Going Wrong
By Jack Gilbert
The fish are dreadful. They are brought up
the mountain in the dawn most days, beautiful
and alien and cold from night under the sea,
the grand rooms fading from their flat eyes,
Soft machinery of the dark, the man thinks,
washing them. “What can you know of my machinery!”
demands the Lord. Sure, the man says quietly
and cuts into them, laying back the dozen struts,
getting to the muck of something terrible.
The Lord insists: “You are the one who chooses
to live this way. I build cities where things
are human. I make Tuscany and you go to live
with rocks and silence.” The man washes away
the blood and arranges the fish on a big plate.
Starts the onions in the hot olive oil and puts
in peppers. “You have lived all year without women.”
He takes out everything and puts in the fish.
“No one knows where you are. People forget you.
You are vain and stubborn.” The man slices
tomatoes and lemons. Takes out the fish
and scrambles eggs. I am not stubborn, he thinks,
laying all of it on the table in the courtyard
full of early sun, shadows of swallows flying
on the food. Not stubborn, just greedy.
Pending Good
By Sarah Holmes
The deer are beautiful. They quietly lope up
the mountain in the dawn of days, alarming
and familiar and warm beneath the forest canopy,
the dappled moonlight fading from their orb-like eyes,
Swift gears of the sunrise, the man contemplates,
Tracking them. “What do you know of my devices!”
demands the goddess. Hmph, the man grunts loudly
and raises his bow, aiming at the russet doe,
preparing heart and mind to do something terrible.
The goddess contends: “You choose on your own
to live like this. My brother raises cities where
things are human. My aunt creates fields of wheat
but you hunt my deer.” The man releases the arrow
and the blood runs thick from a perfect wound.
He leaps forward and the herd vanishes into the
safety of trees. “You have lived years without women.”
He takes out his knife to cut into the hide.
“People forget you, no one cares about you.
You are proud and obstinate.” The man slices
flesh and bones. Removes the inedible organs
and prepares the strips. I am not proud, he thinks,
opening up the carcass in the abandoned clearing
filling with new sun, shadows of vultures soaring
above the kill. Not proud, just hungry.
My experience imitating Jack Gilbert:
The first part of writing the imitation poem was the hardest, simply finding a poem I felt I could imitate. It wasn’t so much I felt like the writing would be difficult but I there seemed to be little structure to most of the poems I was looking through and I felt like I need a visually structural poem to work from, I like when things look solid together. So I stopped trying to find an Ann Killough poem and went with Jack Gilbert. I read through many of the poems but was hoping to connect to one, there were a few I did but the material wasn’t what I wanted, then I read the first poem of the book. I really liked the way he had the thoughts of the man and the Lord talking to him and there was definite structure within the poem. What got me as well was the description of the fish and preparing the fish, I’m fond of both. Overall I really admire the way Gilbert worked in the mightiness and supernatural speech of the Lord against the simple way the man prepared his fish, it was a nice contrast of abstract against concrete images. The idea of the man being greedy to go out in the wild, catch his own fish, and prepare it all for himself as compared to being with woman and in the city where wealth and comfort is more likely obtained was also interesting. You can’t really call the man greedy, he seems more controlled and simple than what one would call a greedy man, but it was very interesting to have him think of himself as such. I haven’t quite figured out the overall meaning of the poem but I liked the feeling it gave me and I figured writing an imitation poem and spending time with “Going Wrong” would only help me understand it more.
