Greeting and Salubriations, Fellow Gather Fulminators!
Well, we?re all done with modern poetry.? I?ve exhausted every conceivable topic, every possible technique.? There?s nothing left to talk about.? Just go back through my previous columns and you?ll know everything there is to know about writing modern poetry.
Did I have you going for a second?
The fact is, there is no end to the invention, the creativity, and the variety of modern poetry and approaches to modern poetry. Think of how many stylistic genres and individual styles there are in modern painting, to name just one medium.? Think for just a moment about the unique visions of Monet, Mondrian, Matisse, Miro, Grandma Moses, and M.C. Escher.
As I?ve said, and tried to demonstrate, poetry is much more than sentiment, short lines, and end rhymes.? The techniques that can be used to communicate the very special, intimate truth that lives in the poetic imagination are as rich and variegated as the colors in the artist?s palette, or the harmonic colors in the music composer?s palette. We've looked at many of them, one by one.
Now I?m inviting you to go wild.? Let loose.? Be creative.? Pull out all the stops.? Put all the leftovers into the stew.? Throw the paint onto the wall.? Play the piano without the music?with your fists, even.
Today we?re going to look at Abstract Poetry and its close cousin, Cubist Poetry.
Abstract poetry is:
- intended to convey emotion rather than a moment in time, event, story or descriptive scene. Some might view it as nonsense.
- constructed at the discretion of the poet in length, stanza, meter and or rhyme.
- primarily attempting to communicate through sound and bizarre images.
From PoetryMagnumOpus.com
Cubist poetry: Heterogeneous images and statements, presented in a seemingly disordered but considered fashion, so that together they build a coherent work.
Babette Deutsch
Many of the abstract poems cited below may also be considered cubist poetry, especially the e.e. cummings and Gertrude Stein.? For the purpose of this article, we will just treat Cubist poetry as a variety or subset of Abstract poetry, and not belabor the distinction between the two genres any further than that.
Dame Edith Sitwell (@Wikipedia) (@Poetry Foundation) is generally cited as the modern pioneer of abstract poetry.
Came the Great Popinjay (Edith Sitwell)
CAME the great Popinjay
Smelling his nosegay:
In cages like grots
The birds sang gavottes.
'Herodiade's flea
Was named sweet Amanda,
She danced like a lady
From here to Uganda.
Oh, what a dance was there!
Long-haired, the candle
Salome-like tossed her hair
To a dance tune by Handel.' . . .
Dance they still? Then came
Courtier Death,
Blew out the candle flame
With civet breath.
?
Also by Sitwell:
What The Goose-Girl Said To The Dean
Sitwell?s collection Fa?ade (which can be read here) is credited with founding the genre of Abstract Poetry.? Please do follow the link and treat yourself to a couple more of her confections.
?
More Examples:
Remember these next two, from our column on neologisms?
Jabberwocky (Lewis Carroll)
?
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
?
Hist Whist (e.e.cummings)
hist????? whist
little ghostthings
tip-toe
twinkle-toe
little twitchy
witches and tingling
goblins
hob-a-nob???? hob-a-nob
?
Two more by e.e. cummings:
anyone lived in a pretty how town
in Just-/spring
Recipe For Sleep (James Tate)
knit the mosquitoes together
beneath your pajamas
let a stranger suck on your foot
reach inside of yourself
and pull out a candle
clutch the giant shrimp tighter
run down the staircase
inside a violet
eat through both doors
empty the hammock of its blood
uncork the head of a doll
and choke the rose inside of it
when you get to the glacial lake
wrap yourself up in gauze
and then swallow your hands
the reverse sometimes works
for waking
?
Susie Asado (Gertrude Stein)
Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.
Susie Asado.
Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.
Susie Asado.
Susie Asado which is a told tray sure.
A lean on the shoe this means slips slips hers.
When the ancient light grey is clean it is yellow, it is a silver seller.
This is a please this is a please there are the saids to jelly. These are the wets these say the sets to leave a crown to Incy.
Incy is short for incubus.
A pot. A pot is a beginning of a rare bit of trees. Trees tremble, the old vats are in bobbles, bobbles which shade and shove and render clean, render clean must.
Drink pups.
Drink pups drink pups lease a sash hold, see it shine and a bobolink has pins. It shows a nail.
What is a nail. A nail is unison.
Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.
?
Two more by Gertrude Stein:
If I Told Him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso
Yet Dish
The Prompt:
Poetry
Read the examples, including the ones linked to but not reproduced here.
Write an abstract poem.
Suggestions:
Start with automatic writing. Get a pencil and paper and write down whatever goes through your head without thinking about it or filtering it or judging it.? In a previous phase of my writing life, many of my poems began with automatic writing.? When you?ve done that for a few minutes, you may find the poem flowing out of you, or you may find you have written the poem already.
Start with an abstraction. Write a poem about that abstraction.? Use surreal, unrelated images, use the sound of the words, but do not use images conventionally associated with that abstraction, and don?t worry about grammar or syntax.? Example:? Spring?evoke the emotions of spring without using flowers, birds, rain, etc.
More examples of abstractions: heat, betrayal, light, sacrifice, speed, dissonance, giddiness, recklessness, thirst, anger, transcendence, achievement, time, work, blue.
?
Alternate
Find an abstract painting.? Picasso, Miro, Mondrian, Chagall, Pollack, that sort of thing.? Write a poem evoking the sense and feeling inspired by the painting, without referring to the painting or its visual elements in a literal fashion.
Here are two wonderful examples of modern poems based on modern paintings, both by Lawrence Ferlinghetti:
Don?t let that horse
In Goya?s Greatest Scenes We Seem to See ...
Strictly speaking, these are not pure abstract poetry, in that they do invoke directly some of the images from the paintings, but they are wonderful examples of Modernist ekphrastic poetry.
Prose
See the September 23 edition of SunWinks!
(Asking you just to write a short story may have been just a little too open, judging from the response so far.? What I?m hoping you will do is read Vonnegut?s 8 Rules and make a conscious decision to either observe or break one or more of those rules.? If you need inspiration for a topic, please see the prompts from our other fine GWE Editors.)
Put SunWEin the title and tags.
- Indicate in some way which devices or techniques I should be paying attention to. ?(If responding to today?s, put Abstract Poetry in the title field.)
- This prompt does not turn into a pumpkin a week (or even two) from today.? If your piece isn?t done in the next week or two, get it in when you can.? This is supposed to be fun.
- I will comment on every submission and include a link to it in the next column.
- If you would like a little more academic critique--but still very friendly and positive--include the word "rigorous" in your post (e.g. "rigorous critique wanted").
Responses to previous prompts are linked to below.? Please check out and comment on one or more.? Let me know if I missed yours.
As ever,
Doug
Short Story
Summer Landscape
by?Adina Pelle
?
Excerpt of Chapter Two of Once Upon a Masquerade
by?Angela A.
Terminal by DW
? 2012 Douglas J. Westberg. All Rights Reserved. ?Please share this on Gather.com, and elsewhere on the web by means of a link back to this page, but please do not copy. ? Doug's latest book is The Depressed Guy's Book of Wisdom from Chipmunka Publishing.
Doug's Gather Group is Depression and Creativity, devoted to creative writing about depression and related illnesses, and creative writing as therapy. ?Please consider joining. ?You can read more of Doug's posts there, or here.
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