Charlie's comments (member since May 18, 2009)

Charlie's comments from the ¡ POETRY ! group.

Grassland! Amazing. Great poems from all of the Goodreads community as usual.

Hi David and Goodreads! Interesting points. I agree with you that simplicity can be very powerful and often times makes for some great writing. Too much complexity can obfuscate the message. Besides, if a reader is to be moved, surely it is through his heart first. On the other hand, I don't know what you mean by 'academic' poetry...

If you mean that a poem can't win a way into my heart and still travel through the mind then I respectfully disagree with you. After all, poetry is a celebration of language, and language is a very complex thing if you think about it. Nothing wrong with using the brain a bit, ey?

As a side note, Stephen King's quote about using a thesaurus was not directed to the reader; it is the 'writer' that should be wary of using a thesaurus. This is a significant distinction. If the writer has a wonderful word and actually knows how to use it, sharing it with the rest of the world is the kindest thing he can do. Some days there's only one word loaded with enough meaning to carry out the intent.

And now I'm depressed thinking about all those poor endangered words on the verge of extinction. Wild and beautiful beasts, they are.

No kidding, Trish. These are all fine poems. I can't decide amongst After the Surgery, on cue, and Vow. Gahhhhhhhhhh.

Did not expect to be moved on a Tuesday morning. Thanks!

I didn't understand the meaning of 'made it down from Annapurna' though.

Had to look it up too. Annapurna peaks are the 10th highest in the world, running through the Himalayas, and are among the most dangerous (fatality rate of 40%).

Gee whiz... that is some really good stuff. Thanks for sharing Jim.

Thanks Jim. I don't know how to use this site very well yet and seem to be incapable of finding what you've written outside of this thread. =) Any poems?

To Lil Jean, your concerns are valid... my first prose poem / free form was a revolution for me. Try writing one and share with us! You might even like it more because the way you control the reader is subtle and subversive, using line breaks and the white spaces in between to manipulate your audience's breath.

Also, if you can find it, Ruth's poems are quite phenomenal. They led me to this great group and am quite thankful for that.

Lol. Jerin1701... you are a strange cat. I like it.

Hi folks,

Been lurking on this thread and wow, the debate sure is getting heated!

Honestly, there really isn't anything wrong with rhyming poetry at all. I think the backlash against them is because many beginning poets will write something and call it a poem ONLY for the reason that it rhymes at the end. I know because I used to do that.

If we look at the period in Western history when rhyming poetry was in style, those poems did more than just rhyme! They had similes, metaphors, alliteration, and all sorts of goodies. What makes a poem a poem is the complexity and manipulation of language to condense a freewheeling thought into something compact.

Poets are probably the most masochistic of writers... they like to impose all sorts of rules and games upon themselves, and see if they can still make something beautiful out of it. Rhyme is just another rule. But if all a piece did was rhyme, well, that does nothing to stimulate the reader.

Anyways, I hope everyone keeps writing. There are a lot of great poets here.

Charlie

This is a great discussion!

Strange White Birds


Between branches, I watch the strange white birds
Dance in the foliage beside the street,
Each curved neck bending time and searching
For the creek that was lost, the foreign trees
That now loom.

Are you a profusion, they ask one another, or
A question without an answer;
Their curved necks punctuate the silence,
Flickering light in the trailing green of where
The sidewalk ends.

Of course, there is no answer, only plumes
Unfurling like a brilliant flower from our behemoth
Civilization; beside a paved road
Two strange white birds move, until with
Startled wings, rise.

Memory at its finest lacks corroboration
—no photographs, no diaries—
nothing to pin the past on the present with, to make it stick.
Just because you've got this idea
of red fields stretching along the tertiary roads
of Saskatchewan, like blazing, contained fires—
just because somewhere in your memory
there's a rust-coloured pulse
taking its place among canola yellow
and flax fields the huddled blue of morning azures—
just because you want to
doesn't mean you can
build a home for that old, peculiar ghost.

Someone tells you you've imagined it,
that gash across the ripe belly of summer,
and for a year, maybe two, you believe them.
Maybe you did invent it, maybe as you leaned,
to escape the heat, out the Pontiac's backseat window
you just remembered it that way
because you preferred the better version.

Someone tells you this.
But what can they know of faith?
To ask you to leave behind this insignificance.
This innocence that can't be proved: what the child saw
of the fields as she passed by, expecting nothing.

You have to go there while there's still time.
Back to the red flag of that field, blazing in wind.
While you're still young enough to remember
a flame planted along a road. While you're still
seeing more than there is to see.

---

Great poem. Everytime I read it, I wonder if there's anything I've forgotten, some piece of magic that was lost in the haste to growing up.

Wonderful!

Golly, I like it. I like it a lot! Thanks. =)

Adamantly Flawed


Up the mountain in an old pickup
20 years ago, I lay in the wet of snow
And left my angel there
To melt over an untended garden,

My years were cast before swine:
One hand clutching forbidden fruit
I trod into desert, despaired
Over a path that was now lost,
When the weight of the watcher lifted
I wept unburdened

For having fallen into sunset
Over lawns, no angel to leave there
Disemboweled by disgust,
And all my days numbered

Thanks David and Rebal Chick. It is somewhat difficult leaving a piece alone. Like a scab. Which is not the best analogy.

Hellos all! I have a poem that's been in a draft for a month now. It is driving me crazy. Need an outside perspective.

---------

the world becomes a little colder


mid april,
the last wind arrives from its forgotten country
beyond the undulating questions of the sea, carries
on jutted shoulders her glacial scent, tundras
and frail purple fragments; your memory of it
– at once heartbreaking and frightful –
is familiar, like an old friend who may have
betrayed you in a previous life.

these days
i am held aloft only by this wind, which is to say
nothing tangible: a junction where two pressures
lead into one or one diverges into two —
the shame of it comes later,
familiar as tropic fruits, their skins
lachrymose and bitter; but still
the wind finagles her entry.

high noon,
just past the sempiternal curvature of morning
these junctions manifest again,
devastatingly metaphorical: two paths into
disparate tunnels like tumors in a cliff –
you are haunted by your old life, as you walk,
as you bite into a pear — the frequency
of junctions disturbs you.

an ending
drone emits from the mountain’s manifold mouths;
shame is the afflatus of the little green
in an inhospitable land, what i lack,
what the morning withheld in its secret heart:
a traveler on a path into darkness, lost
perhaps doomed to exiguous light for
the remainder of his years.

on time
the tunnel swallows you whole, an unmedicated
pill exploding into foolishness: the burrows
are merely overpasses, the daylight
marred only by terrific shadows — yet
you are never certain until the light speaks,
fills you with luminescent relief, just how
much the passage will take.