Last Fifty Towards February's Rent:
His face was like waxy plastic
Wrinkles ran so deep that they carried separate
livelihoods.
His knuckles were pink, thick layers of frost
covering old joints.
I watched, as his tin Cambells can went clanking back in
forth with a only single coin.
My fur coat flipped over my ears. I felt just as fake as the fox hat covering my head.
My rugged leather steel boots ready to fall apart.
The man, nearly eighty, a white beard so gray it
looked so much like the snow did when it fell.
His shoes were old and used, so torn at the soles
that I hardly believed he walked in them.
When I walked over, his smile was real.
It pulled the wrinkles tighter around his lips and
creased his pale blue eyes into slits.
"Hello deary, spare a penny today?"
I looked into his can, that was the coin, a penny.
My heart stuttered then shattered in two, his eyes followed with
my gaze downcast.
His smile never faltered.
"May I sit?"
"It's pretty cold." His voice held only
longing and a deep surprise.
"Alright." I walk across the street.
To my brother's dented Chevy truck, pulled out a
blanket and the fifty I was to deposit in the bank.
Rent would wait.
When I came back, when my legs collapsed into an
Indian style sitting position, I thought:
I had never seen someone so happy.
"Then we'll use this." my words mangled
with the sounds of my clattering teeth.
I huddled close into him; cool water fell on my
face, soft and continuous drops.
Like God is crying from the Heaven's in the sky.
Like God is crying from the Heaven's in the sky.
"The mountains are unpleasant when it
rains."
"On contrary, they are really quite stunning,
see how the snow melts into a dripping sort of white paint. The way the sky
looks when the clouds roll in and darkens everything grey eerily. Pray for
thunder deary and you'll really see why the mountains are said to be: a stone's
throw away from Heaven"
The man and I ate hot soup in the village; saw
the matinée of My Fair Lady
Where he proclaimed that Audrey was far more the
beautiful in person.
When I left Charles II, he was checking into a
hotel,
My brother's blanket draped over his shoulders,
The last fifty due towards our February rent, crisp in his right fist.
The last fifty due towards our February rent, crisp in his right fist.
Beautiful!
ReplyDeleteThank you. I was inspired so suddenly that when I re-read it I couldn't remember writing half the words. Haha.
ReplyDeleteNice work, indeed! You use words really well, and I guess you'll like a siggestion of mine? Do you use sites like zazzle.com, cafepress. com, fiverr? They could be a good way to promote your works/blog, etc and to help "remove" stupidity in the streets like headlines on t-shirts, fridge-magnets, cups, etc: My Boyfriend kisses Better Than Yours, FBI - female body inspector, etc. Not everything we see and think of should be about sex, right? It would be much better if there were more nice pictures (even of mythical creatures), good thoughts, poems (from any genre are welcome I guess), etc? I'm allanbard there, I use some of my illustrations, thoughts, poems from my books (like: One can fight money only with money, Even in the hottest fire there's a bit of water, Money are amongst the last things that make people rich, or
ReplyDeleteLet's watch the moon, let's meet the sun!
Let's hear soon the way the Deed was done!
Let's listen to the music the shiny crystals played,
let's welcome crowds of creatures good and great...
etc). I guess such lines are much better than the usual we see every day? Best wishes! Let the wonderful noise of the sea always sounds in your ears! (a greeting of the water dragons' hunters - my Tale Of The Rock Pieces).
Thank you! I think that's the best compliment I've ever gotten 'You use words very well," As a poet, writer whatever words are our art, our paints, our camera and to say that a poet uses words well is to say that a painter uses his brushes well.
DeleteI will defiantly check out those websites, thanks!
There should be like buttons on here in addition to a comments button! I really love the flow of this. So different. Very engaging. I would love to post about you on my blog...not like I have tons of followers, but I still think your work is great!
ReplyDeleteI'm honored you want to post my poetry on your blog, you have no idea how much that means to me. Feel free to post what ever poem of mine you want on your blog, just give a link back to my blog before or after the poem.
DeleteI am sorry. You just posted "I am aching for some honest, blunt truth". Here it is, as seen through my subjective glasses, of course.
ReplyDeleteToo much feeling. Too little language music, or none. No double-entendre. No plays on words. Nothing of the friction between language elements ( syntax, grammar, meaning ) that makes "real" poetry light up like an atomic bomb.
As the utterings of a young woman on her own feelings: interesting. But only to herself.
Carry on, then. I started this way, too. Twenty years later, after much tearing up, starting again, living, pain, learning, starting over once more, my poems got published:
sites.google.com/site/rocketsandperfumes
There. You asked for it, you have it.
