Weather is something we discuss on a daily basis and is sometimes a topic for poetry. In Japanese haiku it's virtually the only topic. In the New Yorker magazine they generally have a seasonal poem that celebrates winter, summer, or autumn, or even spring. Far from trivial, the weather is now a news item too (which means it suits someone's politics to continually bring it up). Some claim that "global warming" is in effect and that it's a man-made phenomenon. Thus we need socialism. They say that global warming is caused by sin. Others claim that Mars is heating up too, and since no people are on Mars, that it can't have been caused by people and we should do nothing (capitalism as usual). They say global warming's caused instead by the sun. Meanwhile, India has been enduring extremely harsh cold weather and many people have died in what appears to be forty degree weather (why don't they put on their coats and drink hot cocoa?). (It's about 35 degrees at night in the "other" Delhi, and there are amazing photos online if you look.) (It is also snowing in Jerusalem, where everyone is making snowmen, including some right at the West Wall: http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=299010). There's no limit to the number of poems you contribute, nor to the subject matter, so long as they touch in some way on weather and the raw data of weather. Whether or not your poem takes a political stand is immaterial. Voting will be on aesthetic grounds (at least for me). However, some will vote on a political basis, I presume, or on a religious basis, or vote to keep someone in particular (like me) from winning. Let's end the contest on Martin Luther King Day, at midnight (January 21st, at midnight). Because Martin Luther King was not at all political, although in Mississippi the holiday is called King-Lee Holiday as MLK shares the holiday with Robert E. Lee in what some in the north might see as a somewhat incongruous confluence of personalities sharing the same celebration. Voting in our contest shall be the day following this holiday (whatever you might choose to call it). Voting is never political. One poet, one vote, and you can't vote for yourself. Here's a poem to kick off the contest:
WEATHER OR NOT
All day we waited for the storm
The weathermen hinted at tornadoes
School was let out at 12:45
At 5:15 the wind caused the trees to wobble
We were afraid of the slashing rain
clear jazzed lightning
But in ten minutes the storm had passed
I brought out the trash
We washed the children
I went downstairs to watch the finals
Kobe’s team is up a few points at the half
June 10, 2008
63 comments:
The earth around the sun does go,
and on its axis tilted.
And so in summers we must mow,
unless the grass be wilted.
The trees in autumn orange glow,
red and yellow quilted.
In winter comes the falling snow,
with gale winds unhilted.
The grass in spring again doth grow,
hell's King Hades jilted.
The earth around the sun does go,
and on its axis tilted.
Whether
It is raining in my classroom--
well, it is not mine I'm told.
It belongs to the taxpayer
to the state to the students
to another teacher.
At any rate it is raining.
The dust of twenty centuries
drizzles in our lungs
as if we could take notice,
as if the words we read.
Outside the weather would be
unnatural were it not for nature
itself the thing that makes it.
No hands go up in this rain;
the curious fires have been quenched.
GM,
Quite the tribute to academic ennui. Thanks for being a committed and challenging teacher. There are never enough.
I hate that feeling that GM uniquely cites. I had a class this fall where nothing seemed to work. Trains never arrived in that classroom. I don't even think I was the station master, or that anyone expected trains to arrive. We weren't going anywhere. The other section, which was exactly the same class, took off at precisely the same time every day and we made huge strides. It's often a matter of who and not what. That is, some students are raring to go, and others simply will not board the train, as perhaps they think it is going to Auschwitz. Hey, I wouldn't have done that! Still, you never know what they are thinking. Sometimes trust in the conductor has broken down. Sometimes it was never there. I think that's part of it. Would a rain dance help? Only if we're all doing it together.
THANKS YOU GUYS.
Seriously. It's nice to hear that "academic ennui" isn't just my own private Idaho.
GM,
You're welcome. And no, classroom ennui (to be a bit more precise on my part) is hardly a private experience. Isn't this something that comes up in the teacher's lounge? I'm serious here. If not, I'm a bit worried about your colleagues.
