Sleeping on the Wing Challenge: Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

[FifthFlower]

Hmm I was trying to break up the rhythm in the last line but I think I broke it up too much. Here is an edit:

Ciao ED

This woman swallowed Death
It Grew into a Sun —
She cut herself with Words
But could not get it done.

She stropped the knife
Upon the failing Sea, she
Ground it on the unlived life —
But it blunted like the Prison Love

That is eternity's mad wife.


(Still not perfect by any means, but what the hell…)

Ah, death. You inspire me, Eluard. Here's the result.

Mama

Their Sylvia stayed on the edge
Until she put her head
Inside the oven with the gas
Turned on — and now she's dead.

Her children did not understand.
Were they to die as well?
Her demons laughed with her through life,
And love her deep in hell.

 

[champagne1982]

I contemplated my hangnail
as they brought you from sleep
and mourned the ache of throbbing
loss as I chewed the remnant off.

Strawberries and Tommy Chong
waited conciously by your bed
as did tears and I began to cry
when you told me what you'd done.

I drew the line and they took
it there, my choice and only mine
to lose the whole instead of life
to smile instead of pine
for what should have been

So, proudly stand and brave
admission make that though limbs
fall and souls weep
terror can be faced down
in the light of hopefulness.

 

[Angeline]

I contemplated my hangnail
as they brought you from sleep
and mourned the ache of throbbing
loss as I chewed the remnant off.

Strawberries and Tommy Chong
waited conciously by your bed
as did tears and I began to cry
when you told me what you'd done.

I drew the line and they took
it there, my choice and only mine
to lose the whole instead of life
to smile instead of pine
for what should have been

So, proudly stand and brave
admission make that though limbs
fall and souls weep
terror can be faced down
in the light of hopefulness.

Yay! You're back.

And beautiful poem. The theme turned out to be very timely for you, I know.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

I'll say one thing for this challenge.

It's helping me get my taxes done. When I give myself the choice of working on an Emily Dickinson poem or running inventory numbers on a calculator for 3 hours....

lolz

bj

 

[annaswirls]

Ah this is like Emily D meets William Carlos W. in the cafeteria!

this is just to say....

you made me smile not because it was a funny poem, just because....

First try. I'm not sure this is right. Interesting, but difficult, exercise.

I Was Eating a Cheeseburger

I was eating a cheeseburger
When you died, because
I was hungry and the grill
At the hospital had nothing

But bad food so I knew
The doctor's frown, approaching,
Was not because of fat and grease,
Though it was about that too.​

 

[annaswirls]

The Diagnosis

The mailman appeared the morning
we first heard the alarm.
He came as if nothing had changed--
As if life could just go on.

At first I cursed this measure
of time. Another chance, gone?
Sleepless morning, solitude;
Another unsolved dawn.

Soon I believed he brought the answer,
So desperate for a cure
A breath of promise? Words
of hope? Into each note I tore.

Lies! I know, all self proclaimed.
I will wait no more!
We live the News inside ourselves
The Truth behind our door.

The mail man, he still daily comes,
I do not look for more
Clip coupons, skim the news
Of Peace beyond the cure.



good lord that was awful and difficult.
good things do not always come from stretching your style hehe

 

[champagne1982]

Tea At A Wake

I sipped tea as they filed by
heard some fall upon your breast
you wouldn't wipe their tears
and kiss their foreheads
that benediction gone

oh for your arms to raise
and clutch me in glad embrace
and see the smile grace
your lips that offered prayers
at night to some unspeaking
father that you promised
would find a place for you

I tasted heels of bread
slathered in butter baked
inside that Franklin stove
dunked in milky tea as your
tuneless hum soothed
another grandchild rocked
against your heart

the chair beside me scraped
against ceramic tiles
dragging me away from the warm
smells of your hearth
and I saw their tears
as they gathered in clumps
here outside your laying out.

 

[Liar]

Aaaargh.

 

[Angeline]

Aaaargh.

You didn't rhyme!

 

[Angeline]

The Diagnosis

The mailman appeared the morning
we first heard the alarm.
He came as if nothing had changed--
As if life could just go on.

At first I cursed this measure
of time. Another chance, gone?
Sleepless morning, solitude;
Another unsolved dawn.

Soon I believed he brought the answer,
So desperate for a cure
A breath of promise? Words
of hope? Into each note I tore.

