Poetry Thursday

   You can probably guess this week's prompt...

These things you loved, and left
me: turquoise set in silver buckles;
lapis in a gold band. Tattered jeans;
faded work shirts; one iris in a cobalt
vase. A painted iron bed, with flannel
sheets worn thin and pale. Billie
Holiday, Nina Simone. A delicate
Chinese teacup; a jeweled bird. Two
antique lacquered fountain pens; one
inkwell. Morning glories climbing
an adobe wall. This vast and empty
New Mexico sky.

I had a rule for this poem -- can you tell what it was? Did it work?

Comments

[twitches]

A rule? Nah, I can't tell, but I'm no good at that sort of thing. I like all the little, intimate details in this poem, though.

[Patia]

Blue!

[Cathy]

It had to match your mood lately ?

[susan]

both the poem and the photographs are fantastic! thanks for commenting on my blog cause otherwise i may not have found yours...tried the flckr mosaic thanks to you :-)

[prairiemary]

Needs some music! "Reeeed roses for a bloooo lady..." Maybe "Mood Indigo?"

Prairie Mary

[leonie]

thanks for visiting my poetry thursday blog so i could find yours. i love the list, i could actually visualise each thing as i was reading through your poem and saw them all lined up on the lawn outside. i don't know if you have a lawn, but that's the image i got from reading. great poem and awesome photo, thanks!

[Crafty Green Poet]

Hi there, i think you used the same rule as I did- listing blue things without using the word blue. Your poem works really well, excellent in fact. I particularly love the ending.

[Paris Parfait]

Wonderful photo montage and beautiful poem - I like the layers of meaning.

[SB]

Crafty Green Poet got it! I wanted to write a very blue poem, without using the word blue.

Thanks, all, for your comments. This one was fun.

[joseph]

I thought it was something involving enjambment. For fun, I "straightened out" the enjambed lines:

These things you loved, and left me:
turquoise set in silver buckles;
lapis in a gold band. Tattered jeans;
faded work shirts;
one iris in a cobalt vase.
A painted iron bed, with flannel sheets worn thin and pale.
Billie Holiday, Nina Simone.
A delicate Chinese teacup;
a jeweled bird.
Two antique lacquered fountain pens;
one inkwell.
Morning glories climbing an adobe wall.
This vast and empty New Mexico sky.

Rumor has it that a poem doesn't hold up if it doesn't hold up when you straighten it out. I think this one does pretty well.

~~~

I wrote a very similar poem about thirty years ago, so it was with a start that I encountered yours. The color is red, but it may be a little more elliptical. See if this doesn't remind you of your poem.

These things made you
melancholy: red
wine; Venetian
paintings; cinnamon
rolls; the wish
for motherhood and
sons; the fact
that you were six
years up
on me.

The red in motherhood is childbirth, the red in six year up is embarrassment.

[SB]

Joseph -- thank you for your comment, and your poem.

...a poem doesn't hold up if it doesn't hold up when you straighten it out.

I'd never hear this -- and it seems not-intuitive to me. Line breaks are so difficult, so carefully chosen (for me, anyway) --

I expect a poem to perform much better with, than without them.