First semester, undergrad Junior, and a competitively aspiring English major, sitting in a Center Hall classroom, for Modern British and American Poetry, taught by Professor Bert Stern. MBAP was one of 3-4 classes that truly exposed my mind to broader ideas, more colorful personalities, and fresher, more challenging aspirations. Dr. Stern taught me read poetry, both aloud for understanding and silently, with a pen, for study, and I have been fascinated by the rules — the meter, rhyme, and form — of poetry since then. For decades, I’ve scribbled ideas for poems in notebooks, marked and explicated well-known works as a low-intensity, intellectual, hobby, and always lied to myself that I was a poet, deep-down and hidden, and that someday my creative talents would simply emerge and assert themselves, grandly. Maybe even with a Pulitzer Prize (such is my daydreaming).
Instead, I start little and finish nothing, because writing formal verse is hard. Crafting the emotions into ideas, and the ideas into images, and the images into bounded form, is really hard, much harder than writing a business plan, speaking extemporaneously, or running five miles. For me, writing poetry takes time, intense focus, and more desire to persevere than I (mostly) possess. Neither my natural talent, nor my work ethic, are adequate. But I was thinking of ee cummings in the shower yesterday, and I am committed to the principle that “the process is the product.” I am going to learn the art of poetry, formal verse, no matter how many years it takes, and no matter how embarrassing the result.
This sounded like an excellent idea, inside my head, inside the shower stall, at 6am or so, on a very slow-moving Monday morning. I decided to choose a sonnet from his volume “a selection of poems,” to understand that poem, and to “simply” recast it in my own vernacular. “Simple” copy job, a random piece of plagiarism, but an excellent way to learn-by-doing. Why cummings, and why not one of his more whimsical poems? Beats me, but I’ve chosen “O Thou To Whom The Musical White Spring:”
To me, this is both a “muse calling” and a love poem, a recasting of his romantic feelings into a “classical” form. He asserts that the Earth, herself, shrugs-off the black robes of Winter and Death to greet his lover with a beautiful, eternally blooming flower; describes how songs (birds?) fly from around her feet like flame or sparks, to die among the stars; then, explicitly identifies his lover and muse as Love personified, and spills his “bright incalculable soul” across her incense- and hymn-soaked “shrine of intangible commemoration.” Should be easy for a Warren Township boy to translate and make his own, right?
I am taking cummings’ word that this is really a sonnet of some kind, because I don’t feel motivated to mark its feet, stresses, etc. In order to understand it better, I rewrote it two ways, as a series of image sentences, then recasting those image sentences in simpler, more Hoosier-like language:
I will spare you the full back-and-forth with myself on a scratch-pad, then a Word doc, and I deleted much more than I kept. As of this morning, I intend to write a sonnet — Untitled — about the differences between my Muse and the classical Muse that inspires cummings. My inspirations are much simpler, but just as deserving.
I consider this a decent start, and intend to keep working until I have a REAL POEM. I will share updates as I continue to draft.
UNTITLED SONNET Hey You, Standing somewhere behind me, or above me Hovering spectral and useless waiting for me To beg your music from rustled leaves, rippling brooks, Floating lovely as a cloud among the silent dreams of stars. You, Lay your long pale pink foot on the sideview mirror, Drive one-legged, steer one-fingered, dare Red lights and walkers and radio dials, Red-ringed lighters and long white Lights, Hum something below the brain (...) TO BE CONTINUED
