Metapoetry #6 - Accounting

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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

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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

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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.