Your revisions

How much are you revising?

A lot of my poems I am completely cutting but sticking with the themes I originally had. I think I had better potential for some of these than where I started--hence workshopping the pieces. But how far I want to cut and go with them is insane. Does anyone else have this desire?

Assorted

Assorted

The rustling of the grass in the wind
and the chirping of crickets
is all you can hear
as the smoke rolls across the bog.
Seven stand in a circle
blissfully ignorant
and unaware
of what lies ahead
simply enjoying  the warm summer night,
the dank green nug,
the spark of a flame.
As the lighter clicks, it
Echoes.
Round and round
they go.
Echoes of laughter rolling across the sky.
 
So hazy.
If the sun was shining it still wouldn’t penetrate
the wall surrounding seven
standing in a circle.
In the bright moonlight they assess one another,
laughing, teasing, eyes watering.
By the pond they joke a bit.
Who can’t hold their shit?
Red faced and out of it?
A few feet away the water laps,
the sound blends in softly against the
Echoes.
Round and round
they go.
Echoes of coughing thrumming across the grass.
 
The velvet sky above
is spangled with stars so bright,
it’s as if they are bits of the sun itself
falling to shine upon seven
standing in a circle.
Down to the tip
and still they go,
burning their fingers
and reveling in a taste so sweet
it might never be legal.
When from the road above shines a light
and the stunned silence has no impact on the
Echoes.
Round and round
they go.
Echoes of sirens approaching in the night

-Heather Cobb

Kassandra-Peer Shackle Poem

Coffee Eyes humble, knowing;the color as follows: dark espresso pools copper hued caramel & milk chocolate swirls wrapped in a vanilla blanket inviting me in for a cup, an extended stay within your irises, floating in caffeinated bliss; Coffee electrifies, arouses; strength renews with a ‘click’: the coffee pot sputters the dark roast blend tickles my nose I float atop the aroma, stop and pour a cup, look down into the familiar pool within it, reminisce sip, smile; Every day I drink from your eyes.

A Revised Poem of Mine

Wanderlust

Enlightenment.
By a lonely pond
in the dark woods
you can find it.
Hidden beyond the pine trees you walked by,
behind the drooping curtains of willow branches you ducked beneath,
before the patches of meadowsweet,
scattered there along the bank.
Take a moment.
Take two moments.
Watching the light dim amongst the leaves
as the end of the day rolls in.
An orange dusk in a green world
to which there seems to be no end.
Light and life and shadows
fading.
All fading to black.
Listen to the chirping of peepers
and crickets
in chorus with the silence of the night.
Close your eyes.
Can’t you feel it?

 

Neruda poem, always thought this one was pretty

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voide. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my sould is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her. 

Pablo Neruda

A Thoreau Poem

Within the Circuit of This Plodding Life

by Henry David Thoreau

Within the circuit of this plodding life
There enter moments of an azure hue,
Untarnished fair as is the violet
Or anemone, when the spring strews them
By some meandering rivulet, which make
The best philosophy untrue that aims
But to console man for his grievances
I have remembered when the winter came,
High in my chamber in the frosty nights,
When in the still light of the cheerful moon,
On every twig and rail and jutting spout,
The icy spears were adding to their length
Against the arrows of the coming sun,
How in the shimmering noon of summer past
Some unrecorded beam slanted across
The upland pastures where the Johnswort grew;
Or heard, amid the verdure of my mind,
The bee's long smothered hum, on the blue flag
Loitering amidst the mead; or busy rill,
Which now through all its course stands still and dumb
Its own memorial,—purling at its play
Along the slopes, and through the meadows next,
Until its youthful sound was hushed at last
In the staid current of the lowland stream;
Or seen the furrows shine but late upturned,
And where the fieldfare followed in the rear,
When all the fields around lay bound and hoar
Beneath a thick integument of snow.
So by God's cheap economy made rich
To go upon my winter's task again.

I saw this on Tumblr and liked it.

