Same time a year ago, snowy driveways,
frozen roads, icicles on naked trees,
for several dreaded despairing days.
I dreamt of July and a summer breeze
as the dreary darkness wore out its stay.
But even through this darkness bleak, I sought
a break in time. I did not want these days
to end, ’tis the passage of time I fought.
And so it’s true of our fondest wishes:
Of highs, of moments of joy unsurpassed,
that trail gloom toward weary finishes,
where we choose to let go or to make it last.
Awaiting seasons’ ends and new tomorrows,
we watch each sunset with immense sorrow.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Sunday, December 4, 2005
About Poetry
Three years ago this day, when I had no interest in poetry or poets and had never imagined I would ever pick up a book of poetry, I was stunned to read the news item in the Wall Street Journal that talked about Ruth Lilly’s bequeathing $100 million to Poetry magazine. According to Joe Parisi, editor of this 1912 magazine that has featured works of Dylan Thomas, Yeats and Auden over the years, this generous donation ensures their existence in perpetuity. What’s even more interesting is the fact that Ms Lilly, a poet herself, has only ever received rejection letters from the magazine and she has been trying for thirty years!
This was a small headline in the Wall Street Journal, where the paper lists all the news in three or four line snippets on the first page.. I remember reading it, remarking on it and moving on. Not even bothering to read the detailed news item in the inner pages. Poetry was not something I ever thought about.
Fast-forward three years and I am like a kid in the candy store. Devouring everything poetic that crosses my line of vision and occasionally attempting a verse or two of my own. Last year was the first time I started paying any attention to poetry. I had joined a writers’ network online and saw some people post a new poem everyday. I was in awe. I was also disappointed with the network because it seemed to be favoring poetry and poets. I never saw much prose being posted. Poetry had always left me cold before but prose was a different matter. I had always loved to write and prose came rather effortlessly to me. But I kept an open mind and started paying attention to the poetry being posted. This was quite an education. I rarely noticed any structure or rhyme. This disturbed me, I found it disconcerting because I expected poems to rhyme. I expected each line to start with a capitalized letter, I expected to see stanzas. I wasn’t seeing any of this. It made me question some folks on the network. I asked them what they thought poetry was. I asked if prose spaced differently can be called poetry (with a healthy dose of sarcasm) because that’s what I thought I was seeing. The answers that came back were in favor of “free verse”. One person who answered me alerted me to the fact that a lot of poetry was about recitation, about reading out aloud and that which distinguished it from prose was the inherent poetic rhythm.
I accepted the answer for the time being. But then I came across the poetry of a person who never sacrificed rhyme or rhythm or structure. The confines were rigid but the message was always profound, albeit filled with extreme hurt and bitterness. This person’s work really sparked my interest in poetry and made me want to read more, to explore, to study styles, to observe and to learn. I am a long way from writing outstanding or deeply satisfying poetry but I have come a very long way in understanding and appreciating what I do read. There are poems that reel me in, each word sinking in, appearing magical making me marvel at the writer and the written word and then there are others that make me wonder why the author wanted something so pedestrian stated in verse. They are uninspiring and leave me cold. But the same poem appeals to certain others, they like it, love it, they celebrate the author while I wonder what they saw.
It isn’t comforting not knowing what’s good poetry and what isn’t. If it is something so subjective, that what some like, others find pedestrian, why expect critique? What does one expect from critique?
The more I immerse myself in poetry, the more I find that this interest was meant to be. This is how my brain thinks. It’s a deep-seated desire to communicate, to say the most in as few words, in les mot juste. I see many do it so effectively. I have been noticing several layers of meaning within very simple sounding words, words like rainbows reflecting all colors, the entire spectrum of human emotions and some with words and sentences that are so opaque, it’s almost as if they absorbed every bit of meaning or associations available, transmitting nothing like light. I see such poetry praised and I get confused to the point of insanity as I ask myself, “What am I missing?” It is almost as if it is too late, as if in early childhood the brain got wired such that I would never know what “good” poetry is. I keep falling back on instincts, instinctively determining whether or not a poem has been successful in communicating its meaning to me. If it has it is the most amazing piece of poetry, if it hasn’t it is just black words on paper or in cyberspace.
But I know that is not enough. I feel the structure is important. I always like poetry that follows a rhyme scheme, meter, that can be read aloud and sounds euphonic with an inherent rhythm. I like the cleverness seen in alliteration and am slowly becoming impressed to the point of marveling at the kinds of poets who tell me they can map out an entire sonnet in their head before they actually transmit it to paper. The idea that there is “logic” and a system to a poem makes me very glad. It gives my pattern-seeking brain a tremendous amount of hope. It is not a riddle, there is a method to this madness and I am going to discover what it is. It has become an obsession. Something I couldn’t care less about up until 365 days ago, is now an all-consuming obsession; not writing it so much as understanding it completely.
