I'm sure many of you widely-read Spherians know the work of the Pennsylvania-born poet Robert Francis (1901-1987)-- and his "Silent Poem", in particular. It's the one where he presents a simple list of compound nouns-- nearly all trochaic, plus a couple of dactyls and one four-syllable foot which I guess is a double trochee or ditrochee ("honeysuckle" in line 3)-- and presents them as a poem.

I think it works exceedingly well on the literal level as we check out the farmyard, but I think Francis also uses those simple rural elements to take the reader on a much more complex journey: from day to night to dawn, from summer to winter, from the present to the past, from life to death-- and even to the suggestion of resurrection, maybe, at the very end. But I'm not sure it does all that for anybody else, and I'd really like to hear some reaction to it. Maybe I'm overdoing the interpretation? (By the way, there are supposed to be a few more spaces between each word, which effectively slows down the reading of the poem-- but this program refuses to let me add any.)

Marilyn


Silent Poem

backroad leafmold stonewall chipmunk
underbrush grapevine woodchuck shadblow

woodsmoke cowbarn honeysuckle woodpile
sawhorse bucksaw outhouse wellsweep

backdoor flagstone bulkhead buttermilk
candlestick ragrug firedog brownbread

hilltop outcrop cowbell buttercup
whetstone thunderstorm pitchfork steeplebush

gristmill millstone cornmeal waterwheel
watercress buckwheat firefly jewelweed

gravestone groundpine windbreak bedrock
weathercock snowfall starlight cockcrow

-- Robert Francis

It does very little for me except stir up some annoyance. Sure, the nouns are arranged in some patterned manner, but what that boils down to is clever listing. I regard it as gimmickry, not poetry.

What annoys me is that this is the kind of potentially facile approach that is often seized on by insta-poets. Give me a few hours, and I'm sure I could think of, or look up, and scribble down fifty interesting and often unusual nouns covering urban life, or Japan, or sports; arrange them into some kind of structure, include hint of a hint of a teaser in the last grouping, and declare, "Hey, look, I wrote another poem." Naah.

Michael, so do I take it that you also reject Edna St Vincent Millay's "Counting-Out Rhyme"?


Counting-Out Rhyme

Silver bark of beech, and sallow
Bark of yellow birch and yellow
Twig of willow.

Stripe of green in moosewood maple,
Colour seen in leaf of apple,
Bark of popple.

Wood of popple pale as moonbeam,
Wood of oak for yoke and barn-beam,
Wood of hornbeam.

Silver bark of beech, and hollow
Stem of elder, tall and yellow
Twig of willow.


KEB

PS - I tried to do one of these poems once, using the names of towns in the Hudson River Valley, where I spent much of my childhood. The names alone have a really iconic feel to me; I probably learned to read on their town signs. I spent weeks looking at the map, deciding which names were right and sounded right, and changing the order according to all sorts of criteria. The sounds and the rhythm are incredibly important in these, and I think Robert Francis got it right with his feminine endings. My poem has never been a complete success, and not surprisingly the main issue has been finding a title strong enough to set the piece up. Currently it's called "I See the Hudson River," which is also the first line of a song I made up when I was four.

PPS - more food for thought: Kristin Thomas Spam Poetry

Interesting take on the poem, Michael. I think you're right: something like this certainly doesn't require the same amount of plain ordinary crafting that most poetry does-- at least the kind of poetry that comes complete with syntax and punctuation. On the other hand, Francis's word-choices are pretty fresh, pretty interesting . . . those last two couplets in particular are undeniably evocative.

But on the third hand, lists and collections of subject-specific terminology is pretty easily come by these days. If I Googled, for example, "figure skating", I could probably find a couple dozen trochees in two minutes that would serve a similar purpose. In fact, maybe somebody on the list has actually used this approach, and come up with something worthy. If so, please say so!

Anybody else want to try one? (You, Michael? Feel like wasting a few hours Googling?) And Katy, if you still have a copy of your Hudson River Valley poem, please consider posting it.

Meanwhile, it looks like "Musing on the Masters" will not be the right forum for this topic. I think I'll waltz the entire thing over to Drills and Amusements, even though it might lack the intrinsic hilarity of re-writing song lyrics. Further discussion of the Francis poem will still be welcome over there, of course.

Marilyn