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The Sunday Poem: The State of Poetry

October 29th, 2006 (Visited 2898 times) Tags:

Posting the Sunday Poem each week has become an interesting exercise. For one, few of you read them. For another, it’s something alien enough to the game world that I doubt most regular readers of the blog have any interest. I am sure that the various marketing types who hang out here would tell me that it “dilutes the brand” to some degree, because blogs that are tightly focused (and unambiguous, and full of bullet points!) are the ones that quickly get lots of traffic. Ah, the odd ways in which commerce intrudes.

There are also all the overtones of bad poetry — some of which I have no doubt posted. There’s oodles of LiveJournals with atrocious wordsmithing, the sort of thing that once lived safely within the pages of unicorn-speckled notebooks or Goth-clad folders. Certainly, as I comb through the hundreds of poems I have here, finding ones that don’t make me cringe is challenging. It can take years to see how bad a given piece of work is, you see. (Although, interestingly, some of the few poems to garner comments here have been the ones that I dashed off the morning that the poem was “due” so to speak, like “Lions in Vegas”).

In the end, posting them is essentially an exercise in avoiding what you, the readers, will think about them. As I have been writing poems since, well, as long as I can remember, I have had plenty of cases where the mere offering or existence of a poem was taken the wrong way. Poems fall into such cliche uses these days: they must be Goth, they must be teenage girl, they must be gay, they must be a pathetic attempt to be romantic…

The State of Poetry

“I wrote a poem for you.”
She smiled, that half-smile,
Moue waiting in the wings.
Once it was unfolded, she
Passed it to her friend, who,
Furrowed, said, “Not my thing,
But I am sure it’s very nice.”

“I wrote a poem for you.”
He froze, sudden trapped fear
Shaping muscles. Once read,
Twice the wrong questions
Danced in his eyes.

I wrote a poem for you.
Do poems always mean
Something other than they say?

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Psychochild said on October 29th, 2006 at 12:48 pm:

I think poetry is an important part of a game designer’s education. I mentioned your Sunday Poems on my latest Weekend Design Challenge.

To be clear, producing a lot of poetry isn’t important. I’m a mediocre poet and really haven’t written much that’s worth publishign. However, understanding the essence behind it is important for two reasons:

1) It teaches economy with words; that is, you learn how to say more with less. As I said in the design challenge linked above, the 750 page design document sounds impressive, but it’s likely that few people are going to bother reading most of it. If you could pare that down to 250 pages, you will do a more effective job.

2) You learn more about emotions and emotional impact. This is an important part of entertainment. For me, poems are concentrated emotion. You would write pages of prose to capture the exact feeling of a stanza of poetry. Even then, the prose might feel heavy and cumbersome.

I admit, I don’t read every single poem you write, Raph, but I think the aspiring designers who read your site could benefit from learning more. I think your post about Paring Away is a must-read for people who want to learn more about poems.

Aaron said on October 29th, 2006 at 12:49 pm:

Myself, I sometimes read and write poetry, and have a great respect for its many forms and goals; but I tend to glaze over stuff like this because I dislike most modern poetry.

For example, what makes the above a poem? Nothing. It isn’t a poem. There’s no meter, no rhythmic patterns or even any semantic purpose for the words to be divided into poetic lines as they are. There’s a couple lines that rhyme, but seemingly thrown in arbitrarily and not adding much music to the language. If spoken, there’s nothing about it which would distinguish the work from slightly indirect prose. The above can be called a “poem” only by whim or some vague idea of poetry as an abstract emotional impression.

Raph said on October 29th, 2006 at 12:54 pm:

Well, you went from “I dislike most modern poetry” to “free verse isn’t poetry” pretty quick there. I’ve posted formal verse as well as free verse here, and move pretty freely between both styles.

I could expound at length about why free verse can indeed be considered poetry, but I won’t bother.

Aaron said on October 29th, 2006 at 8:38 pm:

If you write in other styles, then I just haven’t been reading the right ones. =) I’ll keep looking.

Free verse, as Shakespeare and Eliot knew it, employs meter, rhythm or some other pattern that makes it distinguishable from prose. There’s free verse and then there’s modern free verse. I only object to the latter.

Raph said on October 29th, 2006 at 10:18 pm:

I think you haven’t been paying attention! Most of the last month or so have been formal verse. Here are some of the more formal ones I found in a quick glance:

One Hundred Kings is basically rhyming couplets.

Lions in Vegas is a villanelle.

In Shelter Park is blank verse (iambic pentameter with no rhymes).

The Old Lady Is is a sonnet (ABBA form rather than ABAB).

Reactions to the Awful News uses a mix of rhyme forms and free verse.

For Every Fiddle Found is formal as well, with both meter and rhyme, but it’s not a traditional stanza structure.