It is easy to learn things these days by surfing the Internet and following each link to the next level of information, however, it is heart-warming and extremely enlightening when someone who knows about poetry talks to you and tells you, without a trace of condescension, what good poetry is all about, that a Shakespearean sonnet is a good place to start ones education in poetry. It is thrilling to be taught that one can think of a sonnet as two poems – an octave and a sestet The octave, the first eight lines, sets up the theme of the sonnet and the sestet, the last six lines, is for resolution or conclusion. This however, is not a Shakespearean sonnet, it is a Petrarch sonnet, I believe. The Shakespearean one has three quatrains where the first and third lines and the second and fourth lines rhyme. The Shakespearean sonnet ends with a couplet where both lines rhyme and are always indented. I was also told how important the ending couplet was to the Shakespearean sonnet. Any sign of forced rhyming and it is reduced to nothing but a farce. Of course the iambic pentameter is indispensable to the entire sonnet. This was a lot of learning for me in one incredible chat session with a very disciplined poet. He encouraged me to try writing sonnets, but told me to read enough of them first, to immerse myself in them. I will always be grateful for this advice.
Maybe someday I will know enough to understand the points that literary critics are trying to make when they dissect a particular poem. And perhaps this clarity will come after I learn how to understand every piece of poetry I read.
Until that day, I continue on this quest and see where it takes me. I have found many friends who are willing to share a wealth of poetic knowledge, to offer help and guidance and it is thrilling to see how ones mind can expand when one is exposed to pure knowledge. I have a very long way to go but as Ringo said, “I’ll get by with a little help from my friends…”
This was a small headline in the Wall Street Journal, where the paper lists all the news in three or four line snippets on the first page.. I remember reading it, remarking on it and moving on. Not even bothering to read the detailed news item in the inner pages. Poetry was not something I ever thought about.
Fast-forward three years and I am like a kid in the candy store. Devouring everything poetic that crosses my line of vision and occasionally attempting a verse or two of my own. Last year was the first time I started paying any attention to poetry. I had joined a writers’ network online and saw some people post a new poem everyday. I was in awe. I was also disappointed with the network because it seemed to be favoring poetry and poets. I never saw much prose being posted. Poetry had always left me cold before but prose was a different matter. I had always loved to write and prose came rather effortlessly to me. But I kept an open mind and started paying attention to the poetry being posted. This was quite an education. I rarely noticed any structure or rhyme. This disturbed me, I found it disconcerting because I expected poems to rhyme. I expected each line to start with a capitalized letter, I expected to see stanzas. I wasn’t seeing any of this. It made me question some folks on the network. I asked them what they thought poetry was. I asked if prose spaced differently can be called poetry (with a healthy dose of sarcasm) because that’s what I thought I was seeing. The answers that came back were in favor of “free verse”. One person who answered me alerted me to the fact that a lot of poetry was about recitation, about reading out aloud and that which distinguished it from prose was the inherent poetic rhythm.
I accepted the answer for the time being. But then I came across the poetry of a person who never sacrificed rhyme or rhythm or structure. The confines were rigid but the message was always profound, albeit filled with extreme hurt and bitterness. This person’s work really sparked my interest in poetry and made me want to read more, to explore, to study styles, to observe and to learn. I am a long way from writing outstanding or deeply satisfying poetry but I have come a very long way in understanding and appreciating what I do read. There are poems that reel me in, each word sinking in, appearing magical making me marvel at the writer and the written word and then there are others that make me wonder why the author wanted something so pedestrian stated in verse. They are uninspiring and leave me cold. But the same poem appeals to certain others, they like it, love it, they celebrate the author while I wonder what they saw.
It isn’t comforting not knowing what’s good poetry and what isn’t. If it is something so subjective, that what some like, others find pedestrian, why expect critique? What does one expect from critique?
The more I immerse myself in poetry, the more I find that this interest was meant to be. This is how my brain thinks. It’s a deep-seated desire to communicate, to say the most in as few words, in les mot juste. I see many do it so effectively. I have been noticing several layers of meaning within very simple sounding words, words like rainbows reflecting all colors, the entire spectrum of human emotions and some with words and sentences that are so opaque, it’s almost as if they absorbed every bit of meaning or associations available, transmitting nothing like light. I see such poetry praised and I get confused to the point of insanity as I ask myself, “What am I missing?” It is almost as if it is too late, as if in early childhood the brain got wired such that I would never know what “good” poetry is. I keep falling back on instincts, instinctively determining whether or not a poem has been successful in communicating its meaning to me. If it has it is the most amazing piece of poetry, if it hasn’t it is just black words on paper or in cyberspace.
