My co-blogger at AMV and friend, Tyler, posted on his personal blog about the state of poetry in our oh-so-post-post-modern-sound-bitey world. Wow, are there some good links there for aspiring poets! The part of his post I liked best:
"Poets should focus on narrative verse as a means of building their readers into more lyric poetry; that we should be using the web as a publication/distribution tool; and that narrative poets should be talking about other poets' work in an effort to get narrative poetry canonized or formally accepted by broad circles of readers."
Tyler often posts his own poetry and I enjoy reading and mulling it over. He is quite skilled. Fourth Month Rosary meant a lot to me. Rua: an elegy of holes is also quite enjoyable. In fact, his blog is a like a galleria of poetry gems.
Anyway, thanks to Tyler's (and Patricia's) example I'm posting one of my own poems today. Enjoy! And, as Tyler says, feedcrack welcome!
Bringing in the Sheep
On the lava plains of Idaho
Puffs of ocher white and brown
Dot the sagebrushed dirt,
Converging in a scrubby, shaded corner.
A streak of peach, a flit of blue, the children,
Brightly colored kites slicing clouds of sheep,
Making storms of fleece
Explode in new directions.
Sheep bleating—
Hooves stamping—
Weeds bending—
Dust swirling—
A voice calls out, half bleat, half croon,
In knowing repetition,
A trail inherent in its weavings.
The flock now moves as one.
Implicit in the shepherd’s voice
Is shelter, food, water,
Familiarity, care, and memory,
Gifts sheep cannot forage for themselves.
Hands feeding—
Fingers feeling—
Tongues licking—
Voices laughing—
5 comments:
Wow! You are an excellent writer. I haven't written much poetry since HS. Beautiful, thanks for sharing.
Well, Laura: I wasn't expecting to inspire anyone today (er, yesterday, I guess, now), let alone anything like this, but I'm glad you responded here and with your own poem, which I quite enjoyed. I especially like the image of children slicing the sheep, cutting through the field like kites through the sky, like a familiar voice through the noise of living, through memory. I think that image is what holds this together.
And the fact that you call my blog a galleria of poetry gems: priceless. I'm going to use that sometime, so just you wait...
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Some good lines here:
A voice calls out, half bleat, half croon,
Gifts sheep cannot forage for themselves.
And I like where you're going with the final stanza.
The lines that really struck me were these:
Implicit in the shepherd’s voice
Is shelter, food, water,
Familiarity, care, and memory,
I connect the reference to a shepherd to the Good Shepherd, and I believe the familiarity, care and memory that Christ offers is as important to spiritual well-being as fulfilling physical needs is to sheep. That's a beautiful list to put together to highlight that truth.
(I found your blog on the Niblet nominations)
I love that. Poetry is so refreshing too me.
I just found your blog after reading "That Girl." I went to Utah State too, and have embraced white pills, pink pills, all sorts. What can you do?
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