I should have made this post 6 days ago on Friday the 13th. On that note, today is the 19th of May, the year 2011 at 21h31.
Sometimes I write things I like:
partly perceived
“objects in mirror
are closer than they appear-or”
briefly became
“objects you fear-or
are closer than they appear-or”
It is now 21h32.
Finalsfinalsfinalsfinalsfinalsfinalsfinalsfinalsfinalsfinals
Here’s a thing I wrote in a language I don’t normally speak:
Ce qui
m’a pris:
La poetesse
Et sa tendresse
Et ses promesses.
I have not posted anything for a while. This is not because I have forgotten about this silly, little Tumblr or lost interest. I have just had a week of being constantly exhausted from performing in “Fiddler on the Roof.” I’ve finished now, so will be updating as usual.
That is how many drafts of this stupid poem I’ve gone through. I have one line that I like. Everything else is garbage.
I suppose I am being incredibly perfectionist, but that one line is the best bit of iambic pentameter I’ve ever written.
edit: Meanwhile, I am going to go read someone else’s poetry. Namely, Alphonse Allais, who was beastly at rhyming. For example:
par les bois du djinn où s’entasse de l’effroi,
parle et bois du gin ou cent tasses de lait froid.
(by the genie’s woods where fear piles itself up)
(speak and drink gin or 100 sips of cold milk)
The entire line rhymes, holey-moley. That’s called holorime, by the way.
edit 2: I might have finished that poem. I’ll post the progress/potential finished version, I suppose.
Last night I slept the sleep of gentle dreams.
Why is it, then, that I should be awoke?
Finding dreams so sweet, I long again to sleep,
But now, alas, are gone the lunar beams
And with them gone, the spell of sleep has broke
And now no more have I the dreams to keep.
I felt like writing something silly, so I did.
A bustle,
A rustle,
A tussle,
Occurred at the grocer one day
A fight over yams,
Bananas,
And clams
Drew dozens right into the fray
This is probably still unfinished, but I like it.
I don’t mean the appendage on the bottom of one’s legs, I mean the poetic term. I want to take a moment to talk about meter. (A foot, by the way, is the smallest unit of rhythm in a poem.)
I write predominantly in iambic or trochaic meter. That is, unaccented-accented and accented-unaccented, respectively. These are both very close to actual English speech, as such, I practically think in those metres. I like to say I think in iambic pentameter, because I talk in my sleep and the snippets I’ve been able to maintain were actually in iambic pentameter. They have since been adapted into a long, long unfinished poem.
An example of iambic pentameter: Last night I slept the sleep of gentle dreams.
One of my favorite metres is the anapest or antidactylus. This is unaccented-unaccented-accented. I love the since of urgency and speed it induces, as well as the really strong and heavy rhymes that close up a line of anapests. They’re also a lot more difficult to write. I’ve found I work best when I tap out that quick rhythm they have.
For example, from my “Song for the Righteous”: You are the righteous, the good, and the strong.
I was bad when I wrote that and didn’t actually start with an anapest. I find starting an anapaestic line with a shorter foot a good way to get the poem up to speed.
The rest of the possible feet are constructed from variations of accented and unaccented syllables. Dactyls are the reverse of an anapest, for one. However, many those are much less common forms (except the dactyl). For example, the tribach, three unaccented syllables, is incredibly rare in English poetry.
edit: (I have not figured out how to respond to things on Tumblr yet.) @Lulies It’s funny that you should use that as an example. I would agree that it isn’t very pleasant rhythmically, but I do think it’s a fairly simple meter, just not a sort I talked about here. That meter is based solely on the number of accented syllables. (Gerard Manly Hopkins wrote a lot of those.) It does have a “beauty” of sorts, I think, but more of a “clever” beauty, the beauty of an intellectual exercise.
So, a post about Doctor Who shortly after I post a picture of an 80’s glam rock Doctor? That seems mighty suspicious to me. Coincidence? I think not.
This means war.
(p.s. Any time I write a question mark, an option to “let people answer this” appears. Here it is: ? And there it goes.)
I don’t have a title.
Anyway, do you know what I want to talk about? I want to talk about “Pony Pony Run Run.” They are a French powerpop band. (I maintain there is no such genre as “powerpop” but that is what Wikipedia tells me.) There music makes me really, really happy. It compels me to dance terribly. Horrifying, really.
Okay…to be honest this is mostly an excuse to post this picture:
What connection do they have? Well, you’ll just have to read http://emmyc.tumblr.com/ to find out. Emmy Cicierega is equally awesome and I love her arts.
edit: Whoops, I lied. The explanation for this is on her livejournal. Silly billy. http://emmycic.livejournal.com/715373.html#cutid1
Continuing in my discussion of poetry I have not actually posted here, I’ve been looking into the legal aspects of publishing the poetry I have written. More specifically, what rights do I have if I publish via Amazon’s Kindle service or their publishing service CreateSpace, for physical books. As I understand it, I have all rights to whatever I publish, so I can do whatever I want with it. That was one of the things I wanted to check before actually posting my stuff online.
I still can’t guarantee I’ll post anything I write here, beyond just random writings, such as this, to get warmed up for writing in general. Nonetheless, I can without worry of legal stuff.
It occurs to me that this tumblr may have a use to me after all. Recall that I posted earlier that I write poetry. This blog could be useful as a warm-up tool. My philosophy about writing is write something, anything every day. A bit of blogging would fulfill part of that.
