Re: Mother of All Poetry Groups Re: Rhyme and its reasons...
From: smorse@sigafoos.net
Subject: Re: Mother of All Poetry Groups Re: Rhyme and its reasons...
A long time ago, I pondered Robert Frost's comment that "free"
(freely played) verse was akin to playing tennis without a net.
Funny thing about me quoting him is that I have always thought he was
just being a cranky wise guy when he said things like that. But, he
was, of course revealing with a smart remark the truth about how he
wrote poetry. He needed lines to hold him in, or structures to build
his tones on. Frost was revealing that secret that some poets try to
hide, even from themselves, that he really didn't know what he was
going to say, but at least with structure, he knew how he was going say
it. My so called american sonnets are like that. I start with end
rimes, the need for 14 lines and 10 syllables in each, and then let
fly, see where the words take me. I, like Frost, usually have a tone,
a feeling in my head, maybe even a specific image-event in mind. But
it's about as far away as starting from a thesis sentence as I could
possibly get. If I had to know what I was going to say in a poem
before I said it, then I wouldn't be able to do it.
The other way for me, other than form, to move that flow is to start
with the senses, a specific experience, remembered or right in front of
me, just telling what I "see" there, much as I explored the cover of
your book. There, the images are the structure for the sounds and
tones of the word. Every sensory experience has the makings of an
essay in different tones. I'm giving away too many secrets I fear.
Whatever's on your mind can change the perception. Your poem with its
stones on the beach is a good example of that, the way you use it to
illustrate whatever it is that you need to illustrate. The poem is the
blackboard.
Best,
Stephen
On Jan 8, 2005, at 8:24 PM, April Corioso wrote:
I was following the talk on rhyme (or rime, rind) and sitting
alone in my glass archive, visible from anywhere on the globe,
as dusk ended and night set in. I was thinking of whole
rhyme *schemes*..., and how they are the rocks the waves
break upon and, their individual syllables caught up in the waves,
the crests of the breaking ...breakers. I was thinking of the
sea-surge power in rhyme in our kits, in "the makings" (poetics)
we use....
A long time ago, I pondered Robert Frost's comment that "free"
(freely played) verse was akin to playing tennis without a net.
One day our great grandchildren will do that, you know. But
education has to do some catching up. Think of the
perceptual acuity everybody involved would have to have
and the currently-thought *inhuman* integrity. Anyway,
I thought of the dark thread in Frost (and, no, I'm not
confusing him with Stephen King, and of other net-like things
and schemes and tried my hand...
on tennis
for R.F.
Giddy ap, giddy ap, old horse!
You, who used to ride the side of night,
Who tore out your flanks on branches of wild gorse,
Who turned maids to windy screams of fright,
Giddy ap! Giddy ap, old mare!
Oh, and hold down now, some more
Field, then the oats, and not a scare
Left in you; heavy shoulders sore,
I reckon, old horse; so, giddy ap!
Say, you hear the night coming on?
The trees wailing? The house shutters flap?
Old times galloping by on the run?
I'd pull the halter off, Dark Roan,
But you'd go, and I'd be left alone.
I always thought Frost's New England woods weren't
far from those of the Grimm boys....
This was a long time ago. I'm too old to profit much from
corrective feedback, but young enough that corrective
feed-forward just might get juices flowing....
You c'n use rhyme more powerfully to bind yourself to
somebody whose language and sentiments you'd otherwise
probe at. Take the William! Remember "darling buds of
May"? A language of accountants, a temperate lover,
and, finally, these lines...
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Poor lover! You've already one foot in it, lass or lad....
It's a chunk of my mind/eye coordination that'll give
you what "after-life" you'll have. It's a fact, of course,
that he couldn't promise anything more than that, and
that was chancy, but that isn't the way to talk, or to
think and imagine to a lover.... So I dragged up
William's sonnet scheme, rocks and crests and all,
and wrote this to Hilary (Ayer, my companion from
63 to 70)...
for Hilary
Shall I compare you to a summer day?
You have more colors and more spirit:
Your laugh is trickier than summer winds at play.
Summer will buckle and end, we won't fear it.
I've seen you hotter than the sun and golden
And raging crouched flesh in thunderclouds.
Your breathing sings summer myths of olden
Times; all the summers gather in crowds.
The summers are not lost, nor will this one be.
You will wrinkle and gray, when winter
Comes, grow youthful in the spring for me
And young and fair in summer, a sun's splinter.
All the years I can breathe, or turn in time,
In each of them you are summer and rhyme.
The sea-surge power of rhyme isn't because you have, if
you have, a large and nuanced vocabulary. Uh, uh, it comes
from your opening to your cognitive innards to allow what
you'd call your search "engine" to travel out ahead. If
you think you know what you're going to end up writing
before you write it ...well, you're failing to "take off the halter"
or play without a net (which is easier in a scheme than out
of any)....
Moral: Your rhyme will have as much power as the fun you
have picking up and riding its waves....
Gene
Gene Fowler
(April of ret. @ddress is m' wyf)
acorioso@earthlink.net
Poetry, Archives:
http://home.earthlink.net/~acorioso/fires.htm
21st century e-typewriter (homemade):
http://home.earthlink.net/~acorioso/ew_main.htm
visit Juice ezine online:
http://www.juice-press.com/poetry/
Yahoo! Groups Links
visit Juice ezine online:
http://www.juice-press.com/poetry/
Subject: Re: Mother of All Poetry Groups Re: Rhyme and its reasons...
