Poem in Process: April 2, 2016

Number 2

Po-em
for John A. Wood

Your words about Williams lodge as proem.
I am still there in that sultry classroom.

We discussed his vanished, Platonic plums
shimmering in the mind of the reader.

You weighed the merits of plums, coming
down, hard, for the value of his po-em.

Leslie Schultz

What do you think? Does the word “poem” have one or two syllables?

That memorable class discussion was the first time I had ever heard the word said so decisively, in conversation, with two syllables.

After yesterday’s post, a sharp-eyed and thoughtful reader raised the question (off-line) of whether the word “poem” has one or two syllables. (Thank you!) This is a great question, one I have been pondering since that graduate workshop at McNeese State University.

We were discussing William Carlos Williams’ famous and evocative “This is just to say…” (see full text, more than a hundred poems, and a full bio of him at the Poetry Foundation website). For those who may not have seen it recently, the poem takes the form of a short note left near the icebox in a kitchen where the hungry person to whom the poem is addressed sought to find those last plums “so sweet and so cold.” The note–one unpunctuated sentence–asks forgiveness because the addresee was probably saving them for breakfast.

In this tiny poem, the most vivid image by far is of those shimmering plums, so desirable and now forever out of reach. Someone in the class, I recall, said that he would not find the theft of the plums easy to forgive. John said decisively, in his resonant, Southern-accented voice, “The plums were gone, true. But in their place was a po-em.”

Two full syllables.

As the reader yesterday rightly observed, illustrating with the famous lines by Joyce Kilmer, (“I think that I shall never see / a poem lovely as a tree”), the word “poem” is traditionally given two syllables. My most recent dictionary, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, gives both options nearly equal weight, though lists the two-syllable option first. Is this a regional difference? (I grew up in the Midwest, hearing “pome” rather than “po-em”.) Is the language evolving along telegraphic, Twitteresque lines? Or is it, in some respects, inherently ambiguous?

One puzzle often occurs when two vowel sounds (or a long diphthong) are side-by-side. The word “fir,” for example, in unambiguous in its single syllable. Once a silent “e” is added, however, to make “fire” the vowel sound shifts and lengthens. One syllable? Or two? Or, as I do in speech, for “poem”, something in between, a sort-of nestled-in, semi-swallowed, one-and-a-half syllables?

James Joyce’s Pomes Pennyeach, is a collection of thirteen poems composed over a twenty-year period and published in 1927 by the Parisian-based book store and publishing concern, Shakespeare and Company. The small volume sold for a shilling (twelve pennies) and was a play on “poems” and “pommes” (the French word for “apples”)–and, perhaps, knowing Joyce’s multi-layered humor–also on “peach”. It was an Irish tradesman’s “baker’s dozen” or a French merchant’s ligniappe, a little something extra. (Today, I think the American phrase is the bald-faced “gift with purchase”.)

Poets, especially those English language poets who sometimes work within strict metrical schemes, are delighted and daunted by words that taunt us with “now you see ’em, now you don’t” syllables.Certainly it opens up more choices.  I think it is part of the magic of English that this feature is embedded with the very word “poem.”

If you have a strong opinion or a stray thought on this topic, please let me know!

Until tomorrow!

Leslie

Poem in Progress: April 1, 2016

Number One

Spondee
for Northfield, Minnesota

During the wanderings of my childhood,
I would dream of a little wooden house
set on a quiet street, sheltered by lush trees.
There would be rising fragrance of cut grass
and roses. Near the doorbell, my own mailbox.
All hopes centered on one syllable: HOME.

Now, I see double-heavenily. Here,
on the edge of the prairie, just uphill
from the blue river, really quite near
to our local shops, arts guild, and library—
and twin shining campuses—I put roots down
every day, among friends, in a HOME TOWN.

Leslie Schultz

It interests me that the first poem of this experimental month (of the National Poetry Writing Month challenge) is a meditation on both my physical home in Northfield and my artistic home in poetry. As a yoga student and poet, I have often pondered the connections and resonances vibrating between the single syllables of “poem” and “home” and “OM”. Lately, I have been preoccupied by the expansion of the ideas expressed by the doubling of that one syllable in the concept-word “home town”.

For those who don’t pour over books of prosody, a “spondee” is a metrical unit of two long (or “stressed” or “accented”) syllables. A spondee acts like a brick wall (another spondee!) Spondees slow things down with their inherent solidity and, in this way, contrast markedly with the natural flow of English speech as represent in the heart beat (spondee) of the iambic line: “That time of year thou mayst in me behold….” (Shakespeare, sonnet 73)

I see (spondee) from The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics that “spondee” comes from the Greek, ” ‘used at a libation’ poured to the accompaniment of the 2 long notes…” I think I shall go out and pour a small libation of my own onto the bricks of the patio Tim laid down (spondee), two thimblefuls of red wine (spondee) to concretely express this moment’s joy of a full heart. Then sit down and savor a cup of green tea.

Until tomorrow!

Leslie

April = National Poetry Month

Poem Barn One

This barn, outside of Red Wing, Minnesota, with part of a public art poem still visible despite weathering and renovations, speaks volumes to me. As you all know, April is National Poetry Writing Month. (It is also National Card and Letter Writing Month as well as National Jazz Appreciation Month!)

This year, I am going to take a long-contemplated plunge and participate in the National Poetry Writing Month project–“NaPoWriMo” to insiders!  If you aren’t familiar with this annual “poetry boot camp”, you can learn more about it here.

Analogous to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which attracts more than 300,000 writers who sign up to write 50,000 words during the month of November (and hold themselves accountable by posting their word counts each day), the poetry version invites poets to write (and if they wish, to share publicly through online posting) one poem each day in April.

This year, I am in! Each day, I will post my poetic “catch of the day”. It is rather exciting–and terrifying, too, since I don’t know whether writer’s block will strike or whether I will feel the poem is too raggedy

Poem Barn Trim

and unpolished to post. No matter–post it, I shall.

Perhaps you’d like to participate? If so, let me know, and I would be happy to include a link to your site each day. And if you are celebrating National Poetry Month in a different way this year, let me know–I will share that idea, too.

Yours in poetry, Leslie

IMG_1264 (Goldfish) Leslie Schultz