Wednesday, April 22, 2009

April is Po-tree Month

Part I:
You may not have noticed, but April is national po-tree month. I'm not quite sure which nation we're talking about here. Maybe the nation of Murricanaduh. I dunno. I'm pretty sure it's Canaduh. And the US too. If not, so what? You don't need an excuse for po-tree.

So, in that spirit I present a pome from an old dead white guy who achieved a good measure of fame for his po-tree, name of William Butler Yeats. This comes from the Oxford Book of English Verse:

Where My Books Go

All the words that I utter,
And all the words that I write,
Must spread out their wings untiring,
And never rest in their flight,
Till they come where your sad, sad heart is,
And sing to you in the night,
Beyond where the waters are moving,
Storm-darken'd or starry bright.

***

Furthermore, in the spirit of national po-tree month, April, I too have a pome, inspired by this work of Yeats. It goes something like this:

All the words that I utter,
And all the words that I write,
Must span the ocean 'lectronic
Either ether or Uther & come to rest
In the Dark Age of the Dragon's Pen;
Or colonize minute interstices
'Mid rampant ignorant superstishies;
Or grind themselves in plates tectonic
Between Scylla whole reading & Charybdis phonic.
None may pass the spellcheck test
& retain the rubric "Larry's Best"
Lest philistines gobble clash & groan
And somehow make this pome their own.

***

I think I could not demonstrate with greater clarity why William Butler Yeats is in the Oxford Book of English Verse and Larry is in the Yoni School for Wayward Poets carrying on his Mental Blog.



Part II:
As proprietor of this here blog, Mental, I get the odd communication from people in the biz. This communication I am about to communicate to you was not so odd, however.

I received an email from Michael Douma who has developed a website called Poetry Through the Ages. I encourage you, if you are interested in po-tree, to visit this site. It has an interesting feature which Mr. Douma calls a nodemap...what I believe is a Java-powered version of "clustering", a technique with which many writers will be familiar. (There is now at least one computer version of this clustering technique called FreeMind, which I have used. It's a way cool -- and useful -- app. Poetry Through the Ages uses SpicyNodes, a web-based app.) What you can do with this map is explore different areas of the website by clicking on the balloons.

And there are many different areas to explore: the history of poetry; different forms both classical and modern; obscure forms; popular forms; notes about the biz of po-tree. There's even a shop where you can shop. And of course links to other resources.

Personally, I plan to revisit the villanelle.

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1 comment:

w.t. said...

I see the moon.
The moon sees me.
The moon sees the one
I long to see.
So God bless the moon
And God bless me
And God bless the one
I long to see.

C.B.Christiansen

Help! I've written and I can't get up!