What's mildly irritating you today?

[SteveDallas]

The day started with my boss dropping off his laptop. "It's really slow, especially trying to open my email."

After poking at it for a while, I went to meet with someone to figure out some database stuff. ~2 hours.

Meanwhile the fiber link to one of our buildings was down. We almost couldn't get it back up because we didn't have a fiber to ethernet transceiver. I put together an ungodly hack involving swapping spare parts on some old equipment we should have gotten rid of. We could have finished a half hour sooner if my brain had been functioning, or I could have put my hands on a null modem serial cable--preferably both. Oh yeah, the boss had the Bagle virus, and 24.000+ emails in his Thunderbird inbox didn't help either.

I was about 45 minutes later leaving work than I had planned. This made me 5 minutes late to orchestra rehearsal, even though I rushed the whole way and gulped my dinner.

The piece we're doing is one I really hate. It's also a very complicated one, and we had a stand-in conductor who didn't know it very well. (Hard to blame him--he only had one week's notice--but it still was brutal.)

[Juniper]

The worst part of my day was
Analyzing, in lit class
A poem
by Anne Sexton
Titled
The Fury of Overshoes.
I'm not a poet.
I do write poetry
But it is rarely free verse
(this is not a poem, but a mockery)
And it rhymes.
I like Shel Silverstein.
And Robert Frost.
Not mind-churning ramblings about
Plastic boots
And thumb-sucking
Which means
God only knows what, it's like a friggin' onion
With all those damn layers.

[ZenGum]

I like your post, Juni.



Why doesn't it rhyme?

[Juniper]

It doesn't rhyme
Because
Um
Because
I
Uh
Ran out of thyme

[morethanpretty]

I hate free verse, I don't see how its can seriously be categorized as poetry. It doesn't take any real skill or planning.

[Sundae]

Free verse - when it's done well - can have a simplicity about it which renders it beautiful in its own right. Like a single tulip in a vase as opposed to a huge bouquet.

And sometimes it contains lines and images that stay with you for days.
Philip Larkin's The Whitsun Weddings is free verse, in that it doesn't rhyme.

It starts:

That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,

What? Where's the skill in that? My Mum might write that in an email - why is that poetry?

But a few lines later you have:

thence
The river's level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

With its wonderful dragging vowels to describe the breadth of the sluggish river.
And:

All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept
For miles island,
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.

Something I always think about on train journeys.

And my absolute favourite (which again I always think about when approaching London):

I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat

Sorry. Poetry fan.

[Shawnee123]

This poem, so simple, has been described as more painting than poem. What makes it beautiful is the simplicity.

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.
--William Carlos Williams

[elSicomoro]

I pre-ordered the new Metallica CD as a download earlier this week. Yesterday afternoon, I got an e-mail saying it was ready for download...whoohoo!

I'm still trying to download it...motherfuckers. I could have already fucking went out and bought the damn thing at the store.

[dar512]

Originally Posted by morethanpretty

I hate free verse, I don't see how its can seriously be categorized as poetry. It doesn't take any real skill or planning.

Free verse is worth what you paid for it.

[Juniper]

No, I see the value in free verse - it's all very artsy and out there and open to interpretation, much like modern art. I just don't care for it. I don't want to have to work that hard at understanding something. Life is hard enough, why do we have to make it worse?

I do like structured poetry, like cinquains, haiku, etc. That is FUN.

[footfootfoot]

Ogden Nash, E.B.White, Dorothy Parker, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Benchley. These are some of my favorites.

I am having the foreshadowing of a sciatic event. Too much car travel lately.

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by Juniper

No, I see the value in free verse - it's all very artsy and out there and open to interpretation, much like modern art. I just don't care for it. I don't want to have to work that hard at understanding something. Life is hard enough, why do we have to make it worse?

I do like structured poetry, like cinquains, haiku, etc. That is FUN.

But you don't necessarily have to work hard at free verse. Sometimes it is simply beautiful images that make perfect sense and don't rhyme.

This poem stayed with me for years because of the wonderful image of an Autumn day being able to keep you warm in Winter. This one because it ties in with the embarrassment but also sly excitement of a love-bite, and the wonderful image of being turned inside out by desire. This for the sheer cleverness - it amazes me - one day I will write a similar poem, but it will be hard work. And finally (although I could go on all day!) this lovely one from U A Fanthorpe, who writes proper, structured poems with great care and detail, which just don't happen to rhyme. I know most of My Brother's House by heart - it just has lines that stay with you, "I regret the passing/ Of my brother's house. It was like living in Rome/ Before the barbarians."

(all links are to poetry posted in the Cellar)

I will stop now. Tastes in poetry are as individual as tastes in music and there is no right and wrong. I just wanted to put some structured non-rhyming poems your way.

[Trilby]

I love Anne Sexton! I'm taking a seminar on the Confessional Poets this quarter. We are studying Anne, Plath, Snodgrass, Lowell and Hughes. YAY!

I lovelovelovelovelove it!

I'll be quiet now.

[Ibby]

ahahahaha
snodgrass!

our midsummer night's dream script is the one edited by Snodgrass (including a 'modern' english translation on facing pages). I have no idea if its the same snodgrass, but I would assume its not so common a name.
totally a great name though. snohdgrahss.
not quite as good as slartibardfast but it ranks up there if you throw in the haughty british accent.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by Juniper

No, I see the value in free verse - it's all very artsy and out there and open to interpretation, much like modern art. I just don't care for it. I don't want to have to work that hard at understanding something. Life is hard enough, why do we have to make it worse?

Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter by Robert Bly (the entire poem)

It is a cold and snowy night. The main street is deserted.
The only things moving are swirls of snow.
As I lift the mailbox door, I feel its cold iron.
There is a privacy I love in this snowy night.
Driving around, I will waste more time.