The Art and Craft of Poetry. Michael R. Collings

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ I dwell among the fair;

      For you have no room for Mary;

      She was ever in your way;

      And fears the good will shun her!

      Will they, darling mother, say?

      Tell me—tell me truly—mother,

      Ere life’s closing hour doth come,

      Do you think that they will keep me

      In the shining angels’ home?

      I was not so wayward, mother,

      Nor so very—very bad,

      But that tender love would nourish,

      And make Mary’s heart so glad!

      Oh! I yearned for pure affection,

      In this world of bitter woe;

      And I long for bliss immortal,

      In the land where I must go!

      Tell me once again, dear mother,

      Ere you take the parting kiss,

      Will the angels bid me welcome,

      To that land of perfect bliss?

      LITTLE BOY BLUE

      The little toy dog is covered with dust,

      But sturdy and staunch he stands;

      And the little toy soldier is red with rust,

      And his musket moulds in his hands.

      Time was when the little toy dog was new,

      And the soldier was passing fair;

      And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue

      Kissed them and put them there.

      “Now, don’t you go till I come,” he said,

      “And don’t you make any noise!”

      So, toddling off to his trundle-bed,

      He dreamt of the pretty toys;

      And, as he was dreaming, an angel song

      Awakened our Little Boy Blue—

      Oh! the years are many, the years are long,

      But the little toy friends are True!

      Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,

      Each in the same old place—

      Awaiting the touch of a little hand,

      The smile of a little face;

      And they wonder as waiting the long years through

      In the dust of the little chair,

      What has become of our Little Boy Blue

      Since he kissed them and put them there.

      Lineation

      Lineation refers to choice of line length, a technique essential to much mod­ern poetry, which often relies heavily on place­ment on the page, length of lines, and physical presentation. Compare, for exam­ple, poetry by Walt Whitman, Mari­anne Moore, and Allen Ginsberg, with their long lines and biblical cadences that sweep majestically from margin to margin; poems such as Susan Musgrave’s “Lure” (TBAP 882) or William Carlos Wil­liams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow” and “This Is Just To Say,” which often seem to hug the left-hand margin of the page; and poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Judith Rodriguez, and others which seem scattered almost at random, with lines punctuating ex­panses of white space.

      The poet’s choice of form often dictates basic line length, how­ever, particu­larly in traditional metrical forms. Note the different ef­fects in the following po­ems:

      M

      i

      A thousand wives lie close to heart,

      intimáte,

      shape shivering breasts to word-dream

      couplings,

      bald lips to consummation

      in the lust

      of vividry

      and elán vital of transmutation

      pressing painful birth into a wilder universe

      part and part and part and intimation

      timbreling into

      completion

      ii

      A thousand secret selves clamor

      for carved ears,

      a thousand altérnate selves,

      elementals recording what is/seems and was

      and what may be—

      a thousand pale prospective nightmares

      dreams

      expulsive energies define

      and

      redefine into infinity

      iii

      A thousand deaths thrive here

      a thousand

      apparitional

      cheddar-scaled goldfish

      floating in blue tepid water and

      cannibalizing

      bloated skull and unzipped spine

      of one that once was of their own kind

      when it still lived—

      but failed

      transmutation

      became

      consummation

      rocking on aquarial blue-plastic coated stones

      iv

      A thousand children sleep soundly

      in typic beds—

      progeny СКАЧАТЬ