So words are dead, a prison where ghosts should be painless, but we persist in painting imperfect pictures for the sake of our own souls because we cannot find a closer connection to heaven.
Is Tuesday of voilets or violence? In beautiful irony, like a bird misjudging the air and crashing to earth by the force of a gravity that lets us hold on, the difference matters but is slight. Tuesday cannot hold violets without the violence.
Do you understand?
In sex, making love, we lose something personal, an unnamable part that we hadn't looked for before, and the hurt is mixed like paint with the joy of discovering a secret gift, a personal power. The fright, the loss, the discovery are inherently braided together, and words attempt to make sense of the knotted mess of yarn we have left lying on the wooden floor of the hall.
How close do we allow words to come? Behind one word are a thousand others. "Sad" means everything and nothing, and the inevitable question still stands: How do I find the words to say...
I wrote a poem, "You Were Little Sister, Diverging." It isn't a secret: I can't understand how our blood and cells and genes can be the closest possible between two people, yet she is incomprehensible to me. Let her be different. But there is so much she refuses to see.
Are there any words in any language to say what I need to say? Poetry theory claims that we find our closest meaning through analogy. Because humans share a common knowledge, we can understand the meaning behind, "All the world's a stage/And all the men and women merely players" (Shakespeare As You Like It). Ironic, no? To say something, we say something else because our words are not adequate in their meaning.
So I wrote a poem to imprison the best of my thoughts. Do I print it? Do I give it tangibility for her to see? No, she wouldn't see it. I'm afraid words have arrived too late, too inadequate to save a relationship that has been diverging for 17 years.
I want to tell her ghosts are not painless, there are no violets without the violence but also that it doesn't have to be as bad as she makes it. How bright does she intend to make the blood on snow? When will she find her closest connection to heaven?
She is little sister, diverging. Can I hope she is not already diverged?
My question for you: How close do we let our poems come to personal Tuesdays, and is there enough common knowledge, common emotion, left in this world for us to understand one another?
Basalil
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Monday, September 11, 2006
Counting Syllables on My Fingers
Last night I tried my hand at meter, the first try in a long while.
I started with a poem of slight substance, an epic idea, but my lines erred with disconnect. Some lines were short, biting with abstract poignancy and others lingered and fell off the page, while the reader and writer alike asked themselves why they were still sifting through the words in their laps when they could be playing softball or swatting flies.
It needed consistency.
So, after throwing the game, I sat down with my eight-year-old hands and counted the syllables in each line on my fingers. I wrote each number next to the line, like a good little soldier with a terrible memory.
Banking on the theories of very dead and very canonized, famous poets and on the quick suggestion of A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver, I believed in the consistency of meter.
I kept the meter of the opening two line stanza and modeled the rest of the poem after it. During the course of two hours, I managed to write a better poem. I changed all except the first two lines, some drastically, some ever-so-slightly with the most beautiful of precise words, and really believed I knew what I was doing.
Unfortunately, I never know what I am doing. The first two lines of the poem, the ones I kept, actually do not coincide with true meter. Meter has two syllables for every "foot" of a line. Each line can have any number of feet.
A one foot line is called a monometer.
A two foot line is called a dimeter.
A three foot line is called a trimeter.
A four foot line is called a tetrameter.
A five foot line is called a pentameter; most people have heard of iambic pentameter.
A six foot line is called a hexameter.
A seven foot line is called a heptameter.
An eight foot line is called a octometer.
My lines are footless.
Because every foot has two syllables, each line will have an even number of syllables. My lines have seven and five syllables and therefore, have 3.5 and 2.5 feet, which to my knowledge is called nothing.
Yes, I have footless lines, am not even the equivalent of a slug who has one official foot, according to scientists.
So I failed at meter. I suppose it is a good thing that I have not tried ordering stresses of words in lines or complete forms of poetry like the sonnet, English and Italian, or even more complicated forms like the villanelle. God forbid that I attempt to rhyme anything!
