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gourdmad
Member
since 2003-12-01
Posts 136
Upper Ohio Valley

0 posted 2004-03-01 11:08 PM


read poem about beach
walk dunes crabs gulls seashell waves
break in remembrance


© Copyright 2004 gourdmad - All Rights Reserved
Endlessecho
Member
since 2003-09-05
Posts 398
I live within myself
1 posted 2004-03-02 04:29 PM


Nice little memory captured here.  
hush
Senior Member
since 2001-05-27
Posts 1653
Ohio, USA
2 posted 2004-03-03 03:08 AM


LOL, at first I thought it said 'beak' in remembrance... which I interpreted both as the anatomical feature of a bird and as a verb simlar in meaning to 'neck'- an interesting image to say the least.

Not sure what to make of the poem... or the real word used... 'break.' As in, take a 'break'- the calgon ahhhh take me away, McD's have you had your break today break? Or, like, a break down? Did your kid drown at the beach or something?

I also have trouble with reading phrases w/o cute little of's and's the's etc... I NEED those pronouns and modifyers in order to amke sense of it all!

Wherabouts in ohio are you?

hope i've somehow in my ramblings helped... i'm working really hard at not writing this paper that's due tomorrow. and i've become too lazy to hit shift. but not too lazy to write about that laziness... heh sorry i'm done.

Grover
Senior Member
since 2004-01-27
Posts 1967
London, ON, Canada
3 posted 2004-03-03 11:30 AM


I got the understanding that the waves broke-- as in against a breakwall. Very nice! Grover.
Sudhir Iyer
Member Ascendant
since 2000-04-26
Posts 6943
Mumbai, India : now in Belgium
4 posted 2004-03-03 11:41 AM


liked the content... just a note, if you are looking for the 5-7-5 haiku or senyru format, the first line has 6 syllables

read po.em a.bout beach
  1   2  3 4 5     6

if you are not looking at any particular form, please ignore my remark...

but then consider hush's remark of possibly expanding the idea a little bit... if you wish, that is

regards
sudhir

gourdmad
Member
since 2003-12-01
Posts 136
Upper Ohio Valley
5 posted 2004-03-03 04:32 PM


Guess it is my accent because I say "poem" as one syllable and was going for 5 in the first line.

Last night I was at an informal poetry reading and read "Juice" by A.R. Ammons and read "syrup" as one syllable and got some puzzled looks. I was like "serp" and had to reread it as two syllables. (Which I guess I should drop Juice in here so noone who is interested has to go groping around the internet to find it.)

Upper Ohio River Valley = outside of Wheeling WV. But my accent is Upper Great Plains filtered thru 30 years of separation, mass media, and multiple exposures to other accents.

The challenge with haiku is to make words do double duty, so yes, taking a break into the remembrance of being on a beach, but also that sound of waves breaking. I literally read a poem about a walk on the beach and seemed to hear waves, like when one holds a seashell to your ear, which reminds one of the actual sound of waves breaking.

Lovely that "read" serves both as past and present tense, lovely ambiguity. The thing I couldn't get around was wasting two syllables on a weak word like "about".

Juice

by A.R. Ammons

I’m stuck with the infinity thing
again this morning: a skinny
inexpressible syrup, finer than light,
everywhere present: the cobweb becoming
visible with dust and the tumblelint
stalled in the corner seem worthy

grassy ninja
Junior Member
since 2003-07-20
Posts 41
Kentucky
6 posted 2004-03-05 01:45 PM


i too pronounce "poem" as one syllable, and also reside in the ohio valley, so i believed this to be a haiku.  i thought it was kind of amusing actually:

"read poem about beach"

this line is for some reason amusing to me.  i like the directness of it.  

"walk dunes crabs gull seashells waves"

i love the minimalist approach to punctuation here.  i like the listing approach.  i don't know. i think it's almost making fun of the haiku, the nature themes.  instead of revelling in nature, or glorifying it, the narrator just lists them as they are, no embellishment.  

"break in remembrance"

i don't understand the ending, but i do like it.  is the narrator coming out of this reverie while reading a poem?  is reading about the beach distracting him/her from something else?  i like that there's no one answer to this.  interesting read.

Sudhir Iyer
Member Ascendant
since 2000-04-26
Posts 6943
Mumbai, India : now in Belgium
7 posted 2004-03-05 05:46 PM


read poem about beach
walk dunes crabs gulls seashell waves
break in remembrance
-------------

i might be shooting myself in the foot... because i am no poet

but maybe you might consider this

read poem on beach
crabs walk, gulls fly, shells speak, waves
break sea memories

maybe?

regards
sudhir

gourdmad
Member
since 2003-12-01
Posts 136
Upper Ohio Valley
8 posted 2004-03-05 05:56 PM


Very nice.

A slightly different angle, you did good with your version of the idea.

Brad
Member Ascendant
since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705
Jejudo, South Korea
9 posted 2004-03-06 07:20 PM


You know what bothers me here? If one dispenses with the normal rules of syntax, punctuation, and grammar etc., form poetry becomes astonishingly easy to write, simply a matter of plugging in the words to fit the form. It is this problem that overshadows the double play you were attempting here. If you need ten syllables in that middle line, you just would have added more words thereby weakening, not strengthening each word in the poem.


gourdmad
Member
since 2003-12-01
Posts 136
Upper Ohio Valley
10 posted 2004-03-08 10:39 AM


Could you clarify ,Brad? I hought I udnerstood what you were saying, the negatives of strict form, but them in the last sentence you seem to shift abruptly to the weak point of nonform and the ability to insert any number of syllables arbitrarily.
hush
Senior Member
since 2001-05-27
Posts 1653
Ohio, USA
11 posted 2004-03-08 12:48 PM


I think what Brad means is that if you have a set number of syllablkes to meet, you just throw some words in. And if you ignore grammatical rules, then it becomes really easy to meet syllable requirements. And if all you have to do is just grab a word... any word... it starts to lost its value because it begins to mean less and less... almost like a mad-libs but instead of "insert noun" "insert color" "insert adverb" it just becomes "insert anything"- thus devaluing the poem as an art form.
Brad
Member Ascendant
since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705
Jejudo, South Korea
12 posted 2004-03-08 09:25 PM


What Hush is saying. The problem isn't necessarily with intent, for all I know you spent days and days trying to come up with that middle line, but if it looks like you've just thrown some words together and you're writing in a form and you've decided to dispense with punctuation and grammar, the first impression is that that's all you're doing.

And that's not a good thing.

Personally, I like form -- I'd probably characterize myself as a loose formalist, and I've been criticized for that (You're paying too much attention to the music, Brad. )

He may have had a point, I know I usually liked what he wrote. Mitchell Roth for anybody who knows.


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