Category Archives: Poetry

Thinking About Writing

By lytspeed Posted in Poetry, Writing Leave a reply

I didn’t write today. I did do a helluva lot of thinking about writing, but I didn’t write. The thinking started in the shower this morning. Unconsciously using techniques from Bruce Holland Rogers‘ Word Work, I imagined myself reading poetry to an enthusiastic crowd at an open mic. I imagined which poems I would read, how I would read them, and how they were received by the audience. When I left the shower, I was wide awake and bounding with enthusiasm for writing, which I couldn’t do because I had to go to work. Grrr ….

After work, I stopped by Old Possum’s Book Store and spoke with Jeff, the owner, for a while. We discussed writing groups, manuscript submission, writing and publishing conventions, and how different authors (particularly Ed Bryant) can be so inspirational and encouraging to us fledgling writers. Rogers discusses this in Word Work, as well, and it’s interesting to note that he also lists Ed Bryant as one of his primary mentors. The man is certainly the hub of SF and horror writing in the Denver area; I don’t know how he finds the energy to do it, but I’m thankful that he does. I wish he had a website so I could direct some traffic his way, but the closest I can get is the Wormhole Books website. Go there. Buy books. Now.

I did finish Word Work today, and I will post a review tomorrow if I can get it done. It’s a great book, and I hope I can use it to sustain the commitment I must make to my writing. When I finished it, I felt a pang of sadness; a miniature post-partum depression, if I can get away with saying that. Or maybe it was more like the feeling young adults get when their parents say, “Okay, you have to move out now. You need to support yourself.” It’s kind of a rejection, but at the same time, it’s an affirmation of belief in their ability to survive and learn about the world.

Failing Memory and Stereos

By lytspeed Posted in Music, Poetry, Writing Leave a reply

There used to be a different page here, but I haven’t the foggiest idea what the topic was, and the file is not on my backup tape. I hate that feeling. I guess it’s possible that I just missed a day, but I thought I had an August 29th file in here. Hmmm …

Ah! I remember! I was planning to go to an open mic poetry reading at Coffee on the Lowell this night, but when I got home I found out that my wife had bought me an early birthday present and she wanted me to open it. It was a new home stereo system, and I spent the next hour and a half playing around with it and setting it up. That was a very sweet gesture for her to make, especially since my birthday isn’t for another month!

Anyway, I didn’t make it to Coffee on the Lowell, but I did get inspired to write a silly little poem anyway. Maybe next month I can present it as a small bit of comedy at the open mic.

Poetry.com and Brian Plante

By lytspeed Posted in Poetry, Writing 1 Reply

Brian Plante updated his Chronicles of the Garden Variety Writers today. I found almost nothing offensive in this week’s entry, though it did still feel a little smug. I agreed with the assessment he made of a member’s “winning” poetry publication in a national contest. You can find one of mine from a similar “contest” somewhere on their website. After accepting my poem and lavishing all kinds of praise upon it, they informed me that it was selected (with thousands of other poems) for publication in a beautiful, cloth-bound volume which I could purchase for my coffee table. Then, later, they told me that my poem had been one of the “few” selected to be recorded for their poetry CD, which I could purchase for my CD collection. Finally, they told me that I could attend their convention, hosted by Florence Henderson, for only $595 plus. Oh, and one of the nearby hotels was offering a special rate of $120 per night to International Society of Poets members. If I attended, I would receive a trophy consisting of a large silver bowl on a cherry wood pedestal (a $170 value!) I guess that means they would only clear about $400 on my at that convention.

(“Oh my gosh, Mr. Johnson. You mean Poetry.com is really just a vanity press? My word!”)

To be fair, there are a lot of great poems submitted to Poetry.com. It’s just too bad they will only be read by people who search for the poet’s name on the site or buy the overpriced books (and probably not even then.)

Similarities to Symmetrinas

By lytspeed Posted in Poetry Leave a reply

I worked on the assignment for Melanie Tem’s writing group at lunch today. Once again, it turned into a short-short story, and once again, I had no idea where it was going or how I was going to make it work. I’m not sure it does work, but if nothing else, it’s a cool idea for a comic book character!

I also learned about Bruce Holland Rogers‘ fixed form of writing called a symmetrina. The more I dig into this, the more fascinating it looks. It has elements of structured poetry, self-reference, and even a hint of fugue. It looks like the perfect form for what I had envisioned as a series of poems about Perspective. Dang it, Bruce, you just gave me another project!

As I read the description of the symmetrina, I thought about poems I have written that have some of the same qualities. Follow along with me if you are interested.

In Two Shifts Passing in the Night, I used line length, font color, font size, and a shift in point of view (from third person to second person) in one continuous sentence to convey a sense of motion and illustrate the Doppler Effect. (Oh, and on the surface, it works as a simple poem about an unrealized relationship.)

Tikkune is the closest I have come to making a truly rigid form, with 22 lines of iambic pentameter (ten syllables per line.) This poem is based on the Tree of Life from Hermetic Kabbalah, and as such, the numbers 22 (letters in the Hebrew alphabet and paths on the Tree) and 10 (number of sephiroth) are significant. The first and fourth stanzas contain three lines, the second and third contain eight lines each. Each stanza illustrates one of the four worlds, moving from worldly to divine (Assiah, Yetzirah, Briah, and Atziluth.) The symmetry of the stanzas is meant to convey the image of the Tree of Life before the loss of knowledge (Daath, the “eleventh” sephira) and the fall of the center structure of the Tree. The rhyme scheme is also fairly complicated, with rhymes fifteen syllables apart, and couples at the end of the eight line sections, though I don’t remember exactly why I built it that way.

(Note: Tikkune is my personal interpretation of how a person might use concepts from Kaballah to increase his self-awareness, and should not be seen as any kind of Kabbalistic reference or endorsement. I have studied Kabbalah a bit, and I’m fascinated by the philosophical aspects of it. But I am no expert or teacher, nor do I advocate anyone getting involved with Kabbalah — or any religious or philosophical system — beyond the level of academic research without serious soul searching and consideration.)

The poem Ornithology is a tribute to Charlie Parker, both in words and form. It’s a sort of musical acrostic, with each stanza having its own “key.” The first notes of each line, if played or sung, create a simple melody resolving in the final note, the key of the stanza. Each stanza’s key, if played as a chord, resolves in a IV-V-I progression in the key of C. The lines are staggered according to the relative horizontal positions of their beginning notes on the Circle of Fourths (also known as the Cycle of Fifths.) If all this makes any sense to you, you win a medal!

(The graphic above is from the Vision Music website.)