And Summer Demands

It is a poet's lot to search for the magic that comes when words, strung together in an exact and unique way, take flight. Well put, Gerry.

i am glad, too! i love the beautiful sea of language. wow!

I like your strategic placement of the seasons, Gerry.
This poem is an original Gerry poem...I see here your
very own reasoning and poetic talent in the style I've
come to expect.

Thanks for sharing this today, Gerry, it's featured on the Friday Gather Essentials: Writing.

I don't remember the quotation exactly, or who even said it. But I'll paraphrase and trust that they were smarter than I am: "Metaphors shout 'Yes' but whisper 'No'." They are simultaneously a support and debasement to language. They're able to convey canyons full of understanding but the mere fact that we have to use them highlights a breakdown in language. This poem made me think of that, but it's often a thought that has me waking up in cold sweats.

Thanks, everyone. It's still a thrill to see that someone is reading my poetry.

Barbary--I guess it looks strategic, but it was a matter of something flowing through me more than careful assembly.

John--a great honor that is! Thank you so much.

Sean--I have never encountered that idea about metaphors and I find it very interesting. Metaphors arise because of our growing awareness of abstract ideas for which we have no existing words, and then they decay as they become part of the everyday skeleton on the language. It's part of a flowing process all languages go through, erosion if you will. Does that equate to what you think of as debasement? Thanks for the thoughtful comment!

New words and new meanings in the same, yet new things a poet looks at. With new eyes.
Love these lines:
"Few will know that these coral skeletons
Were once shiny metaphors
No one will mourn their passing
Into the sea of ancient languages"

The metaphor for water...hope you find many and make us richer with the knowledge.

Gerry - Your poetic urge is showing. The concept of metaphors being born and dying is quite poetic, and the metaphor you employ is wonderful: calcified remains of ancient language - a stunning image, made more powerful by its underwater, submerged character. I liked this a lot, Gerry.

Today I'll be both embracing and battling water: sealing new sandstone against the elements, but making it look like it is ever-wet.

Nice metaphor in a poem about..., metaphor. I never tire of a well placed metaphor, although it may have been used a zillion times before. I sort of look at metaphor from a John Dewey perspective. We take the old, reinvent it and make something new. Yes, there is a lot of bad poetry, if one only looks at such from the aspects of form and style. However, I believe any poem that gives even a single person a feeling of cartharsis, or other needed relevant emotional help has its own special merit. History has shown the elite and the high browed critics of any given era often foist on the public what types of poetry has acceptability. Those who blindly walk off cliffs to meet such artificially set standards often do a disservice to their own creativity as they strive for a difficult to obtain pefectionism.. Just like music, it usually is 50 or more years after the art is published that fresh eyes can see its quality or lack of quality. List of criteria with exceptions must be fashioned before a poem is sensed for its beauty or is taken off life support. Very few poems, out of the millions written, actually survive the ravages of time. A well placed metaphor for today may lose its relevance and meaning to future readers. There is no Holy Grail. Just wobbly structures sitting on an ocean front beach.

Thank you so much, Tom. Your words warm my heart a great deal, and it from the support of friends like you that I am growing to be able to find such words and metaphors. Good luck with your project, and may the metaphor be with you!

William--I note your argument for the worth of any poem with one well-placed metaphor. Once a metaphor becomes popular, it will die for with use it ceases to be fresh, but rather a dependable structure of language. I'm inspired by you to think of reading older poetry in a new way, to see if the old does become new again. Thank you, my friend. I value your input!

First the poem~First rate
Then the thoughts and comments~Provocative
Dear Gerry, you have gathered a fist full of poetic angst and you have laid it out for all poets who manipulate metaphor for meaning. Ultimately it matters not what poems remain... because poems are tidbits of concentrated reality. savored in a reading or two, and then we all move on. The famous poems that remain must be potent enough to maintain the third and fourth printing...and then as such, multiply into infinity.

Love this every time I read it.

Gerry, great poem. I really got into the flow as I read down the lines and began to say in my mind... "but, wait," then you saved me from spewing forth objections with the unraveling of your story. It's a curious poem, with its striking canundrum at the very end, and bringing the poem around to its main theme as hinted in the title. Having said this, I'm groping for a way to describe how you might strengthen this poem. After re-reading many times, I think it's that you need to build a better case for why you long for a metaphor of water and why summer "demands new words." Either that, or consider how you might work with the ending a bit to bring out ambiguities of metaphor without, perhaps, having to tie it into summer (this would necessitate changing the title, perhaps). Anyway, these are just my own personal ramblings, take or leave. All in all, I really like what you've got going here.

Ed, I really appreciate your insightful comments. I can tell you put some serious thought into them. I ordinarily begin with a title, a central idea around which whatever I write coalesces, but not this time. I ended up tacking on that title as a last resort, and you may be sensing that. The idea about building a better case for a metaphor about water is important and yet I'm not sure what to do about it. My instincts tell me to shelve this all for awhile and let me grow into a re-working at some future point. I was not inspired to do that until you helped give this some clarity. Thank you.