I can tell from your writings and the video I saw of the poetry reading that you're a heck of a teacher. But even great teachers are going to run into unresponsive classes. Making a difference doesn't mean that every class is great, it just means that more classes are great, and the great classes are greater. You're giving every student the chance to learn from a great teacher, but not all are going to take advantage of it. Depending on where you are in the departmental food chain, you may get more than your fair share of likely-to-be-dead classes. Maybe it's time to push a bit for a class or two that's more rewarding.
awakened
ice breaks
my water jar
basho
tr jh
In Florida
it is either hot or cool
like our politics.
Thanks, Stu.
I got handed debate this year AND lost my permanent room AND have a clueless admin. Debate's "fun" I guess but I want to "have fun." I want to teach the analysis of literature, not how to argue about politics.
To next year!
Can you teach how to argue about literature and art? The Whistler Wilde debate over the Nocturne might give an example?
It's January
So the weather here
Is hot and dry
As a laundromat
Every day until
The end of May.
The monsoon
Starts in June
With typhoons
Rolling through
Twice a week
Like bowling balls
That strike or spare
Through August
Or until the embers
End.
That would be interesting certainly but not within the parameters of the course. The students are learning Lincoln-Douglas debate which is a fairly rigorous sort of thing.
:/
GM,
I got handed debate this year AND lost my permanent room AND have a clueless admin.
Ouch. That's going to leave a mark.
To next year!
Didn't know you were a Cubs fan... ;-).
I suppose all teachers are Cubbies at heart, right?
Honestly, though, I'd love to switch jobs. The problem is that 1) I do actually enjoy teaching and 2) I don't know what else I'm qualified for. I don't have the programming skills nor any other credentials to do any serious data analysis (though it's something I enjoy doing). Eh.
Back to grading.
GM,
I suppose all teachers are Cubbies at heart, right?
You haven't met my wife: sox fan, through and through.
Back to grading.
Hang in there...
Writing poetry on demand.
Is that like publication on demand?
Or publish or perish?
Or the quackery of hackery?
I could never do it.
For me, truth is always an eccentric design. Which is why rhyme is just a parlor-game, unserious and trivial.
Except, very occasionally, as with Plath or Seidel, or Hecht, when it becomes a little hysterical or mad.
This isn't condescension, as some here have thought, but a habit of mind.
The universe isn't consistent and harmonious. It's chaotic. There's always a hole in the container, and the truth leaks out through a metaphysical whistle-blower.
Curtis,
Writing poetry on demand.
Is that like publication on demand?
It doesn't feel that way to me. But then, I'm not a working humanist. Indeed, if it weren't for this blog, I probably wouldn't even be a wanna-be-poet.
I see poetry writing as a skill that improves with exercise. More than that, I see in poetry a socially acceptable form of clamoring for attention, and as such, placing the writing of poetry in the context of a competition just raises those stakes in a natural direction.
There's also something about the nature of the competition here -- poems get interspersed with commentary, votes, and tangential discussions. If a person isn't careful, they might learn something.
In the meantime, I'd like to note the effort that GM's putting into his blog these days. I'm reluctant to comment -- my sense is that he'd rather draw in some people with name recognition in the poetosphere, and a no-name like me might lead them to hold their noses and look elsewhere. Still, I like and recommend his writing: it's smart, honest, and concise. These are great virtues.
Curtis relax and don't be so uptight. Literature matters less than an ant walking through a macaroni noodle. In the scheme of things it isn't even a shooting star. There's no demand. If you want to drink the Kool Aid you do and if you don't you drink the Pepsi. Politics matters a lot more but we here will not ever have any effect on it. And even that doesn't matter. What matters is the kids learning to wipe their mouths with a napkin after pudding and of course sledding is fun.
basho is in the house
Thanks, Stu!
Feel free to comment--no one does.
I haven't quite figured out what that means.
:)
Kirby:
I guess it comes down to how you think inspired writing is written.
The Greeks believed that inspiration was a form of possession. To "in-spire" was to have the deity "breathe" into you the words of your poem. People were merely vessels through which divine vapor flowed. It's a weird notion, but understandable. Ancient people didn't know where inspiration "came from" since it was an invisible mental quality that came and went.