Lies! I know, all self proclaimed.
I will wait no more!
We live the News inside ourselves
The Truth behind our door.

The mail man, he still daily comes,
I do not look for more
Clip coupons, skim the news
Of Peace beyond the cure.



good lord that was awful and difficult.
good things do not always come from stretching your style hehe

This week has got to be the hardest one for everyone so far. ED isn't a big hit with the Lit Pobo crowd! I'm glad you got a chance to see the Wallace Stevens one though. When we did it, I remembered that you've always loved the blackbird poem.

 

[Angeline]

The queen of all that she
surveyed sat within a room
and counted every butterfly.
She watched until the gloom
of twilight hushed upon her house.
Still she stayed quite motionless
awaiting any mouse or crumb
whose world she might imagine
to explore. She lifts hope
like a candle, dreams
of Death beyond her door.

 

[Liar]

You didn't rhyme!

Blaaargh?

 

[Angeline]

Blaaargh?

Perfect. You've now written your poem for this week. See how easy it is?

 

[annaswirls]

This week has got to be the hardest one for everyone so far. ED isn't a big hit with the Lit Pobo crowd! I'm glad you got a chance to see the Wallace Stevens one though. When we did it, I remembered that you've always loved the blackbird poem.

Yeah, pity I did not emerge from my other life during the Wallace week!

The Blackbird poem was the first poem I read as a girl that struck my hard. The lines would run through my head during the day and I would think... whoa that is so deep... My first experience with a more Zen way of thinking in a hard work will make you free clean your plate waspy kind of existence...

 

[Liar]

Write a poem that is written in somewhat the same way as "I Heard a Fly Buzz"; that is, write about something that is terribly significant to you--the end of the world, the beginning of the world, your death, your birth--and in the same poem write about something that is very insignificant--a leaf dropping, the sound of a footstep, the telephone ringing, combing your hair. Don't say what your emotions are, and don't try to make an obvious connection between what is important and what isn't. Let them simply be happening at the same time: "I heard something drop when the world began." It may help if you think about it all as having happened a long time ago--if you're thinking of another century, you can probably calmly and objectively imagine both a rose blooming and a volcano erupting. Great distances of time and space make everything seem to even out.

I just remembered an old one that was (kinda) in this vein. I'll let that be my contribution. At least it beats

Aaargh
Blaaargh



Romance versus Spoons

Right when you said
that you love me,

I stared in disgust
at a dirty crust
on the spoon you chose
to stir your tea.

I'll remember forever
that dried latte foam,
framed over the mantlepiece
of my mind, as where
it all began.

You never picked
clean spoons,

but you kept saying
that you love me.

So I didn't mind.

 

[Trixareforkids]

I linked to this one last, and without reading any of it because I love Emily and wanted to save this as a treat for when I was able to savor it.

Now, having read through the entire thing I find myself disappointed. I was hoping for much more poetry in her plain speaking, jumbled, make up a word (or word derivative) style.

So, to find that she is not much thought of and that many here (or that used to play here) find her difficult or distastful to read and emulate has me thinking about my self and my poetry. Not that I emulate her necessarily, but I do tend to be a plain speaker at times and find that it is not generally well received, or is received with perceived emotions that were not there in the writing. Hmmm, something to think on for sure.

Now, I shall try to write in true Emily style/form. Very curious to see how it differs from my own.

Editing to add some of my favorite bits of Emily, who wasn't all rhyme and sing-song.

III

SOUL, Wilt thou toss again?
By just such a hazard
Hundreds have lost, indeed,
But tens have won an all.

Angels' breathless ballot
Lingers to record thee;
Imps in eager caucus
Raffle for my soul.


IX

The heart ask pleasure first,
And then, excuse from pain;
And then, those little anodynes
That deaden suffering;
And then, to go to sleep;
And then, if it should be
The will of its Inquisitor
The liberty to die.


XI

MUCH madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
'T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur,--you're straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.


XXI

He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy days,
and this bequest of wings
Was but a book. What liberty
A loosened spirit brings!

 

[twelveoone]

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1069493
dovetails

 

[Trixareforkids]

dovetails

You saw a connection to Emily, but beyond a mild similarity in form, I still don't.

 

[twelveoone]

You saw a connection to Emily, but beyond a mild similarity in form, I still don't.

Noun change, noun is then a metaphor, Emily used nouns as detonative words, but tended to the abstract.
and his self admission