Hello, friends! My poem today is #92 in this year's Stafford Challenge (and #457, including the poem count from last year's Stafford Challenge).
Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “Today, we don’t challenge you to write all of a long, dramatic, narrative poem, but we invite you to try your hand at writing a poem that could be a section or piece of one . . . with the plot of an opera.”
Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For today's prompt, write a reconsideration poem.”
Again, combining the prompts. My list of roles reconsidered is pretty true, though not necessarily in the order given.
Reconsideration Opera
At five, I wanted to be a pirate.
It was the eyepatch. But no, seasickness.
Then I decided to be a spaceman.
It was the jetpack. I reconsidered —
spooky vacuum, pesky G-forces.
I thought maybe a cowboy, a horseman,
but when I saw a real horse — scary!
Viking, scientist, and then guitarist
ultimately when the Beatles came in.
And now the bass. Till the Viking lady
sings, the bass I’ll play on.
—Draft by Vince Gotera [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
Today, Alan is also working with both prompts: a reconsideration of a certain translation of Beowulf.
In Which I Insert a Vital Explanation for a
Logical Omission in the Feast of Heorot Scene
in Beowulf as Translated by Seamus Heaney
The truth is clear:
Almighty God rules over mankind
and always has.
And yet the mystery persists,
how could a monster loathsome as the grave,
pungent as the slaughterhouse, evade the guards
to set himself among the weary warriors,
and not be smelled? Spear-brothers lay as thick
as kenneled puppies, snug and warm of bellies full,
their guts protruding, gaseous gale of pork and ale
expressed through windpipes’ belches, God-directed,
or, more likely, tunneling through hell-path guts
with sulfurous expulsion, one’s nearby kinsman
sleepsealed of eyelid, saved from blindness,
others, snoring mouth agape, to dream
of Alison and think themselves in the wrong tale,
one, too near the hearth, igniting farts
that singed the fair flank fur from Pussgar,
Hrothgar’s favored mouser, troubled
dreams of demons, fires, and pitch which Christ
alone could overcome.
Then out of the night
came the shadow-stalker, stealthy and swift.
—Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
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An illustration of Grendel, the monster
from Beowulf, by J R. Skelton (source)
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Beautifully done, Alan. Wonderful language.
Thanks for coming by the blog today. I've been at a poetry festival — Poetry Palooza — for the last couple days so I'm posting this quite late. 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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