Today I was challenged to “write a poem inspired by [my] favorite [sic] kind of music.” I’ve always loved the beautifully evocative adagietto from Mahler’s fifth symphony: it was used in Visconti’s 1971 film version of Thomas Mann’s novella, ‘Death in Venice’ – a film which is oddly relevant for today since part of the storyline involves the city of Venice being gripped by a cholera epidemic. The quotation within my very short poem references Maureen Lipman’s character in ‘Educating Rita’ .

Adagietto (Mahler’s 5th symphony)

Soft, sonorous sounds                                                

                                    slowly flow from violins and

wrap themselves around

                                                my dreaming soul.

“Wouldn’t you just die without Mahler!” But Aschenbach,

his body already ravaged by disease,

died in the film with a Mahler soundtrack.

Today’s task was to “write a poem that deals with the poems, poets, and other people who inspired you to write poems.” As someone who studied Shakespeare’s sonnets for A level and then chose to take a module on ‘The Idea of the Poet in the Romantic Period’ as part of my English Literature degree, I thought I’d better include Shakespeare and Wordsworth as major influences on my own writing – not that I regard myself as a poet, but I do enjoy iambic pentameter and blank verse, as well as more free form poetry. With all this in mind, I wrote a sonnet in the ‘Shakespearean’ form (three quatrains, followed by a rhyming couplet – different to the Petrarchan form of octet and sestet which I’ve on previous days) which was actually about Shakespeare being my muse; then channelled Wordsworth by parodying his ‘Stealing the boat’ extract from ‘The Prelude’ (1850 edition) – he was my inspiration in the sense that I took a childhood incident and then rewrote it in blank verse, trying to be as pretentious as Wordsworth himself was when he took a whole page to say, ‘I stole a boat, got scared, went home’; then turned to Tennyson’s ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ and parodied that; followed by a very brief parody of T S Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ (brief because I wrote a much longer parody of Eliot last week); and finally, an homage to Ezra Pound. None of it’s great poetry, but it’s been fun experimenting with other poet’s styles.

A-musing

I. Shakespeare

My muse’s verse is nothing like my own:

If words be flowers, mine wither straight away;

Yet writing all his sonnets, he has shown

Both wit and warmth for all he wants to say.

His rhymes work out, and nothing forced is there –

Unlike my own, which lack his stylish flow.

He writes with ease, as if he had no care,

But I must strive to make my rhythm so.

His language too contains an elegance

That’s sadly lacking in my poor attempt:

Each word he pens is never just by chance –

He’d view my awkward rhyming with contempt.

And yet, by heav’n, I’m proud of what I write –

Enthusiasm’s great where talent’s slight!

II. Wordsworth

One summer evening (led by him) I wrote

A poem about my childhood, taking pen

And thinking on the tIme my hair was cut

By someone close – it was an act of stealth.

A Sunday afternoon with nothing planned;

My mother in her bedroom, writing notes.

For essays due within the following week

(She was an OU student and had much

To do – her essays occupied her life.)

Meanwhile, downstairs, my father sat and talked

With Nana Wood, now in her eightieth year –

A tiny, white haired woman who had come

To live with us – too old to live alone.

My brother pulled the scissors from beneath

His bed – it was the hiding place of choice.

A few swift snips – my long and golden locks

Lay on the bedroom floor, and now the fear

Rose up inside me – like some mighty fiend.

He’d cut my hair! What would my parents say?

But Paul just laughed and handed me some shorts

And then a jersey – it was my disguise –

And down we went and told my startled folk

My name was James and that I was a boy.

“He’s from Australia!” my brother said;

I played along and somehow mumbled, “Hi.”

My father thought at first it must be me;

Then, looking at my hair, he shook his head:

“Not with that hair!” And so we went outside,

Maintaining our pretence until the time

My mother, looking out, observed us both

And overheard Paul shout, “Jane! Over here!”

The game was up; we had to go inside;

A telling off was had; I think I wept.

For many weeks long after, o’er my thoughts
There hung a darkness, call it solitude
Or hair loss grief. No familiar length
Remained, no pleasant golden locks;
But short and jagged spikes rose from my head.

I grieved its loss: ‘twas ever on my mind
By day, and was a trouble to my dreams.

III. Tennyson

Write a poem, write a poem,

Write a poem faster!

Onto the virgin white page

Pour all your words down.

Make every sentence rhyme!

Or, at least half the time.

Let’s write a poem

With rhythm and metre!

Let’s sanitise the truth!

Let’s give romantic views!

Let’s glorify it all –

Ignore the true carnage!

Let’s glamorise the war!

This is what fighting’s for!

We’ll spin the disaster

And say it’s true courage!

IV. T. S. Eliot

April is the cruellest month:

Brooding isolation keeps us inside,

Mixing memory with desire …

V. Ezra Pound

I read some poems and searched for inspiration:

Others’ genius is my degradation.

