Poem: Opening the Gates

Opening the gates on a sodden world
is like opening the gates on a world changed,
its skin scooped open by a watery hand
and its constituent earth unearthed.

I have watched roads being covered over
by a grave of water that would claim all cars,
and I have watched yards slowly puddling
till even the tallest grasses are cowed by their weight.

And, while I do not wonder why the birds of the morning
are not defying the rain with their early dawn calls,
I wonder why the sussurus of the water
reminds of waves of cricket-song on a damp night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light
in this world of grey cloudcover, O birds,
and I will rage with you as you turn the watery grave
to a river of lifegivingness, and an inspiration for poetry.

In case you did not know, this is a poem written in the immediate context of a heavy, steady rainfall, with roads closed and the risk of flooding. Like a lot of my poems, while inspired by my immediate world, it is not about it; hence the obviousness of the literary allusion.

Your Feedback Is Appreciated

I have been thinking, today, about NaPoWriMo, coming up in April. Specifically, since I plan on taking part again, I was wondering whether I should use the poems I have been writing every day, for 2012, or (as a greater challenge) writing a separate poem per day over April.

What do you think?

My First (Prose) E-Book

I've started work on what will be the first of a series of e-books about writing poetry. I have yet to work out the title (that can come later) but the idea is to list many of the varieties of sonnets that I write and know about, and give the basic rules, examples, and hints on how to write them.

Not only will I be talking about the "classical" rhyming sonnets, but I shall be talking about the varieties of non-rhyming sonnets as well. So that includes, for example, free verse sonnets, blank verse sonnets, and Sapphic sonnets, among others.

In reality, with a bit of creative forethought, there is such a wide variety of possible sonnet types that we can work with and experiment with, and most of these revolve around expanding the range of metrical types.

I want to briefly mention, before I go, one of these forms, the alliterative sonnet. Each line is a line of alliterative meter: four stressed syllables, two or three of which must alliterate with each other (with the third the one that must always alliterate) and an undefined number of unstressed syllables (and syllables with secondary stress). Each line ends with a rhyming word, and so the last stressed syllable comes towards the end of the line, and the rhyme scheme is that of any other sonnet variation.

The end result is a sonnet whose lines can vary considerably, and are not always ten syllables in length. And it's a challenging and enjoyable form to write, as I have often found.

So why not try variations of the basic forms? They're there to learn, twist and play with, not to slavishly follow, and the process of playing around with poetic forms can help with making your poetry better, since we are always learning what is possible with our poems.

Sonnet for a Friend

The sun's a light I love, lovely to know
when it shines high, at noon. I know it's near
to cliche, like the moon, in poems. Its glow,
its setting, all that guff. But still it's clear:
the sun is something special. When I go
to write about the sun, I feel it here
within me, such the love I hold. And so,
the sun's a light I love, and my love grows.

You are a lesser sun: you light my day
and guide my dreams at night; you turn my eyes
towards the heights; you give me every reason
to live a loyal life. What can I say?
I know: I've had enough of living lies--
let metaphors exist for us a season.

Today's Appearances

It's been a good day for me, acceptance-wise. I have had three poems appear online, from three separate markets:

Tho Tan Hinh Thuc have accepted "Heroes (for Clare)"
Liath Fail has accepted "The Last Sibyl"
Bluepepper has accepted "15th of January, 2012".

I can't say that I can complain about a remarkable day.

Latest Appearance: "Heroes (for Clare)"

My latest poem to appear online is "Heroes (for Clare)", a free verse sonnet dedicated to my partner. It appears with a translation into Vietnamese, as well.

The Craft of Poetry: Meter and Rhythm

As you will have noticed earlier, I like to write poetry that is formal, yet unrhymed. I also like writing rhymed formal poetry as well as other types of poetry. But today, I wanted to talk about one of the benefits of having an underlying meter to one's poem.

This benefit is that that rhythm and meter are not synonymous. I like to say that meter is the theory, but rhythm is the practice. I can also say that meter is the tune, and rhythm is the set of variations on that tune.

Let me explain.

The meter sets up a regular pattern of stresses that can be predicted, but not predictable in the pejorative sense. It can be as simple as iambic pentameter (U/|U/|U/|U/|U/) or as complex as you desire. A recent poem of mine, for example, has lines of the following meter: U/U|U/|U/U|U/.

Rhythm can introduce variations on this via a number of basic steps. You could, if we look at iambs, substitute a foot or feet for others (eg. UU//|U/|U/|U/ or UU/|U/|U/|U/|U/), invert the foot (so that it is /U instead of U/) or add or subtract unstressed syllables (eg. U/|U/|U/|U/|U/U or /|U/|U/|U/|U/) and so on.

And some meters are more amenable to this than are others.

So we can also think of the distinction in this way: meter is the melody, rhythm the counterpoint.