Writing the poem proved easier than I thought going into it. I kept fairly strictly to the same structure as Gilbert, keeping aware of the word count per line not to go below seven words and not to go above ten while keeping them visually about the same length. All the quotes and inner thoughts are in the same places, I used some of the same lines but tried to switch up the words to fit the flow of the poem better. I kept the similar theme of eating an animal but started from the point of hunting it, rather than cooking it and chose an animal with probably more emotional bearing. Instead of the Lord I decided, just as I got to that line, that I was going to make it the goddess Artemis, the goddess of the hunt and the moon. The lines before about moonlight and the deer made it very easy to go with her. I keep her unnamed as not to take away from the imagery and the themes of the poem, it’s not about Roman mythology after all. Her lines are similar to the Lord’s in Jack Gilberts but I attribute the cities to Apollo since he is credited music, poetry, and the arts which make up the substance if not the buildings of a city and the wheat to Demeter, the goddess of wheat and harvest. I made sure the relationships were correct as well. I kept the visuals strong like Gilbert did with the fish, but fairly simple in wording. I didn’t want a lot of abstraction since the speaking of the deity themselves proves to be abstract enough, the basic tasks of cooking in Gilbert’s and hunting in my own poem help to keep the poem centered in reality and gives a time and place for the reader to attach to. While I have never hunted myself, I based the visuals on seeing deer in real life and knowing a bit about the process from books and my sister’s old housemate that hunted.
As for the meaning of the poem, I wasn’t sure if I kept it or went a different way. By writing the imitation poem I hoped to better understand what Gilbert was trying to get at. By the title it appears he believes the man is “going wrong” which I can only assume is because he has given up on city life and left to enjoy the wild. The end with “not stubborn, just greedy”, supported this as well since he is taking in the whole of nature for himself and giving up on the life so many other people must share. Perhaps going wrong was that he wasn’t following what everyone else thought was right, what the Lord claims he created. The Lord seems to be trying to insult the man into going back to the other life but the man is refusing him by simply continuing his task, a task that requires more work than it would in a city, a task all by himself. With my poem I wanted to keep a same sense; that the man in my poem doesn’t care for the city and the fields and the arts, but the rush of getting his own food and living off the land in a basic way. In the end it’s about not having a lot but having the most basic. At the end I realized this man was more than just hungry for food, but for the harshness of life, for the feeling of surviving on his own, for the taste of meat and not of wheat even. The last word was the hardest to pick because it seems to hold the most weight in Gilbert’s poem and I assumed it would in mine as well. He isn’t proud, he thinks, for he isn’t out here hunting because of other people, to change his how he is viewed or for his own ideals of manliness and survivorship; he is out there for something else, something more basic. So I was going for austere but it seemed too harsh, although I liked how it was similar to Spartan which would be an interesting concept relating to the unnamed gods but I didn’t want to focus on any certain place. Hungry seemed like the best word choice, basic and fairly neutral, not wrong or right.
The last point about the imitation poem that was difficult was the title. I’m bad with coming up with titles I feel are satisfactory for anything and poems are the hardest to name for me. I didn’t want to keep the same title because I wanted to take a different route than Gilbert in the meaning but it wasn’t the completely opposite route as the two different men are fairly similar in their situation and thoughts. I searched for synonyms and antonyms of “going” and of “wrong” and decided to go with “Pending Good” since it is not clear whether the man’s decision is right or wrong, good or bad, in which case it is undecided in the poem. I chose “good” over keeping with “wrong” because in my viewpoint satisfying hunger can’t really be bad, especially when that much work and care has been put into it, it isn’t for greediness like in Gilbert’s poem. Although I’m still iffy about the title I think it goes with the poem, but that’s my best explanation for it at this time.
"Underpants" by Ann Killough
ReplyDeleteUnderpants necessarily referring to the manly underpants of startling size that regularly were hanging in arow on the porch across the alley from her bedroom.
As though a row of overweight fathers had flown through Brookline in their underpants and had gotten caught in a clothesline.
The kind of fathers that run the world by means of secret meetings on every continent flying over the seven seas in formation like Canada geese.
But that now had to fly with no underpants, their international penises hanging down likeunusable landing gear.
She always rejoiced at the sight of the underpants.
They seemed to offer a kind of hope, although she wasn't sure what.
Perhaps the kind of hope that is normally offered by undergarments hanging on a clothesline with their seamed faces broadcasting a story of organized and intimate renewal.
Of how somebody is thinking ahead.
Or perhaps the hope was more foundational, so to speak, and had to do with the sturdiness of the operation that produced the recurrent row of underpants.