The Smile is straight-up rhyming iambic pentameter quatrains.

Lost said on October 30th, 2006 at 12:41 am:

Don’t listen to the “marketing types”. Given the volume of posts that you do make about games is far greater than most developers and you are untitled to a little “off market” posts.

Personally I’m jealous of your talents. The nearest thing to poetry that I ever attempted was about the fog. While I was still in high school, I worked on a farm. I would goto the farm very early in the morning, which was at the top of hill. Many mornings fog would form in the valley. It was striking to be standing in the sun light and looking to see a sea/ocean of fog where you lived. *Please forgive me if that makes no sense, it’s very late *

Anyhow I was horrified when a teacher commented on the poem, which I had written in a back page of a notebook that I turned in for something else. Since at the time, it didn’t seem like a “cool” thing to be doing.

Amaranthar said on October 30th, 2006 at 7:55 am:

Raph, I don’t understand where the poetry is in most of your work either, but I’m not educated in the forms either. I don’t even understand the forms you just listed. Trying to follow it in one, “The Old Lady Is is a sonnet (ABBA form rather than ABAB).” I can’t even see it. I took it as ABBA meaning that the ends of the first (stanza?) rhymes with the last of four, and the middle two do also?? But I don’t see that in the poem.
However, I just accept it as an attempt at poetry, good or bad, understandable or not, and take it as it is. For me, I look for a message behind the writting, hidden or not, and just take it lightly for the fun of it.
Not long ago I even tried my hand at it, since I’ve dabbled in my own form of poetry over the years. I probably appeared quite the beginner, but who cares, it’s just for the sake of poetry, nothing more.
I don’t think people need to hash it out so as many do, if it’s really great work people will recognize it as such. That’s on an individual basis, of course, but I think what might make a poem truelly great would be universal acceptance as really great.
What I’ve often wondered about is the works of Holmer. If it’s poetry, I can’t see it but I don’t know greek, and have only read translated versions. But I have noticed repeated endings using the same words. I haven’t delved into it, but I wonder how “poetic” Holmers great works are in Greek. But it’s still amazing to think that someone(s) actually told such long stories in poetic fashion. (BTW, any insight or clairification on Holmers works would be greatly appreciated.)

Grimwell said on October 30th, 2006 at 8:31 am:

It’s a blog. Write what pleases you. Deny the masses! I’d advise turning off the visual counter for ‘visits’ and deny the urge to count the visits and hits to particular articles. While you fully understand the value of being an internet cult of personality, this site is more about peering into your head and sharing what you find than it is overt marketing for your projects.

As to poetry, I haven’t written in ages, never understood the formal side of things (I didn’t invest time to learn it), and yet I appreciate it. Even if I don’t like a particular poem you write, or a mode you write it in. I appreciate the fact that you embrace the creative fire and have the balls to put it on the net for everyone to read and comment on.

Raph said on October 30th, 2006 at 10:11 am:

Well, “The Old Lady Is” definitely pushes at the form — it was from a period when I was experimenting with formal verse and pushing it around, seeing how much I could hide the formality in it.

First, it uses extreme slant rhymes. I’ve marked the common sounds at the end of the lines so you can see what I mean.

A: Up top of the stairs where the blue paint
B: Flinches away and the nails are loose –
B: Stairs climbing the side of the house, exposed
A: Like flies that buzz through waiting

C: Windows. Open the door to see bottles set
D: On every surface, hazy with dust and
D: Time, colored green and black and tan
C: And white like a crystal growth cut

E: Rounded. Past the corner rocking she sits,
F: Wrinkled by the air that never moves
F: Save by her hand. She speaks softly, losing
E: Her breath. She has no wisdom but her cat

G: Reflecting her in yellow mirror eyes, wishfully,
G: Caught hunting in glass like amber like brandy.

As far as meter, it’s extremely loose, just hitting four or five accents per line.

By contrast, “The Smile” is a fully formal poem, but in the comment thread, I seem to recall people not being able to see it there either. Here I’ve marked the accented syllables in the first stanza as well as the rhymes:

A: She wore it like a sundress: loose
B: And casual, unashamed of all
A: There was beneath. It fit, like blue
B: Fits water — clinging close, a fall

C: Of folds and shining white. It dressed
D: Her, danced her, light and lonely, held
C: Her in herself, contained her, less
D: Than kisses, more than faces will.

E: She was no person. Her smile enclosed
F: Her, was her; smiles do that, steal
E: Your body, take your eyes. She knows
F: It happened; yes, it came off, sheer

G: And casual like a sundress, quick
H: And lonely for an instant, not
G: A person, making love to lack.
H: She ran away; she knew, she thought,

I: How smiles are, how waterfalls
J: Splinter on rocks, how blue can fill
I: The eyes — how right she was — that all
J: Smiles kiss more than true faces will.