Of course, what matters is that the meter does not act as a straightjacket for the poem, so that the poem's language is not disjointed or bent into artificial and painful positions. The poem, yes, may be artificial, just as language is, but it has a relationship with speech, so that, while the speech may, in varying degrees, be elevated or otherwise, it should still have a relationship with the speech of its contemporaries.

Recent Purchases: 1001 Ways to Market your Books

I've just received, this very morning, my copy of the sixth edition of John Kremer's 1001 Ways to Market your Books. I've yet to do more than graze here and there, but I was so excited I wanted to let you know, and have the Amazon link to buy your own copy.

Review: Knuckled / Fiona Wright

In the reviews that I have seen and read of Fiona Wright's Knuckled, the words bony and assertive are not uncommon. It is easy to see how that is, on reading this book. The poems are frequented by concrete, and specific nouns and images, and the rhythms and the syntax is sinewy, muscularAnd though not all poetry is supposed to be this way, these qualities are in concord with the poems' rhetoric and arguments, as well as their settings. Everything works, in other words, and everything is in concord.

It has been argued that poetry does not seek to record perfection as much as our want of it, and our progress towards it. The poems, in Knuckled come close to that ideal. But they are not the stereotypical beauty of an English countryside, limpid and green, but the beauty of a suburban landscape in Western Sydney, and in the wider Asian settings of many of the other poems.

And it is a pity that I cannot reproduce the effect of the poem on the page here, in this blog. The use of blank space on the page, while not innovative when looking at the history of poetry, is effective and underscores and highlights the relationships of the lines to the poems as a whole. Just as traditional indentation is a way of typographically emphasising the rhyme scheme, so that the structure of the poem becomes more apparent, here the use of wider indentations emphasises the rhetorical constructions of the poems.

And the result is a body of poetry that works quite well in creating a world beside the external one familiar to us. It is unlike other poets' worlds, in that it is -- not so much lapidary -- rather, knuckled; the title becomes lucid as a result, even as it opens up to other meanings equally important.

But I will leave with a simple quotation from a later piece from Knuckled, “Earth”, which begins in this fashion:

Motorcycles slow to match my tread
there are no footpaths and my feet
grow dessicant

It should not come as a suprise to see the excellent use of the half-slant rhyme, so to speak, of “feet” and “dessicant” in lines two and three. This sort of technical skill is evident in the other poems, and I would love to have the opportunity to talk at length about Ms Wright's use of poetic technique. This is poetry that is lucidly complex, where the complexity underscores the clarity of the language, and ties it into the sinewy nature of its being. And this -- I predict -- will form a significant part of the more detailed criticism that Knuckled and Ms Wright's poetry should elucidate.

Call for Papers: Five Brisbane Poets

Wind and Wave Press is looking for two male, and three female poets for Five Brisbane Poets, to be published in print and ebook editions. Interested poets are invited to submit, in a single RTF or Doc attachement, 20 to 40 pages of poetry to Phillip A. Ellis -- phillip.a.ellis @ gmail.com

Submit with a full cover letter, and include all details of prior publication. You do not need to have had a prior book or chapbook to submit. Deadline: June 30, 2012.

A False Choice

I have had people, when we are talking about poetry, present a choice between rhyming verse and free verse, as if there are only the two choices. Really, the choices are many, and fall between those with an underlying meter or meters, and those without.

The reality is always more complicated than most assume. Take the following piece, written this morning:

"Lines for my Children's Education"

With winter a dream, and the summer dream,
the world a reality, dream as well,
we dreamers aren't culpable, nor is God:
the world is the world that we make within.

Some fashion a sonnet, some fashion swords,
some fashion a sport, as the others make
their multiples; pause here, for people make
and shape most the objects within the world.

Do animals live or they die? We claim
the power of life or of death. We seem
the power, yet powerless, scythe and saint,
the maker yet made, and as mortal, made.

We fashion our misery, fashion joys,
we fashion our beauty, and fashion days
of terror or peacefulness, making us
the students of fate and the toys of time.

With winter a dream, and the summer dream,
the world a reality, dream as well,
we dreamers aren't culpable, nor is God:
the world is the world that we make within.

You will notice that it has an underlying meter (U/UU/UU/U/) which is quite rigid, and that it does not rhyme. But it is a species of formal verse, not free verse, and since it is formal verse it demonstrates that there is room for a structured verse without the use of rhyme. We should remember that most of classical Greek verse did not rely on rhyme, even as it had a vast array of meters, for example, and that, while much of native Latin poetry relied on rhyme, its imitations of form from the Greek usually did not.

Really, it doesn't matter whether you write rhyming verse, unrhymed verse, formal verse, free verse, syllabic verse, syllabic-accentual verse, accentual verse, or verse of whatsoever leaning, as long as you learn the craft, write the best that you can, and revise until the work is as polished as it can be for the poem in question. As long as you choose standards that are professional, rather than amateur.