[inkwellpoetess]

Ginger's poem "There is No You to Accuse" has caused me to question the "list poem". What makes a good list poem? What are the pro's and con's of that form? Does anyone have any favorite list poems they could cite here as examples?

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Regards,
Terri

[RCL]

Terri, it isn't "free," but it's a classic a free-v might allude to:

How Do I Love Thee?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.


Here's one, much freer:

A Hardware Store as Proof of the Existence of God

I praise the brightness of hammers pointing east
like the steel woodpeckers of the future,
and dozens of hinges opening brass wings,
and six new rakes shyly fanning their toes,
and bins of hooks glittering into bees,

and a rack of wrenches like the long bones of horses,
and mailboxes sowing rows of silver chapels,
and a company of plungers waiting for God
to claim their thin legs in their big shoes
and put them on and walk away laughing.
In a world not perfect but not bad either
let there be glue, glaze, gum, and grabs,
caulk also, and hooks, shackles, cables, and slips,
and signs so spare a child may read them,
Men, Women, In, Out, No Parking, Beware the Dog.

In the right hands, they can work wonders.

—Nancy Willard




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Ralph

[This message has been edited by RCL (edited January 19, 2002).]

[MEHope]

Terri, what makes a good list poem is what makes a good poem period in my book, it holds my intererst, it plays with language, introduces elements and images in new and unique way, no matter if I've known these things before. I have a poem that I like quite a lot by Dorianne Laux, I'll post the URL since I've had no luck posting anything longer here today --- in fact must return later and try the prose poem thread again.

Fear

~~Mary

[jasonhuff]

One danger of a list poems is going on too long. I've seen that happen far too often.

jason

[inkwellpoetess]

Stunning poem Mary, thanks for the link!

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Regards,
Terri

[A. E. Stallings]

I'd guess the main thing with a catalogue poem is that the details would have to add up somehow, have an arc, a movement.

Robert Pinsky's Shirt strikes me as a successful poem with catalogue elements. It is not, however, strictly free verse, rather, roughly formal, with five beats in a line.

[inkwellpoetess]

Ms. Stallings,

Thanks for that link , very interesting form, I see there are different ways to do this type of poem. I guess Mary hit it on the head, that this form is no different than any other form, in that it needs to incorporate all the things that make for a good poem, no matter what the form is. Also I would like to thank RCL for reminding me of a classic form of list poem.

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Regards,
Terri

[This message has been edited by inkwellpoetess (edited January 21, 2002).]

[Fred Longworth]

Whether it's a list poem
or catalog poem,
it has to be more than
an inventory.


"Lessee, two cans of Campbells's Chicken Noodle Soup,
a can of beets -- God, I hate beets! --,
a sprayer of D...D...T -- oops, that's DeoDoranT,
a jar of pickled pigs' feet (I remember that cop
who got drunk at Grady's Bar, and took his shoes off
right at the kareoke mic), Mom used to like
pickled pigs' feet, except that she's dead."

My number-one all-time "I hate this kind of list" is when a poet gets into flowers. Then it's, "Look, Ma, how many flower names I can remember!"

I have nine more complaints about list poems, but I will spare you.

Fred the Merciful

[ginger]

Fred,

Your comments made me laugh. My mother has been an avid gardner most of her life, but somehow I never absorbed an ounce of her knowledge. I'm not sure I can even tell the difference between a maple and an oak. As a result, I'm bored to tears by flower poems and have always just skimmed the landscape descriptions that I find in fiction.

An example, in my opinion, of both botany and listing done well (though it's not strictly a list poem), is H.D.'s "Sheltered Garden"

Sheltered Garden

I have had enough.
I gasp for breath.

Every way ends, every road,
every foot-path leads at last
to the hill-crest--
then you retrace your steps,
or find the same slope on the other side,
precipitate.

I have had enough--
border-pinks, clove-pinks, wax-lilies,
herbs, sweet-cress.

O for some sharp swish of a branch--
there is no scent of resin
in this place,
no taste of bark, of coarse weeds,
aromatic, astringent--
only border on border of scented pinks.

Have you seen fruit under cover
that wanted light--
pears wadded in cloth,
protected from the frost,
melons, almost ripe,
smothered in straw?

Why not let the pears cling
to the empty branch?
All your coaxing will only make
a bitter fruit--
let them cling, ripen of themselves,
test their own worth,
nipped, shrivelled by the frost,
to fall at last but fair
With a russet coat.

Or the melon--
let it bleach yellow
in the winter light,
even tart to the taste--
it is better to taste of frost--
the exquisite frost--
than of wadding and of dead grass.

For this beauty,
beauty without strength,
chokes out life.
I want wind to break,
scatter these pink-stalks,
snap off their spiced heads,
fling them about with dead leaves--
spread the paths with twigs,
limbs broken off,
trail great pine branches,
hurled from some far wood
right across the melon-patch,
break pear and quince--
leave half-trees, torn, twisted
but showing the fight was valiant.

O to blot out this garden
to forget, to find a new beauty
in some terrible
wind-tortured place.

[2JR]

A few of my favorite list poems are written by

Michael Burkard (especially his "Kafka" poem), David Antin, there's one by Robert Hass ("Warsaw..." I forget the rest of the title) and Ashbery's "Into the Dusk Charged Air"-- one of my favorite poems ever.

I have a strange thought concerning list poems: to me, list poems, when done well, are some of the most sexual poems we have in the language... The rhythym, and breath, and the sheer waiting for something to turn, calm, bring closure to the redundant, sometimes quickening patterns of breathing in a way that is, well, sublime...

The kinetics of such poems attract me when at my most physical.

The effect leaves me speechless.

[This message has been edited by 2JR (edited January 29, 2002).]