Eratosphere Forums - Metrical Poetry, Free Verse, Fiction, Art, Critique, Discussions Able Muse - a review of poetry, prose and art

Forum Left Top

Notices

Reply
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Unread 07-23-2001, 01:53 PM
peter richards's Avatar
peter richards peter richards is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Dec 1999
Location: Oslo, Norway
Posts: 1,375
Post

Hello, mr. lariat, sir - and welcome.

A poem of yours, or a link to the poem, was posted on one of these boards not so long ago. That much I remember, although not the board or the name of the poem, but I do remember that it prompted the comment from myself of (something like) "So that's how it's done".

I was then informed, by some informative person in this informative place, that yourself would be poet lariat in situ and that I would be able to ask you.

I might have got down to something awfully specific like: why did you use 'and' instead of 'but' in line 19 of Opus 327, but that could get terribly complicated, so I thought I'd start you off on a easy question.

How do you do it?

Peter
Reply With Quote
  #2  
Unread 07-24-2001, 09:02 AM
R. S. Gwynn's Avatar
R. S. Gwynn R. S. Gwynn is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Beaumont, TX
Posts: 4,748
Smile

Hi, Peter. How do I do it? I try to do it very carefully so that anyone reading it will know that the person who did it did it right. Sometimes it's easy to do. Sometimes it's not so easy. I have done it both ways and in between. Maybe now we can move on to specifics. Should I post a poem or what?

Sam
Reply With Quote
  #3  
Unread 07-24-2001, 09:21 AM
Solan Solan is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Grimstad, home of Ibsen and Hamsun
Posts: 833
Post

Another one from the Norwegian crowd will answer: Yes.



------------------
--

Svein Olav
http://nonserviam.com/solan/
Reply With Quote
  #4  
Unread 07-24-2001, 09:58 AM
R. S. Gwynn's Avatar
R. S. Gwynn R. S. Gwynn is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Beaumont, TX
Posts: 4,748
Post

This is an unpublished sonnet sequence.

Afterwords

I
Galatea

O.K. I'm upstairs in his workshop sweeping.
So in he rushes, gets down on one knee,
Picks up a little chip of ivory
And holds it to my cheek. Then he starts weeping
And locks me out. The next night when I'm sleeping
He comes and yanks the sheets clean off of me
And lays this yardstick on my leg. I see
Him jot down something in this book he's keeping.

Now I'd as soon move back to the old block
As live like this. I just can't stand much more--
Lying awake till daybreak all alone,
My toes and upwards growing cold as stone,
Counting each stroke while newborn flecks of rock
Patter like snowflakes on his unswept floor.

II
Leda

Sudden is right. No chilled cold duck. No flowers.
No Hallmarks cards or even e-mail waiting,
And I'd requested superhuman powers.
I tell you, girls, it really gets frustrating--
Six seconds max and you'd made plans for hours
Of just a little special time together--
A goose, a pinch, a poke, then toppling towers
And nothing for a keepsake but a feather.

I mean, I wanted a relationship,
The whole shebang, no severed arm or leg
Or marble torso hacked off at the hip.
Trust me, I'm not the kind who likes to beg,
Only it's really hard to get a grip
When all your best-laid plans have laid an egg.

III
Eurydice

Why did he turn around? I'd like, of course,
To think he worried that I'd gotten lost.
No matter now; it's I who bear the cost
Of double widowhood, worse than divorce.
You know musicians, how they always prize
Their latest strokes and keep them humming for us.
Was that a look of anguish in his eyes
Or just a chord-change for his new song's chorus?
Farewell, farewell, I whispered, and he wept,
Watching me sink in insubstantial dark,
Forgotten as a promise no one kept,
A fire diminishing to one last spark.
Word filters down with the just-dead that he
Has topped the charts with "Dicey's Elegy."

IV
Helen

That other one--the one who breaks the stallions--
That's a real man. That simp Andromache
Gets weepy over Hector and chopped scallions
While I play house here with this loser. He
Sits watching reruns of Deliverance
And blasting out those damn Ted Nugent tapes,
Keeping me hidden from the scornful glance
Of Ilium's better half--pure sour grapes.
He sets his stupid targets up outside
And pulls and plink he's nailed one in the center--
Such is the source of all his manly pride.
If heroes are great oaks then he's a splinter.
Great beauty is a curse, and its reward
Is getting stuck with Bubba for your lord.

V
Calypso

I've tried it all--ordered instruction manuals
And tapes shipped overnight in plain brown wrapping,
Acquired an interest in springer spaniels,
And never once disturbed him while he's napping.
I've tightened fanbelts, handled power tools,
Argued to go for it instead of punting,
Fluttered a fly-line in a mountain pool,
And even gone, Artemis help me, hunting.
I've watched Three Stooges marathons till dawn
And shopped at Frederick's for something frilly.
He never notices what I've got on
Or what I don't have on. I feel so silly
But try to help. He eyes me like I'm daft
And lashes one more timber to his raft.

