Neo-Victorian Poetry
  • Steampunk Poems
  • Romantic Poems
  • Christian Poems
  • Other Poems
  • Blog
  • Home

Inadvertent success with ... love !!!

7/26/2017

1 Comment

 
Picture
A few years ago, while attending a writer’s conference, I decided to participate in a poetry workshop.  I had apprehensions that I might be the only rhymer in the room, and ... actually, I was correct.

I soon realized that those who were leading these sessions were primarily advocating writing in prose form.  Even so, I decided to stay with it … it was, after all, advertised as a “poetry” workshop.

During the course of that workshop, each of us was invited to read our poems at the podium.  After we’d read our works, these professionals would then discuss and appraise our poems.

So, I selected a few of my favorite pieces to read aloud.  Each day we listened, each day we read, and each day the teachers did their best to evaluate what we had presented right then and there.

As the days went on the instructors became perplexed by my style, noting that my poems began at one point, ascended in an arc, and ended perfectly.  “That’s really hard to do,” they responded.

The final poem that I read to the room was “My Heart Upon A Loom.”  At the far end of that room sat my family.  I approached the dais, read the poem,  and then quietly retook my seat   

Then, they began their assessment of my poem by asserting and repeatedly insisting that one simply cannot use the word love over and over in a single poem.  Meanwhile, my family sat there, aghast.

Because, nowhere, in that love poem, had I once used the word love!  It simply wasn't there!  I suddenly realized that I had managed to convey the essence, the ambiance of “love” clandestinely.

I listened to the teachers and nodded politely while my family snickered as quietly as they could manage.  I was ecstatic with their inadvertent validation, but I said nothing in response to them.

To quote Napoleon Bonaparte, ​"Never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake."

No, they were not my enemy, per se, but they were so locked into prose that they couldn’t really evaluate what I had done, poetically.  I thanked them and excited that room a very, very happy poet.

Here is that final poem which I read aloud:


My Heart Upon A Loom
​
My heart upon a loom,
Each woven cord revealing
An incidence of you;
It's you who do the weaving.
Though guarded I this heart
'Neath coolest countenance
You took a gentler part
Than I could guard against.
My heart upon a loom
Which many years lay barren
And I seemed long unmoved;
Thus, uncompleted therein.
You took a crimson strand
Against my warning eye.
With patient, agile hand
You wove away the lie.
My heart upon a loom.
Now row by row a passion
By which I am consumed
Within this frame is fashioned.
A woolen cloak we weave
To keep us from such cold
As loneliness can breed
When maids and men grow old.




​


Image: http://pureheartllc.com
1 Comment

Now ... where is my Onomasticon?

7/11/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
During one of his standup routines, Steven Wright - comedian, actor, writer, and Oscar-winning film producer - asked rhetorically, “What’s another word for Thesaurus?”  I love his keen sense of irony.

Thesaurus: the book one turns to when one needs to know, “What’s another word for …”    

When I finally stopped laughing I looked up thesaurus in my Thesaurus.  What I found was: onomasticon!  If I had heard this word out of context I probably would have envisioned dinosaur.

One of the things I love about the English language is how wieldable and pliable it is, especially so regarding irony.  Some of my darkest works have benefited from the inclusion of an ironic ending.  

So, what exactly is irony?  According to dictionary.com it is "an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have, happened."  It’s that humorous ending of  a joke known as the punchline.

As to the Thesaurus, I relied heavily on mine when I began to write poetry at age eleven in order to boost my eloquence, but as my vocabulary grew I found myself referring to it less and less often.   

Now, if I sit with an idea long enough, specific words rise up to meet it, to commune with my thoughts, working together, ferreting out exactly what I want to say, as my eyes begin to glaze, entranced.

I keep my Onomasticon handy for those events when I want to be sure that the word I’ve chosen is what I think it is in its broadest sense.  It is still easier than I’d like to admit to be mistaken.  

Oh, but I do so love words!  They are my favorite toys.







Image: http://exilebibliophile.blogspot.com ... 'Bookworm' painting by Carl Spitzweg
0 Comments

Solarpunk Gauguin, and so much more.