Still, there are some positive attributes to the poem (says the poet). I am quite happy with the enjambment of the poem. Lines 3, 6, and 11 create momentary syntax of ambiguity. The word at the end of one of these lines could have one primary meaning when read with its line, but because the line has to punctuation at its end (it is enjambed), the word at the end of the line could have a secondary meaning when read with the line below it. And I like this, even if they are juvenile primary and secondary meanings.
So all this talk and no poem to dissect. Below is the third draft of this poem and probably not the last. Note that line 12 is not truly five syllables, but I have taken the liberty of smushing the word "memory," which is sometimes pronounced "memry" in the Midwest, and in effect, forced the line to be five syllables. Note also that Blogspot is not letting me design the poem with the correct amount of white space, so the master poem is structurally different.
A Rebirth of Blooms
by Jessica Zephyrs
She embroidered the Blue Ice
the Gray, then the Blush.
Clear curves -- flowers, familiar
shapes of butterflies --
Sensitive, flighty figures
and slow, the smallest
of stitches, an old woman,
a rebirth of blooms.
She embroidered the Pure White,
a ponderous hue
Thread so fine and light it strained
her eyes, her memory.
With the Oyster, the Deep Blue
she sewed simple birds
And pictures on the pillow
fluttered together.
Through the spring of a sparrow
her hands revived thoughts
of fitted dresses -- the strut
that won all the boys.
Well, say what you will. I tried. Maybe, someday, Meter and I will have another go at it, but until then,
A La Destra,
Basalil
I started with a poem of slight substance, an epic idea, but my lines erred with disconnect. Some lines were short, biting with abstract poignancy and others lingered and fell off the page, while the reader and writer alike asked themselves why they were still sifting through the words in their laps when they could be playing softball or swatting flies.
It needed consistency.
So, after throwing the game, I sat down with my eight-year-old hands and counted the syllables in each line on my fingers. I wrote each number next to the line, like a good little soldier with a terrible memory.
Banking on the theories of very dead and very canonized, famous poets and on the quick suggestion of A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver, I believed in the consistency of meter.
I kept the meter of the opening two line stanza and modeled the rest of the poem after it. During the course of two hours, I managed to write a better poem. I changed all except the first two lines, some drastically, some ever-so-slightly with the most beautiful of precise words, and really believed I knew what I was doing.
Unfortunately, I never know what I am doing. The first two lines of the poem, the ones I kept, actually do not coincide with true meter. Meter has two syllables for every "foot" of a line. Each line can have any number of feet.
A one foot line is called a monometer.
A two foot line is called a dimeter.
A three foot line is called a trimeter.
A four foot line is called a tetrameter.
A five foot line is called a pentameter; most people have heard of iambic pentameter.
A six foot line is called a hexameter.
A seven foot line is called a heptameter.
An eight foot line is called a octometer.
My lines are footless.
Because every foot has two syllables, each line will have an even number of syllables. My lines have seven and five syllables and therefore, have 3.5 and 2.5 feet, which to my knowledge is called nothing.
Yes, I have footless lines, am not even the equivalent of a slug who has one official foot, according to scientists.
So I failed at meter. I suppose it is a good thing that I have not tried ordering stresses of words in lines or complete forms of poetry like the sonnet, English and Italian, or even more complicated forms like the villanelle. God forbid that I attempt to rhyme anything!
Still, there are some positive attributes to the poem (says the poet). I am quite happy with the enjambment of the poem. Lines 3, 6, and 11 create momentary syntax of ambiguity. The word at the end of one of these lines could have one primary meaning when read with its line, but because the line has to punctuation at its end (it is enjambed), the word at the end of the line could have a secondary meaning when read with the line below it. And I like this, even if they are juvenile primary and secondary meanings.
So all this talk and no poem to dissect. Below is the third draft of this poem and probably not the last. Note that line 12 is not truly five syllables, but I have taken the liberty of smushing the word "memory," which is sometimes pronounced "memry" in the Midwest, and in effect, forced the line to be five syllables. Note also that Blogspot is not letting me design the poem with the correct amount of white space, so the master poem is structurally different.
