truffin.com » Scribbling on the wall

Ode Less Travelled: Mixed Feet

TcT — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 16:42:54 +0000

This summer, I began working my way through Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Travelled. Yes, Jeeves has written a wonderful book on the mechanics of prosody. At the end of each section, Fry provides a writing exercise. In these early chapters, Fry is clear to say that “verbal or metaphysical brilliance” is not the goal. With that in mind, I share these examples of the doggerel I constructed in response to Poetry Exercise 5. The given topic was “television.”

5a: 2 quatrains iambic tetrameter

Astronomers have sought for years
With telescopes and satellites
For evidence of gravity’s
Devouring black parasite.
My starry friends, arise! Resist
Celestial gazing misapprised,
Your laboratory waits aglow
For evidence now televised.

5b: 2 quatrains alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter

From television, actors fled
To cinematic fame,
Nocturnal creatures seeking out
The screen’s eternal flame.
But now the humble box attracts
Artisianal fireworks
Where I can watch in comfort sans
The pimply soda jerk.

5c: 2 quatrains trochaic tetrameter: 1 straight, 1 with docked weak endings on lines 2 & 4

Bombs and kittens nightly battle
Sports and weather on each channel,
Striving, selling, pacifying,
Distancing ignoble passions.

Postman warned us of the pleasures
Found in TV’s psychic touch.
Now this disenchanting measure
Doesn’t sound like quite enough.

NPAD 2008 Recap

TcT — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:13:01 +0000

I’ve been trying to put together some kind of fancy schmancy wrap up for the November Poem A Day project, but I’m busy and fried.

Obviously the daily posting of the poetry being generated fizzled. I’m not terribly concerned about that.

In the end, I generated over 20 poems and fragments that I can possibly use. I didn’t generate 30, but I was pretty close. Closer than I ever was to completing NANOWRIMO. I’m feeling pretty good about that.

Also, while I didn’t consistently produce something everyday, I was thinking poetically everyday. I was observing closely and germinating everyday. Then I’d have some spurts of ripping off two or three ideas in one go. The poetical thinking on a consistent basis is something I thought was a good thing.

So, overall, I’m quite pleased.

Fear Not

TcT — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:59:40 +0000

NPAD 2008 has not died an ignoble death. I was out of town working for ETS, and between the internets not always being right close, actually working hard all day, good dinner conversations, and avoiding doing my day job work, I simply didn’t have time to post. However, I was scribbling away all weekend. Hoping to have things caught up online by the end of the week.

Until then enjoy this moldy oldy from the archives (with a hidden toy surprise!):

Shiver me timbers and batten down the
hatches on the bow. Posiden’s
out tonight with the fire in his eyes!
Tether the rafts and
gather up the rations.
Unless I’m wrong (and I am
never wrong)
A storm the sight of which has
never been seen since
God’s washing of the
earth is the fate that
lies before us.

02/26/91

NPAD 2008: Day 10

TcT — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 01:04:24 +0000

On NPAD

That feeling when you open up the bath
Room door expecting an empty room
But find instead your guests arrived and
You clothed only with a broom,

Or when you’re working hard away to cook
A complex, untried recipe,
And family members mumble, over-cautious,
Doubts of your sobriety,

Is nothing weighed against the red-faced terror
Of posting the roughest, most larvae-like
Spoutings of a rusty pen daily upon
One’s little-read internet site.

NPAD 2008: Day 9

TcT — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 23:10:59 +0000

the poem for day 9–
a rumination fundamental
about a grumpy prophet’s
constitution–
will, when ready, be
posted in its entirety
in this bland space
reserved for its posterity