What month this is I think I know.
This writing style is apropos;
To honor poetry and those
Like Shakespeare, Dickinson, and Poe.
To celebrate them, I propose,
Before I start my metered throes,
To explicate what separates
A poem from a piece of prose.
Though the two sometimes conflate
(In classifying there’s debate),
It’s elevating words through craft;
Diverse ideas to illustrate.
*
Shall I compare verse to a summer’s day
Where sunshine meets the cooling ocean’s breeze;
That welcome brilliance after June and May,
And famous fogs that blanket all one sees?
O no! It is an ever-changing thing
Encompassing far more than charm or rhyme.
For poets’ work is making language sing
In tandem they develop over time.
*
For rhyme is a thing like feathers —
Trips lightly off the tongue —
And yet — it would be out of place —
In certain types of work —
*
Poets of Japan
Measured their metric footfalls
Sunlight through water.
*
yet get
modern poetry
scary
be-wary
little stanzas
nonsensish wordage
verbiage
[isn’t this dada-ish]
unto wordy gurdy
quips in twee
playful silly spilling
look assonance and rhyming
(outside parentheses)
infernal vernal spree
yet poetry
wheeEEE
*
I will arise and point out, your appetite to whet,
Some of our local poets, of fame and firestorm made
A Pulitzer awardee, a former state laureate,
And one you want for your MFA.
Though you may love perusing, you may prefer to that,
Reciting from your own books of writings in coffehouses warm:
Rebecca’s on a Tuesday, or Monday at Lestat’s,
Point Loma, where Lazy Hummingbirds swarm.
We will arise and go out, for anywhere we are,
We hear those words like music from poets new and past;
While reading at the beaches or driving in a car.
Life’s delicate, but words will last.
*
I have written
these words
in the style
not my own
at which
you are probably
shaking
your head
Forgive me
it was delicious
and fun
*
Works parodied (in order of appearance):
Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
Sonnets 23 and 116 by William Shakespeare
”Hope” is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson
Haiku of Matsuo Bashō
[hist whist] by E. E. Cummings
The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W. B. Yeats
This Is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams
Libby Weber is a contributor to Voice of San Diego. Follow her on Twitter @thelibbyweber or email libbyweber@gmail.com.