This one is pretty strict meter, but uses some metrical substitutions, replacing one foot (the term for a given pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables) in certain locations for emphasis — the last line, for example, which uses a spondee as the forst foot in order to emphasize the phrase, or the way “splinter” is a reversed foot, so that the disjoint rhythm echoes the sense of the words.

Morgan Ramsay said on October 30th, 2006 at 11:33 am:

Raph wrote: I am sure that the various marketing types who hang out here would tell me that it “dilutes the brand” to some degree …

I remember suggesting something similar when Kristen practically snapped, "It’s his blog! He can post whatever he wants." Damn straight. When people allow the research to command activity, expectations of leadership become unreasonable.

Craig wrote: I’d advise turning off the visual counter for ‘visits’ and deny the urge to count the visits and hits to particular articles.

Haha! Raph, the Excel king, knows why I find your comment funny.

Grimwell said on October 30th, 2006 at 1:34 pm:

I gather that he has a sheet and it updates in real time?

Tess said on October 30th, 2006 at 5:51 pm:

I knew that someday you would remark that you weren’t getting many pageviews on your poems. I knew that you were tracking your site metrics carefully, and I knew you’d be curious how many people were actually reading the poems. And I silently hoped that you would not become discouraged by the fact that not many people were reading your poems, relative to the other material in your blog — all the while feeling vaguely guilty that I often passed over them, myself. I even occasionally considered clicking through on poems that I was never going to read, just to increase your hit count, and make you think that there were more people reading than there really were — but then decided that this would be wrong.

I write poetry (and songs, and many other things), and yet, I somehow find poetry bizarrely self-indulgent. There’s something about poetry that often reminds me of those times when a friend of yours is very excitedly telling you about the weird dream he had last night, and you’re trying very hard to look interested — when in fact, you find it inexplicably tedious and boring, and you really just want it all to end. So, every time I dive into a bit of new poetry, unaware of what I will be facing, it feels like I’m trying to choke down some kind of food that I don’t really like, but which I think is good for me. I would probably cease reading poetry entirely, except that the old primate gambling instinct kicks in, because SOMETIMES, when I hit the lever, good poetry comes out.

Michael Chui said on October 30th, 2006 at 8:09 pm:

Heh. Personally, I’d say it strengthens the brand by diversifying without loss. You’ve never given any indication that the Sunday Poem is a chore or takes time away from doing other things. (Making the Andean Bird, on the other hand… hey, where IS your book? )

I’ve written so little poetry, myself, and none since I started college. *frowns* I hadn’t realized that. I’ve been doing fiction, and on Wednesday, the blitz I have no time for gets kicked off and I already know I won’t make any quotas whatsoever. But it’s nice to have a small weekly dose without being involved in any groups.

My favorite poem by myself was tenth grade (or was that eleventh?) about dreams. My worst was a sonnet I wrote for my English teacher. It wasn’t until after I’d completed it that I recalled that sonnets aren’t just rhyme patterns; absolutely none of it was iambic pentameter. Oops.

Raph said on October 30th, 2006 at 8:34 pm:

I feel like I should point out that I wasn’t complaining that nobody read them… as I posted when I first started doing the Sunday Poem series, I didn’t really expect anyone to. That wasn’t really what the prefatory note this week was about! But I am glad to see so many folks saying, essentially, “what the hell, I can skip ‘em anyway.” ‘Cause I am not planning on stopping.

Hmm, you know, I also have a backlog of short stories…

Cael said on October 31st, 2006 at 2:00 am:

Cold autumn Sundays
Always benefit from choice
Read here, or pass by

Spaz said on October 31st, 2006 at 7:59 am:

I like haiku best.
You should write more of that type.
It’s the most succinct.

Morgan Ramsay said on October 31st, 2006 at 4:41 pm:

I probably made this comment before, but I’ll say it again. A former Honors English professor once wrote to me in a critique of a writing piece, "You’re an interesting writer because you are more of a poet than an analyst."

I’ve long-held that beautifully crafted prose is more poetry than poems are poetry. The odd, disordered formatting of the poem just seems ugly and unnatural. Perhaps the effect is unique to me, but such formatting interrupts the flow of thought and causes my mind to shut down in disgust—as though I had played one-hundred games of Solitaire without ever winning.

Cael said on November 1st, 2006 at 1:07 am:

Hey Spaz, you missed out the season-word!

JuJutsu said on November 1st, 2006 at 4:20 pm:

I hate to admit it but the reason I rarely come to the sunday poem is because this is exactly the reaction I have when I see the topic on the screen. Poetry is scary and intimidating to some of us

The Sunday Poem: The State of Poetry

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