beneath the applause let us ride
diving through the sounds of hand claps
dodging those erratic frantic flaps
rolling somersaults on the tide

1/8/2016

those weeps come due as debts because
life does not love the stoic face
nor hates the tears that leave their trace
but lets us ride beneath applause

1/7/2016

In the last post I explained the framework I work within. In this post I want to parse, take apart, the first quatrain to explain to others what I am doing and to give myself a chance to find what I missed the first time around. There are always surprises and a close read is informative if not generally comfortable. Ok, begin the parse.

How do I get that first line on to that empty page? How in all the world of words do I find the exact eight syllables I need? The answer has to be found in language which allows us to talk to each other and to ourselves.

A language’s function is to communicate and, mostly, linguists agree on five systems or rules that must be in place before people can understand each other. Roughly these are:
* sounds: All English speakers must agree that the letter ‘r’ represents the sound ‘arrrrrrr’ and not ‘esssssss’ otherwise there is extreme confusion over whether ‘sink’ or ‘rink’ is the appropriate plumbing in your bathroom.
* meaning: Because ‘walk’ to one poor soul could mean ‘table’ to another.
* order/organization: A sentence such as: ‘The mouse ran up the clock’ without an agreed upon order could come out as ‘Up the the ran clock mouse’ and that does not lead to any understanding.
*rhythm/stress: Asking a question requires a different stress and rhythm than making a statement and many words change meaning when one syllable or another is stressed. CONtent means ‘the thing contained’ and ‘conTENT’ means ‘satisfied.’
* manner: We do not ask a two-year old for ‘restitution’, we say: ’Give it to me.’ Nor do we (hopefully) tell a judge: ‘liar, liar pants on fire’, we say: ‘I beg to differ, Sir.’
Sounds, meaning, order/organization, rhythm/stress and manner are all linguistic theory and not too helpful until we realize that poetry must also operate within these rules and that these rules are the help we need to find that elusive first line.

The unexpected death recently of a dear friend of mine has left me breathless, wrong-footed and afraid, desperately in need of poetry. And that is the answer to my first line, I need meaning to be my starting point. As an aside I use the word ‘death’ instead of the more euphemistic ‘passing’ because this was an abrupt stop (death) and not a slow release (passing).

Together we walked the lanes and paths of her nearly-wild Indiana farm with no specific purpose in mind other than to be with the sunlight in the woods, to feel the rustle of the wind in the grasses and to hear the calls of her beloved wild birds. Never worrying too much about the clock or where our feet were taking us almost wallowing in the otherness of it all.

Of course this loss hurts but I wonder why this goodbye has to hurt so much more. Is this act of saying goodbye only for this friend as I walk through the lanes of my memories or are there other lanes I have only now perceived? This fresh grief begins to echo with remoter griefs compounding them into a much deeper, denser sadness. And this question becomes: ‘whose goodbye lanes do I wander’

The second line: ‘where my heart lies loved and broken’ is a bit more straight-forward. My heart lies in these lanes where I loved and was loved, but love was the instrument that did the breaking.

And with the word ‘broken,’ I break with the meaning of the first two lines and shift to the question: ‘How long have I not known of these echoes and how have I kept them hidden?’ I numbed them with ice, constructed a box and threw away the key.
‘have I been so long locked frozen’

And this effort to separate myself from my grief has blocked my access to the excess of words I need. Poetry only happens when there are enough words to throw away recklessly until you find the precious few. My efforts at verse were ‘inept’ because of the sparseness of the words left to me.
‘inept without words to squander’

The first quatrain:

whose goodbye lanes do I wander
where my heart lies loved and broken
have I been so long locked frozen
inept without words to squander

I still have four other rules and I guess that means a few more posts.
Lynne

while words with words color sky blue
and therein lies the battered core
once grief begins and opens doors
one weeps because those debts come due
1/6/2016

Lynne: For a while now the urge to write poetry has been growing in me. The words push me, threaten me with their whisperings until I give in ungraciously, knowing that this means work and struggle and disappointment. For words are a bitter master always finding new ways, better ways to combine, always needing another rewrite or a toss into the nearest waste basket or at really bad times the furious tines of a paper shredder. But there it is, I’ve begun.

I went back to the Four Line quatrains I was doing in 2012 because I found that the structure and brevity of these poems keep me safely enclosed within their boundaries yet let me wander anywhere I want in terms of meanings, sounds and typographies.
I try to write one quatrain a day and within a reasonable amount of time I had five quatrains enough to catch me up with the days of the 2016 new year.

What I wondered as I reread the nearly unpunctuated quatrains was how much understanding I was expecting from someone who doesn’t know why or how the words march beneath my fingertips because they do march, not in rows or columns, but in all different directions each to their own beat doing as many things as it is possible to make them do while staying within the formal boundaries set by my quatrains. Sometimes I even find my subconscious glaring at me for parting the curtains it hides behind for it’s naked and mostly unlovely.

I can describe how I am building the quatrains. Taken directly from Wikipedia: ‘A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines.’ Most of the quatrains I write are complete poems on their own, but I overlap their meaning from day to day by using the last line of the previous day’s poem for the first line of the next day’s poem. This repetition is known as chain verse and I use it to give me the push I need to start the verse for the next day. If you’re interested in more details here is a link that explains pretty well.

Next I have opted to use an envelope rhyme where the first and fourth lines rhyme and the second and third lines rhyme thus enclosing the middle two lines within the outer two lines. This shape, generally written in poetry jargon as ABBA, sort of resembles an envelope wherein the external lines contain the internal lines,.

For even more structure I limit the lines to eight syllables. Eight syllables keeps the lines sparse and clean because it doesn’t allow you to use too many prepositions ( ‘on’, ‘in’, ‘of’ …) or articles of speech ( ‘a’ and ‘the’) unless they are actually imparting meaning. This also keeps me from using multi-syllabled words which are fun for their internal rhyme but lead to rhymes like ‘conclusion’, ‘delusion’, ‘contribution’,’revolution’ … or one I particularly abuse, ‘ing’ words, ‘loving’, ‘giving’, ‘meaning’, ‘distressing’, ‘specializing’. You can see how any type of word can rhyme even though it’s root has no rhyme or even close rhyme between them. They are a sort of cheat for lazy or harassed poets. I don’t always avoid this but when I find too many syllables or a sing-song rhythm I look for repeating suffixes.

Those are mostly the restrictions I work within. I find that boundaries make it easier for me to start and finish. Plus every now and then something breaks the rules that is just too good not to use. These gems only come when those boundaries are in place and I love it when I find one of them.

In January of 2012 I explained these boundaries in verse:
I want to do a three six five
and start on january one
a poem complete neatly done
an envelope rhyme come alive
1/1/2012

An envelope rhyme comes alive,
when the lines have eight syllables.
With strict straightforward simple rules,
lines two, three, one and four must rhyme.
1/2/2012

That lines two, three, one and four rhyme,
seems strange and rather more like prose.
The constraints keep the meter close,
let meaning float beneath the lines.
1/3/2012

january 1-5

whose goodbye lanes do I wander
where my heart lies loved and broken
have I been so long locked frozen
inept without words to squander

to squander inept without words
meters worth of rhymes with four feet
counted lines unaligned too neat
meanings too vain to be assured

too vain to be assured, meanings
waltz to a double-time foxtrot
unaware their two left feet fought
semantic wars with tired schemings

with tired schemings, semantic wars
roared thoughtless, groaning through the night
weeping: words, we need words for light,
to ram our way through open doors

to open doors, ram our way through
dam the truth and tell known lies
wail for the sun to hold the sky
while words with words color it blue