Do we know any more about how being inspired works? Is it a form of bio-rhythm? Are we sometimes susceptible to inspiration, but not at other times?
I do know that my best poems come in moments that I do not control, that the words just seem to flow, but that at other times my imagination is stuck, and I can't seem to put anything together. When I was reading tons of stuff in graduate school, I tended to "fill up" with language, and had a higher facility for "throwing off" variation and invention.
But over the years, I came to distrust work that didn't seem to derive from a compelling motive. Every day I come up with titles of poems I think I'd like to try writing, but for some reason they seldom do. It's mysterious, and I don't question that mystery anymore.
I think talented people can be taught to write workmanlike prose, and to make good, entertaining stories. But poetry is something else. It depends upon factors that are beyond our control. Going into a poem is like opening a door. You go into a room, and there are things lying to hand, you choose one, then another, and keep going. It's almost as if the work writes itself.
That's the sense the Greeks had, of being moved by some inner (or greater) controlling power. I seldom have that feeling, but I believe that it's the genuine article. Not the trivial, cheerful, witty stuff that usually passes for poetry.
James Wright had it. Jack Gilbert had it. Ronald Johnson had it. Sylvia Plath. Zukofsky.
I hope I'm not being too "serious" here. Kirby wants people to feel welcome, that we can't be committed to an idea of quality. But I no longer have interest in the other kind.
As an example, yesterday I wrote a blog about Glenn Gould's versions of Sibelius's 3 Sonatines.
I think those works are examples of clear inspiration, flowing from a specific (regional) kind of feeling. The fjords and conifer forests and snowy landscape flow right into the music and define its shape and meaning. The tones, interrupted by pauses for thought, turning, choosing the way. Doubts, hesitations, trial runs. All reflected in the measure.
curtis
you can submit a Zukofsky poem
given that poets are connected with transcendental power they are immortal i think that's what kirby is saying so in effect or is that affect i don't want to affect any undue changes but i think what he's saying is even dead poets can win these contests
i enter because i'm trying to win a t-shirt which no matter how i try eludes me but since i'm dedicated to eventually winning a t-shirt that maybe in my wildest dreams wendy would make and send to me after a triumphant expression if inimitable verse i will stand supreme with laurel crown and t-shirt as evidence of the great new standard to which kirby invites us
slowly
light
increases
(my second entry)
jh
you could even patch in a glenn gould poem something he said about the weather
la hojarasca
bueno
jh
i'm pretty sure basho is going to win this one
kerplop
Curtis, fyi: Sibelius was Finnish (he was a Swedish speaking Finn). There are no fjords at all in Finland. It's a land of 60,000 lakes most of which are no deeper than eight feet at any given point (you can see a moose standing in the middle at high summer in most). Norway has the fjords.
There are some high hills or low mountains in Finland but they are very far north of the Arctic circle where Finland and Norway touch (Norway has the entire Arctic to itself and wraps around and touches Russia). At the point where the Finland and Norway touch, there are some higher hills, but they aren't Alps or fjords.
Sibelius is tricky.
If you want us to go to your blog do you want me to resurrect the link? I never go anywhere except through my links.
You cut the link when JADL would go there and savage you in the past. I cannot guarantee this wouldn't happen again. You are entitled to be inspired but there are relative degrees of inspiration.
It's just breathing deeply isn't it? Spirit or spiritus is the basis of the term.
Finland is not as flat as Iowa, but it's flat. It's not as flat as Holland, but it's flat. There are a few glacial moraines in southern Finland. There are some breathtaking hills where these moraines stand. But I repeat: there are no fjords.
They do drive Fords.
Oh, Kirby, I didn't mean to imply that Finland actually had fjords.
My blog is an impressionistic link to three short piano pieces written by Sibelius in 1912. As you will note, I was trying to suggest that his work seems "Nordic" in its character--Nordic being inclusive of Northern Germany, Holland, and all of Scandanavia (including Finland). I've never been to Finland, and I don't ever expect to. My only exposure to anything Finnish was Anselm Hollo, one of my poet-teachers at Iowa in the early 1970's. Anselm has been very ill lately, suffering from recurring "benign" brain tumors.