But I know that is not enough. I feel the structure is important. I always like poetry that follows a rhyme scheme, meter, that can be read aloud and sounds euphonic with an inherent rhythm. I like the cleverness seen in alliteration and am slowly becoming impressed to the point of marveling at the kinds of poets who tell me they can map out an entire sonnet in their head before they actually transmit it to paper. The idea that there is “logic” and a system to a poem makes me very glad. It gives my pattern-seeking brain a tremendous amount of hope. It is not a riddle, there is a method to this madness and I am going to discover what it is. It has become an obsession. Something I couldn’t care less about up until 365 days ago, is now an all-consuming obsession; not writing it so much as understanding it completely.
It is easy to learn things these days by surfing the Internet and following each link to the next level of information, however, it is heart-warming and extremely enlightening when someone who knows about poetry talks to you and tells you, without a trace of condescension, what good poetry is all about, that a Shakespearean sonnet is a good place to start ones education in poetry. It is thrilling to be taught that one can think of a sonnet as two poems – an octave and a sestet The octave, the first eight lines, sets up the theme of the sonnet and the sestet, the last six lines, is for resolution or conclusion. This however, is not a Shakespearean sonnet, it is a Petrarch sonnet, I believe. The Shakespearean one has three quatrains where the first and third lines and the second and fourth lines rhyme. The Shakespearean sonnet ends with a couplet where both lines rhyme and are always indented. I was also told how important the ending couplet was to the Shakespearean sonnet. Any sign of forced rhyming and it is reduced to nothing but a farce. Of course the iambic pentameter is indispensable to the entire sonnet. This was a lot of learning for me in one incredible chat session with a very disciplined poet. He encouraged me to try writing sonnets, but told me to read enough of them first, to immerse myself in them. I will always be grateful for this advice.
Maybe someday I will know enough to understand the points that literary critics are trying to make when they dissect a particular poem. And perhaps this clarity will come after I learn how to understand every piece of poetry I read.
Until that day, I continue on this quest and see where it takes me. I have found many friends who are willing to share a wealth of poetic knowledge, to offer help and guidance and it is thrilling to see how ones mind can expand when one is exposed to pure knowledge. I have a very long way to go but as Ringo said, “I’ll get by with a little help from my friends…”
Saturday, December 3, 2005
One Morning in a Bus...
Another morning’s commute. I left home pre-dawn, my eyes still trying to squint their sleepiness away. I drove to the Park & Ride in a haze. Perhaps I sleep-drove? I have no recollection of passing any of the landmarks along the way and yet I had reached the parking lot and was shivering as I waited in line for my 6:15 AM bus. The dark days of winter were definitely here.
I found myself a warm and cozy corner of the bus, adjusted the seat and found the most comfortable physical position for the two hour ride. I tried reading East of Eden until the words of Adam Trask and Sam Hamilton’s conversation about the Bordoni acres’ irrigational prospects started swimming around on the page. I don’t know when the book slipped out of my hands and fell to the floor.
The bus made its way along the same highway in the stop-and-go traffic and then to the bridge that takes us closer to Lincoln tunnel en route New York City (NYC). The bus needs to climb a little on this bridge, over the very slight gradient, and it was, until I came to the realization that the climb was steeper than normal. I felt my back pressing deeper into the seat as it climbed higher and higher while its rusty gears got noisier by the minute. Something was definitely not right. In my mind I started running through all the bridges that lead into NYC – the George Washington Bridge, the Tappan Zee Bridge – I couldn’t recollect either one being a steep climb. The climbing continued as I awaited descent in preparation of getting on to the other side. But I couldn’t feel the descent. Then my eyes flew open and I was stunned at the sight. The clouds were all below me, except for the wispy cirrus ones that seemed awfully close as the bus hurtled into nothingness. To say I was panicking would be an understatement. I turned my head and noticed that there weren’t any other passengers next to me, come to think of it, neither were their seats, nor were the walls of the bus. It was almost as if I had been ejected out of a flying bus! And yet I wasn’t falling. I was just headed out at warp speed, into nothingness, strapped to a bus seat without any restraints!
This felt as real as it gets and then I opened my eyes. I really did this time because I know I saw the driver in the driver’s seat and the passenger next to me and felt reassured about being safe and secure inside a bus that was intact and still on the ground.
