even at rest, the jaguar looks fast - as long as its eyes are focused & its feet pad the ground
Jaguar [Tanka]
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Category Archives: Poetry
Dreaming Evil Clowns [Spencerian Sonnet]
My lungs were burning as I ran through town, and tried to escape the streets of cobbled stone and he from whom I ran, that evil clown, whose paint obscured a face I once had known, but how could I know something that's unknown and, thinking that, I knew it made no sense, though I knew it true deep within my bones. Then stirred by eyes so burning and intense, I picked a pointy stick for my defense, and chucked it at the creature's beastly heart. I missed its heart by width of a ten-pence. The clown, in turn, tossed it back like a dart. Awaking to sharp pains in my frail chest, the clown had slayed me, or so I guessed.
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Sunset on the River [Haiku]
the sun sets as we drift down the river, past grand temples
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Shakespeare’s Tragedies, Condensed: Part, The Last
I King Lear too much loved being praised, and too little recognized love. He shunned the daughter he should’ve kept, and held tightly those in need of a shove. II Timon of Athens spent lavishly, but then - in his time of great need - no one would return the favor, so he gave his last coin to watch Athens bleed. III Antony is a love-struck boy, and plots are afoot he can't grasp. He ends in slow suicide by sword, while Cleopatra goes out with an Asp. IV Coriolanus was kind of a jerk, and that's why he was exiled. But he could vanquish all of Rome. Death to the reciprocally reviled!
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Shakespeare’s Tragedies, Condensed: Part, The Second
I Oh, in Titus Andronicus, every noteworthy character dies, one 's raped, loses her tongue and hands -- she's the only one we don't despise. II Brutus's downfall is said to be being too mellow of a guy, but he does partake in the stab-fest -- so maybe just poor at ally. III Othello trips on jealousy when Iago plants a hankie. Iago gets all of the blame, but it's not like it was her panties.
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Wind-Swept Hero [Rubāʿī]
Beyond the house stood half a tree - cleaved in twain, robbed of symmetry; leaning like a wind-swept hero, it could still shade a reverie.
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Stormy Shore [Common Meter]
Sitting on cold, volcanic rock upon a stormy shore, Watching waves crash, hearing naught but wind, and crying for more in a scream that cannot be heard over nature's harsh din as I feel the snap of gusty wind, through cloth so thin that it can't hold back nature's force to draw the heat from bone, and, feeling under this black sky, I am now all alone.
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Shakespeare’s Tragedies Condensed to a Quatrain of Bad Poetry: Part, The First
I Macbeth believed the Witches 'cause they said what he wanted to hear. Then he jumped the gun because his ambition outstripped good sense and fear. II Hamlet thought he saw a ghost-dad, but realized he might just be nuts. Still, his uncle was schtupping his mom, about that there's no ands, ifs, or buts. III Oh, Romeo, your timing sucks - be it in breaking up a fight, or being too quick to put vile to lip when a pause would make timing right.
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BOOK REVIEW: Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis WheatleyMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
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Project Gutenberg
Many talented poets have caught flack, but few have managed to take it from as many directions as Phillis Wheatley. A slave from The Gambia, Wheatley was one of the most skilled poets of Colonial America. Obviously, she got bad-mouthed by racists. Some of them claimed she wasn’t the true author of her poems. Others said she wasn’t a good poet. Still others, quite nonsensically, made both claims simultaneously – i.e. that she plagiarized poems that weren’t any good.
If all she had to contend with was the criticism of racists, well that’s like Einstein being critiqued on General Relativity by the slack-jawed yokel working a Slurpee machine at the carnival. But when she (posthumously) became more well-known, she also started to get sass from blacks who considered her an Uncle Tom because her poetry featured the hallmarks of mainstream poetry of the era, as well as little of the visceral anger one would expect of a person who wasn’t recognized as a person. (Wheatley was eventually freed.)
It’s true that Wheatley’s poetry was – in form and content – quite in line with the poetry of her day. In terms of form, most of her poems are iambic pentameter with couplet rhyming, with a few sestinas and common meter quatrains thrown in the mix. In terms of content, Wheatley draws heavily upon Christianity, Western classics (e.g. Ovid,) and the elegy, discussing her African heritage almost in passing. When Wheatley is accused of not being good, the only sense in which that statement could be said to have a speck of truth is that her poems are quite reserved (certainly not unique to her.) But – to be fair – I think she fought enough of an uphill battle to be published and the fact that her poems are brilliant in language and cadence makes them well worth reading. I think Wheatley’s poetry must be considered in light of her time and stand on its excellent craftsmanship.
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Tiger Riding for Beginners 