Yes, I get it…
Shakespeare is really famous, and he wrote Iambic Pentameter. As have many other really famous dead people. And some less famous living people, but they’re not as relevant to the brief digression / discussion here.
At least I can say the poetry writing class I am taking is inspiring blog posts if not the most excellent of tom’s poetry. Quite understandably, it is based on learning the hunks of word-metal (i.e. tools) residing in the poet’s toolbox. Happy things like metaphor, types of language, form, metrical systems, etc. And some small amount of workshopping from peers and black ink scrawled uncomfortably across the poems I write solely to fulfill the assignment and not from the greater poetic experience I enjoy. That was a very long sentence, perhaps I should have broken it up, tossed in a line break or two, cleared up what I meant, introduced fewer concepts, and so on. It is probably a good thing my instructor does not read this blog (or, at least, I don’t think he does…). The rage, the rage… is really tame.
This weeks assignment: fifteen lines of blank verse. For the uninitiated, blank verse is unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter. Yes, fifteen lines of daDA daDA daDA daDa… Sort of like the sound of my head hitting the desk repeatedly while I attempt to tortuously twist word choice and syntax to fit those ends. Was I successful? I might think so, you might think so, I very much doubt Herr Instruktor will.
Just Passing Through
Just passing through, gray road to NYC
ticks by in mile-marked monotony,
these cypress pines the only green around
for days, a truck-stop maze, we wander out
into a coffee haze like dawn, inhaling
tailpipe tar, a snowflake’s star; not far
off Eden’s Island neon adverts say
an IHOP twenty miles away is lunch,
the bar next door a Harley’s rider’s break
from shirt and tie, a weekend’s ride the soul’s
scant income, Volvo traded, parking pass
negated, he won’t stop ’till Sunday, home,
his pressed suit hung like fate; defrost set high,
I’ll trade the sky, this view, this you, preferred,
your brown eyes wide, the city’s lights ahead.