I’ve been noticing that now this poetry blog of mine has been around for a while, it appears to be established a little in the search engines, and is getting a fair number of daily visitors. This is all I ever wanted – I struggled for about ten years sending off poems, only to (apart from the 2% of acceptances) get rude rejection slips or hints to the effect my poetry wasn’t up to any kind of standard. So I struggled, and even with the acceptances, I would probably have managed a readership in the ten’s, rather than hundreds… Now I’m into the hundreds daily, so that’s pretty edifying – I just hope most of you stick around to read the poems when you get here 😉 In any case, to receive a comment like I did the other day, appreciating the words, and indeed offering a kind of artistic exchange, was a pretty amazing thing to happen, as I think my poems speak for every man and woman – it’s all about communication and expression, so I hope people appreciate the work.
Anyway, realised I’ve been neglecting the blog lately (circumstances are hard, but that’s no excuse) – so even while I may be going through a dry period writing-wise, I do have many poems that I feel deserve to be read. So here goes with a poem from a period that was very creative for me, back in the late 90’s/early 2000’s! The weather had been very hot, and I had been drinking a good deal – when suddenly the weather broke, thunder began to rumble, and the heavens opened, and I couldn’t resist just going out in the yard to let the water flow down and experience it fully – after which I wrote Downpour.
Downpour
Furnace of rain
On roof, hoofbeats
At window, tongue
Of storm drooling:
Just glass and brick
To keep me from the thrum
Of automatic gunfire.It is this white chaos,
Tracer of rain in night,
Makes me stand outside
And taste the flak
Of clouds, dumdum
Bullets smacking
At the heart of land.It will not stop.
It will not stop like
My hand that spars
With words in the flurry
Of the pen and page.
It will not stop;
But my flashing hand
Assigns a state of pause:
There, words like rain
Going out to sea,
Falling away like a lover,
Bequeathing a dry silence.
I normally don’t get into weapon/war imagery but this is great. I could feel the storm clouds gather and let loose. Nice work.
You’ve captured the power of a heavy rainfall very well there
I think most of all i like the rhythm in this – the short phrases reflect the content which evokes for me a WWI scenario, of blitz and bullets and a view inhibited limited by the immediate downpour. I like the threat involved in a storm drooling, but also think it a very ‘slow’ verb, not pacey like the rest. The transfer to the writing on the page works for me but i think the silence doesn’t leave ‘dryness’ – i think it contains something. Just a thought 🙂
Very vivid recreation of violent weather!
I also liked your preface.
By the way: I arrived at your blog through Poets Who Blog.
white choas
what a fantastic description.
You are a brilliant weaver!
“It is this white chaos,
Tracer of rain in night,
Makes me stand outside…”
sweet! i love your word choice! MY CRUSH IS ON YOU
You are so write about submitting poetry. It is almost like no one reads poetry these days. I don’t think this period of poetry can even compare with the victorian or elizabethan period. Well, just telling u, honest to god, I like 19th centruy peotry a lot better than what I see now, I always like rymes. Still, ur poem is good, and u shouldn’t let anyone deter your writing. Good imagery by the way. Do you write any rhyming poems?
Thanks for the comment. I think a lot of people do read poetry, and there are a lot of live poetry events so people are writing, reading and getting involved in other ways. In many ways publishing mechanisms have changed a lot of things, and things tend to me more self published on the net these days. Maybe it also says something that a few publishing houses/editors had control of what was considered the mainstream for a good few years, ie they decided what was and wasn’t good poetry and I’m sure more than a few good poets were left out in the cold. Some modern stuff is certainly excellent – but as “on paper” poetry sales and readerships fall, you have to wonder what that says about just where it’s reaching.
I think metres have changed over the years, and certain metres, especially rhyming couplets, have come to be associated with “Roses are red, violets are blue” kind of poetry, which sounds a bit sing song, or comedy poetry, which still uses rhyme predomoninantly. I do play with rhyme, and like to mix it up with assonance and half rhyme, letting the words find a subtler kind of music. In fact someone once said she preferred a poem I did because it rhymed, but in fact it only contained one rhyme – sometimes adding a rhyme can add a little spontaneity, perhaps even complete a poem. I did play around with complex rhyme schemes when I first started writing, but after a while I started to think, do I really want to find a word that rhymes with x here, or would it be better to find a word that contributed more to what I want to say…
hi , i am a stranger guided by google to your blog!
your imagination’s so wide and rich!
my english isn’t powerful in literature so i make an effort to understand you!
have a great day of imagination!