Day 26 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2014

Day 26. Gettin' near the end, friends. Well, I shouldn't dwell on the ending but rather on the great 25 days we've had so far. Cause for celebration, don't you think? "For today’s prompt, write a water poem," suggests Robert Lee Brewer (Poetic Asides). Maureen Thorson's prompt today is one I suggested to her: the curtal sonnet, invented by Gerard Manley Hopkins. I wrote one on Day 20 for the "family member" point-of-view prompt (NaPoWriMo). Basically, the curtal sonnet is 3/4 of a Petrarchan sonnet. If you figure out 3/4 of 14, you'll get 10 1/2 lines. Fr. Hopkins split that line pattern into a six-line opening stanza rhymed abcabc and a 4 1/2–line closing stanza rhymed dbcdc or dcbdc. I hope you won't think it vain that I'm posting directly below what the NaPoWriMo blog looks like today. If you click on the image, you'll see my name in the fourth paragraph. I'm such a fan boy, huh? I am nonetheless both honored and humbled. Thank you, Maureen! Okay, on to today's poem, merging the two "official" prompts: a curtal sonnet on water, then. Water I fill my glass from the faucet, get ice from the fridge, sit down to watch an episode of Swamp People, who hunt alligators in murky, brown water that makes the monsters invisible. How rich the ways H2O affects us, both lethal and harmless. Did you know we all can walk on water? If it's white and crunchy. It can be unseen yet blue, giving sky its tint. It makes Earth a marble glowing aquamarine and pearl in outer space. None on this planet can live without you,                                                               our trusty friend, water. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] And now to Alan's poem. Alan says, "I attempted to follow both of the prompts today, and I was glad about the curtal sonnet assignment, and I though the water part would be easy. But, strangely enough, thinking about water made me think about chores for this weekend, and I was considering how wet grass requires more attention to mow. "But the real problem, Vince, is Hopkins's 'Pied Beauty' for an example, because I was wanting to follow that model carefully, rhyme scheme and all. But look at that thing! It looks as if it is abc/abc/dbc/dc, because it's 'things/cow/swim//wings/plow/trim//strange/how/dim/change/him.' But, being from the Deep South myself, I was tempted to claim that 'strange' and 'change' almost rhyme with 'things' and 'wings,' claiming a slant rhyme or some such, but I figured that folks from other parts of the country would consider my claim specious or my rhyming lazy, so I decided to treat the a and d rhymes as if they rhyme with each other exactly. "There are times when my Southern accent works to my advantage, given that 'guitar' can be either iambic or trochaic, depending on the need, but I want to play fair." First Mowing after Easter First mowing after Easter, moisture clumps                 new fresh-grown grass. My mulching mower slows,                                 and I, to clear the clogs, must leave the lawn for pavement, banging wheels until the lumps                 extrude to free the blade. And, yet, I chose                                 this time to work, an hour after dawn, for what, mown, this lawn brings, the bird that jumps                 from plainsight bug to bug, how wet grass goes                                 to new-mown pasture smell, the haying done past family clearing timber, burning stumps,                                                 now gone. —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes     [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] What a great poem, Alan. Such a fine ending when the poem goes to family memory. Beautiful. In your poem, "clumps" and "lawn" (a and c) do rhyme distantly or, depending on one's dialect, more closely. I think it's perfectly defensible to claim what you claimed earlier about a rhyme between "strange" and "things" — not to mention the Deep South pronunciation, there is also the eye rhyme of "ng," don't you think? Quite a Hopkins-ish claim, actually. Remember how in "The Windhover" Hopkins used "-ing" for his a sound and "-iding" for b? That's pretty outrageous, bodacious even. So why not "strange" and "things" as emulation? Works for me, Alan. Also, making a the same as d is not a violation of the curtal sonnet scheme. It's merely a tighter interpretation of the pattern. Again, works for me. Hopkins in "Windhover" has an a and b that could be seen as both a. Fun. Won't you comment, please, friends? To make a comment, look for a blue link below that says Post a comment and click it once. If you don't see that, look in the red line that starts Posted by Vince, then find the word comments and click it once. Ingat, everyone.   ヅ

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