Great to see you, friends! My poem today is #88 in this year's Stafford Challenge (and #453, including the number of poems from last year's challenge).
Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “a poem that . . . bridges . . . the seeming divide between poetry and technological advances.”
Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For the second Two-for-Tuesday prompt: 1) Write a poetic form poem, and/or . . . 2) Write an anti-form poem.”
I'm combining all three prompts above in a single poem — for "form and anti-form," I begin with a curtal sonnet and then move to free verse. Actually, four prompts, however, because this is also a tribute poem for the Eye to the Telescope call for submissions on the theme of tribute.
Tribute to George Jetson
—curtal sonnet, at first
Most people are clueless I’m a poet.
They only see George J, with Jane his wife,
daughter Judy, his boy Elroy, our dog
Astro —Rastro, he growls — and our robot
maid Rosie. I write poems on our lives
in the sky, living high above the smog,
jetting around in flying saucer cars.
I work at Spacely Space Sprockets, where life
is pushing buttons all day, just a cog.
In between button pushes, I write verse.
Here’s my new monologue.
“I don’t tell people I write poems
because everyone in 2062 thinks poetry is
passé. Who needs poems
when we have such incredible
technology: flying cars, apartment buildings
up in the clouds like Googie drums,
moving slidewalks to go everywhere (who needs
walking?), humans living in outer space, aliens
living here on Earth, jetpacks, robot pet
animals, and robot housekeepers. Poetry is
old hat, old-fashioned, obsolete, they say.
But writing poems makes me happy,
just like drumming, like when I got to jam out
with Jet Screamer. That kid’s A-okay . . .
eep opp ork ah-ah! I just can’t let anyone know,
especially Jane. She would think
I’ve gone bananas.
Maybe I have. Uh-oh, this poem-machine is
careening out of control, spinning in zero-g.
Jane! Stop this crazy thing!”
—Draft by Vince Gotera [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
Today, Alan is working with the "poetic form" prompt, using a form he invented, described below.
Controlling Modes of Speech
Is Infringing on Free Speech
My institution’s architect has made
aesthetic plans affecting how we speak
to one another, but it’s not unique
designing offices where we’re displayed
behind glass walls; of course, he was dismayed
to learn no bookcases was a mistake—
we’re lit professors, after all; opaque,
fake frosting on the glass has not allayed
resentment we were wronged. Bulletin boards
face banishment by admin overlords,
replaced by screens that cycle an ICE raid,
corruption, shootings, broken peace accords,
but no “reward” sign or “top wages paid”
or invitations to potlucks next week.
—Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
Alan said about this poem, "This is a form I invented that begins with a Petrarchan octet. I call this sonnet form the Uvalde sonnet; I invented it about four years ago in response to the Robb Elementary School shooting. I have moved the culminating couplet one would expect from a Shakespearean sonnet to follow the octet so that it feels as if it occurs prematurely." It's an interesting form, and here Alan is employing slant rhyme with the "-eek" and "-ake" rhyming sounds.
Thanks for coming by today. See you again tomorrow!
Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks!
Ingat, everyone. ヅ |
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