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
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