I enjoyed reading your poem. I'm glad you decided to publish it.

always pushing, always flowing
seeking the depths is the soul
of the planet as it flows between the bones.

Liz, I'm thrilled that you see my fascination behind my struggle to express what I see and feel in water and I'm deeply struck by what you suggest as the best metaphor for water. I was deeply "metaphorically challenged" too before I finally started writing poetry on Gather, after a 30 yr break.

Tina--I appreciate your support a lot!

Charlotte--I love that little verse. Could you expand on that idea into a longer poem about water?

I always liked the term, to lokk at with fresh eyes. If I ever publish, I know I will have to edit my poems. This is reason I value your and the critique of others so much. Yes, you should put a poem aside and then look at it with fresh eyes.
I found Ed's comments instructive and interesting. However, I found his point about Summer in your poem somewhat different tham my own interpretation. Considering your last line, I felt the word had a degree of appropriateness, but on further examination of the various vehicles you used in describing your theme, I believe the word Spring, or Springtime, or even Spring-like would fit much better.

By the way, I did write an answer to your excellent comment on my poem.

I very much dislike competition. I never feel like I'm in competition with other poets. It rather saddens me when I see a good poem get few comments. As you can see I have a fairly good following. It took time to build a good base of other Gather members. Although my poetry is of so so quality academically, it does have one quality that gives it popularity. Simply, it has an easy to understand message. I sometimes ask my Gather friends to read poems by other people by comments on my own site or on Norma's cafe site. I'm not being totally altruistic because I have to like the poem and think it can be reasonably understood to suggest others read it. For example, Dean (formerly Lost Soul) writes terrific poems. I can't even hold a candle to the rich layering of his words, but he gets maybe 15 comments per poem. I like introducing my Gather friends to good poems. I hope you don't mind me introducing you.
I have received over 20 private letters, (maybe more than 30), by people telling me they like my poems because it speaks to them on a deep personal level. Most have told me they don't like some the more artsy poems because they can't understand what the words mean. Personally, I enjoy things academic, but at the same time, I understand my audience. You don't play Jazz to a crowd that wants to hear Folk music. My roots are blue collar and I feel I am a common man, so I write for the common man. Some of the more artsy types won't like my poems and that is fine. They are not my target audience. I am in no way am deriding their tastes. I understand that the free verse poetry movement that started in the 20th century is the most vibrant force in poetry today. I have mixed feelings about free verse because so much of it is garbage, in my opinion. It seems that a lot of people writing free verse just write down fragmented sentences, add a few metaphor and call it a poem. Some free verse is quite excellent. I prefer writing quatrains because they challenge me. It really makes me strain to get the right words that can fit with a rhymed end word. I took it a step further and each verse has exactly the same number of syllables. I have tried to take this even a step further by making my poem have an Acrostic form, but without success. Do you know of any poem terminology for a poem that has verse of equal syllable length?
I read your comment about people still reading your poems. I very much enjoy your poems. I'm not sure what audience you are trying to reach. I think my best advice is to join several poetry groups and find your audience. You have such well crafted verse, I think it is only a matter of time before you have a good audience. Just one warning. Your audience can become quite demanding.

William, you are becoming a force in my Gather life, and I am deeply encouraged and humbled by your comments. Finding my target audience is a key life issue for me, because I kind of refuse to place myself in a narrow spectrum or to write in anything but my own voice. Just as I'd like to be able to do impersonations and escape my own voice, it would be good to be able to write to a specific audience, but something in me rebels against it. I admire your ability to focus on what will reach a broad audience and the way that uplifts people's lives. You may be much more altruistic than me.

I know what you mean about sticking to a form. I've never written any free verse before I came here (and no poetry for 30 years) and I'm beginning to enjoy that but I don't think I'll ever get over the powerful way in which form forces one to discover things that he or she would never have said in free verse. It makes for a powerful set of banks to let thought flow through.

Good to read this again, Gerry. Resonates strongly with the Owen Barfield excepts I subsequently published.

Thanks John, and I agree with you on that.

A truthful poem if ever there was one. I found this utterly true:

And so the poets sow their crops

In the spring and the fall and winter

Few will survive in the rocky, rule-bound soil

Of the language we wish to speak

How kind of you to say so, and to point out a favorite passage, Terry. Thank you for finding your way to this relic!

Waves of seasonal change are implied in this verse after a summer's exploration. Perhaps these images and thoughts are like the apparitions seen on a hot country road when humidity rises up to grant visions normally not apparent. One senses an evolutionary process here, from solid to liquid, from bits to organic wholeness....all in good time.

I missed this when you first posted it. Everything pertinent has been said. So, I will just quote Rabindranath Tagore...

"When old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders"

Glenn and Duckie One--I appreciate your visits to this dated poem. I like that idea, Glenn, of water vapor on a hot road, and I also appreciate the very real evolutionary process you have noted here, that of language and my own. That's a beautiful quote, Duckie and one I'll enjoy coming back to again.