Reading Pop's Poetry

Almost year ago, my grandfather "Pop" passed away.  My immediate family stayed in his house during the weekend of his memorial service.  During that time, my Mom encouraged me to look through his books, to see if there was anything I wanted to keep to remember him by.  There were a few a few comics collections of Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts and Pogo which I took, because my grandfather had a great love of newspaper comics and I grew up to be the cartoonist of our family.

But there was another section of Pop's library that also intrigued me.  There were quite a few poetry books!  During his life, I only knew of my grandfather's interest in poetry because he would write little poems inside birthday and christmas cards to my grandmother.  And every year, whether it was in person or over the phone, on Christmas eve he would recite The Night Before Christmas by Clement Clark Moore, from MEMORY (even in his 90s!)

On one of Pop's shelves, I found two collections of Limericks, a book called "101 Famous Poems" and a Rhyming Dictionary.  And although things have been quiet on this blog over the last year, I have been steadily pouring through these books and learning a lot.

Via the instructions in The Ode Less Traveled, I have been reading each of the 101 Famous Poems out loud.  Usually no more than one a day, whenever I happen to see the book laying there, or if I need to calm down before going to bed, or whenever the fancy strikes me.  I guess all the great masters are in here, and there are some lovely poems.  I find I like the short ones the most, and the ones with a simple and straightforward message.  Anyway, I guess this collection has sold millions and millions of copies, but if you don't have a copy, I highly recommend it.

The other book, which Claire and I have been reading each night before going to bed, is simply called "The Limerick."  It has a very dry, academic, 73 page introduction (which I am still trying to get through, zzzz) and then 357 pages of the most god-awful, horrifying, disgusting, lewd, hilarious and entertaining limericks ever collected.  There are five to a page, plus an appendix in the back with variations.  It's very funny to think of my grandfather, who always seemed to me to be a very proper gentleman, reading this book and chuckling over some of its nastier limericks.  I trust my grandmother never knew it was in the house!

Well, if you have been reading this blog, you know I'm super into limericks!  And I have to say, reading hundreds and hundreds of them have really ingrained the rhythm and meter of this form into my brain.  When we finally finish reading the book I'm going to dive back into writing some of my own, and hopefully, along with the help of Pop's rhyming dictionary, the quality will be much improved!

TOLT Poetry Exercises 7, 8 and 9.

The next section of The Ode Less Traveled was all about accentual verse, which was much simpler than all of this crazy FEET and METER nonsense. The idea here is that each line has four beats. The first three beats are alliterated (all start with the same sound, or have the same sound in their stressed syllable, such as "comPELLing" and "apPEALing"). Then the fourth beat is something entirely different. Mr. Fry sums this idea up with the phrase "Bang Bang Bang CRASH!" It doesn't matter how many syllables there are, or whether or not the lines are the same length or anything, as long as those four accents are in there.

So for Exercise 7, I was supposed to write 20 lines about what I would and wouldn't like to eat, using the "Bang Bang Bang CRASH!" form of accentual verse. Here's what I came up with, which was written last October, while I was staying with Claire in Oakland.

I don't delight in dips and sauces
I'd rather taste a recipe's original intention
Condiments could conceivably ruin
Food that I'm fixing to feast upon
Mayo and mustard mustn't be spread
On a sub or a sandwich made especially for me
When I feast on fries, you'll find no ketchup
My bread isn't buttered, or blanketed with jelly
Some folks suspect this sauce aversion
Hints at a hindrance of happiness in me.
I often feel that food is just fuel,
But cooking with Claire in her kitchen together
Has shown me that sharing food surely enhances
Its taste and tenderness, not to mention
My appreciation of, and my patience during the preparation of a meal.
Perhaps my habit of hermit-like eating
Forced me to feast too fast without
Stopping to smell the "spices" so to speak

Next was syllabic verse, which is pretty much the exact opposite of accentual verse. For this one, all that matters is the number of syllables on a line, and the accents don't matter in the least. Like HAIKU! which have 5, 7 and then 5 syllables. There are all kinds of other weird forms that this type of poetry takes. For exercise 8 I had to write two poems using syllabic verse: 1) two stanzas of alternating 7 and 5 line syllabic verse about Rain and 2) Two stanzas of verse running 3,6,1,4,8,4,1,6,3 syllables (?!) on the subject of Hygiene. Here's the first one, which is obviously written by a Seattleite:

No one seems to like the rain
They call it dreary
People get depressed in towns
Where it ever rains

But if you are born and raised
In a land of rain
Raindrops upon your skin feel
More welcome than sun

And here's the second one - yet another poem about beards!

Once upon
A time, people believed
Beards
Were certainly
Uncleanly and brimming with germs.
And so, people
Shaved,
Thus cutting short a great
Tradition.

We now know
Beards are okay, if kept
Clean.
Soap and shampoo
Wash your beard just like your head hair.
Pour, lather,
Rinse
And repeat, to keep beards
Looking good!

