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Poetry Prompt 20 – Found Poetry Let's Create some Found Poems! When I was a young man I once attended a poetry reading in the basement of a Tokyo dance club called "Blue." Blue was sleek and modern, on the gradient scale of glass, stainless steel, and cool-colored illumination. Its sister club, Yellow, was warm and cozy, but both were themed on Alice Through the Looking Glass. Next to Blue's light court with the up-lit stand of bamboo was a large reception space, and this is where I heard a Canadian poet read from her newly published volume. She had gone through stacks of vintage same-sex porn magazines, cobbling together salacious 10-syllable lines of text in sets of 12, and then concluding her Found Sonnets with a couplet borrowed from one of Shakespeare's W. H. poems. The effect made me laugh. I got nasty, uncomfortable stares – glares, really – from the poetry-reading crowd, but later the poet herself found me and said: "You're the only one who got it. I was pretty uncomfortable reading here. Everyone took it so seriously!" So what is a Found Poem? It is a modernist take on forcing a deconstructivist's eye to an existing text. It is cut up and reassembled to suit the higher emotional goals of the poet; in other words, it's a collage. The history of this type of verse goes back a long way. Walt Whitman built a memorable poem around a recurring line and theme he found in a novel by Herman Melville. The poet wrote: O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck, You’ve fallen cold and dead. My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; Exult O shores, and ring O bells! But I with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. This is based on Melville's: "Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all! why should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us fly these deadly waters! let us home! Wife and child, too, are Starbuck's – wife and child of his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow youth; even as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving, paternal old age! Away! let us away! – this instant let me alter the course! How cheerily, how hilariously, O my Captain, would we bowl on our way to see old Nantucket again! I think, sir, they have some such mild blue days, even as this, in Nantucket."[1] Few people know Whitman's poem about the murder of President Lincoln is grounded on a found item from Moby-Dick. Later poets who used found technique are Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. In the same way that Whitman left his Lincoln poem unacknowledged to his source material, Pound began his Cantos in the middle of an un-credited translation of Homer: And then went down to the ship, Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and We set up mast and sail on that swart ship, Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward Bore us out with bellying canvas, Circe's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess The poet paid eight dollars to have his first volume of poems self-published in an edition of one hundred, and his first reviewer had this to say: "French phrases and scraps of Latin and Greek punctuate his poetry.... He affects obscurity and loves the abstruse."[2] As for Eliot, William Packard writes eloquently about his found poetry technique. "T. S. Eliot in The Waste Land drew on mythology and anthropology, which he interwove with colloquial voices of twentieth-century women in London who were all frustrated and out of touch with their own fertility."[3] In contemporary understanding, Found Poetry maintains a few rules to adhere to. Namely, that sections of text should be lifted verbatim – usually only on a line-by-line basis – from the source material; only the most minimal editing is allowed to achieve the artistic goals of the poet; the resulting work should follow the 'old' standard and be a unified whole made up of lines and images that flow and work together (which naturally can be achieved through contrast as well); and finally, a single piece of writing is usually the object used for deconstruction. The prompt: write three Found Poems on the themes of 'Loss,' 'Memory,' and 'Celebration.' Your source material is The Dead, by James Joyce. You may decide if you wish to explore metre in your poem or not, or rhymes to accent certain parts. You may also wish to consider using a repeating section as a refrain. Let your imagination run free, as long as you allow the three principal themes to guide your creation of three freestanding works. -------------------------------------------- [1] From chapter 132, The Symphony, Moby-Dick, New York 1851 [2] See: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/ezra-pound [3] P. 107, The Art of Poetry Writing, New York 1992

What did Shakespeare’s English sound like to Shakespeare? To his audience? And how can we know such a thing as the phonetic character of the language spoken 400 years ago? These questions and more are addressed in the video above, which profiles a very popular experiment at London’s Globe Theatre, the 1994 reconstruction of Shakespeare’s theatrical home. Click for full article. I find this very interesting. It shows that for instance Irish and west country dialects are in many ways a lot closer to English the way it was spoken in Shakespeare's time than more 'refined' or 'straight-edged' dialects.

