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poetry time
why, yes, fox is avoiding her work again. :-)
i read this in high school, and it's my most favorite example ever of Why You Shouldn't Just Go Ahead And Write Free Verse, Darlings. when artists of any sort -- painters, sculptors, writers of poetry or prose -- depart from form, it works precisely because it's a departure. if you don't know how to write a sonnet (which is not to say you have to be able to write a good sonnet, but you ought to be able to identify one from sixty paces), then when you spit out some words and call them free verse, what they are is lines on a page where you messed with the line breaks because you thought it looked cool.
yeah, i get a little conservative sometimes. :-) this here is -- if i'm remembering my high school french lit rightly -- alexandrain verse, in which each line has twelve syllables (giving final "e" the weight of a syllable). but the last line, "calm. he has two red holes in his right side.", only has ten.
ten syllables! twelve syllables, with two holes! that doesn't happen accidentally. i wish more self-styled poets got that. (i'm sure many more self-styled poets agree with me.)
Le Dormeur du Val, by Arthur Rimbaud
C'est un trou de verdure où chante une rivière,
Accrocheant follement aux herbes des haillons
D'argent; où le soleil, de la montagne fière,
Luit; c'est un petit val qui mousse de rayons.
Un soldat jeune, bouche ouverte, tête nue,
Et la nuque baignant dans le frais cresson bleu,
Dort; il est étendu dans l'herbe, sous la nue,
Pâle dans son lit vert où la lumière pleut.
Les pieds dans les glaïeuls, il dort. Souriant comme
Sourirait un enfant malade, il fait un somme:
Nature, berce-le chaudement: il a froid.
Les parfums ne font pas frissonner sa narine;
Il dort dans le soleil, la main sur sa poitrine
Tranquille. Il a deux trous rouges au côté droit.
It is a hole of greenery where a river sings,
Hung crazily with grasses in rags
Of silver; where the sun, from the mountain of fire,
Shines: it's a little valley that sparkles with rays.
A young soldier, mouth open, head bare,
And the nape of his neck bathing in the fresh blue cress,
Sleeps; he is stretched out in the grass, under the sky,
Pale in his green bed where the sun rains.[1]
Feet in the gladioli, he sleeps. Smiling as
A sick child would smile, he takes a nap:
Nature, cradle him warmly: he is cold.
The scents do not twitch at his nose;
He sleeps in the sun, a hand on his calm chest.
He has two red holes in his right side.
[1] Could also be "where the sun weeps," for those who dig foreshadowing.
i read this in high school, and it's my most favorite example ever of Why You Shouldn't Just Go Ahead And Write Free Verse, Darlings. when artists of any sort -- painters, sculptors, writers of poetry or prose -- depart from form, it works precisely because it's a departure. if you don't know how to write a sonnet (which is not to say you have to be able to write a good sonnet, but you ought to be able to identify one from sixty paces), then when you spit out some words and call them free verse, what they are is lines on a page where you messed with the line breaks because you thought it looked cool.
yeah, i get a little conservative sometimes. :-) this here is -- if i'm remembering my high school french lit rightly -- alexandrain verse, in which each line has twelve syllables (giving final "e" the weight of a syllable). but the last line, "calm. he has two red holes in his right side.", only has ten.
ten syllables! twelve syllables, with two holes! that doesn't happen accidentally. i wish more self-styled poets got that. (i'm sure many more self-styled poets agree with me.)
Le Dormeur du Val, by Arthur Rimbaud
C'est un trou de verdure où chante une rivière,
Accrocheant follement aux herbes des haillons
D'argent; où le soleil, de la montagne fière,
Luit; c'est un petit val qui mousse de rayons.
Un soldat jeune, bouche ouverte, tête nue,
Et la nuque baignant dans le frais cresson bleu,
Dort; il est étendu dans l'herbe, sous la nue,
Pâle dans son lit vert où la lumière pleut.
Les pieds dans les glaïeuls, il dort. Souriant comme
Sourirait un enfant malade, il fait un somme:
Nature, berce-le chaudement: il a froid.
Les parfums ne font pas frissonner sa narine;
Il dort dans le soleil, la main sur sa poitrine
Tranquille. Il a deux trous rouges au côté droit.
It is a hole of greenery where a river sings,
Hung crazily with grasses in rags
Of silver; where the sun, from the mountain of fire,
Shines: it's a little valley that sparkles with rays.
A young soldier, mouth open, head bare,
And the nape of his neck bathing in the fresh blue cress,
Sleeps; he is stretched out in the grass, under the sky,
Pale in his green bed where the sun rains.[1]
Feet in the gladioli, he sleeps. Smiling as
A sick child would smile, he takes a nap:
Nature, cradle him warmly: he is cold.
The scents do not twitch at his nose;
He sleeps in the sun, a hand on his calm chest.
He has two red holes in his right side.
[1] Could also be "where the sun weeps," for those who dig foreshadowing.
no subject
The most -- most! -- I've usually managed is haiku. It's hard to be pompous in seventeen syllables, so this is well and good. There were the twelve lines in three quatrains of iambic tetrameter last week, but that was a fluke.
-- Lorrie