A Rebirth of Blooms
by Jessica Zephyrs
She embroidered the Blue Ice
the Gray, then the Blush.
Clear curves -- flowers, familiar
shapes of butterflies --
Sensitive, flighty figures
and slow, the smallest
of stitches, an old woman,
a rebirth of blooms.
She embroidered the Pure White,
a ponderous hue
Thread so fine and light it strained
her eyes, her memory.
With the Oyster, the Deep Blue
she sewed simple birds
And pictures on the pillow
fluttered together.
Through the spring of a sparrow
her hands revived thoughts
of fitted dresses -- the strut
that won all the boys.
Well, say what you will. I tried. Maybe, someday, Meter and I will have another go at it, but until then,
A La Destra,
Basalil
Friday, August 18, 2006
Indecision
I am currently rereading The Unraveling Strangeness by Bruce Weigl and wondering why he believes we are so alike and wondering if he has a wife, if he lost his author's bio while flapping his hands wildly at Mr. Death, an intangible character who seems to haunt most of his poems, and if his small moments of genius structure should follow him more closely in his other work.
I wonder if such a wondering sentence is too long for a poet's introduction.
The question is do I like Bruce Weigl's Unraveling Strangeness.
Sometimes.
For example:
Weigl's poem "My Pants" is gravely comical and beautiful and describes a few personal quirks of aging, the pleasures and pains of it. The structure is interesting with its use of white space and two line stanzas. The words are deceivingly simple. The flow is lolling and easy... until the sixth stanza when the subject unexpectedly changes from first person to second person, from recalling personal experience to asking the reader rhetorical questions. Perhaps Weigl is asking himself the question of "What are you going to do?" but there is no transition for warning for the subject change. For a mere two stanzas he turns the poem to enforce the idea that his personal experience is also happening to the reader, then leaves me wondering where I went in the poem because Weigl switches back to first person for the remainder of the poem.
The other problem I have with this particular poem is Weigl's comparison of a little boy to a bullet and a scream. He makes what I believe are awkward comparisons like this one throughout the book. Maybe a little boy being like a bullet or a scream hits home for someone else, and maybe I'm too dense or unimaginative, but it is my project, and I have to distinguish differing theories and practices on structure, language, subjects, etc. And considering that the rules of poetry are gray and fuzzy, a haze in the distance at best, taste and personal style play a major role. So I'm telling you what I like and what I don't like, which has little to do with whether Weigl is a good and bad poet.
Here are the things I dislike in most circumstances regarding poetry:
1. the use of "you," unless speaking to a character already mentioned. E.g.: You, Mother....
2. lack of personal information preceding the poetry. I like to know everything - places, people, events, social status - that the author mentions. It gives the poem a complete meaning. Gary Soto is very good at keeping the reader in-the-know, while Robley Wilson was terrible at it and Bruce Weigl is good at it sometimes.
3. reading about an experience that the author could never possibly experienced but writes as if he has.
Those are the only ones I've discovered so far. There are lots of things I like about poetry, and I'm tired.
Later I will write about my replacement poet for Robley Wilson, Robert Hershon.
Basalil
I wonder if such a wondering sentence is too long for a poet's introduction.
The question is do I like Bruce Weigl's Unraveling Strangeness.
Sometimes.
For example:
Weigl's poem "My Pants" is gravely comical and beautiful and describes a few personal quirks of aging, the pleasures and pains of it. The structure is interesting with its use of white space and two line stanzas. The words are deceivingly simple. The flow is lolling and easy... until the sixth stanza when the subject unexpectedly changes from first person to second person, from recalling personal experience to asking the reader rhetorical questions. Perhaps Weigl is asking himself the question of "What are you going to do?" but there is no transition for warning for the subject change. For a mere two stanzas he turns the poem to enforce the idea that his personal experience is also happening to the reader, then leaves me wondering where I went in the poem because Weigl switches back to first person for the remainder of the poem.
