With a sigh, the war begins.

I have decided to make this blog a little more pointed in its purpose, specifically with poetry. I got a book last semester called The Teacher's and Writer's Handbook of Poetic Forms. It is a handy introduction to various poetic forms and styles. What I would like to do is go through the the book, using other reference points along the way, giving examples and explanations of poetic forms, as well as trying my hand at each one along the way. With this in mind, I wanted to start today with the acrostic poem.

An acrostic poem, in broad terms, is a poem in which the first letters of each line spell a word or phrase that gives deeper significance to the poem as a whole, indeed sometimes giving the complete context. You may remember my earlier (ill concieved) poem Annagraneto as an example of an acrostic, but there are far more professional examples that I could cite.Wikipedia cites Poe's poem simply titled An Acrostic.

Elizabeth it is in vain you say
"Love not" — thou sayest it in so sweet a way:
In vain those words from thee or L.E.L.
Zantippe's talents had enforced so well:
Ah! if that language from thy heart arise,
Breath it less gently forth — and veil thine eyes.
Endymion, recollect, when Luna tried
To cure his love — was cured of all beside —
His follie — pride — and passion — for he died.

In general I will try to cite "real" sources rather than Wikipedia, but between my book and having learned about acrostics in class I feel fairly confident to use loose references.

As is common with poetry, writers have attempted to stretch the boundaries of the acrostic. Poetic Forms gives an example of a double acrostic,

Many times I

Yelled across the cosmoS

Not knowing to whoM

And/ or what everlasting top bananA

Men had sought in faR

EternitY

Using the first and last letters of each line brings significance to the otherwise convoluted poetry.

Acrostics have been around for a while. There are nine acrostic psalms in the Bible: 9-10; 25; 34; 37; 111; 112; 119 and 145. Psalm 119 is the most complete acrostic psalm. for more about these psalms click here

  For some of the poetry I wrote during my creative writing class I was required to make multiple revisions to the first drafts. I wanted to show in some way the process which I was made to do this in tandem with the post's theme. Following are all of my revisions of the acrostic poem SIGH.

Sigh – First Draft

Singing at first

I start to scream

Given the worst

Heavily breathing

Sigh – Second Draft

Singing loud at first

I lose my breath

Going past the hearse

Heaving silent death

Sigh – Third Draft

Screaming

Inside

Grieving

Hide

Sigh – Fourth Draft

Screaming

Inside. My

Grieving I

Hide

Sigh – Fifth Draft

Settled screams

Inward illness

Greeting grief

Hidden horror

Sigh – Final Draft

Settled screams

Inward Illness

Graven grief

Hidden horror

Sigh is not very complicated, and i only picked the word sigh to keep the poem short. I wanted to evoke the physicality of respiration alongside with the sadness of desperation that pervades loneliness.

That's the gist for this week, tune in later for another poetic form!

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As with my last post i want to throw something interesting in the end here. I so love the song that i posted last time, a song which i found due to a video game trailer, that i decided for the next three posts (this one included) to be a series of three of the best video game trailers ever posted, mostly due to the music. Specifically, Gear of War 1-3.  Rather than post the music videos with a link to the actual trailers, I'm going to post the actual trailers which speak in a different artistic form than the songs or videos alone. Without further adue,

They only get better from here.....

Not exactly tea and crumpits, but Crumpit nonetheless.

                It's been quite some time since my last post, this was mainly due to a single class that I had last semester: Creative Writing. Although the class was not great it did help me to learn a way to edit my poetry, other than just re-reading it. I started writing posts a few times, but ultimately I wanted to wait until I had as much new materiel as possible before I started posting again, so that I could write, review, and edit my materiel.

                 In the end, I'm really excited about some of the things I came out with, and I want to start with what I consider one of my best products of the semester.

"Mount Crumpit"

Above the town

The Grinch heard

On the north wind

The fervent cheers

Of the town below.

“Never are we alone!”

They cried.

“Never are we alone.”