Sibelius was a staunch nationalist, and his music reminds Finns of that. The Second Symphony, aside from being (in my view) a wonderful evocation, is a call to arms.
So, not to worry about fjords. I think I hear fjords in Sibelius's symphonies, but it's only a feeling, not some factual connection.
No, I don't want a link from your site. I thought if anyone was interested they could read my blog post on Gould/Sibelius. Wasn't trying to lure anyone away. As you know, I could care less if anyone--and I mean ANYONE!--reads my blog. I'm a nobody and my blog is a nowhere. There's great freedom in that.
Sorry to hear about Anselm. He was an anchor throughout my Finnish experience. His brother is on the Finnish Supreme Court, and his father the most famous translator into Finnish -- doing as many as seven languages I think I once read.
I talked with Anselm on the phone but never met him.
We had a falling out over communism. He rather likes it.
Goodness gracious.
It's nice when you're polite. I think we can disagree without it becoming a personal disagreement.
Sorry to hear about Anselm. He was an anchor throughout my Finnish experience. His brother is on the Finnish Supreme Court, and his father the most famous translator into Finnish -- doing as many as seven languages I think I once read.
I talked with Anselm on the phone but never met him.
We had a falling out over communism. He rather likes it.
Goodness gracious.
It's nice when you're polite. I think we can disagree without it becoming a personal disagreement.
And, oh, thanks for the info on Finland.
You should tell us more about Finland. Your wife is Finnish, and you've spent time there.
The Finns are supposed to be a very nice people. I think they have, or used to have, the highest heart attack rate of any country in the world. I don't think they ever figured out why. Maybe something about the reindeer fat?
he's a real nowhere man
living in a nowhere land
isn't he a bit
like you and me E
I know lots about Finland but don't know how to make it into a conversation.
To understand Finland you need to have been there or at least seen fifty of their movies.
i think craig has the poetic edge on everyone this time i like his poem even more than i like the poem of basho who so gallantly and willingly entered into this noble competition basho is the guy
but craig's poem rocks weather or not anyone likes it or not i do and that's really the final say hands down i think craig has won this thing i may be wrong some one else may come in witha zinger but unless that happens i think it's over the rainbow and into the woods who knows anyway poetry is for cyberchildren the medium is the message
we talk to the google god
jh
GM's poem on the classroom hit me hardest so far. A very imaginative take on the assignment.
ok so i go back and read gmS poem and i had to take a second take i read it twice and i became enamoured of the ideas within the lines the way whole cognitive universes merge together in a cosmic dialctic between grace adn nature and the possibility of learning something tht is very clever i like that and i'd retrace my steps on the craig poem if i weren't equally enamoured of the ease with which he portrays weather in an ordinary but radiant way for lack of better terms you can almost see the sweat on peoples brows
for my part i am getting in touch with my inner norwegian
you'd think there'd be more statements on the weather
banal or no
winter banal
cold is coming
so i hear
ay canadian clipper
is whispering near
sir sun is shy
i squint to see
the shadowed darkness
of a winter tree
no twitter of bird
no scampering squirrel
cloth bundled humans
o'er ice skate and swirl
surprised as we are
at the certainty of snow
or an evening star
jh
i think this is my 14th entry
This was lovely!
