Make-Believe

[summayya]

The room is dead white.

 

Garingly a smile comes in and blots the walls with a supreme purple. Curtains cough to one another and whisper to the streets. They are flirtatious and run down to the edge of the sky.

 

Birds won't lie;

snow is licking the sun.

 

Hours tickle the back of day as time wanders through the empty bottles by the desk. A chuckle. Another. Twilight is distrubed by the bubbles of the bulb.

 

The room is half purple now and meddles with the night.

Edited January 15, 2010 by summayya

[tonyv]

Though you only mention the snow once, your prose poem delivers that wintry, Sunday afternoon feeling that comes about when time seems to drag on like the slowly fading daylight. It's quiet, and there's not much going on, but the scene is not by any means devoid of life. After all, there's a chuckle ... then another. I love how time wanders through the empty bottles by the desk and how the room is half purple and "meddles with the night."

 

This is quite the comeback poem, Summayya. It's great to read you again.

 

Tony

[waxwings]

The room is dead white.

 

Garingly a smile comes in and blots the walls with a supreme purple. Curtains cough to one another and whisper to the streets. They are flirtatious and run down to the edge of the sky.

 

Birds won't lie;

snow is licking the sun.

 

Hours tickle the back of day as time wanders through the empty bottles by the desk. A chuckle. Another. Twilight is distrubed by the bubbles of the bulb.

 

The room is half purple now and meddles with the night.

 

This is nice. I think it is too much of a poem poem to be structured as if it were a prose poem. One of my friends is a published poet now retired from being a Poet -in-Residence at a well known private college. He writes both prose and 'regular' poems and would back me up as not being all wrong.

 

As written, your poem uses space in, for me, a somewhat destructive manner, due to jumps from a long single line with a short tail to stwo short lines offset vertically, as it would be for a regular couplet stanza then back again.

 

What I think is that a prose poem, more often than not, has verse 'paragraphs' (a term preferred to stanza in pp's) at least 2 or 2 plus lines or more, but that is an issue you must weigh to to please yourself not me. Just for the fun of it, try to break the long lines into several. I have done so and find your marvelous images/fragment more telling,and emphatic, but I could not do it proper justice not having had the true epiphany you had behind this poem.

 

The only thing I am not sure of in styling/better English/clear semantic is to make any two entities "cough TO" each other. A different preposition may or may not do, though a different verb might. And should that not be "Glaringly, a smile....."

 

Thanks for the good read and a most compelling and interesting view of commonplace surroundings/occasions.

 

waxwings

Edited January 23, 2010 by waxwings

[badger11]

hi S.

 

I know you enjoy Plath and perhaps, as ww suggests, a use of shorter lines with some interesting line breaks will focus the images. I don't myself make a distinction between poetry and prose, unless the poetry is written in verse.

 

badge

[waxwings]

hi S.

 

I know you enjoy Plath and perhaps, as ww suggests, a use of shorter lines with some interesting line breaks will focus the images. I don't myself make a distinction between poetry and prose, unless the poetry is written in verse.

 

badge

 

Hi, badge. We cannot be entirely wrong by thinking there may be little if any undisputable distinction between poetry and prose, because there are many respectable and knowledgeable persons who agree to that.

 

The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics conveys a complicated distinction between prose and verse. As I see it, that treatment reduces to this:

 

* prose may be the language of discourse to be judged by standards of truth and falsehood;

* language of literature may not be so judged but may be valued by the extent of its imaginative consistency,

* verse is language typified by repetition/parallelism of numerous elements of speech and syntax and is not necessarily poetry but both.

 

Some 2000 years ago, Aristotle felt poetry defies definition, but many suggest that it does not hurt to have as many as possible descriptions of what poetry is like or what it does.

 

I personally shun saying that I write poetry, but admit I write what might pass for poems and hope poetry will emerge from in between the lines.

 

My take is:

 

"A poem is like a basket for carrying poetry, a basket that is woven just right to let the poetry leak out slowly, slowly enough so that it will never leak out completely."