Here is another poem from Sonia Weitz that I think is pretty powerful

For Yom Ha'Shoah

Come, take this giant leap with me
into the other world...the other place
where language fails and imagery defies,
denies man's concsiousness...and dies
upon the alter of insanity

Come, take this giant leap with me
into the other world...the other place
and trace the eclipse of humanity...
where children burned while mankind stood by,
and the universe has yet to learn why
...has yet to learn why

So I was rummaging around my bookshelf when I discovered this book by Sonia Schreiber Wietz that I bought back in highschool when she came to speak at the school.  Sonia is a Holocaust surviver and wrote and published a collection of writings (including poems).  This one is written about the African American GI who rescued her from a concentration camp.

My Black Messiah

A black GI stood by the door
(I never saw a black before)
He'll set me free before I die,
I thought, he must be the Messiah

A black Messiah came for me...
He stared with eyes that didn't see,
He never heard a single word
which hung absurd upon my tongue.

And then he simply froze in place
The shock, the horror on his face,
He didn't weep, he didn't cry
But deep within his gentle eyes
...A flood of devastating pain,
His innocence forever slain

For me, yet another dawn
I found my black Messiah gone
And on we went our seperate ways
For many years without a trace

But there's a special bond we share
Which has grown strong because we dare
To live, to hope, to smile...and yet
we vow not ever to forget

A poem for

A poem for Money

Grime and grit

We slave away for the bills

in ardor of paying bills

and achieving the freedom

to stand naively and say, “I can buy that if I want,

sway her persuasion

if I choose,

make him kill for a briefcase full…”

The puppeteers laugh

at such misguided

optimism.

There is no oil spring in your backyard, silly.

But if there were,

do not be fooled by the bills.

They may buy things,

but they buy people too.

Use them up until they

wither and die,

the spoils are merely

collateral damage.

So I think this is a poem.

I have this hanging up in my room. I think it means "Don't let people tell you how/ what to think because then, you'll look like everyone else."

I know it's Silverstein and to some very simple poetry, but I think this speaks volumes on how a younger society views independent minds. 

Write a poem, John said. Make it a poem for someone, John said. Why are you writing seven of them? John will say.

E—

 

I

I took you home and opened you like a book,

Let the newness of you flood my senses

Before I became absorbed by the

Fragile covers splayed out on either

Side of your fragile spine. Holding your

Delicate pages in my hands and fingering them

Idly as the words spilt from my mouth and

Overflowed onto the delicate silk of your sheets.  

II

I wrap each

Little word you

Say in ribbons

And bows,

And press it,

Like flowers,

Between pages

Of a book.

III

Was it T.S Eliot

Or E.E. Cummings

That you loved?

I forget. I only

Started reading them

In a desperate

Attempt to cling

To whatever remained

Of you and I. Some

Digitally preserved

photographs and

letters, Naked Lunch,

and “this is the wonder

that's keeping the stars

apart” scrawled at the top

of barely legible note

Sent from your dorm room

in Alfred, New York.

IV

I was with you when

they dug up Neruda’s body.

And it seemed so perfectly fitting

on the day of his resurrection

that he and we should be

so similar, preserved but

still weathered. After all, nothing

stops the passing time forever.

Not clay or formaldehyde,

Not love poems, 20 or more,

Not the memory of you

springing from the night sea.

Not light, smoke, or still ponds.

Not the spring, not the cherry trees.

V

Here comes the darkest summer.

Don’t be a fool, Ned, this

is much worse than winter.

Winter was us, food, drink,

endless love on the bear skin.

Sure it was dark, but we could handle it.

Now what are we supposed to do?

Light up the dead seaside towns with our smiles?

It’s after 5pm, everything is closed,

we best go home, or back to our hotels,

No one’s having any fun in this place,

not even the birds. They’re too used

to gourmet bread, they won’t even

eat this processed shit any more.

VI

You left,

into the elevator

and out the door.

I haven’t trusted

machines since.

Where did you need

to get to so fast?

And why were they

so complicit in it?

