The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry - 86. ...seed carrier...

This is a wonderful, ecstatic poem! It’s the very thing for a grey kind of day here: it tells me that even in this overcast life, there can be redemption. 

1 hour ago, Parker Owens said:

This is a wonderful, ecstatic poem! It’s the very thing for a grey kind of day here: it tells me that even in this overcast life, there can be redemption. 

Thank you, Parker. Yes, I think it's wonderful too. I woke up this morning thinking about the poem and saw I hadn't posted it yet. So, today was the day

What an adventure of spontaneity and unconventionality.  One free spirit unleashing another.  Why be normal when you can be yourself?

Question:  What style of poetry is represented here?  "Prose poetry" was mentioned with respect to the anthology.  Is that what we see here, perhaps?

On 1/20/2023 at 5:10 PM, Backwoods Boy said:

What an adventure of spontaneity and unconventionality.  One free spirit unleashing another.  Why be normal when you can be yourself?

Question:  What style of poetry is represented here?  "Prose poetry" was mentioned with respect to the anthology.  Is that what we see here, perhaps?

Thanks, Backwoods Boy. "Wondrous the Merge" is what I would call a free form poem. To post it here, I cut out a few of the sections of the entire thing (to focus more on the 'story' the poet wants to tell us), and this poem is more like a small collection of poems, but presented under a unifying title. 

As for Prose Poetry! I suppose you'll remember having read the leading example of it that exists: Max Ehrman's Desiderata. "Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence . . . " 

https://www.desiderata.com/desiderata.html

This Prose Poem is like a meditative verse from a holy book. There are others, and I could pull up several paragraphs from Melville's sea novels that are pure prose poetry too.  

40 minutes ago, AC Benus said:

Thanks, Backwoods Boy. "Wondrous the Merge" is what I would call a free form poem. To post it here, I cut out a few more of the sections of the entire thing (to focus more on the 'story' the poet wants to tell us), and this poem is more like a small collection of poems, but presented under a unifying title. 

As for Prose Poetry! I suppose you'll remember having read the leading example of it that exists: Max Ehrman's Desiderata. "Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence . . . " 

This Prose Poem is like a meditative verse from a holy book. There are others, and I could pull up several paragraphs from Melville's sea novels that are pure prose poetry too.  

Thank you for the continuing education.  I noted in the poem above that there were two patterns - usually six lines though sometimes three, and a complete absence of punctuation except for the occasional question mark and one exclamation point.  Looking online at further discussions of free verse, it seems that Walt Whitman gets the credit for creating it, with nods to the Psalms and French influences.  I'm reminded of Northwest Native American art.  There are a few underlying rules - perhaps "principles" would be a better term - but beyond that the artists are free to express themselves as they see fit.    

Thanks AC!  This lovely poem made me feel happy to have the chance to live life my way.  My day is better for having read this joyful poem. I also appreciate your lessons on poetry.  As I mentioned to you before, I honestly did not appreciate poetry for most of my life.  You have changed that by your passionate teachings and responses to my questions.

On 1/20/2023 at 7:09 PM, Backwoods Boy said:

Thank you for the continuing education.  I noted in the poem above that there were two patterns - usually six lines though sometimes three, and a complete absence of punctuation except for the occasional question mark and one exclamation point.  Looking online at further discussions of free verse, it seems that Walt Whitman gets the credit for creating it, with nods to the Psalms and French influences.  I'm reminded of Northwest Native American art.  There are a few underlying rules - perhaps "principles" would be a better term - but beyond that the artists are free to express themselves as they see fit.    

Broughton's Post-Modern punctuation style was "cleaned up" by the automatic posting editor here on GA. Back in the 70s and 80s, it was considered edgy, lol, to eschew all punctuation (something the Modern poets never did). And my own poetry from the late 80s still has this conceit in it, I'm embarrassed to say. But Broughton used three blank spaces instead of commas in lines that should have them. So his "my courier seed-carrier and consort" should actually look like this:

"my courier    seed-carrier    and consort"

But the GA editor will not allow that and erases the blank spaces. 

You remind me that it's well past due that I post something by Whitman. I know which one I'd show first; now all I have to do is find time to document it

Free form poetry is an interesting area to investigate, if one is interested is its history. A poet named Christopher Smart composed free-form verse while he was incarcerated in the madhouse, in the mid 1700s. But his work was not published until the 1950s, when he caused quite a sensation. On the other hand, the oldest known poet (to me) who printed free-form verse is a German named Novalis. At the end of the 1700s, he published the most incredible poetry (including poems about love and marriage between men) in the new Transcendental style that arose in Germany at the time. Now, this movement later took firm root in American soil, and Lucy Larcom, Melville, and Whitman are all exponents of this school of thought. So, did Novalis give Whitman the form to use for Whitman to become Whitman . . . ? It's an area well worth investigating, as the German press was very, very active in America in his day    

On 1/20/2023 at 9:16 PM, raven1 said:

Thanks AC!  This lovely poem made me feel happy to have the chance to live life my way.  My day is better for having read this joyful poem. I also appreciate your lessons on poetry.  As I mentioned to you before, I honestly did not appreciate poetry for most of my life.  You have changed that by your passionate teachings and responses to my questions.

Thank you for reading this, Terry! I'm always happy to see how a certain poem or prose work I decide to post affects others. The feedback that it made your day better is awesome. I can't ask for anything more! A million more thanks