The other problem I have with this particular poem is Weigl's comparison of a little boy to a bullet and a scream. He makes what I believe are awkward comparisons like this one throughout the book. Maybe a little boy being like a bullet or a scream hits home for someone else, and maybe I'm too dense or unimaginative, but it is my project, and I have to distinguish differing theories and practices on structure, language, subjects, etc. And considering that the rules of poetry are gray and fuzzy, a haze in the distance at best, taste and personal style play a major role. So I'm telling you what I like and what I don't like, which has little to do with whether Weigl is a good and bad poet.
Here are the things I dislike in most circumstances regarding poetry:
1. the use of "you," unless speaking to a character already mentioned. E.g.: You, Mother....
2. lack of personal information preceding the poetry. I like to know everything - places, people, events, social status - that the author mentions. It gives the poem a complete meaning. Gary Soto is very good at keeping the reader in-the-know, while Robley Wilson was terrible at it and Bruce Weigl is good at it sometimes.
3. reading about an experience that the author could never possibly experienced but writes as if he has.
Those are the only ones I've discovered so far. There are lots of things I like about poetry, and I'm tired.
Later I will write about my replacement poet for Robley Wilson, Robert Hershon.
Basalil
Saturday, August 05, 2006
Joe, in a draft
If you were a zephyr
that blew in August
You’d be a breeze of banjos
and awkward harmonies,
carrying the scent of sun-warmed
strawberries
And the sheepish crying of a boy,
fresh with the fear of bees and honeysuckle flowers.
-With much love,
Basalil
that blew in August
You’d be a breeze of banjos
and awkward harmonies,
carrying the scent of sun-warmed
strawberries
And the sheepish crying of a boy,
fresh with the fear of bees and honeysuckle flowers.
-With much love,
Basalil
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Billy Collins, You Led Me Astray
In truth, I'm no good at mother's golden rule: If you don't have anything good to say, don't say it all. No, no good at all, especially when it involves writers.
In college, it seems that students are still children enough to twist their new-found knowledge into specific, though most likely fluid, opinions which they enjoy bashing into each other for mere reactions, myself included. I love arguing about F. Scott Fitzgerald's work. He makes my skin crawl.
Even if this phenomenon remains among students and filters out of them through time - the time when they are no longer hot-headed students, obviously - I still believe in breaking mother's golden rule when it's necessary, like, for an honors project. But no worries, Mother, I'll try to be elloquent.
In Billy Collin's Poetry 180, I read a most beautiful poem by Robley Wilson called "I Wish in the City of Your Heart." It's short, sensual, odd... and it excited me to read more. However, Billy must have picked the best of Robley Wilson, and the book I chose must have been either the leftover sludge or have misplaced its informative foreward, explaining why war was a main theme and why the author felt obliged to write on concentration camps and other subjects which I seriously question as personal experience. Maybe it's just my student taste, but I can believe in a poem when the poet makes it personal. You don't have to write a war story to capture my attention or sympathy or heart; you merely have to write a few beautiful words like Wilson did in "I Wish in the City of Your Heart." If I wasn't so ignorant on copyright laws, I'd lay out this fantastic poems right here, right now; I love it that much.
But Everything Paid For, Robley Wilson's 1999 collection of poetry, hurt me to read.
Wait, that's not elloquent enough for Mother.
Everything Paid For had many elements/techniques that made me groan and throw the book to the floor, which is truthful but still not elloquent. Sorry, Mother.
Oh my God, Lindsay gets to see Sufjan Stevens in concert in St. Louis in September and she just now told me. I have to check the internet to see if I can still get tickets and go. Oh man, I have to see Sufjan.
Sorry, I'll finish later. This is Sufjan we're talking about.
-Jess
In college, it seems that students are still children enough to twist their new-found knowledge into specific, though most likely fluid, opinions which they enjoy bashing into each other for mere reactions, myself included. I love arguing about F. Scott Fitzgerald's work. He makes my skin crawl.