Today’s challenge was slightly different: it referenced ‘The Found Poetry Review’ and looked at collaging poems from existing language – a technique T S Eliot used to great effect in ‘The Wasteland’. The optional prompt was to “write a non apology for the things you’ve stolen”, but I took it in a slightly different direction, going back to Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ and referencing three pieces of advice Polonius (the king’s advisor) gives his son Laertes as he prepares to send him off to university – perhaps the most well known line from this speech is the phrase “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”. I chose to write an internal monologue for Polonius’s daughter, Ophelia, beginning by having her reflect on her father’s words as she thinks about how badly Hamlet has treated her. The second part of the poem shows Ophelia’s descent into madness as she begins to speak almost entirely in other people’s words (or her own words – borrowed from the play); and the third part deals with her death, and borrows words from poems.

If you want to be really geeky about this, see if you can identify the plays and poems I’ve borrowed from!

Ophelia’s Lament

I.

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” you told my

brother, and ‘twas good advice I heeded well

myself: I did not lend Lord Hamlet mine own heart

nor borrow his – i’ faith, I gave it freely in exchange

for tender words and kisses, promises

that swore he would be mine and lov’d me more

than any other maid.

“To thine ownself be true” – ay, so I have:

‘twas Hamlet played me false with cruel words

and exhortations that I get me hence –

“a nunnery,” forsooth! is what he said –

ah, he hath played me false indeed

and stol’n the foolish heart I offered up

and broken it.

And now bedecked with madness in my grief,

I gather flowers to strew my marriage bed;

and Death, my bridegroom, waits with greedy hands

to twine the garland round about my head

and kiss away the life my heart once had

when I was lov’d.

II.

There’s rosemary – that’s for remembrance –

I’m larded with sweet flowers.

He is dead and gone, lady:

my Hamlet’s dead and gone.

There is pansies – that’s for thoughts.

When I am gone, think only this of me:

I’m one who loved not wisely but too well.

Hamlet’s ghost now walks abroad –

a hard-hearted adamant in human form.

I love thee not, therefore pursue me not!

III.

Full fathom five my father lies:

Hamlet stole his life with one sharp thrust.

“A rat! A rat!”

I flit; I fly; I float.

The curse has come upon me!

It is the closing of the day;

Now I lay me down to sleep.

I float.

“Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

During NaPoWriMo, I’m learning a lot about different types of poems I’d never heard of before and today is no exception. I was asked to write a triolet – an eight line poem with a very specific structure: Line 1 is repeated in lines 4 and 7; lines 3 and 5 rhyme with (but do not repeat) line1; line 2 is repeated in line 8; line 6 rhymes with line 2.

Yet again, I’ve chosen to write a poem about trying to write a poem (metapoetry) – it’s not great, but at least it obeys the rules; and now I’ve written my first triolet, I can try to write another, better one on a different occasion.

Triolet

I tried so hard to write a poem

But inspiration ran away,

Reminding of another time

I tried so hard to write a rhyme –

And is it really such a crime

To want to write a poem today?

I tried so hard to write a rhyme

But inspiration ran away.

Today’s prompt was to write a poem based on the language of flowers. For example, yellow roses stand for friendship, white roses for innocence, and red roses for love. In fact, there are as many potential meanings for flowers as there are flowers. The Victorians particularly loved giving each other bouquets that were essentially decoder-rings of meaning. For today, I was challenged to write a poem in which one or more flowers take on specific meanings.

Lost Childhood

You toddle up to me on

chubby little legs, your plump

 hands clutching joyful

buttercups and innocent

daisies.

And I wonder if you realise

 how in years to come

your childish joy will

disintegrate like yellow

petals and your innocence

become a chain

around your heart.

Today’s prompt was to write a hay(na)ku). (No, I’d never heard of it before either.) The form is a variant on the haiku and consists of a three-line stanza, where the first line has one word, the second line has two words, and the third line has three words. A hay(na)(ku) can exist on its own or as a stanza in a longer poem consisting of several hay(na)(ku).

I’ve just written a short story in epistolary form entitled ‘Wild at Heart’ in which I’ve imagined Emily Bronte’s diary entries from the age of six until she died, aged thirty, from pneumonia. Since my head is currently stuffed with Emily and the fictional worlds she created, I thought I’d let my hay(na)(ku) go the same way …

Wild At Heart

Cathy

and Heathcliff

fell in love:

*

he

a wild

gypsy child and

*

she

a fiery

passionate creature who

*

dared

to love

where she chose.

*

The

height of

their passion was

*

the

depth of

their agonising despair.

Day 9 is ‘Concrete Poetry Day’ – write a poem in the shape of the thing you’re writing about. This is my first attempt at concrete poetry …

Heart Broken

He said She thought

he’d love her for eternity he loved her – believed

but he he had a short every word he said when he

memory and held her close and said

eternity didn’t words like forever

last as long but it turned out

as she he didn’t mean

thought it

Today’s prompt was to look at a twitter feed for an established poet and use a line, a phrase or even a word as inspiration. I viewed @percybotshelley and looked at some of Shelley’s lines. Since I teach his famous sonnet ‘Ozymandias’ for GCSE literature, I decided to write a sonnet on the theme of the difficulty of writing a poem, using part of one of Shelley’s lines to start my first line.

