Here is another little ’started purely as a technical exercise’ poem. It is an experiment in syllabic verse, where the line-lengths are dictated solely by syllable length, with no care or concern whatsoever for rhythm, accent, or rhyme. In English it’s quite hard to do without it disintegrating into prose because the language IS so naturally accented (yes, it is. The French need special signs on accented words because they DON’T usually accentuate words. We áccent blóody éverything and thére’d be nó énd of confúsion if we áll went Gerárd Mánley Hópkins and stárted stÃcking dÃacrÃtics Ãn éverywhére).
Where was I? Oh yes, syllabic verse. Like haiku, only you can invent your own syllabic pattern, and don’t have to concentrate carefully to get appropriate seasonal words in (not that English-speakers bother). The following has alternating lines of seven and five syllables, and lots of seasonal words and internal rhymes, and did I mention Gerard Manley Hopkins? Well, the man is insidious, I tell you, and you end up attempting to spring along without slack syllables whether you meant to or not.
But I thought it turned out quite well.
Scent of Weather
Scent of weather, wet dust lost
under hedges where
little cup-nests rest wedged while
crowded rain comes downIn a rush and spatters them
under clustered sticks,
and coal-tits fuss new feathers
fledged while leaves rust down.
I read poetry for two reasons. Firstly for the flow of the words and this succeeds brilliantly. Secondly for the imagery small-squashed. There are two remarkable images here for me; “crowded rain” and “leaves rust down”. I wish I had said them, but, as Oscar Wilde replied to someone who said the same, “You will, you will!”
I was at our desert airstrip this morning listening to the desert un-silence in the heat and d/gusty wind just feeling the images. Something could come out of that in a day or two.
I am in such awe of people who can write poetry because I simply can’t do it. This is beautiful, Reed.
This poem brought back to me a strong sense of October in UK. I could smell the air.
Intonation is so important in English, I agree. You just need to look at the difference in the stressed syllable between “record” noun and “record” verb. I tried to tell my students the importance of this when I was teaching English.
I’ve recently been trying to write a prophecy that one of my characters speaks in my book, and it turned out as a poem with each line having 11 syllables. It did descend into prose but that was sort of the effect I wanted to create. I’m still deciding whether or not to use it because I don’t feel I’m a natural poet.
I wonder if you like Stevie Smith?
Honestly, my dears, there must be something very wrong with my paper-thin skin, in that when I saw such praise for my minor effusion, I was mightily afflicted with a prickling of the nose and eyes.
Good luck with your desert poem, Archie.
*Speechlessly contemplates throwing her arms around Litlove’s neck*
Helen – it did? It worked? October? I feel so inordinately pleased with that compliment its a wonder the top of my head hasn’t come unscrewed.
I know quite a few people have a tin ear for poetry, but I do wonder if anyone who can write well is ever really not a poet, or simply not a practiced poet, or if poetry and prose are actually very different. I tend to think of them as very similar, the one perhaps the brandy to the other’s wine. Or whisky to the other’s ale (Hmm, can you tell I haven’t touched strong drink for days?). It is possible to have a deep affinity for poetry, and nevertheless you’ll need to work and work at it. I suppose an affinity merely makes you WANT to. I do not now and never will believe in natural poetic effusions flowing from the wild and untamed soul of artless nature. Not even in Shakespeare’s case (‘bad revolting stars’, anyone?). At this point whoever it is I have pinned in a corner far far away from the crisps and peanuts and booze usually wildly mentions Mozart and I point out, hotly, that he had been practising away at his piano since he was TWO, goddamnit, he had six years of five-hours-a-day under his belt when he started astonishing the crownéd heads of Europe, and am gently led away by merciful relatives who set me to peeling potatoes in penance.
Anyway.
Please scold me if you wish, but I think natural poets are created, not born. Though it is perfectly possible that a person could find all that effort and endless fiddling about with mere fragments deeply discouraging and le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle
Oh yes, Stevie Smith. I don’t think I know her work nearly as well as it deserves, but have always had a soft spot for The Jungle Husband, which starts off as a rather jolly little poem (‘hittapotamous’ indeed) and over subsequent rereading morphs into a heart-breakingly stiff-upper-lip suicide note. Just brilliant.
It worked. It reminded me of that time of year in Scotland when I’d be starting school or university again and life felt full of promise.
Heh! I agree with you about “the natural poet” who spouts fluently while wandering on lonely moors. He doesn’t exist, no matter how much the general population would like to think he does. I feel as if I’m constantly fighting a battle about this, but with the image of “the natural writer”. The natural writer sits in her ivory tower, jotting down her inspirations in a blank notebook while tealights flicker around her and a harp plays. When her musings are finished – and she is so brilliant she doesn’t need to edit them – Publishing Superman swoops in from the sky and “discovers” her. Bingo. She is now a billionaire.
When I make the mistake of telling people I’ve had 20,000 rejections for my writing, they give me pitying looks and mumble: “Well, maybe it isn’t meant to be? Have you considered it might be time to give up? How about self-publishing? You know, sometimes in our lives we have to separate dreams from reality.” And I’m thinking: “Every night I’m at the coalface writing. That is my reality. The only tower I have near me is a tower of unironed clothes. I have gone beyond waiting for Publishing Superman to sweep me off my feet. What matters now is practice and for my writing to be good.”
Fiddling around with words and sentences and plot parts and minute aspects of character – that is largely what I seem to be doing these days. But I honestly believe that if somebody doesn’t have the experience of writing, they think that if you play about with words and are constantly revising then you’re rubbish. I’ve read so many interviews with published authors where they say: “Oh, I hardly needed to change a word of the original manuscript, I just sent it off to an agent and I was taken up straightaway,” and I’m thinking: “No, you didn’t. No, you weren’t.” The myth of the natural writer is perpetuated by the writers themselves.
Which I suppose was what I was doing when I said I wasn’t a natural poet. I haven’t written poetry since I was doing my undergraduate degree 11 years ago so I am far from being practiced. I’m embarrassed to show anyone anything remotely poetry-ish that I’ve written because the lack of practice glares through. Then again, the prophecy poem I’ve written is meant to be rough and spontaneous because of the context. Knowing me I will revise it 10,000 times anyway before I put it in the story.
Helen took over Reed’s blog with long musings about writing. I will put a sock in it. By the way Tenuous and Precarious is my favourite Stevie Smith poem:
http://plagiarist.com/poetry/1293/
I agree, “crowded rain” is brilliantly put!