Monday, November 17, 2008

Foursomes, Triangles, Insulation, and the Paint-Brush Unrequited

As most of you know, I dabble in poetry a bit. I'm happy to report that I have apparently ended a several month hiatus, and am back to writing the occasional verse. I will post them here on occasion, and I'll probably throw up some older ones when I'm too lazy to post something new, but also in need of seeing my name up on the board!

I have to admit that I am a totally different poet than I expected I might be, and the differences between my verse and prose are almost in the territory of a multiple personality disorder.

While I start poems in a variety of ways, it seems four elements hold true:

1. The title is almost always something about the poem, but not of the poem, as in, I don't use lines from the poem itself. 

2. The poem itself is usually pretty sparse. While I have always wanted to write Homer-esque epics, it seems I am a slave to a form that leaves much unsaid. This is odd, given my prosian  (my word, deal with it) verbosity. I like to think of my poems as three legs of a triangle, with the poem and the title leading you to the unsaid portion, which may or may  not be what I intended. Think of the poem as the frame, the title as the siding, and the balance as the insulation.

3. I seem caught in groups of four. Perhaps its my musical leanings, but I need to feel a certain rhythm in a poem, and that rhythm generally comes in quadrilles.

4. I am principally visually oriented, and I hope that comes through in the work. I am very much a frustrated painter-- frustrated in that it is what I would prefer to do, but I am completely inept at it. So I try to paint with my words, carefully choosing them to evoke a nuanced picture, and hopefully with it, a distinct mood, the better to fluff up that unseen insulation.

Well, now you know more than you either did or needed to...

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