Not just the dependably loud and Russian argumentation out of which the underpants appeared to be extruded like a row of continuing and faithful facts, but also the unvarying style and whiteness of the underpants.
As if they were a testament to some rigorous belief, perhaps in the absolute.
Perhaps just in the indisputable rightness of at least one thing.
Which brought her back to the migrating father in the original hypothesis and what it was exactly they had lost.
What is was exactly they had left innocently hanging across from herlike a successsion of mute and outmoded pronouns.
Like a successsion of hopes of protection from the humiliation of nakedness, a succession of humiliatingly naked and public hopes.
Without which they flew shamelessly over the seven seas but would never again be able to land.
"In the Open" by Lindsay Hoyt
Their clothes were dispersed across her bedroom floor as if it was a store hosting a blow out sale.
The girl could imagine rummanging through every item to get the best deals.
She was the type of girl who felt her cothes really made her unique.
But as she lay in bed with her boyfriend, their clothes lay what seemed like miles away- on the dark blue carpet.
"She always rejoiced at the sight of the underpants.
They seemed to offer a kind of hope, although she wasn't sure what."
Maybe it was the variety, the mess, the chaos she hopes and longed for in her racy, scheduled life.
Protecting millions daily, now laying lifeless on the floor.
Maybe it was the love, so to say that brought these clothes to the ground, the love that put them in their place.
Or perhaps it was this excitement that removed the vulnerabilty as they lay there naked.
The scattered clothes gave them the hope they needed, that this true love would last forever.
She thought again of the hectic store and all the girls searching desperately.
What was it exactly they were trying to conceal by purchasiing new outfits.
And how was it the lovers could feel safe while what protects them lay passionately strewn upon the ground.
"Like a succession of hopes of protection from the humiliation of nakedness."
Primarily, I began to look for a poem that struck me as interesting. I began with Ann Killough’s book, and ended up choosing one of her poems. In her poem, “Underpants,” meaning was given to an everyday item- underpants. I found it interesting how Killough turned an undergarment into a symbol of hope. Primarily, without vital underpants one is useless, vulnerable in their inability to cover humiliation. Stemming from this vulnerability, Killough created underpants as foundational hope, as part of a routine; one is always guaranteed to be wearing underpants. These underpants symbolize hope for protection from humiliation that everyone tries to avoid.
ReplyDeleteThe title of the poem came quite easily to me, although I question if there is more suitable title. I reused two of Killough’s lines, the ones that left the largest impact on me. In the second stanza, “She always rejoiced at the sight of the underpants. They seemed to offer a kind of hope, although she wasn’t sure what,” was reused, and, “Like a succession of hopes of protection from the humiliation of nakedness,” in the fourth.
As Killough created an image of flying underwear across from her bedroom window, I created an image of a bedroom floor after a love scene by comparing the scattered clothing to dispersed clothing at a store hosting a sale. Through examples, the hope offered by the clothes was given in Killough’s poem. My poem continued with this pattern, while stating different sources of hope within the scattered undergarments. Using different examples and comparisons than Killough, I maintained a common theme. Just as Killough had expressed, underwear seem to be just a common, every-day item, but rather act as a way to cover oneself from humiliation, and as a tool to hide from the world. While Killough thinks of the overweight, traveling, business fathers, I portray this lack of confidence in girls searching through a store sale, and the surprising freedom and comfort felt by two lovers who lay unprotected in their nakedness.
I tried to imitate Killough’s imagery, line length, and theme, while adding my own spin to my own poem. I feel I worked well with imitating the length and theme of Killough’s poem, but I doubt my skill in copying the language style. I hope my take on the theme proves sufficient, despite my maybe poor use of imitating Killough’s language.
After reading of Sarah’s experience, I am pleased I did not have as much trouble in selecting a poem to imitate, or giving my imitation a title. The poem seemed interesting to me rather quickly, and upon further searching I decided the first one I found, “Underpants,” was the one I would chose. I also feel the task I created for myself was quite different than Sarah’s. I attempted to use the same theme or subject matter, but add my character to it. I imitated line length and imagery, but am uncertain about the extent to which I successfully imitated the use of language. Sarah seemed unsure if she had dismissed the overall theme, and focused more on other issues, maybe those which I should have paid more attention to.