Mars is warming up
It must be those humans
So they got a guy to go
His name was BO
Off he went yo
kirby i mean far be it from me
but your commentary is tending toward the vicious of late your vituperative impetus is taking on an edge a jagged edge now i don't blame you because when you lay out the parameters of political idealism with as much precision as you seem to too well you're just inviting warriors from the distant regions to take up camp on the border and find ways to cross into freedom like a bedraggled mexican with no water mestizo is accepted patter people
just to throw that in there
now i for one appreciate your bombast and your backed-into-a-corner vehemence but it would seem that stu is finding ever better means of dissembling the factory of demented diatribe you cast into the public forum known as a blahwg
your friends seem to be inimical to some degree and i am not at all sure whether that is an effort to help you change your mind or to lessen the effect of mindnumbing illogic in the service of literature
today is the sunday in the week of prayer for christian unity
i will keep the present temperament of lutheran surrealism on my mind while i attend holy mass
it's always important to consider
wet wood
cheezes
dew
then move on to finer things
maybe you need to formulate a lutheran surrealism blessing
like
here's a fried egg on your head
jh
It may not be illegitimate to find a connection as in We are Women. But the problem is that then the next step is to find a mutial grievance. We have been raped serves nicely. Now not all women have been raped (estimates range from less than 1% to more than 80%, but it more often happens to women than to men, so it is a more or less legitimate grievance). Then you find an outgroup. Men. they are the rapists. Probably less than 1% of men have ever raped anyone, but what you do is identify a group, and then label them. Most men are not rapists. I think it's probable that 99% of men have not, or have not even thought about it. But the idea is to say that this group is the aggressor, and then link them to a bad idea. If we were to destroy all men this would never happen to us again is the next step in the logic. This then turns into an Ahabian quest like killing the White Whale.
We are on more familiar ground when we watch this logic with the Nazis, since they are almost universally reviled. Their logic has been studied. The Nazis said we were exploited. By Jews. Let's kill the Jews therefore so this can never happen to us again. Again, probably only a small percentage of Jews had big incomes during the years of inflation in post-Versailles Germany in which the majority of Germans were hungry. The majority of Germans were, too. But the idea was to label all of them and turn them into an outgroup, and then begin the process of genocide which would erase "the problem." Of course the wealthier Jews got out, and what got killed were the 7 million who didn't have the wherewithal to get out of the way of the newly formed Aryan killing machine.
The difference between feminists and Nazis may be that the genocide is only envisioned in one case but is acted upon in the other. But this thinking is generally bad and leads to mutual antagonism or Balkanization. It may serve specific demagogues as it serves Hitler or Dworkin. But it doesn't serve the whole truth and is therefore always just a form of distorted thinking. Distorted descriptions such as all men are bad leads to distorted prescriptions such as we must erase men or Jews or what have you.
We must erase and then you put into a blank the wealthy or the whites (Mugabe, Duvalier) and put in a different group. This is all Ahab thought. I don't deny that it can motivate people effectively. It does. It's a pack of half-truths that leads mobs like hyenas to war or to the ballot box.
It's very effective, but it's quite obviously evil. And Obama traffics in it. He supported the 99%, he supported the outcry against Zimmerman solely on the account that he was white (even when he wasn't), and he supported the outcry against Crowley, even though it turned out he had done nothing wrong. How did Obama buy his way out of this mess? With peanuts.
But it was still wrong to get involved in the first place. Far harder to get past identity politics toward universal principles. I see Romney and MLK as able to champion universal values. It requires an almost Herculean effort to imagine universals since it is far easier to misinterpret sense data as universals are so hard for so many to imagine.
So r, g, c, is the way forward for so many. Even if someone does understand universals, it's still hard to motivate the hoi polloi who can understand a simple message such as: kill the Jews, or kill the men, or kill the .... fill in the blank.
But it's hard to get people to think in terms of universals. I think MLK did a good job however with his image of children of different colors holding hands.
It's a simple but effective image.
Obama is not capable of that kind of thinking at all. Romney was capable of the logic, as was Bush, but couldn't find an effective image to make it clear for people.
This is why MLK has his own day, while the other three stood at the plate but whiffed.
Creating the right imagery is the poet's job. It's not an easy task at all. When we start with the weather one of the jobs should be to tie our poems into the problems of "global warming," which to my mind is just a lot of hot air and whipping up fear in order to create more governmental control of industry.
Lincoln was quite the poet when he stood at Gettsyburg and made his address. He makes a series of simple clear statements. This is a mighty and Herculean task equal in ardor to that of Hercules more physical labors with the Lernean hydra, the boar, and the Augean stable.
Christ did similar things when he put forth the Good Samaritan parable (150 words).
It's easy to put forth a destructive parable, such as that put forth by Kafka in his Parable of the Door of Justice.
