Blog Archives - Neo-Victorian Poetry

Announcing: A Book-Signing Event!

8/28/2013

You are cordially invited to a Book Signing Event, which will feature the rhyming verses of Echoes, Neo-Victorian Poetry, and the Steampunk adventure novel titled, Clockwork Twist!

This event is set to coincide with South First Fridays, a monthly happening held in downtown San Jose. Since both of these featured books are of the Steampunk genre, the setting will be embellished with some characteristic accouterments: metal gears strewn about, glowing Victorian lanterns, and the tempting libations of tea and biscuits.

Come and have a listen as I read an excerpt from Emily's thrilling adventure novel, Clockwork Twist. Conversely, Emily will do a reading of some of my rhyming verses from Echoes, Neo-Victorian Poetry.

The honour of your company is requested...

Stand by for an announcement ... a new poem while you wait.

8/27/2013

My Sunday post flew out the window. Halfway written, it was preempted by ... an upcoming event. Please stand by.

In the meantime, here is a poem that I've been working on lately. Enjoy:

S. F. Marina

A song is on the lips of distant
ships that pass this foggy night
attuned to every sleeping vessel moored
each lapping breath of tide.
My back now to the sea
my elbows resting on the metal rails
I stare across the vacant, misty street
and into other realms
of cathode ray tubes, each a different
hue set into blank face stone
displaying pantomimes of varied kinds
in each and every home.
I lean there changing channels at a
glance until I chance to see
someone standing in a sudden
window staring back at me.

My particular golden mean...

8/21/2013

I thought I might, for this post, expand a bit on a personal approach to writing poetry that has taken years to craft to its current state; a full fifty years, in fact. With your patient indulgence, here goes:

The ancient Greeks lived by a philosophy embodied in the Golden Mean, which can be explained as the centrally balanced point between opposing extremes. I hold to a similar ideal in my poetry, though my golden mean would be best depicted as the apex of a pyramid.

When I'm writing a poem, if I find a line that stands head and shoulders above the rest, that line becomes my golden mean, and all of the other lines must then measure up to it. This also applies to the title, which I sometimes pull from within the poem.

My style of writing poetry is not unlike sorting out a Rubik's Cube. All of its sides must align properly and smoothly or I won't be satisfied with the piece, and neither should the reader. It is the standard I adhere to.

This approach to writing poetry is probably due to the fact that I was largely self-taught, from the 6th grade onward, and that I had to figure it out on my own. Each of my mentors had died long before I was born, so I found what counsel I could in their written works.

Then one day, someone responded to one of my poems by remarking, "Oh, I really like that line," which immediately made me wonder why they weren't as excited about the other lines in my poem. "What? My poem isn't perfect?" That remark helped to make me the poet I am today.

Looking for that best lines in my poems became an ardent quest for me. It is probably the most important writing tool I own, and I owe immense appreciation to someone who's visage and voice I, sadly, can no longer recall. Whoever you are, I thank you!

Along with that, I now realize that being hypersensitive, which is often regarded as a negative trait, happens to have benefited this poet greatly. It has enabled me to always take deeply to heart any and all comments I receive on my work, whether it be critical, agreeable, or dismissive.

The poets and poetry that are included in "The Oxford Book of English Verse" greatly contributed to the process by which I have grown as a poet. Likewise, it is my hope that my poems might one day serve to encourage a current or future budding poet, who will also be searching for the hows and whys of writing poetry; in pursuit of their golden mean.

Titles

8/18/2013

I try to keep abreast of various online poetry groups. There is a great deal to be learned from them. I use these groups as a testing ground for my ideas on writing, and I usually encounter some truly fascinating and provocative questions.

In a recent group, someone asked about "titles," wondering whether they are important to a poem. My opinion on titles runs headlong towards the "Yes" column. Some of what follows are my responses to that question in one such group.

A title is a tool that can perform a number of roles for a poem, such as giving the reader a heads-up about what to expect in a piece, to encapsulate it subtly, or even to enhance the irony of a poem.   There's also the issue of being able to reference a work in the index of a book of poetry.

Once in a while I receive a response to a poem that I could not have anticipated, such as when readers reveal intense, personal insights in a poem that I hadn't intentionally written there. I could see it clear as day, though, once they pointed it out. In such a case, too much in the title could have steered them amiss.

But, if a poem has no title at all, how does one introduce it in conversation? "Well, it's the one about the guy who loves a girl..." Good luck tuning in to that one. I could memorize a few lines and recite them to reference a poem, I suppose, but a title is so wonderfully handy.

I often pull a word or a phrase from within a poem to serve as its title. This is my favorite method of finding a name for the piece without giving too much away. Plus, finding such a title often gives me a delightful 'ah ha" moment about the poem I've just written.

It is my preference that the reader should be able to understand my poems without any overt "hand-holding." If I give it too much introduction, I'm essentially saying, "You won't understand this, so here is what I intend for it to say." To me, this is a negative call-out that says to the reader, "I don't trust that you're going to get it."

Now and then, I run into tremendous difficulty coming up with a good title for a poem, and sometimes I have to walk away, having given a piece a temporary name. I do not consider my work to be finished until it bears its own appellation.