He sighed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the fifth draft of this poem. I may post the original draft or some other versions later, but this is what I really decided in the end was the best use of the fewest amount of words, which is what my professor said was the goal of poetry. I'm not sure if that's entirely true, but I can see the power in it. 

For Mount Crumpit I was really trying to get to the heart of the lonely and abused. Everyone knows what it's like to "be alone in a crowded room" (as Attack! Attack! puts it). I couldn't think of a character who exemplified this more than The Grinch. The last four lines are really the clinch of the whole thing, the poem could really be just those lines, but I like the expanded influence that the reference has. Few things accentuate pain more than the oblivious joy of others. And nothings makes a person feel more alone than seeing other people, knowing that he or she cannot partake. Perhaps misers are miserly for a reason. 

I'm not sure what this says about the rest of the story. Maybe all that people need is to find out that they are genuinely cared for, as the Jim Carey rendition suggests. Theodor Geisel's original script is a bit more vague however. The Grinch was sad because the Whos (whose?) were enjoying themselves with Christmas, but when he learned that they loved each other (or Christmas rather) just for love's sake his heart changed. Is it enough to see that people are really loving to take away a person's lonely bitterness? Are the two versions really so different? It's hard to say, and ultimately not really what this poem was touching on. I hope that there is hope, but if not perhaps people can at least connect through the mutual misery that Mount Crumpit attempts to capture.

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           In the past I have left behind songs and music videos that have particularly impressed me. I would like to perhaps make this a permanent attribute of the blog. If not videos or music, then other things of beauty that I have seen or heard, beauty being in the eye of the beholder as it is. This week perhaps more than others.

This video, i think, is beautiful. I first heard this song in a trailer for the game "Assasin's Creed: Revelations" (Which incidentally is a mesmerizingly beautiful piece of art as well that you can view here) 

I won't ruin to much, cause I think you should just drink it in. Please enjoy,

Es verdad

It's been a little while since I posted, and as usual I'm sort of stressed for time so I'm just going to throw up a little something with a few lines of comment.

Es Verdad

Es verdad que quiero morir.

If I'm without you here,

Como puedo sobrevivir?

Es Verdad que quiero saber,

How I've become lost in your hair,

Siempre nesecito ser.

Es verdad que quiro oir

The sound of your joy in my ear,

Contigo, yo no debo ir.

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It's a pretty simple little poem, I kinda like it though. I basically just missed someone a great deal. Not much more than that.

More later.

Deep!

O.K.! So it's been a little while since my last posting. I have been generally very busy and just too tired in the last few weekends to have the patience for a post. I have, however, been a busy little bee with my writing. In the past few weeks I have come up with three or four solid poems that I actually kind of like. Stress tends to help with that. Today, I present a simple poem with far reaching implications. Please enjoy.

Deep

She smiles from the greatest heights

And cries herself to sleep at night

He jumps with joy and unmatched charm

And puts the blade into his arm

He writes and writes for other's glee

And thinks such thoughts to fill the sea

Under his fist she sits quiet

Yet in her mind stirs a riot

For some man's cause he is a pawn

But to great things his mind is drawn

Although she governs that small child

Her heart it rages free and wild

So long ago within that cave

He wonders how his soul to save

Those two of old sat in the dirt

Considering a world with hurt

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The poem works on this thesis: "Everyone is deep, and everyone has always been deep."

The first three couplets refer simply to how people may seem shallow they always have deep thoughts going on in private. The Fourth couplet is a woman under the burden of an oppressive husband, she is forced to be be silent, but in her mind things are still raging wild. The fifth is referring to a foot soldier in a war, discussing how just because he is a pawn, does not indicate that he is somehow inferior in his thinking. The sixth is a reference to Jane Eyre, one of my favorite books. The seventh hearkens back to a cave man, who sits and considers his unworthy state as a sinner and how he might be saved. And finally, the last couplet refers to Adam and Eve, having just been thrust from the garden, as they are thinking over the implications of a broken world.

I don't think that man is any wiser than they have ever been. If anything we have gotten worse. Everyone is deep, and everyone has always been deep. 

