I sit down to produce a jot of verse—
I stand up, and I pace around the room.
What might have been a banger will get worse
The more I pace. To hesitate spells doom.
For any work which takes a focused mind—
And poetry is surely in that group—
Ideas must flow all at once, I find,
Or else I'll lose myself: caught in a loop
Of thinking, and rethinking, and—oh, fuck!
I've dropped the thread entirely by now.
That's what I get for pacing: a big suck;
The glimmer of a topic, but no "pow!"
One saving grace: there is no Poem Boss.
When I screw up, it's no-one else's loss.
To improve my poems, I read the masters. Here are the poems I've found inspiring.
Conventions
Poems are arranged by poet. Right now, poets aren't in any particular order; I hereby declare (on 2020-01-26) that I'll write code to fix this some day.
Strong markup indicates the poem left a particularly powerful impression.
Poets are listed under their full birth names, unless, like Lord Byron, they are better known by another moniker.
Unless noted "in full," anything listed here is an excerpt, not the entire poem.
In checking texts against Poetry Foundation or Bartleby versions, I frequently find differences in spelling and lineation. You have been warned.
Citations are chiefly from these works:
Great Poems of the English Language (GPEL), edited by Wallace Alvin Briggs
How Does a Poem Mean? (HDPM), by John Ciardi
Unauthorized Versions: Poems and their Parodies (UV), edited by Kenneth Baker.
Were I King Ahasuerus
Then never would I see
A Haman full of hate.
My kingdom's Jews, their fate,
Would never safer be—
Were I King Ahasuerus.
Were I King Ahasuerus
No outside threat would scare us.
With Mordecai at hand,
The wisest in the land,
We'd have him to prepare us—
Were I King Ahasuerus.
Were I King Ahasuerus
I'd toss out old Vashti
With bigger dreams than britches.
What's with these ancient bitches?
A diff'rent wife for me—
Were I King Ahasuerus.
Were I King Ahasuerus
To fortune I could bear us.
One people, marked forever:
A Jewish race, together.
To this compact I'd swear us—
Were I King Ahasuerus.
A few months ago, my Kinesis Advantage2 keyboard stopped working properly. I was able to locate a backup keyboard shortly afterward, but the backup is missing a few keys, so I still wanted to repair my daily driver and return it to use.
I exchanged a series of emails with a Technical Specialist at Kinesis, Mr. Tyler Sullivan, in which we discussed the keyboard's behavior and the scope of the problem. He suggested that the main cable, which connects the keyboard over USB, might be shorting out. He sent me a replacement cable to install.
I wasn't able to get around to this as fast as I wanted, but today was the day. I flipped the keyboard onto its face, unscrewed the back plate, and put the plate aside to expose the circuit board.
Part of the 2019 Weeklong Wine Country Poetry Fight. Written while hiking in Austin Hills State Recreation Area, in response to a challenge from Chris Stasse: "in five minutes, write a poem on what you see before you."
The north wind rises
Descends onto the ridge
Meets both trees
And swirls away
After I read this aloud, Chris said it reminded him of descriptions of nature from the poet Wang Wei [王维].
Yesterday I got on a plane from Santa Ana to Sonoma. I was supposed to meet my friend Chris Stasse at that airport, but two things went awry:
Chris misunderstood me, and went to SFO airport instead of Sonoma.
After two turbulent attempts at landing in a rainstorm, which induced vomiting in many passengers (and nearly in me), the flight crew made the decision to divert our landing to Sacramento.
All's well that ends well. After a two-hour shuttle ride -- first southwest, then northwest -- I finally met up with Chris at Sonoma airport, still with plenty of time to attend his badminton club's potluck.
If you look at the bottom of this post, after the main text, you'll see that I've added tags to categorize the pages of my website. Clicking one of the links in the "Tags" section will take you to a summary page, listing all the posts with that tag.
Originally, a bug was causing the phrase "Tags: " to show up even on pages without any tags, but as of 2019-12-08 I've rewritten the code to take care of that.
I propose a videogame with two modes. Mode 1 is played in a 3rd-person or 1st-person perspective (I think 1st-person would be more satisfying.) On your turn, you swing your sword toward the enemy's body. The motion of the sword can be precisely controlled, as can the hit location; part of the game skill is hitting a "juicy" place on your enemy.
My milkshake is a peanut-butter treat
With chocolate, too, appearing in the mix
A glass so large, so sickeningly sweet
That I need less than half to get my fix
I'm in a diner with a weighty tome
Great English Poems, edited by Briggs
Across the table, Adam looks at home
With Murakami, and with coffee swigs
There comes a sudden motion from below
As Adam lays a tickle on my knee
I counter-jest, exclaiming, "Nandato!"
Which Adam laughs at oh-so-heartily
It's Wednesday. We have nothing much to do.
The skies change from a rainy gray to blue.