ReplyDelete“The Great Fires” By Jack Gilbert
ReplyDeleteLove is apart from all things.
Desire and excitement are nothing beside it.
It is not the body that finds love.
What leads us there is the body,
What is not love provokes it.
What is not love quenches it.
Love lays hold of everything we know.
The passions which are called love
also change everything to newness
at first. Passion is clearly the path
but does not bring us to love.
It opens the castle of our spirit
so that we might find the love which is
a mystery hidden there.
Love is one of the many great fires.
Passion is a fire made of many woods,
Each of which gives off its special odor
so we can know the many kinds
that are not love. Passion is the paper
and twigs that kindle the flames
but cannot sustain them. Desire perishes
because it tries to be love.
Love is eaten away by appetite.
Love does not last, but it is different
from the passions that do not last.
Love lasts by not lasting.
Isaiah said each man walks in his own fire
for his sins. Love allows us to walk
in the sweet music of our particular heart.
Untitled By Jackie Monti
“Love is apart from all things. “
Lust and desire are its conniving cousins.
Devouring the innocent and the gullible.
Using the body as an vessel.
Lust, it provokes them.
Desire, it chokes them.
Love is in a realm of its own.
Beckoning spectators to follow their impulses.
The fists of love that clutch so tight shed
new light on everything. But beware of
the imposters whose grasps could be fatal.
The mystery of love is learning the
difference between the vulnerable path
and the vital one. Lust is intoxicating.
It is the trail laden with vicious beasts
who reach into the depths of your heart
and rip it out. Lust is merciless.
Primal instincts invade
and blind us from genuine love.
Lust shares this ominous path
With his manipulative
little brother: Desire.
Despite their tactics they perish
in the wake of natural love.
Love, it consumes us.
Love, it captivates us.
Love doesn’t survive, but it dies differently
than its familiar counterparts
“Love lasts by not lasting.”
ALMOST HAPPY
ReplyDeleteBy: Jack Gilbert
The goldfish is dead this morning on the bottom
of her world. The autumn sky is white,
the trees are coming apart in the cold rain.
Loneliness gets closer and closer.
He drinks hot tea and sings off-key:
This train ain’t a going-home train, this train.
This is not a going-home train, this train.
This train ain’t a going-home train ‘cause
My home’s on a gone-away train. That train.
BARELY CONTENT
By: Megan O’Shaughnessy
I don’t even need to wake up to know my glass
of milk is half empty. The clouds hang,
the next dense Kentucky rain rolling in.
Isolation eats me up, savoring.
On the radio, Etta James purrs:
Oh yeah, Life is bare
Gloom and misery everywhere
Stormy weather, stormy weather
And I just can’t get my poor self together.
Like both Sarah and Lindsay, I went looking for a poem that struck my interest. I had a few that I bookmarked and kept going back to, but for some reason, Almost Happy by Jack Gilbert stuck with me. I had a tough time trying to find an Ann Killough poem to imitate. With the poem, Almost Happy, I loved the imagery he used with the dead goldfish and the loneliness coming closer and closer. It seemed so poignant to me because I myself have had those feelings. I knew what kind of loneliness he was talking about and that really struck a chord with me. I wanted to stick to the same idea, the idea of overwhelming loneliness. I also tried to stick to the same basic structure that Gilbert did. Even though I wrote about sadness, when I originally sat down to write my poem, I wanted to do the opposite- I wanted to write about overwhelming joy. While Gilbert wrote of sadness, I wanted to write of extreme happiness, taking place on some sort of tropical beach (because who's NOT happy on an island paradise?... exactly!) but I couldn't find inspiration. My words weren't flowing and I couldn't stop myself from rereading the poem, having the emptiness fill me. Once I decided that I wanted a southern atmosphere, my poem took off from there. The main difference is the ending. While Gilbert wrote his own original ending, I decided to take from an original singer. When I think sad, I definitely think of a voice like Etta James- smokey, raspy and haunted. She sounds like a lonely rainy day which is what I wanted to get across. After rereading my poem and rereading the poems of both Sarah and Lindsay, I wish I would have picked a longer poem. I'm going to spend some more time with the book of Gilbert's poems and see if there is another one I can connect to.