Exercise 9 was one last mark-up of a poem written by Coleridge, to teach his son the most commonly used metrical feet. After I did that, I had finally completed THE FIRST CHAPTER of this book! Phew! And this is only page 122 of 357 (?!) Really, I'm on page 200, but I'm trying to space out these entries, so they don't get TOO long. Even though this book is taking me forever to get through, I am still loving every minute of it. I only wish I had less stuff going on, so I could devote more time to it!

My first poetry post in six months...

This blog looks brand new
But all the content is old
Except this haiku!

TOLT Poetry Exercises 4, 5 and 6!

Sorry for the long silence on this blog. It hasn't been for lack of poetic activity on my part, just a lack of blogging. Back in October I finally finished reading The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats. I ended up enjoying it quite a bit, I'm sure in large part because I had worked through the first half of The Ode Less Traveled. It's definitely given me a greater appreciation for poetry, the same way I appreciate paintings more after having taken a few painting courses.

I've got a backlog of TOLT exercises to post, so I'm going to do 4, 5 and 6 in this entry and then try to do another big batch in the next entry to catch up to my current place in the book.

Exercise #4 had me write 16 lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter, and then I "scored" each line: 2 points for enjambment, 2 points for hendecasyllabic or "weak" line endings, and 5 points each for trochaic or phyrric substitutions (if you want to know what all these crazy words mean, you should totally get the book! I was supposed to use current newspaper headlines as my inspiration, but I didn't have one handy when I was writing, so I chose fake headlines... Here are some examples, with their "scores" after each line:

The walls of Azkaban have fallen down (5)
Eaters of Death have gone and run away (5)
Surely this means that Voldemort is back (5)

Why must the world insist on typing Qwerty? (7)
Dvorak is a better choice by far! (5)

All in all I scored 104 points for my 16 lines. The author, Stephen Fry, got 104 points for his, so I feel pretty okay about this...

The next chapter of the book dealt with different meters. The "PENTA" in "Iambic Pentameter" just means 5 sets of iambs, so this chapter had Iambic TETRAmeter (4) and Iambic TRImeter (3), etc. etc. Exercise #5 had me write two quatrains of eight-syllable iambic tetrameter, two quatrains of alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter and finally two quatrains of trochaic tetrameter. Also, I was actually allowed to RHYME this time, so I did. I'll just post the first two here, since they are my favorites. The topic was television.

A dozen years have passed since I
Escaped the clutches of TV.
In childhood, my brain did fry
So many hours were logged by me.
Each afternoon from light to dark
I sat in front of cathode rays,
Instead of playing in the park,
Or spending time creative ways!

"Reality TV?" you ask,
As if I'll list my faves.
But years it's been, since I did bask
In TV's current craze.
I used to watch sitcoms galore
and game shows by the hour.
Escapism I did adore,
But real life seems so sour.

The next section of the book dealt with "Ternary Feet" which is a foot with three sections, instead of a binary foot (like iambs, trochees, spondees, etc.) So there are Anapaests (weak weak strong), Dactyls (strong weak weak), Molossuses (strong strong strong) and Tribrachs (weak weak weak) and then Amphibrachs (weak strong weak) and Amphimacers (strong weak strong).

For exercise 6 I had to write some anapaestic hexameters about how to get to my house, and some dactylic pentameter about cows (?!) I'll post the prior, as my effort on the latter is too horrible to post, even on this silly blog! These lines are crazy long, so they got word-wrapped. I put some slashes in to notate the actual line breaks...

Of the many attractions of White River Junction, my house is the best./
The apartment is three, with a letter of C, okay now here's the rest:/
One oh four is the building, the street is called "Main." Is there anything left?/
You ask "Where do I find it?" the answer's up North, in Vermont's Eastern cleft

Ugh... pretty bad, huh? Well, the good news is that Excercise 6 ended all of the crazy accentual-syllabic verse stuff. The next section is only about accentual verse, which was much easier. I'll try to post about it soon!

TOLT Poetry Exercise 3

I'm still working my way through The Ode Less Travelled. This week I learned about End-stopping (when a line of a poem ends on a complete thought), Enjambment (when a poem flows straight through the end of a line and into the next) and Caesuras (a pause in a poem). I also learned my new favorite poetry term, which I think describes me to the T: Poetaster - someone who writes really, really bad poetry. ;)

The third poetry exercise sort of kicked my ass. This time I was supposed to write five "blank" (non-rhyming) pairs of iambic pentameter in which the first line end-stops and there are no enjambments or caesuras. THEN, I was supposed to write ANOTHER five blank pairs of iambic pentameter, using the same subject matter, this time using enjambment and two caesuras. Here's one set of mine, which has a bit to do with the one year anniversary of me growing out my beard.

My beard and hair have grown for one full year
It makes the summer feel a bit too warm!

A year has made my face hirsute, it makes
the summer heat acute, please fall arrive!

I'll post more as I work my way through the book. Stay cool everyone!