A long time ago, I pondered Robert Frost's comment that "free"
(freely played) verse was akin to playing tennis without a net.
Funny thing about me quoting him is that I have always thought he was
just being a cranky wise guy when he said things like that. But, he
was, of course revealing with a smart remark the truth about how he
wrote poetry. He needed lines to hold him in, or structures to build
his tones on. Frost was revealing that secret that some poets try to
hide, even from themselves, that he really didn't know what he was
going to say, but at least with structure, he knew how he was going say
it. My so called american sonnets are like that. I start with end
rimes, the need for 14 lines and 10 syllables in each, and then let
fly, see where the words take me. I, like Frost, usually have a tone,
a feeling in my head, maybe even a specific image-event in mind. But
it's about as far away as starting from a thesis sentence as I could
possibly get. If I had to know what I was going to say in a poem
before I said it, then I wouldn't be able to do it.
The other way for me, other than form, to move that flow is to start
with the senses, a specific experience, remembered or right in front of
me, just telling what I "see" there, much as I explored the cover of
your book. There, the images are the structure for the sounds and
tones of the word. Every sensory experience has the makings of an
essay in different tones. I'm giving away too many secrets I fear.
Whatever's on your mind can change the perception. Your poem with its
stones on the beach is a good example of that, the way you use it to
illustrate whatever it is that you need to illustrate. The poem is the
blackboard.
Best,
Stephen
On Jan 8, 2005, at 8:24 PM, April Corioso wrote:
I was following the talk on rhyme (or rime, rind) and sitting
alone in my glass archive, visible from anywhere on the globe,
as dusk ended and night set in. I was thinking of whole
rhyme *schemes*..., and how they are the rocks the waves
break upon and, their individual syllables caught up in the waves,
the crests of the breaking ...breakers. I was thinking of the
sea-surge power in rhyme in our kits, in "the makings" (poetics)
we use....
A long time ago, I pondered Robert Frost's comment that "free"
(freely played) verse was akin to playing tennis without a net.
One day our great grandchildren will do that, you know. But
education has to do some catching up. Think of the
perceptual acuity everybody involved would have to have
and the currently-thought *inhuman* integrity. Anyway,
I thought of the dark thread in Frost (and, no, I'm not
confusing him with Stephen King, and of other net-like things
and schemes and tried my hand...
on tennis
for R.F.
Giddy ap, giddy ap, old horse!
You, who used to ride the side of night,
Who tore out your flanks on branches of wild gorse,
Who turned maids to windy screams of fright,
Giddy ap! Giddy ap, old mare!
Oh, and hold down now, some more
Field, then the oats, and not a scare
Left in you; heavy shoulders sore,
I reckon, old horse; so, giddy ap!
Say, you hear the night coming on?
The trees wailing? The house shutters flap?
Old times galloping by on the run?
I'd pull the halter off, Dark Roan,
But you'd go, and I'd be left alone.
I always thought Frost's New England woods weren't
far from those of the Grimm boys....
This was a long time ago. I'm too old to profit much from
corrective feedback, but young enough that corrective
feed-forward just might get juices flowing....
You c'n use rhyme more powerfully to bind yourself to
somebody whose language and sentiments you'd otherwise
probe at. Take the William! Remember "darling buds of
May"? A language of accountants, a temperate lover,
and, finally, these lines...
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Poor lover! You've already one foot in it, lass or lad....
It's a chunk of my mind/eye coordination that'll give
you what "after-life" you'll have. It's a fact, of course,
that he couldn't promise anything more than that, and
that was chancy, but that isn't the way to talk, or to
think and imagine to a lover.... So I dragged up
William's sonnet scheme, rocks and crests and all,
and wrote this to Hilary (Ayer, my companion from
63 to 70)...
for Hilary
Shall I compare you to a summer day?
You have more colors and more spirit:
Your laugh is trickier than summer winds at play.
Summer will buckle and end, we won't fear it.
I've seen you hotter than the sun and golden
And raging crouched flesh in thunderclouds.
Your breathing sings summer myths of olden
Times; all the summers gather in crowds.
The summers are not lost, nor will this one be.
You will wrinkle and gray, when winter
Comes, grow youthful in the spring for me
And young and fair in summer, a sun's splinter.
All the years I can breathe, or turn in time,
In each of them you are summer and rhyme.
The sea-surge power of rhyme isn't because you have, if
you have, a large and nuanced vocabulary. Uh, uh, it comes
from your opening to your cognitive innards to allow what
you'd call your search "engine" to travel out ahead. If
you think you know what you're going to end up writing
before you write it ...well, you're failing to "take off the halter"
or play without a net (which is easier in a scheme than out
of any)....
Moral: Your rhyme will have as much power as the fun you
have picking up and riding its waves....
Gene
Gene Fowler
(April of ret. @ddress is m' wyf)
acorioso@earthlink.net
Poetry, Archives:
http://home.earthlink.net/~acorioso/fires.htm
21st century e-typewriter (homemade):
http://home.earthlink.net/~acorioso/ew_main.htm
visit Juice ezine online:
http://www.juice-press.com/poetry/
Yahoo! Groups Links
visit Juice ezine online:
http://www.juice-press.com/poetry/
posted by Stephen Morse at 8:44 PM
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