Good luck.
magnaliberatio
Thank you. I really do, honestly love posts like this.
DeleteI just really don't quite understand yours...
"As the utterings of a young woman on her own feelings: interesting. But only to herself." Does this mean that what I am writing is too...boring, over the top, eccentric, bold, etc. I don't quite understand what you meant to say, was it: that the poems I write are fine and all but nobody really cares to hear it?
Next subject: 'too much feeling', I do not know how to not put feeling into it. This poem was meant to have a lot of feeling, all my poems are meant to portray my emotion, if your asking me to what? Cut out the emotion? Than how do I write poetry?
"Language music" Forgive me for being inexperienced but I have no idea what that is. Does it mean that my poems don't have enough lyricism's in them?
"No double-entendre." I had thought the poem was clear that, was what I wanted to portray, the harsh realism that people such as this man exists and that they live everyday just under our noses. This was a real non-fiction story of my own personal experience, I see homeless people all the time, and it makes me disgusted that hundreds of dollars are given out to public schools - that don't use it for what they are supposed - and not spent on lets say a family of three who can't make there mortgage, or a homeless man who just wants a bed to lay down in, in a room all his own.
Fondly,
Anna
Hello Anna.
ReplyDeleteYes, that is what I meant: your poems are not at all bad. But who cares ? What universally appealing elements are there in them ? I see none. Let me be clear: writing poems about your emotions is fine. But they will NOT, I repeat: NOT interest the world.
One does not cut out the emotion. One hides it. See how little all the great poets, from Homer via Shakespeare and Pushkin to Wilfred Owen, use(d) the word "I".
Emotion is a driving force behind poetry. So is the engine of a car. But you don't show the engine. You hide it. One hears it roar - yet, still the bystanders have to guess as to what engine is there in it.
Here is an example of "language music":
"The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;"
( Shakespeare, MacBeth, Act 1, Scene 5 )
Remark how "crown" and "cruelty" recall "croak", how the "oa" in "hoarse" pre-announces the same vowel in "croak".
Remark ( you will, if you read it out loud for yourself ) how "DUNcan" alliterates with "unDER my BATtleMENTS".
Remark the three "f" sounds in "and fill me from the top-crown full"
Sheer music. Black and sombre music, in this case. But how about this:
"The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high."
( Alfred Housman )
Beautiful, eh ? Why ? Well, remark the "won" in the first line, how nice it sounds with "town", how sweet and soft.
Read it out loud - you'll be astounded by the length of the vowels in "Maaan and boy stood cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeering byyyy", and by the sudden tenderness in "...and home we brought you shoulder-high" ( mostly short vowels, obliging the reader to "put a brake" on his voice ).
A last example: the first lines of "Beowulf", you'll very probably know them;
"Hwaet we Gar-Dena in gear-dagum
theod-cyninga thrym gefrunon
huu daa aethelingas ellen fremedon"
It groans and rolls like distant thunder !
Ad double-entendre: saying things in a veiled way is better, in a poem. Saying things clearly is for prose. If that is what you want to do, tell a story - fine. Then write prose. In poetry, you hide things.
Consider this line, a very modern one for a change:
"You cry your needs, bold as a six-week kitten.
You’re devious as a corporate takeover and direct
as an avalanche"
( Marge Piercy, "Raisin pumpernickel" )
She says nothing at all here, our poetess. She speaks of her lover. She hides the description of his temper behind....words. And yet - it becomes pretty clear what she means.
That is genius.
Thank you for replying back to me, now that you went in depth- and I thank you for taking such great care with it- I think I understand. Maybe it is, as you said, not poetry that I am good at but prose. I am not very good at hiding things, I feel the need to put it out in the world bluntly so that people do not misunderstand, or read differently into things that were not supposed to be there in the first place.
DeleteI love poetry and the lyricism of it, but now as I read back I find that perhaps you are right? I do not give enough, the emotion overshadows the music of it. The only thing with it is that I begin writing poetry because I could express emotions out loud, even to this day I can't force myself to utter the words 'I love you.' to a single person. My poetry was the gateway into my emotions, so people could see them and now, with this - sort of crushing realism - I'm not entire sure how to write a poem.
Really you helped me so much! Thank you!!
How to write a poem ?
ReplyDeleteMichelangelo was once asked: "How do you do that ? How do you sculpt such a beautiful, perfect elephant ?" "That is easy", the master answered. "I take a large piece of marble and hack away everything that is not elephant".
More is less.
Shave off as much as you can, and then some. Be very sparing with adjectives. In the above MachBeth excerpt, Shakespeare does with less than one adjective per line.
