Monday, September 14, 2009

Poetic Time Trials

I've been working on a story lately that's been very slow going, and in a moment of sheer frustration today I decided to take a break and do something that goes entirely against the usual grain of my writing process: try to pen a Shakespearean sonnet in one hour. While I'd still have to worry about form, I knew the running clock would force me to accept the words as they came, more or less, and to let the poem suggest its own shape and direction.

I have a small coyote statue on my desk that my parents brought back from Arizona when I was around ten, so I decided to write about that. It's carved from a very hard, shiny wood, which I think might be lignum vitae, but I'm not sure. Here's a picture:



Surprisingly, I was able to meet the deadline, just barely (I think I finished off the couplet at the 56 minute mark). I mostly used off rhymes instead of full rhymes, and I admit, I did go back and change two words to avoid a descriptive redundancy. But on the whole, the poem below was composed in one hour, and while it's not a great piece of work I have to say the exercise was fulfilling and a lot of fun. This is something I could see myself doing from time to time, especially when things feel a bit stagnant.


Coyote

Sleek-bodied, neck craned in a primal howl
of silence, you are darker than the wood
of my desk, and harder too. Some soul
in Scottsdale, where the rocks are red as blood
almost, carved your smooth totemic form
and hawked you to an upscale hotel gift shop
where my parents noticed you, my mom
saying, “He would like that.” The slope
of your back I have always liked, reflecting
sun or lamplight, and your eyes, mere holes,
two twists of the artist’s blade. So affecting,
these things we keep around us, our baubles
and trinkets. If they had a voice of their own
would they sing our small histories to the moon?

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