But to articulate a positive principle such as universality in law, is almost impossible to achieve. Can it be done?
It's really hard to not make it personal or to argue as Stu has that since the Republicans have been bad to go after the Treasury with bailouts why is it wrong for the poor or some other group to attempt the same thievery? I don't think two wrongs can be right, and one cannot excuse the other. I don't attack any persons when I try to put together my ideas or principles (although I do attack Obama because he's a figurehead of an entire bad movement that is turning America into a Balkanized war zone in which resentment group ratchet up resentments and then try to rile up young people on their behalf. It's effective, but mindless, and is only going to destroy the country. On the other hand I only attack what I perceive as bad ideas. Laws that are meant to help one faction of voters against another are bad laws. I am on firm ground with The Nazis when I lay this out or with the Khmer Rouge. But people then say, as Brett has, that these are not American problems, and that I need to stick with American problems. But when I try to bring these problems into the American equation, most of these problems are still only nascent. The ground is shakier when I say that there are similar feminist factions from Solanas to McDworkin who are setting out on a warpath of identity which can only lead to extermination camps. O does it too. He's a Balkaniser. But where are the camps, people rightly say? I see no camps. Right now, there are no camps. But at the end of the rainbow, this notion of camps is being formed. They could be reeducation camps (Duke University has been turned into a reeducation camp, which tried to use the lacrosse situation as an object lesson, but it backfired and became an object lesson in groupthink).
Romney and W did not use such logic to put forward their goals. They had a hard time getting people to sign on to their goals. Bush probably won because he was slightly more human than Kerry or Gore. His Project for a New American Century is still largely unknown. Even in leftist circles, many are not familiar with Bush's ideas. They think of him as a person without ideas who got in due to the family legacy.
Romney had a similar family legacy and this was widely attacked by the left. Stu thinks Romney's 47% remark was factional and clueless since Romney grew up without much difficulty inside of a wealthy family unit. Romney's point was also lost that there are enormous swathes who depend on handouts and there is a party who's hooking people on these. The black family was largely intact in the 1950s but the Dems drove a spear into that group (it was seemingly meant to protect them) and crucified their families in the name of justice (the Projects which are a form of ghetto were also meant to help!)! It's fishy to hand out fish instead of teaching people to fish. It's a bad principle.
But it's very hard to think about principles. Few achieve it. Even within poetry, even by very good poets, you rarely get a good principle enunciated. Frost does have a good principle in Mending Wall, it's a principle that took many centuries to develop and to turn into a proverb. Useful proverbs may take many generations to develop. Frost attempts to overthrow or undermine the proverb but his own writing is largely forgotten. He does better in Stopping by the Woods and his other most famous poem (I get them confused in my mind) where he begins to articulate an image of going the less travelled route can make a difference. This is an American individualist notion that squares well with the country and yet was given a concrete and vivid existence in his poem. There's nothing like this in any of the other modernists.
It's very rare to articulate a useful sentence. JFK managed it when he proffered his sentence, "Ask not..."
W. never managed this. Neither did the other Bush or Bill Clinton. With Clinton we have the image of a maniac abusing women and in particular having sex with that woman in the Oral Office.
With Obama we have images of him getting Benghazi blown up, and having peanuts with Crowley and Gates.
Reagan fares somewhat better: we have images of his successful invasion of Grenada. But there is no sentence that remains.
Nothing is left of Ford, Carter or LBJ but their bungling. Probably Chevy chase's image of Ford falling down, and Carter's sentence that it's ok to cheat as long as it remains mental, and LBJ?
I don't think anything remains.
We have to go back to Coolidge to get his sentence, "The business..."
And from there it's all the way back to Lincoln.
And then it's to the Founders, especially Madison, that we have to turn.
Our poets and comedians are almost entirely useless thus far. They've given us next to nothing.
Our painters, likewise, have given us almost nothing. Grant Wood's image American Gothic goes far but no further. Rockwell had a few good images that can make their way through the whole people, such as the one with the National Guard helping the little black girl stay safe as she attempts to attend school. She's clean and innocent and deserving.