I had some difficulty in finding a poem to imitate. I started by looking through Anne Killough's book but I couldn't really find any that I could relate to. I agree with Sarah about the solidity of the poem. It threw me off how her lines were lengthy and I didn't feel like I could imitate it. I moved on to Jack Gilbert's book and actually found a lot of poems that I enjoyed reading. I settled on The Great Fires. I really liked this poem because anyone who has ever been in love or even been in lust can relate to it. My interpretation of the poem was that passion and desire may be a pathway to love but if that is the only thing you feel with a person it is not love and it will not last. Even though an emotion as raw and real as passion or desire tries to be love it is not. I like how he says that "Love does not last, but it is different from the passions that do not last." From prior experiences, lust always ends in heartbreak and its very hard to tell the difference between true natural love or if a relationship is just based upon passion and desire. True to the title, Gilbert uses a lot of imagery involving fire. That passion is "the paper and twigs that kindle the flames" and desire "perishes." When I was writing my imitation poem I tried to mimic the sense that passion and desire were fakes that were trying to trick innocent people into thinking they could offer love. When I was reading Gilbert's poem I got a lot of figurative language that dealt with searching for something like that love was a pathway through the woods. I tried to imitate that style but also intertwining my own twist. I included a sense of family in the way sometimes members try to sabotage each other: lust and desire are love's "conniving cousins" and lust shared it's path with his "manipulative little bother desire." I felt the basis of Gilbert's poem was to show that only love is real and nothing can honestly be mistaken for it.
ReplyDeleteI found imitation poems to be difficult. Personally when I read someone else's work its like it gets stuck in my brain and that's all i can think about. It was very hard for me to put my own spin on my own poem without being too similar to Gilbert's poem. I tried make my lines and line length the same at Gilbert's but I think I might have strayed too far away from the sound and rhythm of Gilbert's poem. He uses a lot of short sentences and even thought I tried to do the same I felt like I couldn't get my point across in that way. I would come up with something, that I felt, was really good and I wanted to write it even though it wasnt the exact same form as the ling i was trying to imitate. I think my experiences with love and lust really show through my imitation poem due to my figurative language but I tried to keep the meaning relatively the same.
Sarah, Lindsay & Jackie:
ReplyDeleteYour experiences in imitation are interesting in their variations--and in the poems that came out of them. Good imitations!
Can we talk about what makes a poem "easy" or "hard" to imitate? I thought a lot about the books I chose (Gilbert and Killough) and have a real sense of how each in their own way might be difficult. But maybe we could talk about what you all think each poet is trying to do? What kinds of patterns are they using? --LG
The Forgotten Dialect Of The Heart
ReplyDeleteBy: Jack Gilbert
How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not laguage but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.
--
When I chose to imitate this poem, I was struck by its simultaneity. It brings together past images and suggests new meanings. Even more than that it takes on the absence that language contain, how "it can almost mean." This made me think a lot about the way we understand a particular place and how we see it in the here and within the contemporary sheen of newness, even as the vestiges of its past are lying around us. I have been reading a lot about the Hudson River Valley (thanks to Tom Goldpaugh and all of his book loans!) and really started thinking about Poughkeepsie and all of the derogatory things people say about it now. That wasn't always the case! It was at one time called "the Queen City" and written about as a clean, lovely and productive place to live, overlooking the Hudson.
I wanted to write a poem in which we could imagine "all times" at once--similar to what Gilbert does, but not exactly. When I wrote the poem, like some of you, I used a part of one of his lines and more of his structure. When I had a poet friend of mine read it to help me with revision, he said: "You really don't need Jack anymore." So the poem shows in its structure less adherence to the original poem than it did previously. Part of this was helped, too, by all of the research I did (which was fun! Who knew Marlon Brando used to hang around Hyde Park?)
