Walt to Emily

O Emily, anomaly, you sing There is no frigate like a book,
And, Exultation is the going / Of an inland soul to sea!

Please climb aboard the good ship Whitman. . . .set sail
From home. . . . Song of Myself your chart and sextant.

Though recluse you have, methinks, imagined Wild nights!
In roiling seas. . . .When your life had stood a loaded gun?

Discharge! Load your lungs with earth and sun to yelp and yawp
Of cherished freedoms. . . . shoot truth straight, not slant!

You survey what I see, my macroscopic views. . . . beneath
Your microscopic lens! My ocean is your dusty pond. . . .
Is that gaze a squint?

Closer I approach you, Em. . . .breathing into, warming ears,
teasing, whispering, “With widened eyes, you’d see the oceanic
swells and surges. . . .feel Spirit pulsing, pummeling our senses.”

Ah, you note my eight and twenty bathers, men and women. Are you,
Sweet Emily-of-empathy, the twenty-ninth? Splashing, frolicking
Intermingling limbs with us. . . .but dry behind your cabin’s porthole?

Dive! Brave the floods of flesh. . . . waves of blood, currents of souls,
Submerge, merge, emerge. . . .See that my craft, like yours, is true.
Hear me. Dive in and play.

I will exult in you. . . .


from Amsterdam Quarterly and later in Ghost Trees

per his 1855, first edition, using ellipsis throughout

This Is a Poem

This is a poem,
as you can tell
because, you see,
it rhymes so well,

and if you count
the beats per line,
you'll see they all
come out just fine

(in this case "fine"
means each has two).
But there's an even
better clue

by which you won't
just think, but know,
this is a poem:
I told you so.

Silverback

There’s only one sun in the sky:
one star in our solar system.

There’s only one I in foci:
one centre of the circle.

The atoms have their nuclei
containing all our power.

The eagle glides across the sky
in solitary splendour.

The mighty lion isn’t shy,
Kings don’t hide; they roar with pride!

The Himalayas reach up high:
a point beyond the heavens.

Each storm can only have one eye:
the calm before destruction.

There is a truth, a reason why:
our world looks to its leaders,

so this, here verse, can testify:
Great Writers rule their readers!

Doesn't it take sense that the guy who raised the fuss about junky poems about poetry posts the most junky poems about poetry? What's worse, I'm beginning to like some of them and starting to convince myself that one or two in a book get lost, but string eight or ten together as a separate section and maybe they play off and help each other - and I need eight pages or so for another book...

Erato at Sarasota

Four rabbis board the charter fishing boat.
Full-bearded Hassids, extra-kosher guys
in somber suits, white shirts, black hats that float
across the Sarasota pier; surprise
the other passengers, who can’t disguise
their wonder at what’s trundled down the docks.
“They’ll set gefilte traps,” I warn - I’m wise
to all the tactics of the Orthodox -
“Put cream cheese on a three-pronged hook and troll for lox.”

“You putz,” she says, “Forget your fancy flights.
You see a beard, you think Maimonides.
The fact, my dear, is that they’re Mennonites -
good Amish farmers come for sun and breeze -
not props to populate your fantasies.
All you ever do is strew old Jews,
ex-lovers, Elliotese and Japanese
throughout a work and call it verse – abuse
a poet’s licensed right to choose whose life is whose.”

What does she know? I’m not bemused by nymphs
who nag at the conceits that I propose,
think they see truth with every sharp-eyed glimpse.
Yes dear. I just ignore her yawp and close -
unleash my rebbes till each stanza glows
with whiskered quartets singing, each to each;
mad sages dancing slow adagios,
their music droning, drowning out the screech
I swallow as I struggle; choking on a peach.


The Minimalist at Work

Mad Mary
Minimalist
Divelicates
... my whole
Masticates
Adjudicates
... and
Extricates
... its soul

“Show don’t tell.
Don’t need that.
You’ll do well
To lose some fat”

My epic poem
... has lost
... its heft
... arhythmically.
Like the Cheshire cat
... now all
... that’s left
... is a simile.

Puns in Poems

A punning word is one
of several senses spun

Or for deep esprit
there’s etymology

Exaggerating stages
piling up through ages

Perhaps extravagance
beyond the common sense

I learned this from Thoreau
whose puns were always thorough.

Dame Rhetoric

Synecdoche means when we name
A thing by a part of the same,
As folks with no class
Say "a fine piece of ass"
When referring to all of the dame.

Metonymy's almost the same.
It means when we give things the name
Of something related:
"A skirt that I dated"
Refers not to clothes but a dame.

The way I see it is the best way to teach people how to write poetry is to show them how not to write it. For my last trick OTT brash metaphor and now for a sibilance fest:

‘S’

S, noisy hiss, simple sound,
the effervescent letter,
a breathless whisper is the mist,
the sweetest kind of passion drips
like sips of sarsaparilla.

S, the sassy snake that slithers,
a slender nib slopes with its curves,
and flicks its tongue between the lines,
the satisfying strokes that signs
its soft satin like signature.

S, the language of the sea,
screams of pleasure locked in shells.
The wind fashions the ocean's silk
so s-shaped waves clasp one another
and send their secret message.

S, the sand between my toes,
a plural gently laps my feet.
With S the answer’s always yes,
assertive keystroke pressed,
as S races across my screen

Sssssssssssssssssssssssssssss,
the silence between songs-
seconds where no strings are strummed,
the wireless sighs that seize the air
to soothe the roots of senses.

S, the sensation skirting skin,
the stoke of flesh, a speechless sin,
the synthesis that sparks and skims
and slides its lips along the rim
of decency itself.

Designing Words

I.

Logos:

My living breath informs all things,
the moon and sun, the earth and sea,
the sweets and sours, salves and stings,
for I am One composed of three:

Adore the Son, and honour him as mee.

Man’s beginning was my Word,
and you will find that every line
now said or sung within your world
was made by men of my design:

In whom the fullness dwels of love divine.

II.

Satan:

He ended Eden with his words
and sentenced three of us who fell,
but I revise his fallen world
to sound and sense that speak my spell:

To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

When I inspire your vatic men
to sing the world with fiery notes,
my power is Promethean—
its words flare from a thousand throats:
Of man’s First Disobedience. . . .

III.

Mankind:

Some verses of our Genesis
and Milton’s lines on primal treason
prove poetry can best express
the good-in-evil—logos, reason:

Happier, had it suffic’d him to have known
Good by it self, and Evil not at all.
For ever now to have their lot in pain.

We hear these bold immortal voices,
and may defer to I. or II.
when whispering prayers or shouting curses,
but poets sing that both are true.

For I behold them soft’nd and with tears.


Italic lines from Milton, Paradise Lost

From Ghost Trees

Stumbled across this one - about twenty years old, but it actually is an accurate if exaggerated description of why I stopped writing - and never finishing - short stories/novels - and switched to poetry.

Why I Write Poetry Instead of Novels

We were told to write about ourselves
so I went home and wrote a perfect sentence.
I polished it and I rephrased it,
and shined each word until it glistened on its own,
but also became an integral part
of a larger and extraordinarily complex entity.
My shining words were strung together in perfect
... order.

Soon I had another perfect sentence
and by the end of the year, a third and most of a fourth.
The perfect sentences developed an internal rhythm
... and cadence
they reflected and strengthened each other.
As the number of words increased,
I discovered that it was easier to develop hidden
... meanings,
and even to hint at puns in other languages.
Writing was beginning to come easily.

I was a natural.