Very few of our novels say anything. Gatsby doesn't say anything. Nothing Hemingway wrote articulates a principle. So what we get in his case is a clean technique.
I think this is why literature and poetry and art in this country feel dead. They don't speak to the nation as a whole.
What does speak is sports. When you listen to the sportscasters and the players themselves you get proverbs that help them play. This is why people watch these games. They are interested in competition, and what it takes to come out on top. In addition to the play itself, it becomes a laboratory for different kinds of vocabulary.
This is what I am hoping to generate in my poetry contests.
The Civil War poem by Poet-General Konrad Krez called Little Rock that I translated from German to English is also a weather poem, somewhat like mine. His regiment occupied Little Rock from August, 1863, until the end of January, 1865, so he structured his poem as a weather report calendar for each month of 1864.
His other two Civil War poems describe brief bivouacs, two weeks camping out in Algiers across the river from New Orleans and less than a week on the beach in a tent for Heimchen Brazos Santiago. Heimchen is a double entendre as it refers both literally to a tent or 'little home' and colloquially to its occupant, the cricket or cockroach, with whom the poem is itself a dialogue.
my vote means something
i vote for craig's poem
stu's poem is fine in it's own way
but lacks a certain je ne c'est pas
whereas gmS poem is radiant in it's geographical certainty and metaphysical suggestion that learning might be possible
but craigs' poem not to dismiss the other poems at all rings out there with aplomb like a cognitive bomb kiby's poem makes brilliant nothing of a rhetorical mishmash of momentary perceptions in good surrealist style but one is given to the reflection of a dreamlike disturbance in the world of insubstantial matters and leaves one left for lack of a better term completely unmoved not to say it's a bad poem no it's a good poem and good poem's must be inscribed on cave walls for posterity so get busy kirby you got work to do
obviously curtis considers himself above our game or maybe he's drunk on the 49ers as they grunt and punt their way to superbowldom seems like football should've been all finished before christmas the season goes way too long time for a national referendum of referees to rein in the pro sports world those people command too much attention they make sports facilities into cathedrals
has anyone ever seen the gettysburg re=enactment
history in living faded slowly demented color being acted out on a stage of death like a broken record of an ancient rite which no longer understands why so much blood flowed senselessly
craig for poet laureate
at least for 10 minutes
jh
I'm voting for JH because I like his poem that goes here like this:
winter banal
cold is coming
so i hear
ay canadian clipper
is whispering near
sir sun is shy
i squint to see
the shadowed darkness
of a winter tree
no twitter of bird
no scampering squirrel
cloth bundled humans
o'er ice skate and swirl
surprised as we are
at the certainty of snow
or an evening star
I think GM's poem on teaching is more memorable but it's not really about the weather per se but about teaching and uses weather as a metaphor for the heaviness and barometric one can feel in a classroom that isn't working. Whether or not my focus is correct I also have really appreciated JH's willingness to slog with us through the winter doldrums as we attempt to get the temperature of the blog right even though I keep getting death sentences, and blizzards blow through, and the whole idea of warming doesn't seem to have reached this square posting area.
So it's JH for me.
I think Stu, curiously, was influenced by Poe's poem especially in its first and second lines of the first two stanzas and the last two lines of the final stanza.
I liked Craig's poem until "embers" appeared which mixed up the metaphor to the point I could no longer follow. He's talking bowling alleys with typhoons and then suddenly it's embers. I couldn't figure out where those embers came from. I had a meltdown.
Obama is on the radio talking about how "individual liberties require collective action" or some such drivel. Goodness gracious. Some way or another you know he's going to give us "collective action" which is just another word for his unilateral mental activities translated into law bypassing the legislature, bypassing the people's will, and counting on our collective amnesia about Benghazi and Crowley and Zimmerman and all his other crimes to get us all just a little bit closer to the "collective action" that was the Siberian gulag for anyone who opposes his demented will.
Colder today than usual.
