9-12-09 verse still
Today was nearly going to be my surgery date but instead I awoke at home to find a mail from Joann in Minnesota, whom I’d thought lost, which would’ve been a pity because for many years she was a keen observer of the Convention scene and thus a welcome companion and an antidote to its rampant whimsy.
Sorry Joann, I don’t know how you post reponses either; I’m still getting used to putting up these pages and had assumed I was hooting in the dark.
Joann actually remembered the potery I put in the last entry and was more than necessarily polite about reading it again, so recklessly emboldened I’m throwing in another couple chosen almost at random from the Mentoring file.
I’d forgotten a lot of what I’d written and since the project was to ‘just write’ there are inevitably a lot of duds and runts in the litter. The same applies in writing as it does in illustration: we rise slowly on the stack of our own waste-paper.
Some of the real klunkers were the result of trying to write poetry as a script for imaginary poetry readings, ennunciated in poetry diction; precise… poised over consonants, significant consonants… sprinkled with ellipses… and dotted – with plonks. My writing never became that exquisite, my ability to maintain a straight face wasn’t entirely reliable.
Years ago I tried to get into the habit of attending a writers’ group which included a couple of resident poets. Poetry was a good move because its personal content and expression makes it difficult to question, while offering the opportunity to speak your lines solemnly after alluding to the Big Ideas your piece is about.
Allusion is not synonymous with illumination. I was often reminded of that era of folk-club singer-songwriters whose ten-minute intros made you think ‘if this song is about all that, why didn’t you put it into the lyric?’.
So, please engage low gear for:-
Marion Brings Poetry
Marion brings poetry
Every week
No one says that
you need more
than frequent line-breaks
Sincerity
And Mogadon delivery
To do poetry
But they think it
The word for today is
Blue
How she relates to
Blue
Blue.
The word: Blue
The sky: Blue
A bluebell: Blue. Her heart. The World. You…
Well you get the idea
Like saying your name
Over and over
It loses its meaning.
A moment’s pause.
Well done Marion.
You really have your own voice.
I hadn’t finished.
Deep Blue.
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I’ve just hunted this one out because it came from that inability to wrangle an idea into words. Sometimes you can throw language in the direction of an idea like throwing flour at a ghost – the outline may appear. Sometimes you squat beside the bones of an idea and ponder what shape it would take if you had enough connective tissue. Sometimes brilliant phrases spring at you like trailers for a movie coming soon and…
And…
In Translation
Allow me to introduce, I am the
Translator of the verse of me.
I am expert to transpose stanza;
Fellow-travelling Sancho Panza
To cardio-vascular vacillations and
Consequent emotional sensations of the Author.
Please to be admiring this svelte describing of a sky
Also birds singing from all around and varying distances away.
Oh Beloved, I describe your body parts in close detail
Enjoying the description very much, with many eating-metaphors.
Exchanging breath in mouth-to-mouth resuscitation
And noting reciprocal signs of infatuation.
[Here are several lines left blank, for which is no translation]
Now is more amorous insinuendo
And lingering descriptions
Repeating all ideas in the first part
But with less structure! and here I curate
The laziness. And novel punctuations!
Here expressing how love is hilarious
And tranquilising. Oh my [darling poppet]
How very content I am to be here. It is a quiz.
Gosh I feel grateful to someone. I pronounce your name.
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… this was not the topic I had in mind when I fired up the Mac this morning but happily it’s more cheerful so thanks J for derailing that train of thought…