnight clouds and budding greens
Flowers blooming for the first and last time anywhere

My hair flies forty-five miles per hour
Removes the sour taste in my mouth
Of other nights, abandoned by pretense
And the erosion of dreams.
Instead, abridging the wonder
Of spring lightly touching fall

 

 

Coming home from college last night to spend a week with my family before next semester, I fell asleep.  I had been up for approaching thirty straight hours, due to exams and projects, and I just couldn’t stay up anymore (don’t worry, I obviously wasn’t the one driving).  I woke about twenty minutes from home, and, by chance, rolled down the windows.  It was dark, and the air was crisp and cool.  Outside smelled like… I’m not sure.  Spring and everything.  It’s hard to describe, so I tried to write a poem about it, and failed.  Said failure is above.

Don’t get me wrong.  I feel like this poem is very rough and imperfect, but I still like it.  As my track record for writing sonnets goes, it’s certainly my best.  But I don’t think I captured the moment adequately.  Perhaps I’ll return to that some other night, on some other highway.

Double Dactyl: Phillip of Macedon

Higgeldy Piggeldy
Phillip of Macedon
Sired Alexander to
Rule with a sniff

Tried to scare Sparta who
Laughed and returned with a
Representational
Answer of “If”

Clerihew: E. E. Cummings

e. e. cummings
full of Spring, vague somethings,
whispered veryfastintothe microphone; or,
|            slow (like a          closing
door)

 

 

Alright, here’s my final clerihew for this week.  I cannot say, officially, that I have a favorite poet.  I probably have favorite poems, ranging from modern spoken word to 17th century sonnets.  However, so many poets fascinate me and inspire me, in very different ways, that it would be difficult to choose one above the rest.  But, gun to my head, my answer would always be E. E. Cummings.

He was not the poet who first got me interested in poetry (that would be Allen Ginsberg).  But, I’ve never read a Cummings poem and been disinterested in it.  His command of syntax is both amazing and intensely personal, and it lends to a variety of very different and equally likely interpretations.  But, as difficult as his poetry looks, it is not as hard to understand, given a little thought.  Aside from that, Cummings’ poetry is just fun and enjoyable to read.

But, enough of my write-up on Cummings: if you have any experience with poetry, you’ve probably read him and have your own opinion of his work (if you haven’t, you should give his poetry a shot).  This is the only clerihew that took me any amount of time to write, even if it was just perfecting my references to his style, and it’s the clerihew of mine that I like the most.  So, I hope you enjoyed me poking a little fun at Cummings poetry.  And I’ll get more substantial poetry out soon.

Clerihew: Robert Frost

Robert Frost
Could never get lost
On a road where he’d weep
With promises to keep

 

 

Alright, almost done with clerihews.  I chose Frost pretty randomly.  I have a kind of love/hate relationship with his poetry.  One the one hand, I really don’t care for The Road Not Taken, which is probably his most famous and most misunderstood poem.  That could honestly just be me overhearing it so much, even before getting into poetry.  But, it’s just never appealed to me.  On the other hand, I really like Promises To Keep, enough that it might be in my top twenty favorite poems.  Also, as I’ve gotten more into poetry, I’ve read a larger variety of Frost poems and really enjoyed most of what I’ve read.

Anyway, like the rest of these clerihews, there isn’t much to say about writing it more than I already have:  I took his most well-known poem and my favorite of his poems, and voila — reference!  That’s not the case for the next one, though…

Clerihew: JFK

Kennedy, John Fitzgerald
A democracy herald
But historians adept
Know why England never slept

 

 

Third clerihew, and about a historical figure I recently wrote a similar (though longer!) light poem about.  JFK actually isn’t my favorite president, but he might be up there… I don’t know, I guess I just think there’s plenty of room for poetry about him, humorous or otherwise.  And yes, I did use this joke in the other poem (I wrote that one recently but this one eight months ago), but this one has a different reference!  That makes it okay, right? Right?

Clerihew: Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac
Always wore a backpack
And to follow the beat
He’d hitchhike down the street

 

 

Here’s the next clerihew, and this one’s about my favorite author.  Jack Kerouac’s books aren’t for everyone, so I can’t say I recommend for anyone to read them.  Though I do maintain that everyone should at least read On The Road.  Anyway, I really dig his writing style and the mythos behind the Beat Generation.  If you have an interest in the era from one of the major figures of the Beat Generation or are interested in stream-of-consciousness writing, and you don’t mind if the book you’re reading doesn’t have a plot or arc, give Kerouac a shot.

Clerihew: J. Edgar Hoover

J. Edgar Hoover
A freedom remover
Now say all the presses,
“He wore women’s dresses.”

 

 

This was technically my first clerihew, and it mostly just jumped into my head.  I’m not exactly a fan of the FBI’s first director; in fact, quite the opposite, as this poem might not-so-subtly hint at.  And I have my doubts, whatever his sexuality, about his supposed cross-dressing incidents (nor, might I add, would I care either way).  It just makes me smile that, of all the things that Hoover did during his life, that is the “fact” that most of popular culture latches onto.  Perhaps we should pay attention to matters of a more substantial nature, hmm?