VI

Psyche

Yes, your little wings get in the way,
And, yes, I spank for arrows in the walls,
And, yes, your molting goes on night and day;
You spit up and another feather falls.
I thought your naked butt was cute, but now
The carpet's littered with your tiny turds.
I know you love me but I wonder how
Long I must wait to hear it in your words.
Such are Thought's thoughts, and, Love, Thought's thoughts
aren't thrilling.
Measuring, weighing, biding time, I pray
For days of no spilt milk, no didies filling,
Mixing your formula until the day
You loom above me in your full-fledged glory.
Love conquers thought. It's such an old, old story.


Text
Reply With Quote
  #5  
Unread 07-24-2001, 10:07 AM
MEHope's Avatar
MEHope MEHope is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Future dustbowl
Posts: 1,522
Wink

Well you make it seem so easy this "I try to do it very carefully so that anyone reading it will know that the person who did it did it right."

Welcome, Mr. Gwynn!

------------------
~~Mary
Reply With Quote
  #6  
Unread 07-24-2001, 10:28 AM
wendy v wendy v is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: Western Colorado
Posts: 2,176
Post

Wow, that's a helluvan entrance. Hearty welcome to the new lariat. Brilliant stuff. I especially love Leda, (fabulous open), and Psyche, but they're all just fabulous.

Here's an unspecific, specific question -- why do you suppose the sort of energy and bloody good fun evident in your posted sequence is so rare to find in poetry these days ?

wendy
Reply With Quote
  #7  
Unread 07-24-2001, 10:30 AM
ChrisW ChrisW is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Boston, MA
Posts: 1,651
Post

Just read this through once, and I have no question yet.
For now, I must say the whole sequence is absolutely delightful! I particularly love what you do to Yeats in "Leda" (a little bit like what Hecht does to Matthew Arnold in "The Dover Bitch", come to think of it.) Thank you for posting them!
I have the desire to press you once again to tell us how you do it. Surely there is some simple algorithm, a paint-by-numbers approach you could tell us, if only you wanted to share it!
Welcome to the Lariatship -- I'll come back and ask a real question later.

--Chris W
Reply With Quote
  #8  
Unread 07-24-2001, 10:37 AM
R. S. Gwynn's Avatar
R. S. Gwynn R. S. Gwynn is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Beaumont, TX
Posts: 4,748
Post

>>Here's an unspecific, specific question -- why do you suppose the sort of energy and bloody good fun evident in your posted sequence is so rare to find in poetry these days ?

Rare? Perhaps. Our new laureate, Billy Collins, is great fun, and there's always Wendy Cope (whose new book can be ordered from amazon.com.uk). I do believe that we're still laboring under the kind of high seriousness preached by Mr. Matthew Arnold, and that poetry that evokes a humorous response is somehow relegated to second-class citizenship. But certainly there's a great deal of fun in Eliot, Millay, Auden, Hope, Wilbur, Hecht, and others.
Reply With Quote
  #9  
Unread 07-24-2001, 10:45 AM
R. S. Gwynn's Avatar
R. S. Gwynn R. S. Gwynn is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Beaumont, TX
Posts: 4,748
Post

>>I have the desire to press you once again to tell us how you do it. Surely there is some simple algorithm, a paint-by-numbers approach you could tell us, if only you wanted to share it!


If only. I can tell you what happened with this poem. I'd had "Galatea" for about ten years but had never been satisfied with it. It occurred to me that it might be too weak to stand as an individual poem, so one day the idea of a sequence popped into my head. I composed most of "Afterwords" orally, reciting into a microcassette recorder while driving from Texas to North Carolina. I ended up with a bunch of usable fragments that I assembled over a couple of days at my mother's house. There was quite a bit of revision, and there are still some things I'm not entirely happy with but can't think of how to remedy. I do find that most of the poems I've written in the last few years have come out of sessions with the tape recorder.

The chief difficulty with these poems is that I knew how each one was going to end. When this happens (and sometimes you know only the beginning) there's quite a bit of bumbling and fumbling and stumbling before you can figure out how to get to point B when you don't know where point A is. Of course, once I got into the sequence it began to generate some energy and momentum of its own, so it became easier as it went on. I wanted the voices (or at least the tones of the voices) to be discrete yet to share the same pissed-off sensibility.
Reply With Quote
  #10  
Unread 07-24-2001, 11:47 AM
Carol Taylor Carol Taylor is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2000
Location: Houston, TX, USA
Posts: 7,827
Post

"There was quite a bit of revision, and there are still some things I'm not entirely happy with but can't think of how to remedy."

Can you tell us what parts you aren't happy with and why?

Welcome to the board. We're especially lucky to have this opportunity to get you to talk about your own work.

Carol
Reply With Quote
Reply

Bookmarks

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump



Forum Right Top
Forum Left Bottom Forum Right Bottom
 
Right Left
Member Login
Forgot password?
Forum LeftForum Right


Forum Statistics:
Forum Members: 8,399
Total Threads: 21,840
Total Posts: 270,796
There are 860 users
currently browsing forums.
Forum LeftForum Right


Forum Sponsor:
Donate & Support Able Muse / Eratosphere
Forum LeftForum Right
Right Right
Right Bottom Left Right Bottom Right

Hosted by ApplauZ Online