A Roost For Words: Rewrite take 3
Sep. 8th, 2010 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
georginasandSeriously, I need to get over this poem. It wasn't one that I intended to put ANY time into, and we are now on the third re-write. But I like it better now, please don't look at the old ones. I am not deleting them only because I promised myself I wouldn't delete the ones I thought were crap (we would be left with very little material here, and they are all apart of the process, right? RIGHT? thank you.)
A Roost for Words
A sonnet on a napkin makes a poor
ode to the page, and feels like failing before
I've begun. Coffee shop poets of yore,
moleskins in Parisian cafes, seemed more
prepared, if not inspired, than I to
face empty space that wants a poem. So
I cower behind lattes and napkins,
unwilling to commit to espresso
and a notebook that I cannot sneeze in.
Are words lost to the glop of nasty colds
a kind loan to a sick friend, or the sin
of suicide by a poet who holds
more fear of pages full of the wrong words
than empty lines: only a roost for birds?
This involved a fair amount of poetic license. This poem (in it's earliest, most humiliating iteration) was begun on a napkin, but has been finished and edited in a notebook I try to avoid sneezing in. Also, I don't drink lattes (I needed the extra syllable and black tea doesn't have the same ring of cowardice). But I am too cheap to buy a moleskin and the sentiment is there.
There is one mistake. 10 points to the person who can spot it, but no smugness because I did it on purpose.
I remain,
Georgie
A Roost for Words
A sonnet on a napkin makes a poor
ode to the page, and feels like failing before
I've begun. Coffee shop poets of yore,
moleskins in Parisian cafes, seemed more
prepared, if not inspired, than I to
face empty space that wants a poem. So
I cower behind lattes and napkins,
unwilling to commit to espresso
and a notebook that I cannot sneeze in.
Are words lost to the glop of nasty colds
a kind loan to a sick friend, or the sin
of suicide by a poet who holds
more fear of pages full of the wrong words
than empty lines: only a roost for birds?
This involved a fair amount of poetic license. This poem (in it's earliest, most humiliating iteration) was begun on a napkin, but has been finished and edited in a notebook I try to avoid sneezing in. Also, I don't drink lattes (I needed the extra syllable and black tea doesn't have the same ring of cowardice). But I am too cheap to buy a moleskin and the sentiment is there.
There is one mistake. 10 points to the person who can spot it, but no smugness because I did it on purpose.
I remain,
Georgie
