Thursday, February 23, 2006

Poetry: Odes

This week I will attempt to write an ode for my poetry class at Grub Street. Here is the assignment provided by our instructor, Morgan Frank:

According to The Teachers and Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms (Ron Padgett), Edmund Gosse defined the ode as "enthusiastic and lyrical verse, directed to a fixed purpose and dealing progressively with one dignified theme." While you might find it useful to explore the classical history of the ode, which dates back to the fifth century B.C., the former definition suits our purposes, albeit with a little modification to give you focus. For this assignment, you are going to choose as your subject an object you encounter in your everyday life. Neruda's elemental odes addressed such things as watermelons, maize, and wine, and Robert Pinsky takes on such everyday objects as the shirt and the television as focus for meditation. How might meditation on the thing itself let you unfold larger themes and intentions, and keep you away from sweeping statements and abstractions?

While I will most likely stick to an object, the following poem by Robert Pinksy is an amazing example of a modern ode to a idea, in this case "meaning."

Link to the poem: http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/pinsky/meaning.html

Ode to Meaning
by Robert Pinksy

Dire one and desired one,
Savior, sentencer--

In an old allegory you would carry
A chained alphabet of tokens:

Ankh Badge Cross.
Dragon,
Engraved figure guarding a hallowed intaglio,
Jasper kinema of legendary Mind,
Naked omphalos pierced
By quills of rhyme or sense, torah-like: unborn
Vein of will, xenophile
Yearning out of Zero.

Untrusting I court you. Wavering
I seek your face, I read
That Crusoe's knife
Reeked of you, that to defile you
The soldier makes the rabbi spit on the torah.
"I'll drown my book" says Shakespeare.

Drowned walker, revenant.
After my mother fell on her head, she became
More than ever your sworn enemy. She spoke
Sometimes like a poet or critic of forty years later.
Or she spoke of the world as Thersites spoke of the heroes,
"I think they have swallowed one another. I
Would laugh at that miracle."

You also in the laughter, warrior angel:
Your helmet the zodiac, rocket-plumed
Your spear the beggar's finger pointing to the mouth
Your heel planted on the serpent Formulation
Your face a vapor, the wreath of cigarette smoke crowning
Bogart as he winces through it.

You not in the words, not even
Between the words, but a torsion,
A cleavage, a stirring.

You stirring even in the arctic ice,
Even at the dark ocean floor, even
In the cellular flesh of a stone.
Gas. Gossamer. My poker friends
Question your presence
In a poem by me, passing the magazine
One to another.

Not the stone and not the words, you
Like a veil over Arthur's headstone,
The passage from Proverbs he chose
While he was too ill to teach
And still well enough to read, I was
Beside the master craftsman
Delighting him day after day, ever
At play in his presence
--you

A soothing veil of distraction playing over
Dying Arthur playing in the hospital,
Thumbing the Bible, fuzzy from medication,
Ever courting your presence,
And you the prognosis,
You in the cough.

Gesturer, when is your spur, your cloud?
You in the airport rituals of greeting and parting.
Indicter, who is your claimant?
Bell at the gate. Spiderweb iron bridge.
Cloak, video, aroma, rue, what is your
Elected silence, where was your seed?

What is Imagination
But your lost child born to give birth to you?

Dire one. Desired one.
Savior, sentencer--

Absence,
Or presence ever at play:
Let those scorn you who never
Starved in your dearth. If I
Dare to disparage
Your harp of shadows I taste
Wormwood and motor oil, I pour
Ashes on my head. You are the wound. You
Be the medicine.




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