 

ww

Edited January 24, 2010 by waxwings

[badger11]

I don't want to take over S. thread ww.

 

I am simply saying, from my viewpoint, that I make a distinction between verse and prose. I define verse by saying it is written in meter. If the poem is not written in verse, then it is prose. Personally I write my poems in prose.

 

badge

Edited January 24, 2010 by badger11

[Tinker]

Hi summayya, This piece looked strange to me at first glance but on reading it aloud it made sense to be written as it was. Your long lines created a mood without emphasis on a particular image, the images seemed to blend together. That is, other than "birds don't lie,/ snow is licking the sun" which stood out deliberately...

 

I liked the progression of time through images of light and sound. This is a poem that needs to be heard not read.

 

~~Tink

[tonyv]

I define verse by saying it is written in meter. If the poem is not written in verse, then it is prose. Personally I write my poems in prose.

A fascinating viewpoint, Badge. I never heard it expressed this way. I think there can be poetic prose (even in a newspaper article), and there can be "prose with line breaks" which itself does not amount to poetry, but I would characterize your works which exhibit line breaks as "poems" and not "prose" whether they are styled as free form or metrical compositions. I, myself, have written metrical works which aren't very poetic; they are but mere exercises. I know that James Wright preferred to call works like Make-Believe "prose pieces" as opposed to "prose poems." "Prose piece" and "prose poem" both work for me.

[Aleksandra]

Hi Summayya. This prose or not, is something very nice. I loved the title, and the expressions. The Make - believe formula is something what I love to use while writing poetry, and reading. Your expressions here are something new what I read from you.

I simply enjoyed this:

Curtains cough to one another and whisper to the streets. They are flirtatious and run down to the edge of the sky.

 

and this:

 

Birds won't lie;

snow is licking the sun.

 

and this:

Hours tickle the back of day as time wanders through the empty bottles by the desk. A chuckle. Another. Twilight is distrubed by the bubbles of the bulb.

 

And I loved how the room from dead white turned into half purple.

 

This is wonderful job and I agree with Tink, this poem should be heard.

 

Thank you for sharing and hope to see you soon.

 

Aleksandra

[waxwings]

I don't want to take over S. thread ww.

 

I am simply saying, from my viewpoint, that I make a distinction between verse and prose. I define verse by saying it is written in meter. If the poem is not written in verse, then it is prose. Personally I write my poems in prose.

 

badge

 

It is quite widely agreed that poetry can be written either in verse or prose. The distinction between the last two is the real problem, the marginal distinction being whether we are judging primarily in terms of truth and falsehood or of imaginative consistency. It is too bad that we historically recognize a poem merely because ir is written in lines shorter than the paper alows, lines that are historically called verse. Prose is even less well defined than verse, and what is thought to be verse does not neccessarily have to be rhymed and/or metered, though it can be and was, almost entirely so, in some now distant past. Biblical verse certainly was not.

 

I think tony certainly has offereded some further tenable set of views. And badge has, quite recently, written a poem that: is masterful, is rich in the elements of poetic expression, is rife with sonic elements--w/o being rhymed--and is extremely rhythmic--w/o being uniformly metered, though it is well metered in parts.

 

I think that we owe summaya for the poem that has brought about this meaningful discussion. I do believe this assembly of poets needs more of such to encourage its participants/authors rather than restricting responses to a mostly polite and cliche-ed praise of work posted.

 

We are all capable and promising poets. I post my poems and know fairly well how bad/good they are, and while I do not mind praise, I'd much rather hear others here saying whatever seems wrong to them. I may disagree, but there has never been such that has not made me better at doing my next poem.

Edited February 2, 2010 by waxwings

[dr_con]

Summayya,

 

A wonderful rich piece which captures the day-dreaming quality of make believe- hypnotic and internally consistent it is a fine work filled with sensual images and a distinct POV...

 

Many Thanks!

 

 

DC&J