As April is National Poetry Month, I've been trying to publish a poem a day during the month. I'm taking Sundays off because they're my non-computer days, but otherwise, I've kept up. Not all of them are good and tonight's offering is *very* rough and needs a lot of work to get into real publication shape. But it's a work in progress, just like all of the poems published here each day. Poems need much more time than a mere day, and as we were gone most of the day at the San Diego Zoo and shopping for E's 17th birthday party on Thursday (a Mamma Mia! themed slumber party with seven friends), this poem was written in about 15 minutes. And it shows....
The Life of a Poet
Wiping sweat from my visage,
I turn back to the written page,
Laboring over metaphors for an age.
Divine inspiration seems to have flown
Far away, so on I drone,
Overworking images and slaughtering meter,
Avoiding rhyme so as to not sound neater.
My muse has left,
Has flown the coop --
All I have remaining of deft
Phrasings is an alphabet soup
Of letters and words, as a group
Dancing and whirling,
Spinning and swirling
In my beleagured brain.
So I sigh, bearing the disgrace,
And swiping the hair out of my face,
I try to compose yet again.
(c) 2009 Susanne Barrett
2 comments:
Love this because it so perfectly expresses my own thoughts!
Especially like this metaphor:
"All I have remaining of deft
Phrasings is an alphabet soup
Of letters and words"
I am doing miserably at this poem a day. I have resorted to using my "verse" from Facebook! Shame on me!
I am working on something. How good it will end up being remains to be seen, but I have lots of thoughts swirling around in my head which I jot down when I get a chance. My problem is that I'm only getting bits and snatches of time to write anything these last few days.
I so understand -- this writing a poem a day is really hard. But it's an excellent discipline for me as I really need to be composing more poetry. It's just like NaNoWriMo, only in verse.
My friend Kitty is studying for her MFA in Poetry, and she and I were talking over the weekend about how we can't be afraid to write crap. Only in writing what is poor can we rise to writing what is good. So I'm considering this my "crap month," with a few redeeming lines mixed through it. But one needs fertilizer before the flowers can bloom, right? :)
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