Or consider these lines of his, ones that a contemporary author recently quoted as "...when I spoke it out loud, it felt to me as having my mouth full of diamonds":
"I do believe,
Induced by potent circumstances, that
You are mine enemy, and make my challenge:
You shall not be my judge: for it is you
Have blown this coal betwixt my lord and me;
Which God's dew quench! Therefore I say again,
I utterly abhor, yea, from my soul
Refuse you for my judge; whom, yet once more,
I hold my most malicious foe,"
( Shakespeare, Henry VIII )
Hardly any adjectives. Terse, compact, harsh language renders how a furious Queen speaks to an utterly haughty Cardinal ( Wolsey ).
More is less.
Saying "I love you" has nothing to do with poetry.
Poetry as a gateway into emotions ? Reverse your approach. Take your emotions as a gateway into poetry, be it that of yourself or that of others.
Keep going.
magnaliberatio
See that is what I don't understand, I was once taught by my high school English teacher that poetry is about expression. It does not fall under a category that which can be critiqued and analyzed, it is not science its just expression, it's neither wrong or right it just is, its just words. Saying that poetry is a gateway into my emotions, is that not the same as saying that my emotions are a gateway into poetry?
DeleteSaying I love you, for me, has everything to do with poetry. I can't say it so I write it, just like Anne Perry writes mystery novels, poetry is just words crafted in a way that rhythms, it is subjective to almost every critque and yet it is different from any sort of genre. Poetry by definition should be evocative, it should produce an image, project a feeling, a statement. So I don't understand, what is it that you feel poetry is?
"Poetry is about expression". What a fluffy and vague-ish nonsense. Your teacher was, in my humble opinion, misled. One of these poor creatures who think that any "expression" is poetry. He / she was probably a product of the sixties, who read Allen Ginsberg and never saw the tremendous amount of work and crafsmanship behind his seemingly loosely-worded poems.
ReplyDeleteWell, when I say anyhting, when I wink, belch, fart, snore, cough, ejaculate, yell, sigh, snuffle, groan, smack my lips - then I do express myself. By that virtue it is not yet poetry.
Poetry is a craft. It is this what "art" originally meant: the original Latin word "ars" meant "craft", as in "crafsmanship". As such, poetry can very well be the subject of critique. There is bad poetry and good poetry, as there is bad engineering and good engineering, worthless painting and great painting, good and bad pottery.
Much like engineering, pottery and painting, poetry has rules and trade secrets.
Find out what a hendecasyllable is, then try to write some. Did you try your hand at sonnetts, that greatest of all classic forms ?
Learn the basic trade secrets of your trade. Mistrust fluffy and vague-ish teachers. Exercise the severest critique. And, most of all, READ THE CLASSICS. Over and over again.
This said, I still did not answer your question on what poetry is, to me. Poetry is an organized attempt, with the help of utterly organized language, to steer my mind ( which thinks AND feels ) in new directions. As when I first read the lines
"Since I was tangled in thy beauty's web
And snared by the ungloving of thine hand"
( Keats )
Poetry is the craftsmanship of language, pushed to its limits.
Chryslers, Toyotas, Volkswagens - they are all cars. They are the prose in which the car world writes.
A yellow Ferrari roaring down the highway at 200 mph is poetry.
Don't give up.
magnaliberatio
I have tried sonnets, I have a two part one that I was just about to post on my blog, both entitled Adoration. I think sonnets are beautiful and simple in a way that took much effort to achieve. I do not doubt that poetry takes time but I do doubt that their is a wrong kind of poetry and a right kind of poetry.
DeletePablo Picasso was a renowned painter, sculptor, etc, etc. and he once said that "Art is a lie that makes us realize truth." His work transformed the 20th century by it's gateway into a child's mind, he showed people that not all paintings have to be smooth and defined, the strokes of a brush can be rough and messy and it can still be considered art.
If poetry is a form of art - the term used in the lightest way even - than is it not what the artist feels it should be?
Take Vincent Van Gogh, who was hospitalized twice and redeemed the madman of his town, he was - when he lived - the most hated artist, he couldn't give away his paintings and now they are considered priceless, they hang in some of the most prestigious museums the human culture knows. Art professors, history professors teach us that his art are masterpieces, and yet he only sold one painting in his entire life. His art was considered bad, and then in the passing of a millennium's time it was no longer bad but brilliant masterpieces.
I understand that poetry is different from painting, that it takes discipline and the study of what is considered 'masterpieces' but for me I absolutely despised the writing of Homer, I felt he was boorish and overly defined. William Cartwright's To Chloe was dull, it was a love poem and it showed no emotion, it to me at a point overbearingly romantic.
