October 16, 2008

Poetry in Limbo

Yes, I've been reading Dante.
No, that's not what this is about.

About a week ago, I had an interesting experience at work, quite a funny one, actually, and I thought "Why, I should post this on my blog!" Then I said to myself, "I should definitely do more than just post this on my blog...I should poetize about it, and then post it on my blog...hmmm..."

Noble sentiments, no doubt.

One of my favorite poems is Egar Allen Poe's The Raven, and so, subconsciously, the metre for it had been running through my head.
You know that feeling, when everything in your life seems to happen to a metre? When you walk, you feel it in your steps, when you find your brain entertaining itself, it's chanting it's nonsense syllables in the cadence that fits your favorite poem.
Ok, so maybe you don't always have a rythm in your head, and maybe I'm just a little weird (big surprize, no?)
Either way, I had the metre and words of this:
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over a many quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door-

Only this, and nothing more.'


running around somewhere between my scalp and my half-emerging wisdom teeth. This caused the poem I was thinking about writing to come out in the exact same rythm:

Once upon a windy October, as the gusts entreat us to be sober,

They kindle sentiments, noble and nobler within the hearts of doleful men

The clouds were softly, swiftly flying, the leaves were slowly, sadly dieing,

The wind, in eddies, sweetly sighing, around the eaves, and back again.

The solemn wind, in swirling currents, came ‘round the eaves and back again.

And a moan escaped me, “never again”

Unfortunately, I liked the beginning of this too much (and it was also much too sombre) to convert into a comic piece for a blog. Now, without the motivation to write it so I can post it on my blog, and the responsiblilty that I gave myself by putting work into this first verse to do the rest in the same caliber, chances are, I will never, ever finish this, and if I do, it won't be posted on this blog.

Your loss. :-P

This isn't the only poem in such straights, though. I started another parody the other day about Fresno, the city just north of here to the "tune" of The Cremation of Sam Magee (by Robert Service), and it is likewise in Limbo:

There are strange things done in the hot, hot sun by the people who live around here;

Out great wide valley has a long death tally, and terror is built upon fear.

The dim streetlights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the corner of Maple and Horner, I was a hero of the Fresno Bee.


Now the Fresno Bee was a paper, you see, and a better there’d never been had,

For the Bee had column, right down at the bottom, that was entitled, “Who went bad”

Eevery week of the year will a story appear, each telling the story of how,

Through thick or thin, by wine or gin, a man’s character went south.

Maybe if I ever finish this one, I'll put it up on here...I guess we'll just have to wait and see, won't we? :-)





3 comments:

lasselanta said...

It must have been the poetry reflection essay after Three Centuries of American Poetry. I'm sure of it. Maybe I should assign you to finish one or the other of these poems by Tuesday afternoon at class time... would that work?

I mean, getting out of Limbo is pretty significant, right?

Sylvia said...

Maybe you should check your spelling when you're posting instead of doing schoolwork....

Wanderer said...

I know the "poetry in the mind setting rhythm to the life" all to well....=)
It especially happens when you are walking...Here, "heavily the low sky raining / Over towered Camelot" often beats it's way into the core of my soul on the way back to Crick from anywhere in the City Centre. =) I wonder why...=)=)

Have you every been laying in bed forever trying to sleep, and suddenly realize that the reason you can't is because the poem currently in your mind is simply not conducive to resting?? then there's the problem of switching...arg!