On Clerihews

Clerihews are simple poems.  They were created by Edmund Clerihew Bentley, who also has the distinction of having one of the oddest middle names of all time, when he was a teenager.  Essentially, they are four line “biographical” poems about an individual.  They’re biographical in that, typically, they have at least one major fact about the person, though it’s usually played off in a humorous manner.  They rhyme, in an AABB pattern, and the lines should be noticeably different in length and even meter.  The first line is traditionally the subject’s name.

This form has a lot in common with the double dactyl, which, as that’s one of my favorite forms, might be why I enjoy clerihews so much.  Both the clerihew and the double dactyl are semi-biographical poems and both are humorous light verse.  Oddly enough, these forms are also the only two major and popular forms coming out of the twentieth century.  That’s not to say that other forms weren’t created during the last century; I can think of a couple off of the top of my head, such as the dream song and the double exposure poems.  But, most of those were only written by a poet or two, while plenty of poets write double dactyls and clerihews.  Most other well-known forms that exist today can trace their roots to much older times.  To me, it’s quite interesting that these two similar forms (at least similar in substance) are the only established forms to come out of the whirlwind that was twentieth-century poetry.

Clerihews are yet another form I became acquainted with through a college course.  Honestly, college has done a great service to my poetry, but that’s another topic of itself.  I’ve never found clerihews particularly difficult to produce; the lack of requirements that they must adhere to make them quite easy to throw out.  Most of the next few will be ones I wrote a semester ago for class.  Most of them are of historical and, often, literary figures I’m interested with, though not all.  Certainly not the first one, anyways.

And Now a Word from Our Sponsor

Okay, a quick word of explanation for the recent dearth of posts.  Over the past few weeks, I’ve exhausted my backlog of poetry, at least any that’s publishable at the moment.  The rest is a bit too personal or too uninteresting to put up.  That’s not to say that all of the poetry up here thus far was old; at least a third of it, expecially the more recent ones, were written maybe a day or two before I put them up.  But, since I now don’t have a supply of poetry to put up when I don’t have the time or inspiration to write, I find myself at a loss.  To make matters worse, my exams and other final projects are this week, so I don’t think I’ll get much written until Sunday evening.  That said, I have a plan.

I still have a few very short poems I can put up over this week, called Clerihews (and I guess I’ll write a brief post going into detail about those and my experiences with writing them).  They’re only four lines apiece, and they’re light verse, but I find them, for the most part, amusing.  So, I’ll post those sproadically between now and Sunday, along with (probably) another double dactyl and a full-length poem.  At the latest, I should be able to get back to at least a normal every-other-day schedule by Monday.

That said, I am working on a few newer things for over the summer.  I’m going to try to get back to writing short stories (though I doubt anyone cares about that), along with a few new poetry projects.  I know that, based on what I’ve already written, I seem to be very focused on form, but I have another genre of poetry with which I am currently infatuated: spoken word.  I’ve made attempts to write spoken word poetry in the past, but I’ve never quite gotten the hang of it.  However, I think I might go ahead and try again anyways.

I’ve also been thinking… as much as I like writing poetry, I might like reading it even more.  I feel like there’s something you gain with listening to a poem being read than just reading it on the page.  So, I’m considering putting up a few audio clips of me reading poetry, both my own and some from famous poets.

And, also… there’s National Novel Writing Month.  It’s in November, and it’s quickly approaching.  I participated (and succeeded, I might add) three times in high school, but I’ve been avoiding it whilst in college.  This year will be no different, as my schedule is harsh and unforgiving.  But… I’m thinking about it, though perhaps I’ll aim for late summer instead of fall, when I have the time.  We’ll see.  More on that later.

Alright, it’s late (or, rather, early), so I think that’s enough for now, my imaginary audience.

Provenance

Awakening to darkened dreams
In oceans far away
Underneath a current stream
Without a word to say

Alone, no hint of musical score
To brighten or dampen mood
I’m not sure what I’m looking for
But a figment of attitude

That’s not to say imaginary
Though not exactly real
The differences make me weary
And keep me free from zeal

I treat all visions like misty clouds
Something a dreamer holds dear
Give them a shape, a purpose out loud
Hanging out wishes sincere

But that is not reality
A cut from which lies have bled
The truth is more than I can see
And knowing that strikes me near dead

And yet I keep looking for spots of mist
To grasp onto till dawn
Detatch myself should symptoms persist
And sprinkle them over the lawn

Not knowing my image’s accuracy
Whether bullseye or over par
Drives me to thinking erratically
Creating brand new scars

It breaks me down and cuts me in two
Making me lose the provenance
Which is fake and which is true?
It drives me into a trance

Just to stay awake, to stay alive
Should I lose myself in the end
Then I lose rhythm and sense of rhyme
The power to comprehend

They found me, nothing but hamstrings and fists
And they jigsawed me up with glue
Return again should symptoms persist
What’s fake and what is true?