. Poetry Prompt 6 – Elegy Let's Write a Tennyson-style Elegy! We have studied how verse form relates to certain patterns, like line length, using end-of-line rhymes for emphasis and memorability, and stanza patterns like the Tanka, Haiku, and Couplet. We can build on that by practicing with the four-line structure of the Elegy, which is like a pair of couplets split up to be a-b-b-a in its rhymes. The Elegy belongs to a group of lyric poetry including the Pastoral and the Eclogue. This form is ancient, and city-bound Hellenistic Greeks used to dream of getting back to nature through such popular pieces. While the other two forms promoted bucolic bliss, the Elegy spoke of loss – more often than not, of one handsome shepherd being taken by someone rich and powerful to 'the city,' and his equally handsome and lonely shepherd mate having to deal with the separation.[1] In this sense Shakespeare's poem Venus and Adonis is an Elegy, as the goddess has to suffer the rather comic rebuff of the beautiful boy before ultimately losing him altogether. With this, he breaketh from the sweet embrace Of those fair arms which bound him to her breast, And homeward through the dark laund[2] runs apace; Leaves Love upon her back deeply distrest. Look, how a bright star shooteth from the sky, So glides he in night from Venus' eye. Later, continuing to run from the goddesses' lust-driven pursuit, the beautiful teen boy is gored and killed by a boar. So in this we come to how the Elegy has been most often used in English: a lament for a departed loved one. Even though it is usually thought of as a death song, good Elegies still retain the element of nature as a sub-theme. For our purposes of studying how to write one, I will stick with examples from arguably one the greatest same-sex love poems ever written (and one sadly few bother to read today); Tenneyson's In Memoriam contains the lines: 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. And the man he loved, Arthur Hallam, must have been a remarkable soul, for the expanse of In Memoriam is as passionate and sweeping as its near contemporary poem, The Leaves of Grass. Tennyson deals with his loss by questioning everything – Christian hypocrisy against same-sex love, faith versus reason, love being stronger than doubt and hate, even Creationism versus Evolution. And ever in the background is nature and how it brings the poet back to the presence of his beloved. Take for example these strophes from 95: By night we lingered on the lawn, For underfoot the herb was dry; And genial warmth; and o'er the sky The silvery haze of summer drawn; And calm that let the tapers burn Unwavering: not a cricket chirped: The brook alone far-off was heard, And on the board a fluttering urn: But when those others, one by one, Withdrew themselves from me and night, And in the house light after light Went out, and I was all alone, Then strangely on the silence broke The silent-speaking words, and strange Was love's dumb cry defying change To test his worth; and strangely spoke. So word by word, and line by line, The dead man touched from the past, And all at once it seemed at last His living soul was flashed on mine, And mine in his was wound and whirled[3] About empyreal heights of thought, And came on that which is, and caught The deep pulsations of the world. So, sucked from out the distant gloom A breeze began to tremble o'er The large leaves of the sycamore, And fluctuate all the still perfume. Here we can see what I mean when I say the rhyme pattern is like a pair of Couplets split up, and note that Tennyson chose to stick with a lyrical 8-syllable line length throughout. There is a grandeur to these lines, but I chose to show them first for how beautifully he weaves in the presence of both nature and the memory of the departed. But that does not always have to so blatant. Easier to follow are the four stanzas of 73: So many worlds, so much to do, So little done, such things to be, How know I what had need of thee, For thou wert strong as thou wert true? The fame is quenched that I foresaw, The head hath missed an earthly wreath: I curse not nature, no, nor death; For nothing is that errs from law. We pass; the path that each man trod Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds: What frame is left for human deeds In endless age? It rests with God. O hollow wraith of drying fame, Fade wholly, while the soul exults, And self-infolds the large results Of force that would have forged a name. So here, I hope you noticed right away, Tennyson used the exact form and line pattern, but achieved something markedly different from 95. His anxiety almost beats with a heartbeat as we read his words, and 'nature' becomes thought of human nature and of how natural it is for two people to love one another. The prompt: write your own set of four-lined Elegy stanzas. The theme is 'Remember,' and I encourage all of you to submit your work to Irri for the spring anthology. Keep the rhyme pattern a-b-b-a, use as many stanzas as you like, but maintain