One Nation

This Memorial Day gave me reason to stop and think about the way Christians in America speak about God. If this is over the top, it is because I fear any subtlety on the matter would be missed entirely.

Fragile Attempts

Today I took some time to sit and read poetry, and essays about poetry. This, along with the beer I was sipping, helped relax me enough to write some decent verse. Or at least I think it is decent.

And She Smiled At Him

I've been contemplating how to describe a smile in terms of poetry - here is one attempt.

He Speaks of His Loss of Desire

Often I feel that I have nothing to write about, especially in the summer, when my life becomes much more mundane and pleasant. When there is nothing that taxes your thinking too much, I feel that there's not too much to write about. Well, I decided to try that fancy thing called empathy, where you imagine what it would be like to be someone else. So, I tried to write as a jilted lover. I have no idea if it succeeded, but I'm content with the result.

Trending Upward

One of my favorite TV shows is Top Gear, a British car show that is possibly the most watched show on earth, with estimated viewership at 250 million per episode. For those who are unfamiliar, it is a quirky blend of road tests of hypercars and family hatchbacks, epic races between cars and other forms of transport (the Japanese bullet train, for instance), and some sophisticated mayhem. None of that really has an impact on this poem, except that today I was watching the first episode of the second season, from 2003. Now, in the past three years or so, there have been a number of arch references to financial crises in the world and the producers saying they needed to have more family cars on the show and fewer pieces of Italian exotica. This first episode, however, featured nothing exciting at all, at least not in terms of cost. The most expensive car was less than £18,000, which is rather moderate actually. This struck me as odd - there seemed to be as much of an emphasis on affordable living 8 years ago, but without a catchy, economist endorsed name for it. It got me thinking about trends, and how it allows us to label ourselves more conveniently and give us excuses for doing things. Well, that's the longest intro I've ever written for a poem. May you read and understand.

Poetic Development

Well, I don't have many readers left, which is only to be expected in the summer, and feedback has dropped to zero. This makes me a bit sad. This poem summarizes the way my poetry has been received.

Something Old, Something New

I write a lot of poems, and yesterday while sipping a beer in my back yard and reading Rebecca West's massive and brilliant Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, I jotted this down in the back of the book. It's born from reflection from a philosophical question I posed when rather young, and the response I got from a family friend who has a PhD. in philosophy.

He Wishes For Any Cloth At All

I've been reading William Butler Yeats recently, whose poetry is so beautiful and perfect it almost makes me weep. In particular, his "He Wishes For The Cloths of Heaven" is heart-wrenchingly gorgeous. This is a conversation poem, written somewhat in response to Yeats.

El Capitan

I know almost nothing about rock climbing, if I'm honest, but this metaphor is based on El Capitan, the massive granite face in Yosemite, 60 miles from my house. I found this one in a notebook as well, and have spent some time trying to rework and reconstruct it. I may return to this one.

Eliot and Hamlet

I found this in a notebook, like a lot of poems recently. I have no idea if I meant to title the poem "Eliot and Hamlet," or if it was the title of the lecture I should have listened to, the page is pretty much blank aside from that. Still, I'm not too sure what I meant by this at the time, but I can see where I took some elements for later poems.

Sonnet - Treacherous Love

Here's a sonnet from an undated page in my notebook. It was incomplete, I dashed off the final three lines just now. I like sonnets, they're such an expressive form.

Food For Thought

Here's a poem I discovered in a notebook, dated March 25 of this year. I won't say which class I wrote it in.

Hop, Step, Jump

While talking with my mom today, the subject of moving on in life was raised. We both agreed that for God to guide our paths, we need to first decide to walk at all. This is the poem that resulted from that thought. Also, hop, step, jump is the order for the triple jump, which I used to do quite poorly in High School.

Apocalyptic Revelations

Well, for those who don't know, the world apparently is not ending today. I could talk a lot about proof-texting and numerology, but I just wrote something mildly whimsical. Enjoy.

The Top Heavy Man Makes A Request

Here's another poem born of my long hours of driving. I didn't really write it all in my head, but I thought out a lot of the issues on the road, and typed them up when I got home. This deals with the issue of guilt and asking for forgiveness. Originally, the idea is that the speaker is asking a fellow human for forgiveness, but while thinking about it I realized it also works well as a prayer to God. I think that's telling, in that our offenses are against both God and man.

The Praises of an Impoverished Land

I've just completed a road trip from Chicago to Texas to California, and much of that land was desert. I love the desert, the American Southwest is truly gorgeous. Driving through for hours, I got to do a lot of thinking about that land, and this poem is partly the result.

