:)

John

Lol, yes, just a little adventure. I wrote this a few years ago. I thought heroic metre might be suitable for the subject, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. Thanks for brio and there's certainly a lot of information. I posted the Scilly series on a love-in sort of site originally. Unfortunately it became a hate-in site once I'd been published a few times, so I had to leave 😂

Thanks for your poems, very much enjoyed. There's no need to apologise for IP; often it just fits 👍

- - -
Allen

I hope you slept well, Allen, and thanks for looking over the poem. I know it's a bit rubbish, really. If I were to have another go, I'd definitely do more research first and have a few practices before posting on Met. I'd also use my voice rather than one of my characters, lol. Still, I'm glad a few line ends brought you satisfaction :)


Best wishes,
Fliss

Hate-ins were not in the 60s plan! I am sorry to hear that news. OTOH, I'm glad brio has appeal, and the trip to the Silly Isles sounds memorable, if rather scilly.

I've decided to name drop a tad and post this poem about AC/DC. Here's the song, which I think is tremendous: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etAIpkdhU9Q

And here's the poem:


We All Must Perish


A bell is tolling. My distracted ear
comes into focus. This is not the sound
an ambulance or fire truck makes; it’s not
the happy peal of wedding bells. It speaks
of how we all must perish. And across
its slow tones, a guitar in counterpoint
comes out of nowhere. What on Earth could this
strange fusion of the sacred and profane
portend for us? The two in dialogue
are joined by a high wail: I’m rolling thunder,
I’m pouring rain, it cries as if possessed.

For this is heavy metal. Angus Young
is in school uniform. I’m going to take
you, says the song, to Hell. Now what is holy
is not good by necessity, and Hell
lies on that axis. The eye lifts, the Lord
is heard in that catastrophe. This is
a struggle we are pawns in, and it plays
from other worlds into our own. The bell
is tolling still, a single note. The band
calls out the chorus. There is no escape.
 

Here now is the great Hank Williams.

First a song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tPcfJZnXu4

And then, a poem:


Lonesome


Hank Williams is going to spend the next three minutes
telling me to mind my own business.
It’s 4 a.m., which may be a good time
to listen to his lonesome twang. I am
not minding my own business after all,
but then he’s the one who keeps talking about his life.

Just one of Hank Williams’s 40 Greatest Hits
clocks in at over three minutes, by one second –
that’s all the time he needs to make his point,
and he does so again and again. So now
he wants me to know he doesn’t like my way
of living. And we do lead different lives –

his son for instance calls another man daddy,
he tells me, and his prison time will have
something to do with that. He’s cut these words
into the living rock; the orchestration,
the voice, the rhetoric, are not the most complex,
thank goodness. Sometimes water is what we want.

Morning John (1am-ish here),

Hate-ins are inevitable, I've decided. It was a shame because I'd had a very pleasant time on that site for almost a decade. But once people become set in their shady ways, there's no point persevering.

I know quite a lot of musical terms, I've just realised. That trip was amazing; I had so much fun revisiting the places I'd visited and learning new things. I think some of the poems are still in Freshtival here.

Thanks for your latest contributions to this thread. I'm very tired at the moment (I just performed a pre-sleep kick), but I'll be back tomorrow to take a proper look. In the meantime, please enjoy this terrible rendering of Mussorgsky's 'Bydło' (music here). I do intend to rewrite it at some stage, but here we are in Amusements, lol.


Bydło

Sheets of rain sweep through the fields
...cattle stand and shiver
track verge trembles, shakes then yields
...road becomes a river.

Farmer must prepare his cart
...take his stock to market
hitch two oxen, shout to start
..."Come, Borys and Czarit!"

So the big beasts drop horned heads
...set their great limbs trundling
past the farmyard barns and sheds
...bearing timber bundling.

See the high cart wheels race round
...hurling mud on all sides!
hear the oxen's huge hoofs pound
...through the screeching squall tides!

Closer closer they approach
...whirring, rattling, creaking!
north wind forcing their encroach
...on the bank, shrill shrieking!

Smell Borys' and Czarit's sweat
...streaming down their tough flanks!
mingling with the earthen wet
...rushing from the bluff banks!

"Whoa there!" Farmer strokes his whip
...to avoid a tall oak
Borys shifts a hefty hip
...rights the flailing haul yoke.

Then the cart turns into town
...and the rainstorm passes
on the farm the sun shines down
...cattle chomp moist grasses.

- - -
I particularly like 'shrill shrieking', I think :D

Hi Fliss,

I don't know - I like it, especially the two oxen, and the chomping at the end.

Here somewhat randomly is Schubert, in musical form (and with my favorite baritone): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0Rry-ahcHM . My favorite song in the cycle may be Der Lindenbaum, though it's hard to argue with the closing number.

And now featuring in a poem:


Separating Schubert from Interstellar Space


Separate knowledge from noise, they say, and that
seems like a worthwhile project. I for instance
know it is 9 a.m. The sun is up,
here where the Rio Grande meets the Gulf
and flowers bloom in late September light.

There’s knowledge to be had in my aunt’s house,
whose shelves are lined with her books, and my father’s,
and mine; where the TV shares information
and we all live our lives. There is an art
to the day’s round on this blue planet where

some seek truth, others happiness, and both
slip through the hand like water. I can hear
the notes of Schubert’s Winterreise as
the clock ticks, though the stereo’s not on.

The music’s like a still pool. And beyond
this bedroom lies a border town, a land mass,
a spinning globe, a solar system, and
black interstellar space that starlight fills.

 

Hi John,

Well, thanks very much for the appreciation! There are elements I like within the poem; I'm just wondering whether I could make it more dramatic. Chomping is always good, though :)

Random Schubert is good too. As you know, I've just woken from an hour's sleep and I really ought to go to bed in earnest soon, lol. But my first impressions of your poem are positive. It's interesting that we have different approaches to writing to music. Perhaps we could consider a collaboration at some stage. Do you remember when I channelled a ram-god on one of your ekphrastic pieces? That was fun :D

Best wishes,
Fliss

There should be more chomping! Though cattle do their fair share in all weathers, natch.

I do indeed remember your channeling my random gods, Fliss! Did you not also channel my poor winged bulls who never got to step off their plinth in the Louvre? It's been a couple of millennia.

I'd be happy to collaborate. Music I think lends itself to all sorts of approaches, including the chomping one, and all have merit. "All have won and all must have prizes," says the Dodo.

Cheers,
John

It's time to call a halt. This thread has been remarked upon, but not in a positive way, I'm afraid.

Drills & Amusements is not the place for mutual admiration communications between the same two people posting their poems on an almost daily basis, which is what the thread has become, so I am closing it.

I'm sorry if this seems harsh, but our "One poem per week" rule on the other poetry boards is there to prevent Eratosphere becoming a vanity site. We can't have D & A being used as a way of avoiding that rule.

Jayne