a consistent 8-syllable line. Play with it; your poem does not have to be about death or loss, just remembrance. -------------------------------------------------- [1] The two young shepherds who were household names in ancient and Renaissance times were Corydon and Alexis. They were as well known a couple as Romeo and Juliet is to us and the story of how their pure love and passionate devotion to one another was tested by the glitz and fakeness of hypocrisy was written about time and time again. Marlowe's famous lines of "Come live with me and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove" is Corydon speaking to Alexis. (See Chapter 3 of Bruce R. Smith's 1991 literary survey of same-sex love in Shakespeare's England) [2] Laund = a grassy meadow [3] The 'his' of this line and the line above are the originals. Tennyson's son later systematically went through the poem and edited parts he felt were too 'gay.' Thus in this line he craftily added a 't' to make a nonsensical 'this': "And mine in this was wound". Unfortunately this was one of his favorite ways to deface the manuscript. Sometimes, as in the case of "His living soul was flashed on mine," he was forced to cross out his father's words and simply write something obscuring above it; here he altered it to read: "The living soul was flashed on mine," which again makes no sense to a reader. (See In Memoriam, edited by Robert H. Ross, 1973 New York) Walt Whitman's editor for the Leaves of Grass insisted he add qualifiers like "him and her," and "he and she" in his erotic poetry where he only wrote "him" and "he." Later on his dutiful students defaced his manuscripts after the master's death to reflect the edited print versions of the poem. (See Love Stories, by Jonathan Ned Katz, 2001 Chicago) Emily Dickinson likewise had her manuscripts rather brutally altered by her editor and niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi. As Keith Stern writes: "Though we know little about Dickinson's sexual life, we can be certain about the passions of her sexual orientation. In 1852 she wrote a love letter to her friend Susan Gilbert that read in part, 'Susie, forgive me darling, for every word I say – my heart is full of you, none other than you in my thoughts.' Her love for Gilbert inspired many of her poems. In addition to altering Dickinson's rhymes and punctuation, early editors replaced Gilbert's name in many of the love poems that were written to her. Scissors and erasers were taken both to poems and correspondence, turning 'her' to 'him,' and erasing the 's' in front of 'she.'" (ps. 139-140, Queers in History, 2009 Dallas) It is a shame that LGBTQ youth are still systematically kept from knowing the extent of Gay arts and letters that exists all around them. Editing Gay people out of their own history should end. _

Poetry Prompt 9 – Sonnet Let's Write an English-style Sonnet! There are fundamentally two types of Sonnets: English and Italian. The English Sonnet has about the easiest definition of any poetic form. It's 3 quatrains and a couplet; that's it. But, oh what magic can flow from that combination, for it's like Goethe said, "Mastery appears in limitation of form, and order alone can give us freedom." The history of the Sonnet stretches back to roots in Medieval France, but later Italian poets made it well known throughout Europe. In the 16th century, English writers began to experiment with how the older form was constructed, and by Shakespeare's time, the new shape was perfected. So, as easy as the form actually is, the freedom for the poet lies in using the quatrains to establish and then develop a theme. The couplet comes in at the end to verify, refute, celebrate, or destroy the message of the poem. It's all up to the sonneteer, and it all comes down to a 'pivot point.' Think of it like listening to a piece of music. If the composition were all happy and breezy, the music might fail to connect with the listener. However, if the composer introduces a change in tempo, a slip into a minor key, then the happy-go-lucky original theme is suddenly placed in context, and the hearer knows there is depth to the composition. With the Sonnet, this 'change of key' (the pivot point) usually happens with one of the quatrains.[1] Let's look at an example in summary form. Shakespeare's Sonnet 44 breaks down like this: - 1st quatrain: If thoughts were flesh, nothing would keep us apart. - 2nd quatrain: Then neither land nor sea would stop me from being with you. (pivot point) - 3rd quatrain: BUT, thought is thought and elements are elements. - couplet: So I must pay tribute to my flesh as the earth, and my tears as the water; both keep us apart. Or, here's the same type of breakdown for number 58: - 1st quatrain: God forbid I tell you what to do. (pivot point) - 2nd quatrain: SO, let me suffer without blaming you for who's trying to kiss you. - 3rd quatrain: I have faith in your character; you'll do no wrong by me. - couplet: Waiting may be hell, but not as much hell as accusing you. In Sonnet 