--LG
Poughkeepsie Time
Whale-rending along these shores leads us to South Seas, a silk factory, hotel burnings; like dreams’ net or currents one with another— hemlock-black, brackish & lovely, fresh
or tang, estuary’s switch. That all time cannot exist at once in our heads: cigar-making & electric trolleys, how you bent & sighed into your shoes, peeled oranges in the shape
of eyes. What is forgotten lingers, the “lion-headed store front,” bobs or busts through this now, a warning without warning, can you dig it, a buoy of the past, place-marker
& maker, tricked out as “picking your feet” in The French Connection, cough drops called “Trade”
& “Mark,” rising high school rafters in Marian Andersen’s contralto.
Imagine histories current: ferries trawl nigh 300 years; Brando haunts Happy Jack’s on Northbridge Street. We might say Poughkeepsie & hear “reed-covered lodge
near the place of the little-water,” “the Queen City,” “safe & pleasant harbor,” look & see the Pequod chief & his beloved spooning in the shade. This river sailing the Half-
Moon back to Crusades, a city spelled 42 ways & young Vassar brewing in Newburgh. Rio San Gomez is the Mauritius is the Muheakantuck isthe Lordly Hudson, place of the
deepest water & river of the steep hills— what if we are still dancing in Chicago’s hottest summer as Wappingi braves are coming up the path & Van Kleek’s house just yonder
Fall Kill? You are writing me letters from Rio Dulce & I am eating bagels at the Reo Diner. Modjeski sits imagining this bridge; his mother swoons as Juliet in Crakow. At night the lights
of these still busy foundries become strange fires, beckoning America—& maybe not; their great furnaces’ ambient noise, soughing across these waters; concurrent
worlds asleep, dreaming, not dreaming
Going There by Jack Gilbert
ReplyDeleteOf course it was a disaster.
That unbearable, dearest secret
has always been a disaster.
The danger when we try to leave.
Going over and over afterward
what we should have done
instead of what we did.
But for those short times
we seemed to be alive. Misled,
misused, lied to and cheated,
certainly. Still, for that
little while, we visited
our possible life.
I chose this poem by Jack Gilbert to imitate. Even just flipping through, I felt very disconnected from Ann Killough's poetry, most likely because her structure is not generally what I consider when I am writing poetry. However, many of Gilbert's poems caught my eye as I was searching his book. I settled on this one for a couple reasons. The first was the length. I have always been a fan of shorter poetry because I personally believe that they have a stronger power to them; although I cannot pin point exactly what that power is. The second is that I think this poem has the ability to be very applicable to everyone. Instead of something concrete, Gilbert uses this ambiguous "it" as the subject of this poem. He expresses that "it" has "always been a disaster" and that there is always regret that attaches itself. However, even though the reality is "misled,misused, lied to and cheated," we cannot help but feel our true selves exposed as we are caught up in "it" and express who we really are. I thought he illustrated well this common human construct and left it so that the reader could almost insert his or her own "it" into the poem.
Just like Jackie, I too get poetry very easily stuck in my head. I knew that if I read Gilbert's poem too many times before I began writing my own, I would be stuck. So what I chose to do is read the poem enough to get an idea of it but not nearly well enough to remember anything substantial. Then I began to purely break down the structure, almost ignoring the actual words completely. I imitated the number of lines and the number of words per line, as well as also taking on a somewhat similar theme of life. The process was definitely more difficult than I thought it was going to be. When I would come up with a line that I thought worked well, I would have to alter it to fit the structure that I was going for. I didn't necessarily mind this though because I feel that the more I work with a line the better it becomes. When I read my final product, I read Gilbert's poem again and I compared them side by side. They looked very similar form-wise and either mirrored or contrasted each other in terms of the emotions of the words per line. I was much happier with my final product than I thought I would be but and am still not fully content with it. I think I may work with it some more and try to give it a clearer theme and tighter diction. Also, like Megan, I found many of Gilbert's poems that I would have also liked to use so I am considering trying this process again.