Even if this phenomenon remains among students and filters out of them through time - the time when they are no longer hot-headed students, obviously - I still believe in breaking mother's golden rule when it's necessary, like, for an honors project. But no worries, Mother, I'll try to be elloquent.
In Billy Collin's Poetry 180, I read a most beautiful poem by Robley Wilson called "I Wish in the City of Your Heart." It's short, sensual, odd... and it excited me to read more. However, Billy must have picked the best of Robley Wilson, and the book I chose must have been either the leftover sludge or have misplaced its informative foreward, explaining why war was a main theme and why the author felt obliged to write on concentration camps and other subjects which I seriously question as personal experience. Maybe it's just my student taste, but I can believe in a poem when the poet makes it personal. You don't have to write a war story to capture my attention or sympathy or heart; you merely have to write a few beautiful words like Wilson did in "I Wish in the City of Your Heart." If I wasn't so ignorant on copyright laws, I'd lay out this fantastic poems right here, right now; I love it that much.
But Everything Paid For, Robley Wilson's 1999 collection of poetry, hurt me to read.
Wait, that's not elloquent enough for Mother.
Everything Paid For had many elements/techniques that made me groan and throw the book to the floor, which is truthful but still not elloquent. Sorry, Mother.
Oh my God, Lindsay gets to see Sufjan Stevens in concert in St. Louis in September and she just now told me. I have to check the internet to see if I can still get tickets and go. Oh man, I have to see Sufjan.
Sorry, I'll finish later. This is Sufjan we're talking about.
-Jess
Monday, June 26, 2006
The Man
Most of my generation vaguely remembers Gary Soto as a short fiction writer who we had to read in late grade school or junior high. He was that one guy who sometimes used spanish words, forcing the kids who cared to delve into their emerging second language skills just to complete a sentence, even when the word we struggled minutes over was something as simple as amigo or abuela or adios (the one word we felt proud to know automatically as if we were Mexican ourselves). Who knew, however, that Gary Soto is actually The Man.
I'm currently reading New & Selected Poems by Gary Soto as part of my honors project. It's a thick book for poetry with an artistically flat cover - one I wouldn't be mesmerized by, in fact, probably not one I would even pick up off the shelf. And that's why I shouldn't look at covers. But the inside... the inside makes The Man. The Man owns words and makes words new. I have already stolen the preface title: Sizing Up the Sparrows. Soon, perhaps, I will be brilliant and write something as beautiful and no longer be a theif. But those skies look rather rusty.
The book is a dense 177 pages with poems divided into 7 chronological sections. So far my favorite section is "Black Hair" but here are some of my favorite poems, just in case you want something to Google:
"The Tale of Sunlight"
"The First"
"Her"
"The Widow Perez"
"Morning on This Street"
"The Trees That Change Our Lives"
"Heaven"
"Small Town with One Road"
And here's a little taste of Soto:
"I say it is enough/To be where the smells/Of creatures/Braid like rope/And to know if/The grasses rustle/It is only/A lizard passing."
from "The Space"
And this is why Soto is The Man and the first poet in my project.
I hope you are intrigued, just as I am.
Basalil
I'm currently reading New & Selected Poems by Gary Soto as part of my honors project. It's a thick book for poetry with an artistically flat cover - one I wouldn't be mesmerized by, in fact, probably not one I would even pick up off the shelf. And that's why I shouldn't look at covers. But the inside... the inside makes The Man. The Man owns words and makes words new. I have already stolen the preface title: Sizing Up the Sparrows. Soon, perhaps, I will be brilliant and write something as beautiful and no longer be a theif. But those skies look rather rusty.