The Absent Muse

Regrets, vexations, lassitudes and more

Have plagued me since Calliope departed

In vain I think until my head be sore,

Until I tire and grow so weary hearted.

I search for rhymes; I study ancient lore –

My quest to pen a poem is barely started;

I think on love, on hope and death and war –

Yet inspiration has from my soul parted.

But though I cannot think of an apt subject

For my poem’s substance, this is no dilemma:

Let creativity become my theme.

I’ll write of how it suffers not to reject

A germ of thought born from despair’s slight tremor,

And turn this writing nightmare to a dream.

Like most of the other Romantic poets, Shelley was rather pretentious and I’ve tried to capture that in the above poem. However, what I really wanted was to take the first line of ‘Ozymandias’ – a sonnet which denounces the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses the Great and highlights the fleeting nature of power – and use that as the first line of a sonnet that has undertones of the middle Eastern folk tales in the ‘Thousand and One Nights’. Shelley followed some of the conventions of the classical sonnet in his poem – 14 lines, written in iambic pentameter – but deliberately ‘ruined’ it by using an irregular rhyme scheme – perhaps a subtle reference to his own power as the poet to create on his own terms. I have chosen to use the Petrarchan rhyme scheme with an abbaabbacdecde pattern and my poem follows.

Wanderlust

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said, “This carpet that I carry furled

Has carried me around the Eastern world

O’er silver seas, across the golden sand,

Past palm trees tall – these journeys were not planned:

I did but sit upon the patterns twirled

Upon the carpet; then my vision blurred;

The mat rose up; below me, vistas panned.

On this fair carpet, have I travelled far,

Yet now ’tis time for me to end those days:

I can no longer sustenance such deeds.

And so farewell to sand and sea and star:

I have relinquished my nomadic ways –

And yet the love of travelling in me bleeds.

In all honesty, I think I prefer writing non rhyming poetry, but I’ve tried to rise to the challenge of channelling Shelley by using poems with a set rhyme and rhythm. Iambic pentameter actually mimics the rhythms of natural speech – which is one of the reasons why Shakespeare and other playwrights used it for their plays – and is also easier to remember than lines written in prose. I’m not particularly satisfied with either of the above attempts, but I do like experimenting with form – so it will be interesting to see what Day 9’s challenge is.

Today’s brief was to turn to newspaper headlines for inspiration; however, the suggestion was to take a light-hearted news article rather than writing about Covid-19. (Perhaps just as well since five of my poems so far have touched on that topic.) I quite liked the headline “People are dressing up in ballgowns and tiaras to take their bins out“, so I’ve entitled this one ‘Bins and Ballgowns’. PS To counteract the rather banal content, I’ve used iambic pentameter – surely a metaphor for the poem itself …

Bins and Ballgowns

On pointy heels, she wobbles down the path.

Her odd attire makes passing strangers laugh.

We must stay home in constant isolation

And not ignore the PM’s information;

But two weeks in, she’s tired of wearing leggings.

Designer clothes hang in her wardrobe, begging

To come out and have a little airing,

And now, she thinks, she really is past caring

What others think – she’s going to do this her way!

So she’ll dress up in style for this week’s bin day.

Her satin ballgown trails upon the floor –

At least her neighbours know she isn’t poor!

Her dress alone cost almost half a grand;

Whilst at her throat, a diamanté band

Proclaims her taste – there’s nothing too outré:

She’ll celebrate good breeding while she may.

Of course, the bin bags in her outstretched fingers

Are made by Harrods – snobbishness still lingers.

Keeping standards up is such a pleasure:

One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.

Today’s resource was the online journal, Ekphrastic Review, which chooses a different painting each week and invites readers to submit their own creative responses in the form of poetry or prose. (Last August, they published a short story I wrote, inspired by the painting ‘Frenzy’ by the Polish artist Wladyslaw Podkowinski.) The prompt for today was Heironymous Bosch’s famous (and bizarre) triptych, ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ and we were asked to write a poem from the point of view of one person/animal/thing from the painting. (If you’re not familiar with it, google it.) I chose to write about Adam, shortly after the Creator has presented him with Eve (seen in the left hand panel of the triptych), and so I’ve called my poem,

Adam Finds His Earthly Delight

It seems that, as I slept,

My ribs were counted

And one of them deemed fit for transposition:

That solitary bone – just one of many –

Took on flesh

And warmth

And softness.

*

She sits here now,

Her voice a laughing river,

Her eyes two stars,

Her form an unknown country

With hills and mounds

And secret hiding places.

*

Her hand in mine,

We walk this world together;

My skin on hers,

We rise and fall together.

*

Flesh of my flesh;

Bone of my bone:

Without me, she would have no life,

But I cannot live without her.