Metapoetry Series #7 - The Imperfect Mind

Just click on the image of the poems to read them.

Thinking generates lists. We keep them in our heads. Or, we write them on random chits of paper, on bargain store whiteboards with quaint floral decals, in notebooks or month-at-a-glance agendas. Lists. Our mind is insecure without them. Sometimes, because I'm lazy, a list becomes a poem. It is to the poem what a pun is to the joke, or worse.

And thinking is so damned tenuous. It's on the tip of my tongue. What was that we were talking about? (shhhh. I can't introduce you because I forget his name.) Poems, like snow, evaporate or sublimate, into nothingness. What was clear and there in a flash is gone.

So that is why, to me, they are all precious.

Metapoetry #6 - Accounting

Just click on the image to read the poem.

I gave this poem its database entry count as part of its title. I seemed to be aware not only of each poem but of the body of poetry that has exited me. In 1998 I sent all of my hand-written and typed chits of paper, housing poems from the previous couple of decades into an msAccess database, and there they now sit. Everything is cozy and together there: the stupid poems and the poignant ones; the compulsive lists of thoughts and the prose that flows. My stories are there too.

So, I will dedicate this week's episiode to Sara Jeffery. I am not certain who it was listening to my woe-be-gone tales through the mirror when I wrote my 800th, but Sara will know what I mean, as will any of the queens of the shears.

Why do I keep track? Is time beneath it all?

Metapoetry #5 - The Shape of It

Just click on the image to read the poems.


The graphic novel is a now kind of medium, maturing from the comic and bringing visuals into adult literature. A graphic poem can also experiment with visual elements. Font art, like the cut-and-paste kidnapping note from magazine clippings, can make an interesting contribution to what a poem is saying. Poems and images often go hand in hand, but usually in post production, not so often during the inceptive creative process.

I find the physical shape of the poem, on the page, to be an interesting poetic element. And the shapes of the letters themselves can contribute a visual element to a poem.

In this collection, there were two, specific pieces, that took a physical shape on the page during the writing process. Possibly, it was the shape of the page that invited a long and winding graphic output, but the shape also gives a repetitive redundancy ;) that was part of the mindset. The third poem presented here, Away Away, is a galloping poem, more so than a graphic one, but I've always thought of it as a diminishing triangle on the page.

Metapoetry #4 - Silly Sounds

Just click on the image to read the poems.

Sometimes a rhyming poem can be downright embarrassing. I think it is the rhythm of the heartbeat, driving for congruence, that makes us look for meter and rhyme when suddenly we find a poem spilling forth from the pen. And yes, because of this, sometimes it can be just plain silliness. Just as the tongue plays to wrap itself around a twister, so the poem can twist and contort to make the sound come forth, just so. We know about alliteration and onomatopoeia - and my point is that these are really seldom conscious with this poet. I seem to hear my poems unfold from within my mind. And sometimes, not every time, the silliness of the sound just takes over! The message, and even the thought, actually becomes secondary.

So don't take these too seriously. Poems work best read aloud, but nobody wants to listen to poems while trying to gulp down some Grisham or Brown on the eight fifteen into the city. So, mouthe the poems. You'll look wierd, but you'll get to hear the silly little sounds that way.

Metapoetry #3 - The Where

Just click on the image to read the poems.

More than once, the paper, the page, has been the inspiration for the poem. It was there in front of my eyes and begged the ink, sucked the thought from my brain.

These four poems have that in common. All confess a consciousness of the paper housing the words. Twice, a blank page that otherwise would have gone to waste in my tiny congested notebook, welcomed a neatly written poem to fill the page just so.

In my experience, the shape of the paper also can provide some stimulus for a poem. I have some, written horizontally on a long narrow notepad and others written vertically. Some require staggered indentation to keep the flow going before the next line can begin, and others welcomed the span of a nice wide page, giving freedom to the notions that came from nowhere.

There is no link between the themes of these little poems, other than the fact that they all knew about the page where they were born.

Metapoetry #2 - The What

Just click on the image to read the poems.


What are poems?

They are usually a collection of words, but not necessarily. Artists have found other ways to build poems with sounds and other sensory stimuli too. Think of experiencing poetry of fragrance. Walking though a barn yard, for example. Or a lumber yard. Whatever a poem actually is, it is something that sets our mind, or our heart, or our nerves into movement, that is, if the poem is of interest. If it isn't, well, then that's not the poem for you. For example, a hair salon does nothing for my olfactory poetry receptors.

These three poems have addressed some characteristics that can define a poem.

Metapoetry #1 - Mouthe the Poem

Just click the image to read the poem. Welcome to my Metapoetry collection. Over the next three months, I will be sharing poems about poems in the next postings, here at Mouthe the Poem. In total, to date, I have selected 33 meta-poems but may not include them all here.  Of those, twenty-nine were written holographically, four were composed on the computer keyboard. The poems were written between 1993 and 2009 and comprise an interesting cross section of poems about poetry. Some speak to the page, others explain the whys and hows of creating poems. A few of the pieces are about other poets. There are poems that play with audibles and graphics, and others that contemplate the ways poems spill forth, and the reasons we often fail to share them. My first poem is about a word, in fact it is about… The Softest Word. I hope you will check in for new introductions.

Harper's Manifesto

Just click the image to read it.

UPDATE: dec.2013 - Prediction - Cda Post uproar is the diversion and, per the manifesto, the no-delivery policy will be rescinded, making for good positive election fodder.  BUT - what is the real news?  Dig dig dig.... just say this.  just say that.

This is the first posting of my poetry and it took government irresponsibility to precipitate it. I suddenly began channeling our prime minister and out came this piece, just a few minutes ago. Actually, it is a song, but I will not torture you with that interpretation. I strongly believe that he took voice coaching to sound like Stuart Maclean. Since sensing this, I have never listened to Vinyl Café.

The yellow words are meant to be difficult to read because they can be substituted.  In this version the text is:

Quietly introduce that back-room corporate deal
For military jets so coffers will grow
Nobody will notice
Let them chant for census justice


I will post others, I have many. Thanks for peeking in. I think I will follow this spontaneous poem by beginning a presentation of my MetaPoetry series: My poems about poems.

*Update... since 2010 there have been many other diversions in the media - Rob Ford is a good example.  Pandas too.