Imitation Poem
ReplyDeleteAt first I thought imitating a poem would be quite simple and then I found out it was more difficult than I thought because I focused too much on the original poem than I did my own work. Having a poem to imitate worked nicely as a stencil or form to work off of but seemingly got in the way of my own creativity and gave me more things to worry about. I wanted to imitate a poem and still have an original piece of work which I feel I accomplished but don't feel as fulfilled as I would if I wrote my own poem from start to finish with nothing more than my own ideas. I wrote a few imitation poems and then selected the one I felt was the best. I also found that selecting a short poem and/or a long poem was also more difficult; the shorter poems being even more so because there is less to work with and with a longer poem, there is more to imitate and is easy for one to get lost in. I chose a poem that as soon as I saw the title, an idea came right to me without even thinking about it. I found it easier to work with that way and then just let the creative juices flow.
Between Aging and Old
ReplyDeleteBy: Jack Gilbert
I wake up like a stray dog
belonging to no one.
Cold, cold, and the rain.
Friendships outgrown or ruined.
And love, dear God, the women
I have loved now only names
Remembered: dead, lost, or old.
Mildness more and more the danger.
Living among rocks and weeds to guard against wisdom.
Alone with the heart howling
and refusing to let it feed on
mere affection. Lying in the dark,
singing about the intractable
kinds of happiness.
“Singing About the Intractable Kinds of Happiness”
By: Michael Cresci
I wake up half blind
from the sun poking through the blinds.
I feel, all of the sudden, older
And think:
you’re young until you’re not.
The rays fickly light parts
of the disarrayed room,
leaving shadows carelessly tossed about.
It is vaguely pretty in an unbearable
sort of way, I suppose.
I rise for a round of shower songs recalling friends and drunken sing alongs.
And it seems to be, in the melancholy
morning, that the world is the
most beautiful place I’ve ever been.
I chose the Gilbert poem almost exclusively based on it's last line. It caught my eye and took me in a million different directions. As I reread the poem it seemed to give the whole thing new meaning. Hence I decided to use the last line as a title and explore my idea of "the intractable kinds of happiness."
I attempted to stick to the structure making sure to keep short lines and not to exceed seven words at anytime. At one point there is a short line in Gilbert's followed by a colon so I made sure to insert the same device into mine albeit in a different spot altogether. I also chose to start with "I wake up" to give the poem the same sense of beginning and set a time frame up. I didn't stay very close to the subject material other than that because it felt to restrictive to stay tightly n Gilbert's thoughts. The beneft of the ppoem was that it was my thoughts based on words he wrote for his own purpose.
Ghosts by Jack Gilbert
ReplyDeleteI heard a noise this morning and found two old men
leaning on the wall of my vineyard, looking out
over the fields, silent. Went back to my desk
until somebody raised the trap door of the well.
It was the one with the cane, looking down inside.
But I was annoyed when the locked door rattled where
the grain and wine were. Went to the kitchen window
and stared at him. He said something in Greek.
I spread my arms to ask what he was doing.
He explained about growing up out there long ago.
That now they were making a little walk among
the old places. Telling it with his hands.
He made a final gesture, rubbing the side
of the first finger against that of the other hand.
I think it meant how much he felt about being here
again. We smiled, even though he was half blind.
Later, my bucket banged and I saw the heavy one
pulling up water. He cleaned the mule's stone basin
carefully with his other hand. Put back a rock
for the doves to stand on and poured in fresh water.
Stayed there, touching the old letters cut in the marble.
I watched them go slowly down the lane and out
of sight. They did not look back. As I typed,
I listened for the dog at each farm to tell me
which house they went to next. But the dogs did not
bark all the way down the long bright valley.
I think I chose this particular poem simply because I like how the title is implied or defined in the last line. But it wasn't really the content or the subject that I was trying to imitate, or even Gilbert's choice of words. What i focused on imitating the most was the basic form, which Gilbert seems to apply to a lot of his poems in The Great Fires. I really like the blockiness to it and how it almost reads like prose.
