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Madge Wildfire's Song, by Sir Walter Scott

Proud Maisie is in the wood, walking so early;
Sweet robin sits on the bush, singing so rarely.

“Tell me, thou bonny bird, when shall I marry me?”
—“When six braw gentlemen kirkward shall carry ye.”

“Who makes the bridal bed, birdie, say truly?”
—“The grey-headed sexton that delves the grave duly.”

“The glow-worm o’er grave and stone shall light thee steady;
The owl from the steeple sing, ‘Welcome, proud lady.’”

"Proud Maisie" by Frederick Sandys
Thinkerbell · 41-45, F
Scott's meter is pretty ragged in this poem.
Keeping the first couplet as a model, I would have written,

"O tell me, thou bonny bird, when shall I marry?"
— "When six brawny gentlemen, kirkward thee carry."
"And who makes the bridal bed, birdie say truly?"
— "The grey-headed sacristan, tending graves duly."
"The glow-worm thy gravestone light; by night so shady,
The owl from the steeple sing, 'Welcome, proud lady.' "
Thinkerbell · 41-45, F
@LeopoldBloom

Yeah, Shelley's personal life was nothing to write home about.

As for Kinnell's poem, like much of what passes for poetry nowadays, it is mostly prose — chopped up into lines of varying length, and with barely any interesting imagery.
@Thinkerbell It's not his best work. The Book of Nightmares on the other hand meets the definition of heightened language even if it doesn't have rhyme or meter. If rhyme and meter alone define poetry, then Ogden Nash is up there with Shakespeare.

https://akirarabelais.com/o/thelibraryofbabel/nightmares.html

I have glimpsed
by corpse-light, in the opened cadaver
of hen, the mass of tiny,
unborn eggs, each getting
tinier and yellower as it reaches back toward
the icy pulp
of what is, I have felt the zero
freeze itself around the finger dipped slowly in.

That is an interesting image because you can feel it even if you've never done this.
Thinkerbell · 41-45, F
@LeopoldBloom

Eh... with just the revision of a couple of small words, this 'poem' might as well have been prose.

I have glimpsed by corpse-light, in the opened cadaver of a hen, the mass of tiny, unborn eggs, each getting tinier and yellower as it reaches back toward the icy pulp of what is, as I felt the zero freeze itself around the finger dipped slowly in.

On the other hand, something that was written as prose (it's the last sentence in a science fiction novel, A Mirror for Observers, by Edgar Pangborn) can easily be made into a poem of the Kinnellian sort. In fact, Pangborn's prose has a lot more rhythm than Kinnell's poetry.

Never, beautiful earth,
never even at the height of human storms
have I forgotten you,
my planet Earth,
your forests and your fields,
your oceans,
the serenity of your mountains,
the meadows, the continuing rivers,
and the incorruptible promise of returning spring.


BTW, I never said rhyme and meter were necessary (let alone sufficient) requirements for a poem. Content, imagery and well-turned phrasing (of which Shakespeare was an absolute master; e.g., "And be these juggling fiends no more believed, that palter with us in a double sense...") are also important. And by most definitions of poetry, there should be at least SOME rhythm, regular or not.

 
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