Nothing Gold Can Stay -- a Poetry Friday post

[kellyrfineman]

This morning, I had to drive S to school because she opted to stay home and finish a bit of homework she'd forgotten rather than take the bus that comes an hour before school opens. (I don't quarrel with her decision, which was sound, or with her priorities, which were to spend all last night studying for a major unit test in Spanish, and I enjoy

Comments

Karen Edmisten said:

[anonymous]

How interesting -- I'd never read the earlier ending to the poem. Thanks.

Re: Karen Edmisten said:

[kellyrfineman]

I found it interesting as well. Based on the "achieves", the prior line must've been about "leaves". I'm hoping to track down the whole thing to see how it morphed over time.

[kellyrfineman]

High praise indeed, since that's how I feel about your blog!

[slatts]

I love your poetry lessons!

I struggle with them sometime b/c they remind me of the "after-the-fact" dissecting of work that I don't always feel the artist consciously figures in... this more so in Art History. I'm really not convinced that all artists worked with the triangles and the "this-and-thats" that make a painting a "masterpiece"... Could they maybe just have "done it" and instinctually it was "correct"....

But you convince me in poetry it may be more of a crafting process. More like a symphony than a pop song. Much labor before the piece is a masterpiece...

So, very informative these lessons.....

and so very humbling.... I have "worked harder" on my poems since "taking your class". So, many edits and lines denoting syllables and beats...and yet I still feel like an undisciplined "rock n' roll poet" when I sit in classroom...

Thanks for this appreciation of an art...a word art!

[kellyrfineman]

You are most welcome. Some of the stuff that gets into poems is serendipitous. I know of several that popped out fully formed, or very near so, for me. But many of them don't. An image just doesn't work how you think it should. Or you see a way to make the poem be more than what it started as. And in those times, revision is key. I found it good to know that with something that appears simple - an 8-line poem - Frost spent several years revising it off and on. Six drafts still exist. Others probably were jettisoned along the way.

He wanted to make it say more than the original nature poem that came to him, and he did.

[anonymous]

Wow. Fascinating to read those last lines from an earlier draft. And thanks for the essay links. Will try to read them later.

Jules, 7-Imp

[kellyrfineman]

The linguistics one is dense, and yet I loved it.

[kellyrfineman]

I love this poem, too. It's really a gem.

The linguistics guy analyzes the use of alliteration in various lines (as pertains to stressed syllables), and also claims there are two palindromic lines (if you isolate the starting sound of the stressed syllable) in the middle, and that these devices give the poem extra weight and are one of the things that keeps the end-stopped couplets from pouncing on the reader. I found it fascinating, but decided most people's eyes would blear at reading it.