POETECHNICS A lyric L-plate holder asks: Does one write a poem? Plutarch and Julia admit to techniques hardly covered by this familiar word. Lucy, in answer to a slightly different question, also reveals a variant approach. But if not write what then?
One compiles a list but this is hardly appropriate for a poem. The raw material of a compilation is surely fusty-dusty data-ish stuff. Assemble? Isn’t that what happens to the parts of a CKD Ikea table or a pile of Lego bricks en route to becoming a mini version of Buckingham Palace?
I offer refine. I know refining is a secondary process but in this case the raw materials are the contents of a big, big dictionary; by refining their nuances and their relationships a poem (verse? doggerel?) may emerge. OK, it’s a slow day at the office.
Below is a sonnet. As I commented in my previous post, adopting this format was like putting on an overcoat which conferred adulthood. Meeting the AB, AB, BC, etc, restrictions is the price paid; the benefit is the horizon shrinks from infinity to manageable proportions.
Coughing, etc
This other voice, this interruptive jolt
This inarticulate explosive bray
This unwarned auditory thunderbolt
That breaks communication by its sway.
An unkempt voice grown ragged down decades
Its origins in poisoned northern fumes
Remote from cliché comfortable glades
Enshrined in chimney stacks and rattling looms.
A wrestler’s hold that forced the primary voice
Through nostrils to evince a captious whine
Removing too the beneficial choice
Of lungs resistant to the breath’s decline
Accent, nasality and coughing can
Identify the true West Yorkshire man
One compiles a list but this is hardly appropriate for a poem. The raw material of a compilation is surely fusty-dusty data-ish stuff. Assemble? Isn’t that what happens to the parts of a CKD Ikea table or a pile of Lego bricks en route to becoming a mini version of Buckingham Palace?
I offer refine. I know refining is a secondary process but in this case the raw materials are the contents of a big, big dictionary; by refining their nuances and their relationships a poem (verse? doggerel?) may emerge. OK, it’s a slow day at the office.
Below is a sonnet. As I commented in my previous post, adopting this format was like putting on an overcoat which conferred adulthood. Meeting the AB, AB, BC, etc, restrictions is the price paid; the benefit is the horizon shrinks from infinity to manageable proportions.
Coughing, etc
This other voice, this interruptive jolt
This inarticulate explosive bray
This unwarned auditory thunderbolt
That breaks communication by its sway.
An unkempt voice grown ragged down decades
Its origins in poisoned northern fumes
Remote from cliché comfortable glades
Enshrined in chimney stacks and rattling looms.
A wrestler’s hold that forced the primary voice
Through nostrils to evince a captious whine
Removing too the beneficial choice
Of lungs resistant to the breath’s decline
Accent, nasality and coughing can
Identify the true West Yorkshire man