He says:
"When you loved me and I loved you
Then both of us were born anew."
Maya Angelou used her emotion to light her poems, and she is one of the most famous poets on the 20th century. I find the classic's boring, Aeschylus was the 'father of tragedy' and yet his poems did not move me, they were flat and concise, they didn't evoke a response from me because they felt like an essay. I get that you might think my poems are bad, or overbearing, or too emotional, or even not structured, and you may be right but, Charles Bukowski wrote poems that were frank and blunt, he wrote to express himself, his poems may be graphic or obtuse compared to classical poets but a lot people feel they can relate to them. And as a writer, or an artist, or a poet is that not what we hope to accomplish, a connection to readers through our work, why else would one go through the trouble of re-proofing, subject themselves to New Yorker critique's, and 'haggle' until they were published.
There is hardly any hope for you, in your current state. I wish you to become a proficient baker.
ReplyDeleteThat was rude.
DeleteYou were being honest with me and I was being honest with you, I thought I was clear that was what I wanted. You have given me a lot of your opinions and now because I delivered an opinion back to you, you degrade me.
I don't care who you are or how many poems you've published, that, saying that was petty. Not every poet has to like the same things, not every person has to think the classic's are masterpieces' of human nature. I don't care for them, that's an honest opinion.
And you didn't use 'proficient' english.
You should have wrote: 'I wish you would become a proficient baker.' or perhaps 'I wish you would pursue banking, that would be, for you, a proficient livelihood.' maybe even added a reason why?
Well, let us not enter into a war who writes the best English here, as your poems are full of misspellings. But that aside.
ReplyDeleteThat was not rude, that was honest. A 20-year old who puts herself, albeit implicitly, on the same footing as Picasso, van Gogh and one of the greatest 20th-century poets - such a person is overbearing, self-possessed and not slightly laughable.
It was honest in the sense that reading the classics is what anyone should do. Whether you like it or not. You may not like them - that is a personal opinion, and as such : free. But if I study whichever discipline ( I studied mathemtatics ), uttering something as ridiculous as "I don't care for the classics" immediately puts an end, and that in a justified way, to my teachers' or professors' efforts to make a skilled person out of me. Had I ever said something similar about, say, Leibniz, Euler, Russell or Gödel - to name a few of mathemtaics' classics - I would have been met with howling laughter.
By sheer coincidence I had a look, sunday, into a book with Picasso reproductions. Funny, isn't it, that he started out in a very classical way ? How could he have done else: it was all he knew, at that moment.
The same goes for poetry. Poetry is not sitting down and letting "feeling", whatever you understand by that, flow out of your pinkie and "voilà - a delicious pizza!" No way. Watch the movie "Bright Star" about the life of John Keats. How hard the work was to write "Ode to a Nightingale".
Homer boorish and overdefined ? Well, woman - do better than he did. Here is your chance at fame. My gawd - do you have ANY idea of how ridiculous THAT phrase of yours sounds ?
And that came from a person who writes "poems" without metre and, indeed, without rhythm at all; whose poems are devoid of rhyme, assonance and alliteration, show no internal structure.
I quoted several classics, above. You never reacted. Instead, you went and ranted on and on and on about your "feelings". To hell with them.
It took me twenty-eight years, living in many different countries, the loss of a wife, the burning of all my possessions, homelessness and subsequent re-entry into civilized society to discover that: to hell with "feelings". Flower power and hippie times are gone.
Learn the tricks of the trade you want to master. First the basics, then the advanced tricks. Once you master these, go on and ínvent your own rules.
You may be twenty-eight years further down the read, once you reach that level. If you reach that level.
Until then, humility behoves you as it behoves me.
QFD
Your right. Suppose I have never taken time to fully study the classic's, suppose I just read them a couple times, and that is no basis to stand on. Suppose my poems are a disgrace to the craft of poetry. Suppose I am just an Home schooled girl, teaching herself and therefore should not speak on things I don't know. Fine, your right. I didn't react to the quotes, because I didn't know what to say to them. They are fine, just not my style. Albeit they are rhythmic and I have none of it, they are defined and have a hidden structure I couldn't see, fine. I didn't like them, and I didn't not like them. I don't think I will ever like Homer, I don't like over-rhythmic poems, and perhaps that makes me a disgrace to all poets of every nature. Fine, that doesn't mean I can just stop writing poems, or whatever it is that I write, nor does it mean that I'd want to.
