Day: October 16, 2016

Who can say the heart’s a refugee?

Wholly here in   trust of the unknown
A trust   wholly impossible to  man
So Jesus  cried out  in his state forlorn
Unknowing and uncertain, he began.

Who can tell us what the cost may be?
Our open eyes may  let in bleak despair
Who can  say that  love’s a refugee?
Our open eyes may see the Light shine where?

How we  draw our lifelines   sharp and black
When watercolor may be nearer truth.
A puzzle, steel, mechanical, might crack
And leave us  helpless , buried in  our ruth.

Who has got the courage when alone?
Which of us will roll away the stone?

I’ll love you, by the way

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'Twas but a reptile passing by.
It flew across the deep blue sky
Why do reptiles fly so high?
I'll love you till I die.

"Twas but a cat under the moon.
Did you have a silver spoon?
Why can't cats all waul in tune?
I'll love you very soon

'Twas but a wooden legged man,
Carrying a large brass saucepan.
Why can't men do what women can?
I'll love you better than.

Why are adverbs?
What are nouns?
why do circuses have clowns?
I'll love you lying down.

Where do dreams go in the day?
What game can we adults play?
Can you or can you not say?
I'll love you,in my way.

'Twas but a verse that seemed so free.
It floated over my oak tree.
I have eyes but cannot see.
I'll love you when I be

What Is Poetry by John Ashbery

What Is Poetry

John Ashbery

The medieval town, with frieze
Of boy scouts from Nagoya? The snow

That came when we wanted it to snow?
Beautiful images? Trying to avoid

Ideas, as in this poem? But we
Go back to them as to a wife, leaving

The mistress we desire? Now they
Will have to believe it

As we believed it. In school
All the thought got combed out:

What was left was like a field.
Shut your eyes, and you can feel it for miles around.

Now open them on a thin vertical path.
It might give us–what?–some flowers soon?

In time to the music of the words

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http://www.poetryarchive.org/glossary/metre

“Like the rhythm in a piece of music, the metre is an underlying structure. Poets often slip in extra feet, or remove them, or change stress patterns around to prevent monotony, like playing rubato. (Sometimes a poem seems to be exploring how far a line can be pushed without losing all connection with the underlying metre.) This means that the discovery of a foot other than an iamb in the middle of what is otherwise iambic, say, does not stop the poem from being iambic; rather the attention ends up lingering at that point, so the word on the different foot ends up more powerful as it has the attention longer. An example of this can be found in Peter Dale’s ‘Half-Light’; he writes “I’m trying not to give another glance. / Lit window thirty years back up that path.” The first line is a perfectly regular iambic pentameter, but the second introduces an extra stress on “Lit”, so that what the speaker’s trying not to be drawn to seems more powerful, perhaps helping us empathise with him when he does look back and “catch her eye an instant””

 

Note  on  the word:iamb

An iamb /ˈaɪæm/ or iambus is a metrical foot used in various types of poetry. Originally the term referred to one of the feet of the quantitative meter of classical Greek prosody: a short syllable followed by a long syllable (as in “delay”).

Iamb (poetry) – Wikipedia

To measure out right feelings in due size

A  triolet can act as a device
That stops the flood of feeling  drowning  all
If it   embeds a phrase  for wiser eyes.
A  triolet can act  when well contrived
To measure out right feelings in  due size
Then we are  sheltered from  apocalyptic falls
A  triolet’s a  poem , a    rhymed device
To contain the flood of feelings which appalls.