Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day prompt is the usual "Two for Tuesday":
1. Write a form poem.
2. Write an anti-form poem. Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “write a poem that deals with the poems, poets, and other people who inspired you to write poems. These could be poems/poets/people that you strive to be like, or even poems, poets, and people that you strive not to be like. There are as many ways to go with this prompt as there are ways to be inspired.”
Alan today satisfies both prompts with a Petrarchan sonnet. Bravo!
I find my Jackself, Father Hopkins, here
I find my Jackself, Father Hopkins, here
beneath the lip of concrete walk, the nest
that’s blown from that whipped cherry tree, the best
that I can tell, some feathers still stuck there
where hatchlings fouled then flew and now somewhere
begin their nests and broods. What downy breast,
what shelter, wing or setting hen, professed
through watchful action God’s own watchful care?
Now watch me care, inadequate and lost,
just housed, just fed, not comforted but kept
away from friends and music. If I brood,
then I am selfish, focused on the cost
of keeping others from me safe; accept,
O Lord, my shame, my penitential mood.
—Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
Check out Alan's book on Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Fire That Breaks: Gerard Manley Hopkins's Poetic Legacies, edited by Daniel Westover and Thomas Alan Holmes.
My poem today addresses all three prompts, the two form/not-form prompts and also the poet tribute prompt.
The Ballad of Emily and Walt:
Synergic Sonnet Not-Sonnet
Walt, you Granite huge Grizzly
of a Man – your Pen swirls
through air and over Paper — truly
and widely Transcendental!
Ah yes, Emily, Amherst's resident angel, your pen adorned with feathers plucked
from an amorous swan, floating and swimming in these American continental
waters, your pen streams a flowing yawp of illumination, energy, and spark
Through heaven's firmament, the moon's curling path through the stars, the swash
and buckle of the planets, great wanderers through the obsidian bowl of the sky,
the grand orbit of Apollo and his chariot as the almighty sun,
Through the sweeping vistas of the expansive prairies and massive mountains
of this superlative land, the eagles, and the passenger pigeons, flying across the
cerulean dome of the Divine's aerial dominion, the birds of the ground, the ostrich
and the penguin, the hummingbird and the hawk, the nightingale and the lark,
Through the aquamarine and indigo depths of the seas and lakes, the swirling schools
of finned creatures, the shark, the albino whale, the miniature minnow, the
many-tentacled octopus, the serpent-bodied and sinuous eel, the folk of the
burbling creeks, the swift rivers, the broad Mississippi, the ocean.
Yes, the bobolink my Diva
sings in your Honor,
and the owl – Omnipotent chanter –
croons a tune of Dolor.
The many and varied peoples of this vast republic extol bright praises to your verse,
The regalia-bearing Indians in their verdant woodland, the Irish blacksmith hammering
blades in his forge on Long Island, the German farmers toiling in the black soil of the
Middle West, the Chinese forty-niners in San Francisco all laud your words, from the
rough-hewn cedar cradle to the gold-leaf filigree of the Stygian horse-drawn
ultimate hearse.
—Draft by Vince Gotera [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
The way the form/not-form aspect of my poem works is like this: the form vibe is represented by the Dickinsonian hymnal stanzas, while the not-form feeling resides in the Whitmanesque long lines of free verse. If you consider the paragraph-like long lines as each one long line, then you'll see that the poem is a Shakespearan sonnet, sans meter.
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3 comments:
Man, I'm loving those verses from both you and Alan! Fitting tributes all. Mine was a bit less ambitious but no less sincere.
Bruce, sorry, I just saw this. Thanks! No need to be about feeling "less ambitious" ... I love your poems!
Thank you, Bruce--I just saw this comment. "Jackself" alludes to one of Hopkins' sonnets of desolation, "My Own Heart."
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