ReplyDeleteI never, never put myself on the same page as those people. I mean really, I'm not blind, you've made it distinctly clear that I am no good at poetry. It is obvious you know what your talking about, so don't think I don't take your word for it.
Honest thanks for opening my eyes.
Now you exaggerate in the opposite sense. Your poems are not a "disgrace to poetry". However... why don't we try and write a poem together ? You state the subject, I give the first line, and from there we carry on.
ReplyDeleteOkay...lets see, maybe a past experience sort of poem. Where the subject is your life and my life, as if we were having a conversation together. Or we could go with loss, write a poem about an emotion without the shouting emotions laced between each letter.
DeleteAll right. Loss. Your life, my life, the past. A conversation on that topic. Here we go. I propose the following opening lines:
ReplyDelete"What loss is greater gain than nothing
left to lose, the right to win..."
( you will have to terminate the phrase somehow, I guess, or give a turn to it that is all yours )
"To play the game as the child in you once did
ReplyDeletewith no fear of consequence, of shame, that binds you like shackles on your wrists..."
All right :-)
ReplyDeleteLet us try to put some rhythm into this...and take away most of the interpunction to make it smoother. I propose:
"What loss is greater gain than nothing
left to lose the right to win
playing the game the child once did
in you fearing no consequence
and shackle-shame not on your wrists.
Unbound..."
I like this, and hope you can live with it. This proposes 5-line stanzas with assonating rhyme on the ending vowels of lines 2, 3 and 5 ( "-i-" ).
I like how this becomes a play on words and sounds. Your proposal of combining "shackes" with "shame" is a beautiful alliteration :-)
My turn. I'll be back soon.
Yes, yeah I can see now where the rhythm comes in, how devoid my lines were of it.
Delete"What loss is greater gain than nothing
ReplyDeleteleft to lose the right to win
playing the game the child once did
in you fearing no consequence
and shackle-shame not on your wrists.
Unbound by loose ignominy,
we'd play by still-unwritten books..."
Here you go :-)
I suddenly realized that leaving most,if not all, interpunction away still enhances the poem's power, by introducing a play upon the broken link between "wrists" and "unbound" :-)
ReplyDelete"What loss is greater gain than nothing
left to lose the right to win
playing the game the child once did
in you fearing no consequence
and shackle-shame not on your wrists
unbound by loose ignominy
we'd play by still-unwritten books (...)"
"What loss is greater gain than nothing
Deleteleft to lose the right to win
playing the game the child once did
in you fearing no consequence
and shackle-shame not on your wrists
unbound by loose ignominy
we'd play by still-unwritten books
living gallantly among crooks
we'd love so tenderly
without grand stature or societies favor (...)"
Anna, this is excellent. I have to think a moment about this, but I love where this is going. I do.
ReplyDelete"What loss is greater gain than nothing
ReplyDeleteleft to lose the right to win
playing the game the child once did
in you fearing no consequence
and shackle-shame not on your wrists
unbound by loose ignominy
we'd play by still-unwritten books
living gallantly among crooks
we'd love them tender like them sweet
our junkie pirates off the hook
if gain were loss and loss were gain..."
I would propose that, already, we start working towards the poem's end. "Less is more" is valid here, too. Three stanzas with a good "pointe", as the French say, at the end, would seem enougg. At least to me. What do you think ?
ReplyDelete"What loss is greater gain than nothing
ReplyDeleteleft to lose the right to win
playing the game the child once did
in you fearing no consequence
and shackle-shame not on your wrists
unbound by loose ignominy
we'd play by still-unwritten books
living gallantly among crooks
we'd love them tender like them sweet
our junkie pirates off the hook
if gain were loss and loss were gain
the ending than, should surely outweigh
those menacing thoughts of Hell's embrace(...)"
"What loss is greater gain than nothing
ReplyDeleteleft to lose the right to win
playing the game the child once did
in you fearing no consequence
and shackle-shame not on your wrists
unbound by loose ignominy
we'd play by still-unwritten books
living gallantly among crooks
we'd love them tender like them sweet
our junkie pirates off the hook
if gain were loss and loss were gain
the ending then for sure outweighs
the menace-thought of hell-embrace -
a game is worth more than its marbles;
running, not the runner, wins the race"
By Anna and magnaliberatio,
California / Vienna ( Austria ),
VIII.III.MMXII
Anna, we did it ! How do you feel about this ? I, for my part, are pretty proud, having tried this before without ever coming to something satisfactory. This is different. I even think this can stand as "decent to good poetry".
ReplyDeleteThe only thing left to do, for you, is to find a title. I am curious as to what you will come up with :-)
What about just loss, simple and sweet?
Delete