I was seated at a window seat and suddenly felt a draught. I glanced toward the window and noticed that it had slid open. I slid it back in place, settled in and closed my eyes again, reassured that all was well and that I wasn’t hurtling into space. But it happened again. No sooner had I closed my eyes that I found myself on a bridge climbing up into eternity. This time I knew it was a dream. I opened my eyes and glanced at the side to see the window open, once again. I closed it shut. I thought these hallucinations were being caused by the flimsy window.
By now we were near my stop. I had to get ready to auto-pilot myself out of the bus. I started searching for my work ID card and my keys and once again glanced at the window next to me. It was sealed tight, like airplane windows usually are. This was an air-conditioned bus. It didn’t have the kind of windows that would slide open and then slide back in place!!
I felt the color drain from my face. Then I looked around, really wide awake now. The passengers were all familiar, the driver was his usual cheery self and was announcing the stop that preceded mine. Things were wearing their normal November morning frigid sheen again. All was well with the world. I picked up my things, got off the bus and started walking to work.
Needless to say, I haven’t been able to think of anything else all day. I rarely remember my dreams and this is the kind of dream I’ve never dreamt before, the kind where you feel you have awakened from your dream, but the ostensible awakening is still part of the dream and you have to wake up a third time in order to feel awake again.
The rest of the day went by in a haze, leaving me thankful about my feet on the ground and my head far away from wispy cirrus clouds but extremely doubtful about my present state of wakefulness.
I found myself a warm and cozy corner of the bus, adjusted the seat and found the most comfortable physical position for the two hour ride. I tried reading East of Eden until the words of Adam Trask and Sam Hamilton’s conversation about the Bordoni acres’ irrigational prospects started swimming around on the page. I don’t know when the book slipped out of my hands and fell to the floor.
The bus made its way along the same highway in the stop-and-go traffic and then to the bridge that takes us closer to Lincoln tunnel en route New York City (NYC). The bus needs to climb a little on this bridge, over the very slight gradient, and it was, until I came to the realization that the climb was steeper than normal. I felt my back pressing deeper into the seat as it climbed higher and higher while its rusty gears got noisier by the minute. Something was definitely not right. In my mind I started running through all the bridges that lead into NYC – the George Washington Bridge, the Tappan Zee Bridge – I couldn’t recollect either one being a steep climb. The climbing continued as I awaited descent in preparation of getting on to the other side. But I couldn’t feel the descent. Then my eyes flew open and I was stunned at the sight. The clouds were all below me, except for the wispy cirrus ones that seemed awfully close as the bus hurtled into nothingness. To say I was panicking would be an understatement. I turned my head and noticed that there weren’t any other passengers next to me, come to think of it, neither were their seats, nor were the walls of the bus. It was almost as if I had been ejected out of a flying bus! And yet I wasn’t falling. I was just headed out at warp speed, into nothingness, strapped to a bus seat without any restraints!
This felt as real as it gets and then I opened my eyes. I really did this time because I know I saw the driver in the driver’s seat and the passenger next to me and felt reassured about being safe and secure inside a bus that was intact and still on the ground.
I was seated at a window seat and suddenly felt a draught. I glanced toward the window and noticed that it had slid open. I slid it back in place, settled in and closed my eyes again, reassured that all was well and that I wasn’t hurtling into space. But it happened again. No sooner had I closed my eyes that I found myself on a bridge climbing up into eternity. This time I knew it was a dream. I opened my eyes and glanced at the side to see the window open, once again. I closed it shut. I thought these hallucinations were being caused by the flimsy window.
By now we were near my stop. I had to get ready to auto-pilot myself out of the bus. I started searching for my work ID card and my keys and once again glanced at the window next to me. It was sealed tight, like airplane windows usually are. This was an air-conditioned bus. It didn’t have the kind of windows that would slide open and then slide back in place!!
I felt the color drain from my face. Then I looked around, really wide awake now. The passengers were all familiar, the driver was his usual cheery self and was announcing the stop that preceded mine. Things were wearing their normal November morning frigid sheen again. All was well with the world. I picked up my things, got off the bus and started walking to work.
Needless to say, I haven’t been able to think of anything else all day. I rarely remember my dreams and this is the kind of dream I’ve never dreamt before, the kind where you feel you have awakened from your dream, but the ostensible awakening is still part of the dream and you have to wake up a third time in order to feel awake again.
The rest of the day went by in a haze, leaving me thankful about my feet on the ground and my head far away from wispy cirrus clouds but extremely doubtful about my present state of wakefulness.
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