7/6/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
A few years ago, I shared a table with the author of the Clockwork Twist adventure series, Emily Thompson, where we signed and sold our books side by side.  It was then that I became acquainted with the other writers in what was to become known as Author’s Row.

Later that year I was invited by the Clockwork Alchemy authors to participate in a new Steampunk anthology, to be titled 12 Hours Later: Twenty Four Tales of Myth and Mystery, containing stories, (or poems), each cleaved in two and finishing 12 hours later.

The following year, I participated in their second Steampunk anthology, titled 30 Days Later: Steaming Forward: 30 Adventures in Time, which followed the same design of bisected stories, (or poems), and included many of the authors of 12 Hours Later.  

Most recently, they have produced a third Steampunk anthology, titled Some Time Later: Fantastic Voyages Through Alternate Worlds.  I’d never written an alternate history poem before, nor read such works, so it took me a while to wrap my head around it.

Via email and whatnot, I and the other writers were able to gather the gist of each volume as they were being proposed and designed, which helped us to focus on the collectively agreed upon theme.  In this latest book, the theme involved composing an alternate history.

I might have been feeling rather snarky the day I threw my idea their way, typing something about an alternate history involving Gauguin in Tahiti.  As I happen to be a fan of Solarpunk, I began by trying to imagine a Solarpunk Tahiti.  What is Solarpunk you ask?

“Solarpunk is a genre of Speculative Fiction that focuses on craftsmanship, community, and technology powered by renewable energy, wrapped up in a coating of Art Nouveau drawings.  http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SolarPunk

It’s the visual aspects of Solarpunk which attract me to this genre, and for some reason the notion of Gauguin, Tahiti, and rewriting his history sprang to fruition.  Mind you, I’ve never much admired Gauguin’s Tahitian works, nor Gauguin himself, but I went for it.

I knew his story, or so I thought, until I embarked on a deeper investigation into his life and times.  Through this research I began to see a different man that the one I had envisioned, and I eventually came to think much more kindly of him, (not so much for his art).

And so was born my contribution to Some Time Later.  If you’re already a fan of alternate history, (or if I’ve perhaps peaked your interest in it), I invite you to grab a copy of Some Time Later: Fantastic Voyages Through Alternate Worlds.  It’s a really fun read.

This latest volume includes my poem: Solarpunk Gauguin.  Enjoy!





Image: Steve Collis 
0 Comments

Unstable blog site makes me ...

7/3/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
American actor William Hurt once said, "You can only sit on the frustration of wanting to express something for so long."

​
I quite agree!!!

Now that I finally have that oar in the water and am ready to propel this boat forward, I find that this site has set things askew while I wasn’t looking. This time the link to my blog post became hidden from the home screen!


What good does it serve when one cannot find the link to blog posts on a blog site?  Is one left to intuit that surely there must be a new post ... somewhere? This is but one of the many problems that I’ve encountered with Weebly.

Sure, it’s free.  Sure, it’s easier to use, initially, for the less technically adept. Sure, I’ve been sticking it out with Weebly since February of 2013.  And, to be sure, it and I have been at odds on numerous occasions ... such as now.

On the other hand, the very thought of switching to some other site, from which to thumb my nose at this one, feels incredibly daunting.  Pardon me if I’ve said this all before.  I’m fairly certain that I must have, given the nature of it all.

In this instance, I’d also like to add a cautionary note: despite the trepidation I feel in saying so, I may well be moving on to a more stable platform for this blog soon, or at least linking it through some other site.  I will keep you apprised.




Image: http://successyeti.com
0 Comments

    About the author:

    I've written many poems over the years.  This blog is a preview of my books: Echoes, Neo-Victorian Poetry (April 2013), Echoes ll, More Neo-Victorian Poetry (May 2014), Echoes lll, Even More Neo-Victorian Poetry, (August 2016), A Compilation of Echoes. (September 2016), and When None Command (April 13, 2019)

    Archives

    December 2021
    January 2021
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    May 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    July 2019
    April 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly