It's the Poem-A-Week Challenge Discussion Thread

[42BelowsBack]

I wrote this and posted it elsewhere a few weeks ago about the original version of Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott (1832), which I just posted in the other thread. Hopefully you all enjoy reading my thoughts about it.

I’ve been drawn to Tennyson and wanted to read more Arthuriana, and there’s a painting I really love based on this poem, so I wanted to start with “The Lady of Shallot” There’s another version that Tennyson wrote later that changed the ending to be more about unrequited love as opposed to the protagonist’s (Elaine of Astolat) agency and pursuit of freedom so here is the original.

So right off the bat this probably kinda looks like what most people think of when they think of stuffy old poetry. It’s in pretty strict iambic meter, there’s end rhymes, the language is kinda archaic, he does the thing a lot of older poets did where they’ll contract words to fit in the meter. It’s not gonna be everyone’s idea of a fun read but I dont mind that stuff and actually really enjoy formalism. The more I learn and practice art the more I feel like contstraints of form and style force you to make creative choices you may not have been drawn to at first, and over time I really feel like paying attention to it has made me better with language and music overall. But it can be kinda cheesy and honestly I’m not a huge fan of the way this poem begins. Part 1 I find mostly boring, the imagery is kinda pretty sometimes but it feels mostly rote. The second stanza has something that interested me when I read it though.

Four gray walls, and four gray towers
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.

All of a sudden this sounds more like a prison than anything else and I like how it recontextualizes a lot of the pretty imagery preceding it. A gilded cage is still a cage.

Part 2 is where we find out that she’s cursed, and this section has something lines in it I really love. Some of it is just kind of setting up the conflict and there’s a lot of imagery of the goings on she watches while she weaves all the time, and Tennyson writes

“She lives with little joy or fear.”

That’s not a super complex line, there really isn’t much going on, but when you think about that, it’s pretty bleak. That’s how being in major depressive episodes always felt to me. Just nothing, it’s not even bad most of the time just feels devoid of everything that makes being human worth it.

Or when the moon was overhead
Came two young lovers lately wed;
'I am half sick of shadows,' said
The Lady of Shalott.

The end of the second part I really love. “I am half sick of shadows” is a pretty powerful line again. It’s where she regains her agency in the story. And I dunno, with the preceding imagery of two young lovers in the moonlight and the way it just rolls off the tongue I think it’s one of the more memorable lines in the poem.

We get some Lancelot shit next and honestly he’s kind of a fuckboy so this is the weakest section for me except the last stanza

She left the web, she left the loom
She made three paces thro' the room
She saw the water-flower bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
'The curse is come upon me,' cried
The Lady of Shalott.

The repetition in sounds as she rejects eternally weaving in favor of something else, and knowing that in doing so she’s lost something forever, this is another great part of the poem imo. At the same time you get the sense that while she knows she’s cursed she’s also become a whole new person, and this happens in the space of 9 lines. And you just see this through her actions and the contrast with the weaving imagery she’s always had through till this point.

Up to here there’s been some parts I enjoyed and I do appreciate a lot of the adherence to form and stuff Tennyson uses, but I think the last part of this poem is the strongest part overall. The first three stanzas of this part all read magically imo, the imagery of the scenery passing by in the wind is great. Amazingly though; I think every consecutive stanza just gets better and better in this part. The writing I think is at its best here, but also just the imagery chosen, picturing this woman dying and falling apart in a storm but singing all the while because she finally gets to be part of the world just really sticks with me. I’m sure when Alfred wrote this in the 1830s he didn’t expect some queer on the internet to be like “omg she’s just like me fr fr” but like I feel like it’s just impossible not to relate to that symbolism as an openly trans person.

A pale, pale corpse she floated by,
Deadcold, between the houses high,

These lines I just wanted to say are hella goth and deadcold is a ridiculous word

The ending four lines are just the perfect end though, and honestly fuck you Tennyson for changing this to be about fuckboy shit.

'The web was woven curiously,
The charm is broken utterly,
Draw near and fear not,—this is I,
The Lady of Shalott.'

What a great way to end. Tragic yeah, but she finally gets to be free and meet the world she’s been stuck out of and go up to the townsfolk and say (in a sense, she is dead at this point)

Draw near and fear not,—this is I,
The Lady of Shalott.

Overall I think Tennyson has other stuff that’s better written and more interesting from a poetics standpoint, but I just really love the whole (ORIGINAL VERSION) story of The Lady of Shalott and her quest to be one with a world she’s always been set apart from. The drive and determination to say “This is I” in the face of death is just so powerful and feels endlessly relevant as an openly queer person in the USA - and I think it’s endlessly fascinating how in looking at past artwork we derive new and powerful meanings based on our current times.

Hey, thank you for taking us through this poem. You made it really accessible.

 

[Tzara]

I wrote this and posted it elsewhere a few weeks ago about the original version of Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott (1832), which I just posted in the other thread. Hopefully you all enjoy reading my thoughts about it.

I’ve been drawn to Tennyson and wanted to read more Arthuriana, and there’s a painting I really love based on this poem, so I wanted to start with “The Lady of Shallot” There’s another version that Tennyson wrote later that changed the ending to be more about unrequited love as opposed to the protagonist’s (Elaine of Astolat) agency and pursuit of freedom so here is the original.

So right off the bat this probably kinda looks like what most people think of when they think of stuffy old poetry. It’s in pretty strict iambic meter, there’s end rhymes, the language is kinda archaic, he does the thing a lot of older poets did where they’ll contract words to fit in the meter. It’s not gonna be everyone’s idea of a fun read but I dont mind that stuff and actually really enjoy formalism. The more I learn and practice art the more I feel like contstraints of form and style force you to make creative choices you may not have been drawn to at first, and over time I really feel like paying attention to it has made me better with language and music overall. But it can be kinda cheesy and honestly I’m not a huge fan of the way this poem begins. Part 1 I find mostly boring, the imagery is kinda pretty sometimes but it feels mostly rote. The second stanza has something that interested me when I read it though.

Four gray walls, and four gray towers
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.

All of a sudden this sounds more like a prison than anything else and I like how it recontextualizes a lot of the pretty imagery preceding it. A gilded cage is still a cage.

Part 2 is where we find out that she’s cursed, and this section has something lines in it I really love. Some of it is just kind of setting up the conflict and there’s a lot of imagery of the goings on she watches while she weaves all the time, and Tennyson writes

“She lives with little joy or fear.”

That’s not a super complex line, there really isn’t much going on, but when you think about that, it’s pretty bleak. That’s how being in major depressive episodes always felt to me. Just nothing, it’s not even bad most of the time just feels devoid of everything that makes being human worth it.

Or when the moon was overhead
Came two young lovers lately wed;
'I am half sick of shadows,' said
The Lady of Shalott.

The end of the second part I really love. “I am half sick of shadows” is a pretty powerful line again. It’s where she regains her agency in the story. And I dunno, with the preceding imagery of two young lovers in the moonlight and the way it just rolls off the tongue I think it’s one of the more memorable lines in the poem.

We get some Lancelot shit next and honestly he’s kind of a fuckboy so this is the weakest section for me except the last stanza

She left the web, she left the loom
She made three paces thro' the room
She saw the water-flower bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
'The curse is come upon me,' cried
The Lady of Shalott.

The repetition in sounds as she rejects eternally weaving in favor of something else, and knowing that in doing so she’s lost something forever, this is another great part of the poem imo. At the same time you get the sense that while she knows she’s cursed she’s also become a whole new person, and this happens in the space of 9 lines. And you just see this through her actions and the contrast with the weaving imagery she’s always had through till this point.

Up to here there’s been some parts I enjoyed and I do appreciate a lot of the adherence to form and stuff Tennyson uses, but I think the last part of this poem is the strongest part overall. The first three stanzas of this part all read magically imo, the imagery of the scenery passing by in the wind is great. Amazingly though; I think every consecutive stanza just gets better and better in this part. The writing I think is at its best here, but also just the imagery chosen, picturing this woman dying and falling apart in a storm but singing all the while because she finally gets to be part of the world just really sticks with me. I’m sure when Alfred wrote this in the 1830s he didn’t expect some queer on the internet to be like “omg she’s just like me fr fr” but like I feel like it’s just impossible not to relate to that symbolism as an openly trans person.

A pale, pale corpse she floated by,
Deadcold, between the houses high,

These lines I just wanted to say are hella goth and deadcold is a ridiculous word

The ending four lines are just the perfect end though, and honestly fuck you Tennyson for changing this to be about fuckboy shit.

'The web was woven curiously,
The charm is broken utterly,
Draw near and fear not,—this is I,
The Lady of Shalott.'

What a great way to end. Tragic yeah, but she finally gets to be free and meet the world she’s been stuck out of and go up to the townsfolk and say (in a sense, she is dead at this point)

Draw near and fear not,—this is I,
The Lady of Shalott.

Overall I think Tennyson has other stuff that’s better written and more interesting from a poetics standpoint, but I just really love the whole (ORIGINAL VERSION) story of The Lady of Shalott and her quest to be one with a world she’s always been set apart from. The drive and determination to say “This is I” in the face of death is just so powerful and feels endlessly relevant as an openly queer person in the USA - and I think it’s endlessly fascinating how in looking at past artwork we derive new and powerful meanings based on our current times.

I second 42's comment; this is a very interesting exposition of the poem.

One of the qualities I quite like about the poem is Tennyson's metrical variations. While the poem is generally in iambic tetrameter, there are little runs where the meter varies either through the substitution of a non-iambic foot in an otherwise iambic line (e.g. "She lives with little joy or fear. / Over the water, running near, / The sheepbell tinkles in her ear" where L2 replaces the first iamb with a trochee) or a more extended variation from straight iambic meter:

Four gray walls, and four gray towers
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers

The Lady of Shalott.​

where the first three lines, taken in isolation, are trochaic tetrameter (though in the iambic context of the poem would probably be considered acephalic with feminine end rhymes). Combined with the iambic trimeter of the fourth line, this gives the poem a nice break from a steady iambic tetrameter rhythm.

As a side note, the poem is referenced in both title and in the text in the Agatha Christie novel The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side.

 

[Angeline]

I second 42's comment; this is a very interesting exposition of the poem.

One of the qualities I quite like about the poem is Tennyson's metrical variations. While the poem is generally in iambic tetrameter, there are little runs where the meter varies either through the substitution of a non-iambic foot in an otherwise iambic line (e.g. "She lives with little joy or fear. / Over the water, running near, / The sheepbell tinkles in her ear" where L2 replaces the first iamb with a trochee) or a more extended variation from straight iambic meter:

​

Four gray walls, and four gray towers​

Overlook a space of flowers,​

And the silent isle imbowers​

The Lady of Shalott.​

where the first three lines, taken in isolation, are trochaic tetrameter (though in the iambic context of the poem would probably be considered acephalic with feminine end rhymes). Combined with the iambic trimeter of the fourth line, this gives the poem a nice break from a steady iambic tetrameter rhythm.

As a side note, the poem is referenced in both title and in the text in the Agatha Christie novel The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side.

I'm following this discussion with interest and want to make sure I understand one of your comments. These three lines~

Four gray walls, and four gray towers
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers

when read in the context of the poem would be considered acephalic iambic lines because the first syllable in each is stressed, right?

I get that taken out of context they're trochaic lines. Just wasn't sure I understood "acephalic."

Thanks.

 

[Tzara]

I'm following this discussion with interest and want to make sure I understand one of your comments. These three lines~

Four gray walls, and four gray towers
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers

when read in the context of the poem would be considered acephalic iambic lines because the first syllable in each is stressed, right?

I get that taken out of context they're trochaic lines. Just wasn't sure I understood "acephalic."

Thanks.

They are acephalic (or acephalous) because, if considered as iambic lines (as metrically most of the lines of the poem are) they are missing their "head," i.e. the unstressed first syllable of the first iambic foot. If they had been written as

These four / gray walls, / and four / gray tow•ers
Here ov /er•look / a space / of flow•ers,
In which / the si / lent isle / im•bow•ers​

They would be consistently iambic (with, as I mentioned, feminine endings).

 

[Angeline]

They are acephalic (or acephalous) because, if considered as iambic lines (as metrically most of the lines of the poem are) they are missing their "head," i.e. the unstressed first syllable of the first iambic foot. If they had been written as

​

These four / gray walls, / and four / gray tow•ers​

Here ov /er•look / a space / of flow•ers,​

In which / the si / lent isle / im•bow•ers​

They would be consistently iambic (with, as I mentioned, feminine endings).

Ok. I think I understand. I hate a double negative but I believe the salient point is that the initial syllables in the acephalic iambic lines are not unstressed as they would be in regular iambic lines.

 

[Tzara]

Ok. I think I understand. I hate a double negative but I believe the salient point is that those initial syllables are not unstressed as they normally would be in iambic lines.

Not exactly. It's that there "should" be another, unstressed syllable in front of the stressed syllable. If you scan Tennyson's lines as iambic, you see that the first foot has only one syllable:

​

Four / gray walls, / and four / gray tow•ers​

Ov /er•look / a space / of flow•ers,​

And / the si / lent isle / im•bow•ers​

The first, unstressed syllable isn't there, so the line is "headless." You see this, as here, in iambic lines where the initial unstressed syllable is missing but you also see it in anapestic lines, usually where the first unstressed syllable of the first anapest is missing. This happens a lot in limericks, for example:

​

There was / a young wo / man from Kent​

Who felt / quite ex•treme / ly ver•klempt​

In this example, the first foot is iambic (dah dah) rather than anapestic (dah dah dah), but the other two feet in the line are properly anapestic.

Of course, to confuse matters, you could consider the first foot as simply a metrical substitution—an iamb replacing the anapest. Or, if you wanted to make it really complicated, you could interpret these lines as amphibrachic (dah dah dah) with catalexis ("the omission of a final syllable or syllables in a line of verse" Edward Hirsch, A Poet's Glossary) like this:

​

There was a / young wo•man / from Kent​

Who felt quite / ex•treme ly / ver•klempt​

This is one of the reasons why prosody and scansion give people fits. It's like music that can be notated in multiple ways.

 

[Stephie02]

I wrote this and posted it elsewhere a few weeks ago about the original version of Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott (1832), which I just posted in the other thread. Hopefully you all enjoy reading my thoughts about it.

I’ve been drawn to Tennyson and wanted to read more Arthuriana, and there’s a painting I really love based on this poem, so I wanted to start with “The Lady of Shallot” There’s another version that Tennyson wrote later that changed the ending to be more about unrequited love as opposed to the protagonist’s (Elaine of Astolat) agency and pursuit of freedom so here is the original.

So right off the bat this probably kinda looks like what most people think of when they think of stuffy old poetry. It’s in pretty strict iambic meter, there’s end rhymes, the language is kinda archaic, he does the thing a lot of older poets did where they’ll contract words to fit in the meter. It’s not gonna be everyone’s idea of a fun read but I dont mind that stuff and actually really enjoy formalism. The more I learn and practice art the more I feel like contstraints of form and style force you to make creative choices you may not have been drawn to at first, and over time I really feel like paying attention to it has made me better with language and music overall. But it can be kinda cheesy and honestly I’m not a huge fan of the way this poem begins. Part 1 I find mostly boring, the imagery is kinda pretty sometimes but it feels mostly rote. The second stanza has something that interested me when I read it though.

Four gray walls, and four gray towers
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.

All of a sudden this sounds more like a prison than anything else and I like how it recontextualizes a lot of the pretty imagery preceding it. A gilded cage is still a cage.

Part 2 is where we find out that she’s cursed, and this section has something lines in it I really love. Some of it is just kind of setting up the conflict and there’s a lot of imagery of the goings on she watches while she weaves all the time, and Tennyson writes

“She lives with little joy or fear.”

That’s not a super complex line, there really isn’t much going on, but when you think about that, it’s pretty bleak. That’s how being in major depressive episodes always felt to me. Just nothing, it’s not even bad most of the time just feels devoid of everything that makes being human worth it.

Or when the moon was overhead
Came two young lovers lately wed;
'I am half sick of shadows,' said
The Lady of Shalott.

The end of the second part I really love. “I am half sick of shadows” is a pretty powerful line again. It’s where she regains her agency in the story. And I dunno, with the preceding imagery of two young lovers in the moonlight and the way it just rolls off the tongue I think it’s one of the more memorable lines in the poem.

We get some Lancelot shit next and honestly he’s kind of a fuckboy so this is the weakest section for me except the last stanza

She left the web, she left the loom
She made three paces thro' the room
She saw the water-flower bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
'The curse is come upon me,' cried
The Lady of Shalott.

The repetition in sounds as she rejects eternally weaving in favor of something else, and knowing that in doing so she’s lost something forever, this is another great part of the poem imo. At the same time you get the sense that while she knows she’s cursed she’s also become a whole new person, and this happens in the space of 9 lines. And you just see this through her actions and the contrast with the weaving imagery she’s always had through till this point.

Up to here there’s been some parts I enjoyed and I do appreciate a lot of the adherence to form and stuff Tennyson uses, but I think the last part of this poem is the strongest part overall. The first three stanzas of this part all read magically imo, the imagery of the scenery passing by in the wind is great. Amazingly though; I think every consecutive stanza just gets better and better in this part. The writing I think is at its best here, but also just the imagery chosen, picturing this woman dying and falling apart in a storm but singing all the while because she finally gets to be part of the world just really sticks with me. I’m sure when Alfred wrote this in the 1830s he didn’t expect some queer on the internet to be like “omg she’s just like me fr fr” but like I feel like it’s just impossible not to relate to that symbolism as an openly trans person.

A pale, pale corpse she floated by,
Deadcold, between the houses high,

These lines I just wanted to say are hella goth and deadcold is a ridiculous word

The ending four lines are just the perfect end though, and honestly fuck you Tennyson for changing this to be about fuckboy shit.

'The web was woven curiously,
The charm is broken utterly,
Draw near and fear not,—this is I,
The Lady of Shalott.'

What a great way to end. Tragic yeah, but she finally gets to be free and meet the world she’s been stuck out of and go up to the townsfolk and say (in a sense, she is dead at this point)

Draw near and fear not,—this is I,
The Lady of Shalott.

Overall I think Tennyson has other stuff that’s better written and more interesting from a poetics standpoint, but I just really love the whole (ORIGINAL VERSION) story of The Lady of Shalott and her quest to be one with a world she’s always been set apart from. The drive and determination to say “This is I” in the face of death is just so powerful and feels endlessly relevant as an openly queer person in the USA - and I think it’s endlessly fascinating how in looking at past artwork we derive new and powerful meanings based on our current times.

If anyone is interested, Loreena McKennit put this to music, over 10 minutes long. Beautiful and haunting, hypnotic how she sings it.

 

[Angeline]

Not exactly. It's that there "should" be another, unstressed syllable in front of the stressed syllable. If you scan Tennyson's lines as iambic, you see that the first foot has only one syllable:

​

Four / gray walls, / and four / gray tow•ers​

Ov /er•look / a space / of flow•ers,​

And / the si / lent isle / im•bow•ers​

The first, unstressed syllable isn't there, so the line is "headless." You see this, as here, in iambic lines where the initial unstressed syllable is missing but you also see it in anapestic lines, usually where the first unstressed syllable of the first anapest is missing. This happens a lot in limericks, for example:

​

There was / a young wo / man from Kent​

Who felt / quite ex•treme / ly ver•klempt​

In this example, the first foot is iambic (dah dah) rather than anapestic (dah dah dah), but the other two feet in the line are properly anapestic.

Of course, to confuse matters, you could consider the first foot as simply a metrical substitution—an iamb replacing the anapest. Or, if you wanted to make it really complicated, you could interpret these lines as amphibrachic (dah dah dah) with catalexis ("the omission of a final syllable or syllables in a line of verse" Edward Hirsch, A Poet's Glossary) like this:

​

There was a / young wo•man / from Kent​

Who felt quite / ex•treme ly / ver•klempt​

This is one of the reasons why prosody and scansion give people fits. It's like music that can be notated in multiple ways.

Ok. Headless. Kinda like I'm feeling at the moment.

Thank you for taking the time to clarify it for me.

And I thought transformational grammar was bad!

 

[Angeline]

If anyone is interested, Loreena McKennit put this to music, over 10 minutes long. Beautiful and haunting, hypnotic how she sings it.

Love Loreena! Thanks for reminding me.

I also love her other literary adaptations. My favorite is her take on The Lake Isle of Innisfree.

 

[Stephie02]

Love Loreena! Thanks for reminding me.

I also love her other literary adaptations. My favorite is her take on The Lake Isle of Innisfree.

Don't know that one, thanks for telling me, I'll look for it. I grew up listening to her, my parents are fans! But that one was always my favorite, and I love the poem.

 

[Stephie02]

Oh my bad! I was mixing up Judy Collins's Innisfree with Loreena's Stolen Child, both are adaptations of Yeats poems and both beautiful.

Lake Isle of Innisfree


Stolen Child

I love stolen child! Her voice is just amazing

 

[Angeline]

I love stolen child! Her voice is just amazing

 

[42BelowsBack]

Chick music

 

[Angeline]

Chick music

I'll see if I can find a nice masculine tune for you. Perhaps some head bangers have put Hemingway to music.

 

[Angeline]

@Waeponwifestre your Nihil villanelle is bleak and absolutely beautiful. It's also relatable for anyone with eyes...and a heart. You're really, really good.

 

[SmilingLez]

I am really enjoying playing with Pantoums. Is it poetry, is it a puzzle, no it's both!!

I picture a bunch of drunk poets making up silly little challenges to see who is the better poet and Pantoum was created by the drunkest poet

 

[Stephie02]

This was beautiful! Thank you for sharing this!

 

[Jaws82]

I can't keep the verse inside
Just not something i can hide
My body's reeling with emotion
Till I have a rhyme explosion

Joy or fear or sex or sorrow
Can't contain it till tomorrow
Feelings huge like tea from China
Verbal climax, mind/vagina

Ride tsunamis of sensation
Poetry's my masturbation
Hear my words, poetic song
Gush creamy verse, all night long

i want to watch you limerick baby

sonnet all over my face

 

[Jaws82]

Smoke a cigarette
Aftermath of my climax
In my soaking sheets

that is a sexy image

 

[Angeline]

that is a sexy image

Just a reminder that the Poem-a-Week thread is poems only, no comments. If you have comments use this thread. Thanks.

 

[SapioSexual9]

The quality of the Linked poems in the READINGS thread is astounding. For those Girls who like naked sex with boots on I suggest reading @Angeline’s linked reading suggest Loose Woman by Sandra Cisneros.

If you don’t get it, what are you doing reading it? Say it again baby

 

[NivKay]

Timely~

The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats

that slouch...those thighs..

 

[SapioSexual9]

(I so wanted to write in all caps that)

This poem is absolutely beautiful.

Dear Ari / A Kabbalah Poem by @Waeponwifestre

 

[SapioSexual9]

There are sooooooooooooooooo many excellently crafted poems written this week I am too shy to post mine.

There are too many to list. Check out. @Angeline, Photograph.

Everybody posting whoop whoop!

 

[NivKay]

There are sooooooooooooooooo many excellently crafted poems written this week I am too shy to post mine.

There are too many to list. Check out. @angelineS Photograph.

Everybody posting whoop whoop!

Oh, go on.. I cannae wait..