I'm voting for JH because I like his poem that goes here like this:
winter banal
cold is coming
so i hear
ay canadian clipper
is whispering near
sir sun is shy
i squint to see
the shadowed darkness
of a winter tree
no twitter of bird
no scampering squirrel
cloth bundled humans
o'er ice skate and swirl
surprised as we are
at the certainty of snow
or an evening star
I think GM's poem on teaching is more memorable but it's not really about the weather per se but about teaching and uses weather as a metaphor for the heaviness and barometric one can feel in a classroom that isn't working. Whether or not my focus is correct I also have really appreciated JH's willingness to slog with us through the winter doldrums as we attempt to get the temperature of the blog right even though I keep getting death sentences, and blizzards blow through, and the whole idea of warming doesn't seem to have reached this square posting area.
So it's JH for me.
I think Stu, curiously, was influenced by Poe's poem especially in its first and second lines of the first two stanzas and the last two lines of the final stanza.
I liked Craig's poem until "embers" appeared which mixed up the metaphor to the point I could no longer follow. He's talking bowling alleys with typhoons and then suddenly it's embers. I couldn't figure out where those embers came from. I had a meltdown.
Obama is on the radio talking about how "individual liberties require collective action" or some such drivel. Goodness gracious. Some way or another you know he's going to give us "collective action" which is just another word for his unilateral mental activities translated into law bypassing the legislature, bypassing the people's will, and counting on our collective amnesia about Benghazi and Crowley and Zimmerman and all his other crimes to get us all just a little bit closer to the "collective action" that was the Siberian gulag for anyone who opposes his demented will.
Colder today than usual.
I'm voting for GM's first poem, about teaching.
I'm a bit disappointed that WB hasn't weighted in, as my first poem contained an intentional homage to his poem in the poetry & economics competition.
The Embers are September, October, November and December.
Kirby,
I think Stu, curiously, was influenced by Poe's poem especially in its first and second lines of the first two stanzas and the last two lines of the final stanza.
Which poem? It's not as if he wrote only one.
Stu, The one we recently read called Alone, in which he talks about the earth travelling around the sun.
Craig, I completely didn't get the Embers! Very nice pun.
I feel guilty toward GM! GM your poem is fantastic! It's just brilliant!
But I want to reward JH, as his poem is really beautiful and reminds me so much of Soupault's poetry.
Kirby,
Stu, The one we recently read called Alone, in which he talks about the earth travelling around the sun.
I'm thinking not. The rhyme scheme as well as content is completely different.
"From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,"
-- Poe
"The earth around the sun does go,
and on its axis tilted.
...
The trees in autumn orange glow,
red and yellow quilted."
-- Kurtz
"From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,"
-- Poe
"The earth around the sun does go,
and on its axis tilted.
...
The trees in autumn orange glow,
red and yellow quilted."
-- Kurtz
Still not buying it. Note how constrained the rhyming pattern was in my poem: ABAB ABAB ABAB. Also note that the poem was about the seasons, which introduced the summer-fall-winter-spring constraint. It's pretty tight.
I'll acknowledge that there is a similarity in meter with the couplet you pick out from Poe, but that involves a bit of cherry picking, because the meter in Poe's poem is purposefully inconsistent.
Meter is running in different ways, but the imagery is similar and the tone of wonder. But it's perhaps possible that Poe has been in a time warp and has been reading Lutheran Surrealism, and got this from you, and this is why he feels so alone.
Ladybugs flutter over the lima beans.
There's more allusion to Sidney and Marvel in Stu's poem than there is to Poe and I'm voting for it on that account.
here we go again
a whole lot
of beautiful losers
Brett has the tie breaker will he vote?
It's disappointing to me that we have a tie. Stu, GM, and JH are the co-winners of the weather contest.
Should we extend it until Groundhog's Day, at least the voting part? It seems apropos due to the weather theme.
If not, then we have our winners!
It's disappointing to me that we have a tie. Stu, GM, and JH are the co-winners of the weather contest.
Should we extend it until Groundhog's Day, at least the voting part? It seems apropos due to the weather theme.
If not, then we have our winners!
remember the embers
Sorry. Craig is also on the ballot and a winner.
A tie is good for an MLK contest.
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