Summer heat and new notebooks

Getting a new notebook is a simple joy. Its blank pages a very symbolic, full of hope for the future. Looking through the empty leaves I wonder what parts of me will end up on the page and whether or not it will have been worth it.

I got a new notebook recently and I thought for a long time before putting anything on the first page. In the end I think I may have been a little over eager and I don't really like this as much as I hoped I would, but it's certainly not the worst thing I have written. It is however certainly appropriate given my current surroundings. I'm working at a summer camp out in east Texas, and it's probably about 100,000,000,000,000 degrees. I wore a shirt all day once, and I never had to work directly in the shade, but I still found that my shoulders were boiled when I lay down in bed for the night. Here it is either way,

Springtime in Texas

Up from the ground with heaving shoulder

The flower puts off earth and boulder

But as it looks up to the sky

It's already begun to die

The sun it shines with brilliant power

And burns and wilts the little flower

Yet at it has begun to die

By golden rays in open sky

A savior of some sort, and how!

A hungry beast, the lonely cow

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I think it's about death or regret or something, I'm not one hundred percent sure. I don't think it's bad though. Oh well...

Martyr

      Well I managed to get just a little bit of writing done despite my heavy workload over the past week. I've written two versions of this poem but this is the one that people so far have responded better to. I don't have much time for explanation so, here it is.

Martyr

There were two groups watching him

One with eyes of brazen anger

One with eyes which saw no danger

Yet both saw fire surround the rim

Those first watched as his ribs splintered

His screams flew into open sky

Till Finally failing with a sigh

Into space his breath was rendered

They saw his shoulders melt away

The bones protruding out of place

the pain and terror on his face

The did rejoice his final day

The second saw as his heart splintered

His eyes were lifted to the skies

Till Finally smailing with a sigh

Into space his soul was rendered

His shoulders grew and bowed away

And wings unfolded in thier place

As golden light beamed from his face

They did rejoice his final day

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Well that's all I have time for, See ya next week!

Corazon del Hombre/ Sandburg

I found the prose selection I had been looking for! It's very exciting, I quite like it. Of course by some inverse nature this means that casi nadie mas les gusta. Some lines were partially inspired by Carl Sandburg's Always the Young Strangers. In the end though it's really a pretty overt poem, or so I thought when I was writing it. There seems to be one small point that needs clarification. When I refer to the "working-woman" I am indeed referring to a woman of the worlds oldest profession. If that still doesn't clarify it for you ask you parents. I'm purposefully not using the current or more grotesque terminology, because it's unnecessary and not the point. These few lines have no name yet, so I'll just tentatively name it Heart of Man.

Heart of Man

The heart of man is like the Working-Woman, 

Wailing alone in the night,

Struggling to recall those young days of bare feet and hands grasping for the tops of trees.

Striving against some spoiled thing deep within,

But still caught in her own mire.

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Again, I really quite liked this one. Unfortunately, as with some of my other work, I was praised on the writing style, but my concept was heavily criticized. I think it's both appropriate and true but if I didn't then I probably wouldn't have written it.

I would like to take a moment now to promote my favorite poet who I mentioned before, Carl Sandburg. I just recently finished reading his autobiography Always the Young Strangers which was simply amazing. It's very chic these days to be almost anti-American. I find this somewhat ironic because America is one of the few countries where you're allowed to actually stand up for what you think is wrong, and I feel that any major change that people cry out for would invariably take that right away. Even so, even I get into that mood at times, I look to the president and blame him for things far beyond his control, forgetting that he has a huge job that I cannot even begin to fathom. One way or another however, Sandburg has a magical quality that actually makes you proud to be an American. His story of growing up in the late 1800's in Galesburg Illinois makes you remember what America was built for. He speaks with such reverence of the rich conglomeration of cultures that have settled here. He was proud of civil war heroes and worked hard to get by.  I would highly encourage you to read some of his poetry, it will pierce your heart. I'll likely be posting a lot of it in the future, but for now just enjoy this small snippet.  

HAPPINESS

I ASKED the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell
     me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
     thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
     I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
     the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
     their women and children and a keg of beer and an
     accordion.