Honestly I didn't find it that difficult to imitate the form I think because in a way I found it liberating. Obviously all poetry isn't all rhyming and having identical stanzas with the same number of words, etc., and even though Gilbert's poem does have a certain form to it, it's less constraining to me. I think what I focused on the most was trying to keep a similar number of words to each line but more importantly trying to break up each sentence the right way. Sometimes Gilbert will end a sentence at the end of the line, but a lot of times he continues the sentence on the next line, with no comma or anything, which I really like. So I tried to imitate how to do that and pick which words were important enough for that particular technique.
The one thing about the content that I did kind of steal or imitate was the last line. In Gilbert's poem, the realization that the two men are ghosts takes place in the last line or so, which kind of brings the reader back to reality, which is also the concept I have tried to imply in the last line of my poem.
A Year Later by Jack Gilbert
ReplyDeleteFrom this distance they are unimportant
standing by the sea. She is weeping, wearing
a white dress, and the marriage is almost over,
after eight years. All around is the flat
uninhabited side of the island. The water
is blue in the morning air. They did not know
this would happen when they came, just the two
of them and the silence. A purity that looked
like beauty and was too difficult for people.
A Year Earlier
In this light they were larger
than the island. She was supine, splayed
at his side. The picnic had only begun
when already a gray cloud portended of her dash
to sanctuary while he looked skyward in awe
of the suddenness that had swept them both
into that intimate retreat already. They thought
they knew of tenderness in moments shared beside
a lake in afternoon time in summer but were not
prepared for a anything beyond the picnic.
Thoughts:
I don't think my imitation was at all subtle. I tried to engage Gilbert's island and couple, showing different sides of both, using language and imagery I thought appropriate for the scene. I tried to think a lot about picnics -- they strike me as idyllic, and of those I have been on, they have typically had romantic motives. In part, I think, because I have taken many meals outside, some in beautiful settings, some not, and I wouldn't call any of those experiences picnicking.
I chose the Gilbert poem because I liked the contrasts that he set up. Purity that was too difficult to understand, weeping woman, white dress, failing relationship, et cetera. I tried to create my own contrasts with mixed results.
In choosing which poet to imitate, I ultimately selected Gilbert because his form seemed more apparent. Killough's language and imagery was rich, and there were a number of lines that caught my fancy, but I was unable to decide how to proceed with imitating her.
"Between Aging and Old" by Jack Gilbert
ReplyDeleteI wake up like a stray dog
belonging to no one.
Cold, cold, and the rain.
Friendships outgrown or ruined.
And love, dear God, the women
I have loved now only names
Remembered: dead, lost, or old.
Mildness more and more the danger.
Living among rocks and weeds to guard against wisdom.
Alone with the heart howling
and refusing to let it feed on
mere affection. Lying in the dark,
singing about the intractable
kinds of happiness.
"Sleeping in the Meadow"
To be alone is just a dream
replayed in your mind.
Cold, miserable, and singing meekly.
Friends don't exist here.
And love, sweet idea, has only
existed in the past with differing names
remembered: dead, lost, or old.
Mindful more and more of body.
Awaken to find rocks and weeds
living by our side.
Alone with the yellow dandelions
and the blue birds chirping in the sun
we're together. Lying in the grass,
singing much louder now
we find each other.
I wanted to write a very concise poem. I chose Gilbert because his ideas and lines were just that. I actually wrote a few different imitations and ultimately chose this one. I didn't find the process too be that difficult. I tried to keep the same number of words per line as well as the same melody. I found myself trying to put more into an idea than needed and had to rewrite lines. That was probably the most difficult part of the writing process. I also wanted to incorporate a line from the original poem and thought that "Remembered: dead, lost, or old" was the best line to use as I wrote the poem. I liked the original poem because it was one of memory and replaying life. I saw how I could easily relate it to the idea of dreams incorporating memories. I had a lot of fun doing this and would like to actually try my hand at imitating other poems.