Probably to New Hampshire,

where all things that

need to get lost go,

to sleep in stables

next to Willa Cather

or eat braised lamb

off his fat nose.

VII

I thought about

turning the car

and heading

north towards

New Hampshire,

just to make

sure that it was

still there. As if the

whole state

would rise up and

walk out of

existence when

we did.

I’d do anything

to get the rose

colored glare

out of my eyes.

Gillian's Revision

Original:

He took me by surprise,

When I saw the violence in his eyes,

And a desire to destroy himself,

Like I had never seen before.

He was singing the saddest song when I first met him,

Songs of never-ending despair,

And the pain of one boy,

Who could never understand,

He was singing a song with his eyes,

That only I could hear.

He took me by surprise,

The day his eyes finally looked alive,

And the destruction that once followed like a shadow,

Was nowhere to be found.

It was the way in which he whispered,

He finally understood,

That surprise me so,

The way in which he cried,

Because he finally understood what it felt like to be alive.

It was the way in which he overcame himself,

That made me love him so.

Revision:

I was empty but in love

(I’m still trying to figure out how that could be)

with a boy whose eyes

shined with a violence

and desire to destroy

I had never seen before

Eyes that sang to me

a song of never-ending despair

the kind of pain that couldn’t be understood

despite relentless attempts

to dissect the inner workings

of a heart

that was constantly on the verge of never beating

again

He took me by surprise

singing that song

only I could hear

becoming the lullaby that put us to sleep

all those nights

when his pain threatened all that we had built

I was empty but in love

he had stolen all of me

and I was unable to let go of the pain

he had wrapped himself in

almost permanently

I lived with his pain

simply so I could be there

on the day it all went away

He took me by surprise

the day his eyes

finally looked alive

and I noticed the glimmer of green

I had never seen before

It was the way in which he whispered

he finally understood

that took me by surprise

the way in which he cried

because he finally understood what it felt like to be alive

it was the way in which he overcame himself

that made me love him

despite the emptiness that had become all of me

When you wrote your paper, did you challenge yourself?

I have decided that by basically listing what I admired about the poem I wrote my craft analysis paper on, that this was me listing challenges in my own poetry and my own thoughts.

I realized my writing suffers from over thinking things, and being too afraid to try something new. For the remainder of the semester, I want to challenge assignments with the things I admired and the things I want to aim to convey/craft up.

Tell me what your experience was like. What do you think you'll aim to do? Got some goals for your poems?
-Jenn

hey guys
so...I forgot to write this down but, we are meeting for class on Tuesday right?

Revision and Original

Original

FILTHY HYPOCRITE
You’re the one who said you loved me,
You’re the one who told me you would never leave,
But you did
And now you’re the one telling me that I
I was the one who fell in love with you
But it wasn’t
You blamed me for walking away
But did you realize
That you gave me every reason to
Hey!
You aren’t listening
Stop pretending you’re a saint
You were the coward
And changed your mind for someone else
I remember every time that you
Told me forever and always
You never heard my side of the story
Never really cared at all
Nor did you think my part valid
You called me a liar
You filthy hypocrite
Never have your words
Lined up with your actions
You aren’t sorry.

Poem #7

10/5/2013

I have no clue what you are talking about. 

I didn’t think you were going to walk away.

I thought you would be here waiting for me. 

You fell in love with me.

Despite what you think, I am sorry. 

You didn’t take any time in moving on. 

You said you would wait for me. 

But you never did. 

You just chose to move on without me. 

I never stopped loving you. 

Tori's Revision

Original:

You have hair.

That might have been the first thing I noticed.

I stared at your hair for hours,

honestly,

hoping to capture it somehow.

I think your voice struck me next.

And that’s strange

because you’ve been talking to me for so long.

But there was your voice.

And I listened to the sound instead of the words.

Weirdly…

your hands, too.

I want to touch them, not hold them,

not yet,

just brush against your knuckles,

and hope you do the holding for me.

