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Just finished verse that may – just – qualify as a poem. Previously I’ve only claimed to write verse at best. More often closer to doggerel. But this one flows, has something serious to say but includes humour, is slightly longer than usual, sustains its theme throughout and ends on a note that accurately reflects how I see myself.
Seven six-line quatrains in iambic pentameter (What else?) with, I hope, all the stresses in the right place. I think my late friend Joe and an even more attentive critic (in the best sense), his brother Ken, also dead, would have approved.
Perhaps even Lucy who, happily, is alive and who has taken a progressive view of what I’ve written would also give me the nod. Her recent responses were the most rigorous: well-considered praise (ie, the sort I recognise as appropriate, technical and truthful) for an unexpected effort which gained wider circulation than this blog; dispassionate condemnation of a short story which I was considering including in my collection, Two Homelands, and which I subsequently left out on her judgment.
I seem to be making a meal out of this. Fact is I came very late to reading and writing poetry - within my life as a blogger. With no time to take instruction I rushed at it. About fifty pieces, three of which say something poetically. Otherwise the quality is variable and tending toward rubbish.
So why, you will ask, have I not posted this most recent piece instead of blathering? Left it to your judgment? I promise I will. Trouble is it’s what’s called an occasional piece and it awaits its occasion. Persiflage continues.
Imagine me tapping my foot as I wait.
ReplyDeleteColette: It must seem as I'm being a tease but the logic of this delay will become apparent. I had intended to post immediately but then - as my Grannie would have said - I bethought myself. In the meantime I may reflect that no piece of writing can ever be categorised as perfect. So there'll be time for tinkering.
ReplyDeleteWhile I have a great love for poetry and read it frequently, I admit to have little knowledge of its form and structure, and modern poetry seems not to involve rhyming at all. I remember at school learning the verses that had the kind of cadence that was so pleasing to recite, and they have lodged in my memory to this day. I can still recite “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” A couple of years ago, I took a college level course on Wordsworth (on line) and it was very enjoyable. On a totally different level I am very fond of the nonsense poetry of Edward Lear; it is sublimely perfect. My own brush with creativity of this sort begins and ends with the humble limerick (I always have trouble with the fifth line). This started sixteen years ago on a visit to Bhutan to discover the wonderful avifauna of the Himalayas when a fellow traveller (he a distinguished geneticist) and I would amuse the other members of our mountain encampment by composing a limerick to be recited at dinner each night. The doggerel was no doubt entirely devoid of merit, but it was great fun. We had a captive yet appreciative audience and they were effusive in their praise. My geneticist friend had since returned his ashes to the soil, but had I been invited to say a few words at his funeral I would have composed a limerick. He would have loved it.
ReplyDeleteDMG: I've posted quite a few limericks in Tone Deaf and my previous blog Works Well; the trouble is finding them among sixteen years of blogging. In the end I simply searched "limerick" and this related trio emerged. It reveals a useful a useful asset for the limerick-writer; there are many many words in English ending with "-ion"; it's a rhymer's paradise..
DeleteLimerick trio
A writer of modest ambition,
Undergoing a late circumcision,
Said to he who was cutting:
"Please allow me to butt in,
I'm keen to lose no ammunition."
"Fear not," said the scalpel technician,
"You are part of a bookish tradition.
In trimming your member,
I'll not harm your gender,
Just bring out a smaller edition."
"I like that, it gives me a frisson,"
Said the scribe,"You have my permission,
To carve with free rein,
Taking care to retain,
A way to ensure micturition."
I've spoken publicly at several funerals and yours is an excellent suggestion. The services usually form part of a queue at a secular chapel run by the local authority; and the timetable is almost always very tight. On one occasion I was told I would have 15 minutes, this was reduced to 11 minutes because a man of the cloth decided he also wanted to speak, then I was down to 9 minutes. As a journalist I am skilled at cut-to-fit but this was quite a tester, given the guy in the coffin was my younger brother. Had I been aware of the limerick option I might well have used it.
DMG: Post scriptum. Took a course on Wordsworth, eh? Then I assume you didn't need my hint for the quote.
DeleteI'm looking forward to reading the poem. I wrote my first poem when I was in kindergarten. The first line was, "Now that I am old." Here it is 66 years later and I'm still waiting to be young.
ReplyDeleteNewRobin13: My first attempt came at a later age, round about 15. Ah Pamela, so ripe, so voluptuous, how I admired your raven's wing bob. A week after she thanked me formally in the street.
DeleteHope springs eternal in the human breast,
This saying applies to mine
All other cares from my heart you will wrest
If you'll be my Valentine