This is an improv of “Dream Song 324” by John Berryman. I liked the Elegy format, and I wanted to try the rhyme scheme of Berryman’s piece. I didn’t catch a significant stress or unstress pattern, so I just wrote using the idea of an elegy and the rhyme scheme that Berryman uses.
Lisa in Atlanta to EJ underground:
How you must hate, to be without sound.
Dear father, content must you be until
we’re around. You’ve sneered with a mouth, still
echoing the insult to the others in my life,
I know your pain, alone and full of strife.
You’ve tried to raise us right,
never angry, except when I broke mother’s light,
and they say widows are always
black, grim, like it rains for days.
You left with a twinge below the ribs,
like a knife, over and over, jabbed like fibs
told that one day, turned into lies
oozing, through the backs of our eyes.
Tay-Tay,
ReplyDeleteI absolutely admire and respect you for making yourself vulnerable to form.
With regards to this specific improv', I think your choice a rather wise judgement. On the one hand, you aren't pressured by form here, in the Elegy, not as strictly, anyway; so this allows room--for those of us not so acquainted (just yet) with the mechanics/tiny gadgets of poetic forms--to experiment without being overwhelmed or finding oneself overtly oppressing the poem to comply by making absurd demands: "Be a villanelle, damn it!" On the other hand, Berryman's elegy, with it's rhyme scheme, forces a little pressure on your improvisational writing, albeit gentle-handedly.
As for the improvisational draft: I definitely think you are on the right track. Of course, you're producing imagistic and scenically rich lines throughout--but those are now trivialities in a 4210 workshop. That is, in this workshop you should be honing in on content, on the contextual components of each draft. (I'm still busting my buns!)
Advice: I would revert to the anthology and carefully (re)read the overview for the elegy. Look closely at the last two sentences, especially. As I previously noted, this draft is on the right runway; it just needs a little more maintenance.
I would consider--as the antho. also maintains--the conflict: locate the tensions, introduce them--but you must find a way to situate contemporary cultural customs of death while still being orderly, refined and decorous about it. And you cannot forget the private sentiments. Dying is easy; writing about it, however, is not.
Like always, if you have any questions, concerns, opinions, ideas, etc., just hit yo girl up. Don't forget: I'm learning this form-stuff with you. :)
--Sydney