I think it took tem minutes

for me to notice your lips.

(I had to get past your eyes and cheeks and smile.)

That’s when I went to talk to someone else.

Revision:

You have hair.

It's not impressive or noteworthy, really. But still,

I stared at your hair for hours

of days, over months,

hoping to capture it somehow.

Your voice struck me first,

violently and constantly,

because you'd been talking for so long,

and I listened to the sound instead of the words.

Weirdly,

I want to touch you, not hold you. 

Bump into you as I walk past,

just brush my hand against your knuckles.

I think it took ten minutes,

that first day,

(I had to get past your eyes and cheeks and lips)

for me to speak.

And it came out angry.

My approach to this revision was, first, removing every other line. I was honestly surprised that it still made some kind of sense and, actually, gave the poem a whole new tone. It was similar to the tone of the original, but stripped down, harsher in some way. This led me to finding my new speaker, or at least a new attitude for my speaker, and the additional lines sprang from there. 

Revision by Tony

Original

The ocean breeze sweeps

Across the sea

And breathes

Life into me.

In the north

Atop a bowsprit I stand

I am king of myself

And obey no man.

My fingers shriek

And my blood stands still

Though I’ve lost all feeling

I can finally feel

Through isolation

I’ve found a peace

That many neglect

Or Fail to Achieve

If I had one wish

It would be

To share my happiness

With worthy company.

Revision

A gentle breeze caresses the ocean’s waves

And as it’s forced skyward by their shape

It breathes life into me.

Stationed in the desolate north,

Far removed from social interaction and love

I stand upon my ship, in charge of my own destiny.

The frigid winds pierce my skin

And my fingers shriek and bend.

My blood halts in the veins, my senses fail me

And I can finally feel.

Isolated, alone, I have achieved a glorified sense of complacency

Which I mistake to be a feeling of peace

And I criticize the world for their lack of achievement.

Yet I yearn for more than what I’ve found,

But what I’ve found is what I sought.

I wish only to break the sound of self-praise

With real conversation and worthy company.

Kassandra

Original:

Rain.

I remember almost drowning
I still feel like a fool for loving him
We fell asleep under the stars one night
I swore our hearts drummed in sweet sync
He held my heart in the palm of his hand
Is it weird to crave a person on days
when rain ensues after kisses goodbye?
I gave him my poems as lullabies
to soothe his longing on damp nights when love
would not suffice to keep him full of me


Revision:

Rain.

Raindrops danced on the windshield.

Headlights and metal flashed.

There you stood on double yellow lines

as if you had been waiting to crash into me

all day.

I spun, 

heard the tires skid on liquid pavement, 

my lungs awash by silky skin.

I tried to stop, 

gasp for air between the swells,

but your eyes overflowed into my mouth,

my nostrils, down my throat,

and into every empty crevice of mine.

You washed through my veins,

claiming me as yours;

but I never asked to fall in love.

I never wanted to fall in love, 

but I slipped in the rain that day,

and you came anyway.

You came anyway.

In the revision, the speaker is opposite the one in the original, in that the original speaker was a woman and the new speaker is a man. These are differing vantage points of the exact same relationship that this couple was in.  

Original Poem:

Shy

 

Now what is left for us to talk about?

Not much, but how there used to be a lot.

 

Far back in time, when you had shinning curls

But then you went and turned them oh so dark.

 

Back when you used to laugh more than you cried

Before your love turned black for the first time

 

It seems just one wasn't enough for him

He had to break you too, and use you up

 

Before he moved on to destroy the next,

You see, you weren't the only one he robbed

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Revision:

 

Shy

 

Chaos seeping in at the roots,

Now all black

Go your once golden curls.

 

And the light, once too bright,

Glares enough, just to see,

On the dirty and dank bathroom floor


That those spatters of dark

All around where you sat

Have bled into the tiles on the floor


And the rank smell of change,

Sickly chemical smell,

How you still keep on breathing it in.

Even as some things still

Are yet seeping within

I ask: are some seeping back out?