"Hail, poetry, thou heav'n-born maid ..."

Aerothorn on 2/3/2011 at 19:09

Quote Posted by Sg3

Hmm. All but three of my poems have been rigidly formed. Iambic or trochaic, matching syllable counts, rhyme, etc. I'm only now beginning to experiment with free verse, as the rut I've been in seems to be exacerbated by my conformity to, well, form.

Fair enough: I say this because most folks I know stick to free verse. That said, there are some forms that are less about straight rhyme/metre and more about playing with the meaning of words. Look up the "double exposure" - it's pretty interesting.

demagogue on 2/3/2011 at 19:27

Quote Posted by Kolya

Just because it's in/on your eyeball doesn't mean you suddenly gain microscopic vision.

Obviously you're seeing the outline of billions of them, or the shadows of them.

Quote Posted by "eye doctor guide"

This phenomena is caused by a reflection of microscopic fibers in the jelly-like substance (the vitreous humor) contained inside your eye, onto the retina.

They're not wastes though. I don't know where I read that. Anyway, apparently:

Quote:

They can be structures of protein or other cell debris which have become trapped in the eye's vitreous humor. ... The most common cause of floaters is the shrinking of the vitreous humor, or clear liquid in the eye. This humor is 99% water and 1% collagen and hyaluronic acid. The collagen breaks down into fibrils or strings which are the floaters seen in the eye. These type of floaters tend to be linear and few in number.

I did learn something new though.

Quote:

Unfortunately, once the floaters have appeared in the eye, they are there forever. ... After a while, floaters tend to settle at the bottom of the eye, out of the normal line of sight.

Interesting that a lot of the squiggly lines I see today could be the same ones I saw as a kid.

Stitch on 2/3/2011 at 19:55

Poetry is actually a phenomenal medium that any writer should at least attempt. As I wrote three years ago in my now-defunct-but-to-be-resurrected-soon-hopefully blog:

Quote:

By its very nature poetry is the most immediate means of expressing something, be it a concept, emotion, moment, or story. Novelists have all the time imaginable to present their case, and short story writers have however many pages are granted by Playboy that month, but poets have to hit the ground running with the leanest prose possible in the race against the reader's attention span. Poets butcher their babies by carving off every ounce of fat, each individual word weighed and judged for inclusion. There is no form of communication with a higher blood-sweat-and-tears-to-words ratio than poetry.

What interests me most about poetry, however, is that there is also no other form of communication that so directly demands the participation of the reader. Good poetry doesn't just strip down to the compact essentials but instead goes one step further to eviscerate large chunks of content in the interest of forcing the listener to fill in the gaps. Explanation and exposition, who needs them? Or, more importantly, why pull the trigger when the reader is there to do it for you?

As for me, I don't really write poems so much as micro-stories, although I suppose the distinction between the two is meaningless. One of mine:

[INDENT]The Reluctant Souvenir

A coworker of mine recently brought in a collection of sea shells his family had picked during a recent cruise of St. Kitts.

He told me to keep one, if I wanted.

Later he sent me a photo of the St. Kitts beach from which the shells were selected. The sunlight poured down to warm the vast shores of sand, the surf white and gentle as it rolled in. Lush hills formed knuckles on a green finger curled around the bay, the peaks lost in distant, rolling clouds. A gull screeched somewhere, invisible in the endless sky.

I looked down at my transplanted sea shell, sitting on my desk in my cubicle in Madison, Wisconsin.

"This is bullshit," it said.[/INDENT]

Aja on 2/3/2011 at 21:25

She loved him so he kept close by
while I stayed back to enjoy the evening air,
and red brick that echoed under solid heels across the campus,
slowed beneath the halos of streetlights and distant windows.
I stayed back, I followed at a tender pace and as we parted
and they tumbled to the river,
only smiled and turned to face that gentle evening air
once more

Fingernail on 2/3/2011 at 23:00

there's some good stuff in this thread! Coincidentally I went to a poetry reading for the first time last weekend, all original stuff by 6 or so poets in the basement of "The Poetry Café" which is run by the Poetry Society in London. Nice to see an art form that has an interested and passionate, if small, audience. Everyone was listening carefully to the readings, unlike so many music gigs I've been to where people have come to hear one band and all but ignore the rest out of hand.

Anyway, it inspired me to write this. I've been writing lyrics for ages now, but I don't really see them in the same way. For instance, I can imagine writing a song about the following idea/subject but I can't imagine using these words to do so. Songwriting is often about everyday language for me, in a way that poetry is about a more considered, concise choice of words. I'll put a song lyric up too to compare and contrast!

The lucky few

I was too far into my teens
before I knew
that windows in the night
were see-through

that is to say, when lit from within
and curtains wide
that anyone at all
could see inside

(how unlike day, when cold cupped hands
are the peeping tom's viewfinder)

ignorant of this basic observation,
my bedroom window was my
nighttime mirror, now
reflecting gives a shame sensation

no doubt amongst the best performances
I ever gave,
and if there was an audience,
I'll have no clue,
but let them take it to their grave.

Virtue

so pure
how wonderful and virtuous
daddy knows best
perhaps it's best for all of us

I'm not a predator,
I couldn't find it in myself
cos I'm in love with her.
I wouldn't save myself for anybody else

virtue
what does it mean to you?
it is a prison
built around what others do

so pure
how beautiful and innocent
daddy knows best
her life to him was heaven-sent

he is a minister
well he can save you by himself
but I'm in love with her
why can't he save somebody else?

virtue
what does it mean to you?
it is a prison
built around what others do

you mustn't go there
no no no

ashes to ashes
and dust to dust
daddy knows best
perhaps it's best for all of us

Kolya on 2/3/2011 at 23:20

I like that Aja, because it's subtle and refreshingly unflashy. Poetry is better when it's not love or death.

Aja on 3/3/2011 at 20:06

Thanks :)

Queue on 3/3/2011 at 20:21

I'm confused by the title of this thread....

Are you saying that poetry should clean my room? If so, sorry about that jizz towel moldering in the corner.

There's nothing heavenly about that mop of the Devil's plaything.

(pssst... Shouldn't it be "borne"?)

theBlackman on 4/3/2011 at 00:00

Quote Posted by Queue

The good lord decided that the world would have a few assholes scattered around in it. It's no surprise to see that one of them posting on TTLG.

Sg3 on 4/3/2011 at 01:59

Quote Posted by Queue

Shouldn't it be "borne"?

I didn't write the line. But, technically, either one could work. "Heaven-born" (born of/in Heaven) makes more sense to me in that context than "heaven-borne" (carried from/by heaven) does. I don't know for sure how Mr. Gilbert spelled it, but Google consistently shows up "born."