55, he waited until the end for the break: - 1st quatrain: You'll outlive history and monuments in my poetry. - 2nd quatrain: Not war, nor rebellions, nor coup d'état shall burn your memory. - 3rd quatrain: There will be room for you in the future despite all the death and hate in the world. (pivot point) - couplet: SO, until judgment day comes, you will live here, in lovers' eyes. I hope you can come to see how much potential and flexibility the Sonnet offers; the possibilities seem endless for capturing emotions in a narrative style. You have all the tools to write your own Sonnet: you've practiced with the quatrain (a 4-lined sentence of verse, rhymed a-b-a-b, and having 10 syllables per line), and the couplet (a 2-lined sentence of verse, rhymed a-a, and having 10 syllables per line), so feel empowered to try your own. Do not be intimidated by the useless notions that Sonnets must be difficult, or that they are antiques, for the form can easily accommodate any modern notion or vocabulary. It's just a structure, so start building on it, and have fun. The prompt: write one English Sonnet about your first love. Remember, we are looking for the pivot point, so if the love ended sadly, contrast that with a moment of brightness; if it was joyous, contrast it with a moment of doubt that it might not last, etc., etc. You get the idea. (As an aid, I have written a small piece on basic rhyming technique. It can be found here: https://www.gayauthors.org/forums/blog/513/entry-15424-rhyming-is-fundamental/ ) ----------------------------------------- [1] The shift can happen at the start of any of the quatrains, or be delayed until the couplet for maximum effect.

Poetry Prompt 5 – Rhymes and Couplets Let's Write some Rhymed Couplets! Why use rhyme at all..? There are a few different reasons; one is to enhance rhythm. We have studied the way in which a poet like Emily Dickinson used alternating rhythms of metre to accent her lines, and she could also choose to punctuate her meanings with rhyme if she wanted to. So that leads us to the second reason, emphasis. You can draw attention to the concept you are presenting in the poem by putting a literary exclamation point on it through use of a Couplet (a matched rhyme in two consecutive lines). The third reason is for humor, for let's face it, the Couplet is difficult to do in English because it can come off sounding hokey. Shakespeare made fun of poor poets in As You Like It. The love-stricken Orlando nails heartfelt verse to the local trees in honor of Rosalind. When found, the jealous Touchstone makes up his own Couplets to knock the young lovers: Sweetest nut from sourest rind, Such a nut is Rosalind. Early English poets loved the rhyming Couplet, as it was foreign to ancient Latin and Greek poetry, and was thus considered something new. It first appeared in Italian or French lyric verse, and then became very popular, even though it's far more challenging to rhyme in this language than in the Romance tongues. Nevertheless, some beautiful and powerful Couplets have come down to us through the ages. Many people know them by heart, like Helen Hunt Jackson's lines: Bee to the blossom, moth to the flame; Each to his passion, what's in a name?[1] In her lines one can feel the power of the imagery, for although the same sentiments can be said in a simpler way, the poetics of the way she presents the basic idea makes it unforgettable. Couplets are also excellent for lightheartedness and sexual innuendo. Witness this gem from John Donne: Licence my roving hands, and let them go Behind, before, above, between, below. Or sometimes, out and out silliness and humor. W. H. Auden wrote a performance translation of a Goldoni opera libretto named Arcifanfano, King of Fools, as set by the composer Karl Ditters.[2] In his production, Auden chose to stick with Couplets throughout because they lead to some hilarious moments. Like these: But who's this modest maiden, Not with brains overladen? Such as she seems to be frigid, With principles too rigid. They blush and retreat and say no, And when you touch them, erupt like a volcano! So how can we build a complex piece in a more serious mode using Couplets? By using the tools we have already learned about – that poetic lines are constructed considering syllable length (either plain or marched into a pattern of metre); that lyrical verse arises when the patterns are rhythmically matched (all lines are the same length) or alternated (lines follow a back and forth use of two different lengths); and that form is there to offer freedom of expression. Any poetical form takes time to master, but once mastery is gained, you can do anything you want with it. Here is an example of what I mean. A couple of years ago I wanted to provide a translation for a particular piece of music in one of my stories. Although the original German lyrics make use of a single rhyme throughout, I knew that in English that would sound forced and bizarre. Answer? Couplets! Here is the result. You can find the music here; open