SunWinks! Sunday Gather Writing Essential Dec. 9, 2012: Brevity (SunWE)

 

Dear Gatherizors:

 

“Brevity is the soul of wit.”  Shakespeare: Hamlet: Act II, Sc. 2

CANS

My mother kept cans till they exploded.

Better to let beans curdle to oil

poison swelling the tins like blisters

than have nothing to show.

Allison Glock

This poem, which I found in the Sept 24 New Yorker, dazzled me.  It’s only four lines long, but it’s a complete poem.

 

• It introduces the setting or premise
• It draws a metaphor
• It relates the metaphor to the real-life situation
• And as it does so, it gives depth to the metaphor
• And reveals a luminous, ironic detail of human nature

My mother

 

A woman from a previous generation, with a certain responsibility

kept cans till they exploded.

 

She’s needy, can’t bring herself to let go of the most meager possessions.  Perhaps she grew up during the Depression, or worse.

Better to let beans curdle to oil

 

Whoa!  Why would you do that?

poison swelling the tins

 

Now, this isn’t just inadvertent.  It should be obvious to her or anyone else that these cans are dangerous.

like blisters

 

Here’s the metaphor.  A visual simile, but much more.  The blisters are a human phenomenon.  The poison isn’t just botulism, it’s pus.  The cans are symptoms of an illness.  Whose illness?  And why?

than have nothing to show.

 

Ah.  My cupboards are full of poison, but they’re full.  Deprivation, neediness is the deepest humiliation of all.  At least I can show I once had the means to buy that food.

Now…we’re not done. Let that sit on your mind for a moment. Now look at it again. I like to go back through it backwards, line by line.

This is where a good poem really rewards the reader. Look at the next-to-last line. What’s the real poison here? Pride?  Vanity?  Finding my self-worth in what I possess?

Many poems of this brevity are merely epigrams:

 

a politician is an arse upon

which everyone has sat except a man

 

e.e.cummings

…Or less:

 

MARITA

PLEASE FIND ME

I AM ALMOST 30

 

Leonard Cohen

Here are a bunch of examples of poems nine lines or fewer.  Study them.  Where is the metaphor?  What is the luminous revelation?  What is the human insight?  What is the irony?

A few of these, you may argue, are merely epigrams.  Which ones?  Why?

 

THE REASON I WRITE

The reason I write

is to make something

as beautiful as you are

When I’m with you

I want to be the kind of hero

I wanted to be

when I was seven years old

a perfect man

who kills

ANGELICA

Angelica stands by the sea

Anything I say is too loud for her mood

I will have to come back

a million years later

with the scalp of my old life

hanging from one hand

THE DREAM

O I had such a wonderful dream, she said.

I dreamed you made love to me.

At last, he said to himself, the spirit

has taken up some of the heavy work.

Leonard Cohen

when god decided to invent

everything he took one

breath bigger than a circustent

and everything began

 

when man determined to destroy

himself he picked the was

of shall and finding only why

smashed it into because

 

e.e. cummings

 

PAUDEEN

 

Indignant at the fumbling wits, the obscure spite

Of our old Paudeen in his shop, I stumbled blind

Among the stones and thorn-trees, under morning light;

Until a curlew cried and in the luminous wind

A curlew answered; and suddenly thereupon I thought

That on the lonely height where all are in God’s eye,

There cannot be, confusion of our sound forgot,

A single soul that lacks a sweet crystalline cry.

 

MEMORY

 

One had a lovely face,

And two or three had charm,

But charm and face were in vain

Because the mountain grass

Cannot but keep the form

Where the mountain hare has lain.

 

W.B. Yeats

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY

 

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

 

Robert Frost

THE LOVING DEXTERITY

 

The flower

fallen

she saw it

 

where

it lay

a pink petal

 

intact

deftly

placed it

 

on

its stem

again

THE CHRYSANTHEMUM

 

how shall we tell

the bright petals

from the sun in the

sky concentrically

 

crowding the branch

save that it yields

in its modesty

to that splendor?

THE RED WHEELBARROW

 

So much depends

upon

 

a red wheel

barrow

 

glazed with rain

water

 

beside the white

chickens.

 

William Carlos Williams

FACE

 

I would beat out your face in brass.

The side of your head I would beat out in brass.

The nose, the mouth, the hang of the hair thick over
your head, the cool straight-looking forehead,

I would take a hammer and a sheet of brass and beat
them out till your face would be set against rain, frost, storm, sea-water and sea-salt, against hoofs, wheels, nails, against tidewater, rust, verdigris.

I would set your face at a blue crossways of sea beaches, a dream of blue and brass.

 

Carl Sandburg

Portraits are to daily faces

As an evening west

To a fine, pedantic sunshine

In a satin vest.

~~~~db~~~~

THE SEA

An everywhere of silver,

With ropes of sand

To keep it from effacing

The track called land.

Emily Dickinson

SNOWFALL

 

Watching snow cover the ground, cover itself,

cover everything that is not you, you see

it is the downward drift of light

upon the sound of air sweeping away the air,

it is the fall of moments into moments, the burial

of sleep, the down of winter, the negative of night.

Mark Strand

THE MIRROR

 

She tells me

that I can

see right through

her, but I

look and can

see nothing:

so we go

ahead and

kiss.  She is

fine glass, I

say, throwing

her to the

floor…

THE IMMORTALS

 

None of us have felt good this year:

pus around the eyes,

sores that come and go with no explanation.

But we still believe we will come through it!

I signal this news

by lifting a little finger.

 

James Tate

 

 

FORK

 

This strange thing must have crept

Right out of hell.

It resembles a bird’s foot

Worn around the cannibal’s neck.

 

As you hold it in your hand,

As you stab with it into a piece of meat,

It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird:

Its head which like your fist

Is large, bald, beakless and blind.

 

Charles Simic

from SEVEN WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT MONET

V.

He continues to paint,

almost blinded by cataracts.

The Japanese bridge

is a red ball of fire,

like an impression

of sunrise.

HAI TECH

 

Pixels draw you near

You answer my cyber-ad

Cling like silicon

 

D.W.

The Prompt

 

Write a poem.  Max. nine lines, preferably closer to four.  No haikus!  Try to make it a complete poem, as I’ve defined it above (not that that’s the only possible definition of a complete poem).

Alternate

Analyze one of the above poems.

• Put SunWE in the title and tags.
• Share your post with Gather Writing Essential group.
• Indicate in some way which devices or techniques I should be paying attention to.  (If responding to today’s, put Brevity in the title field.)
• This prompt does not turn into a pumpkin a week (or even two) from today.  If your piece isn’t done in the next week or two, get it in when you can.  This is supposed to be fun.
• I will comment on every submission and include a link to it in the next column.
• If you would like a little more academic critique—but still very friendly and positive—include the word "rigorous" in your post (e.g. "rigorous critique wanted").

Responses to previous prompts below. Let me know if I missed yours.

As ever,

Doug

Anti-Poetry

Behind the Steel Door

by Irina Dimitric

Lean and Mean

Fortune's Fool

by Adina P.

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