Summer Indolence

I think I need to work on my titles, they aren't very imaginative. Oh well. This poem is about the emptiness that Summer often seems to contain. It was fine when I was young, but now that I'm older, the slower pace seems slightly worrisome.

Repartee

This poem is born from thoughts about verbal deflections, and how we can use humor to foster or discourage conversation of depth. The final stanza is a line that I've came to me months ago, and I've been mulling it over since.

A Poem for My Peers

I finished my finals today, everything is in, and now the waiting begins. I graduate in three days. Most of my friends are pretty excited, but I'll be honest, I don't know what I feel. I do know that I'm close to tears a lot of these days, and that makes me ashamed. Experience though, has taught me that in those moments I feel most alone, I am most human, the most easily identified with. So, for those who are graduating with me in a few days, or graduating in a year, or at all, or if you feel sorrow for reasons you cannot explain: You are not alone.

Clean-Up

I'm done with finals, and have only my department portfolio left. This means I must start to pack up all my belongings and leave, for the last time. This is sad.

Verse Epistle - On John Donne

For my John Donne course, our final assignment was to write a verse epistle - a letter in poetry form. I made several attempts to copy Donne's style, iambic pentameter couplets, but when I write like that I focus too much on the rhyme and not enough on what I'm saying. So this is the final version. I chose instead to work on meter, with the lines alternating between 8 and 6 syllables each. It was written to a good friend.

New Directions

Yes, I'm aware that this post is not a poem. Now that National Poetry Month is done, I've had to decide if I will keep the blog going - and for now, the answer is yes, I will. That's the simple stuff though. I'm writing this to try and gauge people's opinions on where I stand as a poet and writer as a whole, and to try and figure out where to go from here.

To begin, the reason I created the blog at all was to circulate my work among friends, firstly, and also to gather feedback on my writing. On the first point, the blog has been quite a success - 1,300+ page views already, from 8 different countries (to be fair, I think the ones from Brazil and Singapore were mistakes). The second point was largely successful, as a number of wonderful friends took the time to tell me they were reading along, and that they enjoyed what they read. If you've voiced your opinion to me, thank you so much, putting my work on display was a very difficult decision for me, and your support and affirmation means more than I can say.

However, I've only received positive feedback so far, and I'm not stupid or proud enough to believe that it's because I'm a brilliant poet. I greatly appreciate the kindness that restrains some tongues, but I would like to ask for people to let me know when a poem is bad, when a line is just plain wrong, if a rhyme or meter seems forced, etc. Some of you have taken the time to do so once or twice, and I encourage you all to do the same. It doesn't matter if you "know" how to read poetry or not, I care what everyone thinks. If an image is confusing or ineffective, say so! I want to become a better writer, and that won't happen if people don't honestly tell me when I'm doing something wrong! Be a real friend, criticize me!

A Battle of Wills

As the end of my college career hastens, I've been occasionally beating myself up over opportunities missed, dares never taken. If I'm honest, a lot of the time I was mad at God for not giving me the opportunities I wanted, and therefore missed out on seeing how incredible my options really were. Life moves on though, and I need to as well.

Deus Ex Machina

This is another poem about Doctor Who, a show I love dearly. Basically, he's a time traveling alien,  and he's always revealing that he's actually the truth behind some legend, or took part in some crazy historical event, so I wrote a modest little poem about the origin of a certain phrase. I hope you enjoy!

Overdue Introductions

Well, here's another one of those poems that is probably a bit convoluted in its thought process, but I think I mean what I'm saying. Unless you dislike what it says, then you're just reading it wrong.

Osama's Death

I'm a big fan of Arrested Development, and in the second or third season, when they think they've found evidence of WMD's in Iraq, the anchor man says, "Weapons of Mass Destruction found in Iraq, what this means for your weekend, coming up." I think it's hilarious, and very telling - we get very, very worked up over things that may or may not have a direct impact on us, due to the global media. Yes, Osama bin Laden is now dead, but it doesn't reverse the deaths of 9/11 or the war that followed, nor does it make the dead rest more easily. It may make us feel better, but I think we all know that this death really doesn't change much - there are lots of other terrorists out there, and there's still plenty of time for someone to step up to take Osama's place. Anyway, I wrote a poem about his death. It's satirical, and I'm not sure what I'm advocating for. But I wrote this, so read it.

Late Night, Denny's

So, I'm sitting in a Denny's working on a paper, and there are some really weird people nearby having a rather crude conversation. Oh, wait, they're just going. Well, Ben Stephens encouraged me to write a poem about them, and I did.

The Silence

So, I'm a big Doctor Who fan, and the new season is the best one yet, and is totally freaky. This poem is in no way a spoiler, but tries to capture the utter creepiness that the new villains represent.