Continual Conversation With A Silent Man

I scored as Wallace Stevens on a "Which Modern Poet Are You?" quiz. Since I'd never read any of his poems, I decided to do a little investigation and found this. I like it, because of the vivid imagery and the word play.

The old brown hen and the old blue sky,
Between the two we live and die--
The broken cartwheel on the hill.

As if, in the presence of the sea,
We dried our nets and mended sail
And talked of never-ending things,

Of the never-ending storm of will,
One will and many wills, and the wind,
Of many meanings in the leaves,

Brought down to one below the eaves,
Link, of that tempest, to the farm,
The chain of the turquoise hen and sky

And the wheel that broke as the cart went by.
It is not a voice that is under the eaves.
It is not speech, the sound we hear

In this conversation, but the sound
Of things and their motion: the other man,
A turquoise monster moving round.

I think the old brown hen is the earth, the turquoise hen is the sea...and the sky speaks for itself. The cart is most likely life, and the wheel is time.

Misfits

Broken tile, chipped stone,
Pebble mishaped. Bent
Are all the furnishings,
But uséd anyway.
Tile's rough edge scrapes
The stone, quarrel doth ensue.
Pebble finds no place
To wedge securely in.
Madness to attempt
Founding sky-top scrapers
With such misfits
As these. Yet with
Cornerstone
Of dimensions umblemished,
An unshakable monument
Grows out of the very
Parts discarded by
Builders of wise foolishness.
Clouded judgment rendered naught.
Sightless eyes speak to deaf ears--
Try to understand what is hidden
But old wineskins burst instead.
And so Rock turns upside down
What pebble, stone, and tile
Fail to accomplish on their own.

The poet's explantion of work: the real deal
The above poem is a chiasm, so-named because its structural shape resembles the letter "X," which in Greek is called "chi." The idea is something similar to those fingerpaint prints one would make as a child: sprinkle a few drops on one side of your paper, fold, press, and open up to get a mirror image design (an "X" looks like a mirror image itself). Thus, one starts with one idea, moves to a central idea, and then finally returns to the original idea (much like ABA form in music). This particular poem is about the church, based on Eph. 2:19-22: "Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit."

Twelve lines lead up to the apex of the poem, and twelve lines recede, representing the foundation of the apostles and prophets. The apex itself is the cornerstone, set alone to signify its supreme place in the structure of the building. The "madness" of line 9 is paired with the "foolishness" of line 18. The catalogue of building materials is repeated in reverse order at the end of the poem. The first and last lines are the only that deliberately rhyme. In addition, the arrangement of the text on the screen is meant to give a vague visual impression of an arch. The text itself deals with the eclectic nature of the materials used to construct this arch, the church. The structure, an "X" (the Greek letter that begins the title "Christos"), further emphasizes Christ's central place in the organization of the church.

Poetry Games

I got the idea for this from a fellow poetry blogger. The idea is to have every new word begin with a successive letter of the alphabet.

After boredom calls dusty egos,
Fellow ghosts have in justice kissed
Life's mechanistic nowhere. Or
Perhaps quicksand really sends
Them under verse's whitewash.
Yearning zeal abates.

My Grandmother

My grandmother passed away January 24, 2005, on her 74th birthday. Beholding the little urn containing her ashes was a surreal experience, one which led to the creation of the following poem:

The ashes in the jar—
Who are these cinders now?
This woman, beautiful in youth, dark hair and twinkle eyes.
One whose brain still fired faster
Than her grandchild’s. This woman,
Whose eyes passed many pages,
Before they closed one last time.
This woman, whose lungs collapsed,
Self-destructing,
Gasping.
Here are her remains.

But what are they now? What ever were they yet?
A shadow.
A tent.
Though but dust-specks, caught in the wind, scattered to sink
Indistinguishable from the molecules of earth, these were the
Tale-bearers of glory to come.
Collapsed lung spoke of
Breath unhindered,
Pouring forth the praise of God.

Marred members, yet we loved them just the same.

The pilgrim pavilion sags in the woods.
Time to unpitch and move along.
Leave the shredded canvas.
Rest under solid roof tonight.

Manifesto

This blog shall be used henceforth for the following purposes:
1) to publish all thoughts academic regarding theology, music, poetry, or philosophy
2) to publish poetry of my own creation
3) to critically reflect upon specific examples of music, movies, books

4) Anything else remotely related to above categories...