The book is a dense 177 pages with poems divided into 7 chronological sections. So far my favorite section is "Black Hair" but here are some of my favorite poems, just in case you want something to Google:
"The Tale of Sunlight"
"The First"
"Her"
"The Widow Perez"
"Morning on This Street"
"The Trees That Change Our Lives"
"Heaven"
"Small Town with One Road"
And here's a little taste of Soto:
"I say it is enough/To be where the smells/Of creatures/Braid like rope/And to know if/The grasses rustle/It is only/A lizard passing."
from "The Space"
And this is why Soto is The Man and the first poet in my project.
I hope you are intrigued, just as I am.
Basalil
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
New Last Name, New Superman Movie, New Blog... Hold onto Your Bellybuttons, That's a Whole Lotta New
Well, Basalil is now the fourth Zephyrs to ever grace this planet. That's right, I'm married, and who wouldn't want to inherit such an incredibly made-up last name? Zephyrs: like the Greek god of wind. It goes quite well with the similarly made-up first name Basalil. It also fits well with my real name: Jessica Zephyrs. Do you like it?
So I decided it is time to establish a new blog.
In an attempt to be more scholarly, globaly aware, and all-in-all out of the sticks, I will try to also establish a ring of local (Springfield, MO... maybe even an area as wide as the "midwest") writers and poets who exchange ideas and news and writing through blogs, and considering that most of the writers who have already committed their souls to this project have blogger accounts, a Blogger blog is, for no other reason than stated above, necessary. We'll see how this project falls apart.
(I'm a writer. I'm incapable of being optimistic.) :)
In a further attempt to bore my small audience and to keep myself on top of things, I will also update on my honors project which began last week and will end sometime in the spring of '07.
What's Basalil's honors project?
Oh, I knew you wanted to know. Well, in short I'm reading books by three comtemporary poets of my choosing, studying everything about their writing that I can think to study, interviewing them because they're still alive, and then writing about this process and findings. In the interim, I'll be writing my own poetry and about that process.
Man, that was sssoooo entertaining.
My uterus is schluffing (sp?). I bet that's more entertaining.
In other news:
I am reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, and it's amazing so far. (Yay, I got to use more hyperbolic adjectives/adverbs.)
I am looking for a job. Hint, hint, you Springfield employers. My skills: uterus battling.
Joe and I are planning a day hiking trip. For details, ask Joe. He's the one who's actually planning.
I make delicious quiche.
And flat bread.
Joe makes delicious coffee with lots of cool whip.
I'm losing the utero battle. I must go and defend the battlegrounds.
A la sinistra,
Basalil
"There will be no balls without meat." - Alton Brown from Good Eats
So I decided it is time to establish a new blog.
In an attempt to be more scholarly, globaly aware, and all-in-all out of the sticks, I will try to also establish a ring of local (Springfield, MO... maybe even an area as wide as the "midwest") writers and poets who exchange ideas and news and writing through blogs, and considering that most of the writers who have already committed their souls to this project have blogger accounts, a Blogger blog is, for no other reason than stated above, necessary. We'll see how this project falls apart.
(I'm a writer. I'm incapable of being optimistic.) :)
In a further attempt to bore my small audience and to keep myself on top of things, I will also update on my honors project which began last week and will end sometime in the spring of '07.
What's Basalil's honors project?
Oh, I knew you wanted to know. Well, in short I'm reading books by three comtemporary poets of my choosing, studying everything about their writing that I can think to study, interviewing them because they're still alive, and then writing about this process and findings. In the interim, I'll be writing my own poetry and about that process.
Man, that was sssoooo entertaining.
My uterus is schluffing (sp?). I bet that's more entertaining.
In other news:
I am reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, and it's amazing so far. (Yay, I got to use more hyperbolic adjectives/adverbs.)
I am looking for a job. Hint, hint, you Springfield employers. My skills: uterus battling.
Joe and I are planning a day hiking trip. For details, ask Joe. He's the one who's actually planning.
I make delicious quiche.
And flat bread.
Joe makes delicious coffee with lots of cool whip.
I'm losing the utero battle. I must go and defend the battlegrounds.
A la sinistra,
Basalil
"There will be no balls without meat." - Alton Brown from Good Eats
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