Sunday, October 30, 2011

Breaking up is hard to do!

The other night I was going through my poetry notebook, trying to complete old, half-finished poems.  I came across the first few lines of the limerick below, which I started on 3/28/08 and I finished them off thusly:

It's simple when things end in hate
One month off and you're ready to date!
But when both get along
And the timing's just wrong,
The feelings take years to abate.

It was only then that I turned the page in my notebook, and saw that I had continued working on the poem which I posted in this blog back in 2008.  I think my new version gets much closer to accomplishing Gabe's original suggestion, to incorporate the entire second limerick into the last line of the first.  A happy accident.  Here's to second drafts!

2 comments:

Isaac said...

It's interesting to see the limerick turned to less comical purposes. (This is something I often challenge my students in a poetic forms class to do.)

But the meter in the second line seems off, to me. Maybe instead you could have "A month, and you're ready to date."

Alec Longstreth said...

Thanks for your improved second line Isaac. I'll let my clumsy meter stand above, but agree that yours is much better.

Some have argued I'm doing the Limerick a disservice by not making them humorous, or dirty! Here was my response.