As this topic was born in an online poetry group, I think it only fitting that I recommend such groups to other poets as well as to readers. I'll leave it here with one caution, though: "Do not hold what goes on in such groups too dearly. We/they are all just trying to work out these issues about poetry. No harm, no foul."

Some poems just won't do what they're told.

8/14/2013

Since ancient times, poets have cited their "muse" as the source of their inspiration. In fact, it was the antediluvian Greeks who personified them as the source of knowledge, assigning credit to them as the inspirations of science and the arts, as well.

I often feel as though there is "something" which feeds, directs, and helps me to make sense of the poems I write. I hesitate to nail this down too tightly because the very idea of the muse, of having a muse, is a wonderfully romantic and ethereal thing.

There had been times when I found myself in a great struggle for control over a work in process. I had chosen the words, and carefully plotted their course, only to see them dash against the rocks and fly apart.

It took me a while, as I groped my way along in my early years of my writing, to relinquish some amount of control to that "something," until I almost wondered whether the poem was destined to simply write itself.

Eventually, I came upon a sort of truce with my "muse." Now, instead of a battle there is a kind of collaboration I've learned to listen for subtle nuances and unexpected turns that I might have otherwise overlooked.

Whether there actually are "muses" or no, what I now experience while writing goes well beyond merely taking dictation. As a poet, I get to be both plotter of the course, and ever curious about what lies ahead a the poem.

Everyone's a critic ... I hope.

8/11/2013

There was once an ancient punishment called "running the gauntlet." The one being penalized had to run between two flanking rows of men who wielded whips or clubs, and who beat on the criminal all along the way.

When faced with criticism, one runs the risk of a trial by fire, which can feel equally abusive. The point here, though, is that of facing critical appraisal of one's work, be it poetry, prose, or any other style of writing.

Testing one's metal, though initially daunting, need not inspire fear. It is a necessary device for proving the merit of ones work. Without it, the writer can call prey to self delusion, or to acknowledgements that are overtly effusive.

I find it a difficult task to locate trustworthy and candid critics beyond my own family, who are my best critics. They are willing to scrutinize my poems and to give me an honest, sometimes disappointing, appraisal. I am most fortunate in this.

It's easy to accept the accolades of well meaning readers, or of those who are reluctant to hurt the writer's feelings. There are also those who simply find it difficult to give a meaningful account of their reactions to a work.

In such cases, both the work and the writer can fall heir to prolonged stagnation. Beyond my own family, the issue has become one of sometimes begging for criticism. Essentially, when there are no walls to bounce off of, how can one define oneself?

Spinning unhappy memories into .. gold?

8/7/2013

Much like the straw in the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale, unhappy memories can seem like such useless stuff, and can end up filling room after ever larger room in a sensitive and brooding mind. The result can be just as abusive as the nameless miller's daughter's plight.

But is there some way to spin such unwanted dross into ... gold? Most happily, yes, and a few such vehicles include painting, composing music, writing novels, keeping a journal, and crafting poetry. When we give our painful memories purpose, they acquire positive potential.

In other words, rather than allowing such tainting thoughts to endlessly haunt my mind, where they can whirl unbound, and fester into ever more painful hues, I use them. I begin with a feeling and associate it with a word, which becomes a phrase, and then a rhyme comes to mind.

Ultimately, I can make a great deal more sense out of what I've been thinking once I begin to lay it all out on paper. When it is out there, before me, where I can more clearly see it, it's "game on." Up roll the sleeves and off come the gloves.

Very often, what I expect to find waiting for me in those daunting and fully exposed images ends up revealing surprisingly deep insights about my past, my mind, and about situations in general. There is a wealth of liberty and vitality waiting for me where I had expected just more pain.

I, like the miller's daughter, have found myself in situations that were not of my own doing, but having been vulnerable to many hurts does not mean that I am so today. Those bygone hours and enemies no longer wield adverse potent power over me. Today, they are yielding gold.

An apology

8/3/2013

I have unavoidably neglected my blog for days on end. It isn't that I run out of things to write about ... oh, goodness no ... but that the logistics of my life occasionally take possession of my availability. I'm not gifted with the ability of jotting down quick and coherent vignettes of thought. My entries here take some time to compose, because they simply demand it.

I've thrown in a few poems lately to keep the sheets warm, as it were, but this is not intended as a replacement for my usual writing here, nor should it become so. Typically, I aim to publish bi-weekly posts, somewhere around Sundays and Wednesdays, and this remains my goal.

Still, by way of apology, I give you this for the time being:

Promised

Her future had been chiseled out in stone
With every instance as it ought to be,
As was the manner of the ancient code,
The breeding template of her family.

She bowed to this much like a wilting rose,
A brilliant blossom bled of vibrancy,
And nothing in her manner or her tone
Gave any quotient of her misery.

And through it all she had a stranglehold,
As did so many in her ancestry,
On one great promise someone had foretold
In otherwise neglected prophecy:

One day, somehow, a bride would break the mold,
Would get to live her life fulfilled and free,
And like the others born into her fold
She watched and waited, hoping it was she.