it in a separate window and listen along as you read the lyrics. My aim was not to provide a slavish reiteration of the original words, but to create a beautiful performance poem that can both carry the meaning of the poet and the weight of the music. Sleeping softly, or so it seems, Heaven enters us in our dreams; Angels hover round about, Showing they comfort doubt; Two are singing sweetly, Two with blossoms neatly Spread a bed of roses, And there my heart reposes, For heaven will not forsake We who at dawn must awake. The prompt: write your own set of five Couplets using the music provided here. You have a choice of being serious or silly, it's up to you. If serious, write about how you hope to meet your goals and ambitions for the coming new year. If you are feeling silly and irrelevant, write about how lame this challenge is, or anything else you like. The point is, practice, practice, practice! Get a feel for letting rhyme come to you as you construct Couplets. ------------------------------------------------ [1] Jackson was a school friend of Emily Dickinson, and apparently their relationship was one that started off romantically. The surviving letters between them hint at this very strongly. See Rebecca Patterson's book, The Riddle of Emily Dickinson, Boston 1951. [2] You can buy the Auden-directed production recording of the work here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/dittersdorf-arcifanfano-king/id162471301

Poetry Prompt 8 – Quatrains Let's Write some Quatrains! Last prompt we took a major step forward, although it was so smooth ( ) you may not have noticed it. We went from lyric poetry, with its rhythms based on lines of 6 or 8 syllables to narrative poetry, where the line lengths are set at 10 or 12 syllables. The Quatrain is a storytelling device, and unlike the simple heartstrings of the Lyric form, the narrative qualities of the Quatrain can move a reader along just like a story does: with a beginning, a middle (development) and an end. And although the term can be used to talk about any 4-lined strophe of verse, for us it means something specific. It means four lines rhymed a-b-a-b, and having a total of 40 syllables, 10 per line. The history of why 10 syllables became the standard storytelling form in English is a bit odd. Classical Latin and Greek poetry is remarkably consistent in favoring 12 beats per line, and even Chaucer wrote that way. The Earl of Surrey was the great innovator, for in his work in translating Italian sonnets into English, he fell into a natural 10 beat rhythm, which he later used un-rhymed and called 'Blank Verse.' Without him, we would not have the English Sonnet or the blank verse that folks like Marlowe and Shakespeare used so well. Inspiration? Oh yeah, there are a lot of fantastic Quatrains in the English language, don't worry about that! Here is a little gem, and sorry about the carnage That drinks and still is dry. At last they perished – His second son was levelled by a shot; His third was sabred; and the fourth, most cherished Of all the five, on bayonets met his lot. (Canto Eight, Don Juan, Byron) Byron rather smoothly uses the Quatrain in a conversational style to simply tell us what happened to this poor man's children. Other times nothing can surpasses the grandeur of the Quatrain to talk about our personal stories of love, like this one: When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry, Not Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn, The living record of your memory. (Sonnet 55, Shakespeare) For a contemporary poet using the Quatrain to great effect, check out the following link to a work by Gert Strydom. http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/if-there-is-something-more-wreathed-quatrains-in-answer-to-edgar-allan-poe/ So, if you are thinking of tackling your own Quatrain, how do you start? Start with the story you wish to tell, and it can be a simple one. How the coffee spilled in the car and made you late for work; how the puppy wags his tail and makes your blues disappear; how the flowers are blooming now because you laid mulch down last autumn. You get the picture – you can write about the Trojan War if you want to, but I'm sure you have your own stories, so use 'em! Once you know what you want to story-tell about, I suggest you write out the first two lines. Review. Are they in the proper metre? Are the two words at the end of the lines easy to come up with a rhyme for? If so, write the next two lines. Done. If NOT, then tweak the first two lines until you have the rhythm, and have words that you can think of easy and natural rhymes for. Only then proceed to the last two. The prompt: write two Quatrains. One inspired by the sights of spring around you right now (or autumn, if you are below the Equator). And a second one telling us how you feel inside about it. It can be happy or sad, or indifferent – it's all up to you! Keep the Quatrains to four lines, rhyming a-b-a-b, and 10 syllables per line. Don't get frustrated, just have fun with it.