"Writer's Block comes from too much head. Cut off your head. Pegasus, poetry, was born of Medusa when her head was cut off. You have to be reckless when writing. Be as crazy as your conscience allows...."
--Joseph Campbell
And for all my NaNoWriMo buddies: "It takes a heap of loafing to write a novel."
--Gertrude Stein
OK. I'll give it a whirl: LIES IN NOVEMBER
My stone has hands
It sleeps in the cradle
Of my hands,
Drinking my fire
My stone grows hair
In wonderful curls
Down its silky back
It loves the ice
That breaks me
More than it loves me
It sings of boots
Of blackbirds dying
Of the cracking of heaven
My stone knows black and white,
Was there at the hour
Of my birth
Understands cemetaries
Is flexible
.
15 comments:
I like this poem. It's strength is that I want to go back to read it again and again to look for the stone.
- re. your previous post. I always wondered why in most African countries women are the official storytellers- that is, storytelling is a woman's craft- but the writers have been men. Glad you're both.
Both what? A writer and a man? Um,oh. A storyteller and a writer! Oh, yeah!
The poem is beautiful. And I got a laugh from the cartoon. :-)
You gave it a whirl and you won. I love your stone.
"It loves the ice
That breaks me"
That says so much to me.
Easy for Gertrude to say, she was on SPEED!
Love the Stein quote!
And your poem, the lines are strong, certain, just as they leap from one brilliant image to the next. Really beautiful, taut, and deep.
P.S. Project Gutenberg has some Stein available for free. I think she writes prose like Philip Glass writes music. (But I'm not calling Glass a speedfreak. I don't know about him.)
Anyhow its here.
I like this part the best:
It loves the ice
That breaks me
More than it loves me
It sings of boots
Of blackbirds dying
Of the cracking of heaven
Man, that is just a really nice bit.
Thanks for stopping by my blog. Your poem is an interesting interpretation on the theme.
I like the Joseph Campbell quote you shared. It's so true.
This poem keeps me step by step to the end, too...always the mark of a good poem in my book!
(the cartoon is a hoot and love that Joseph Campbell quote, too)
Awesome post! I loved your poem and its strength. It's beautiful.
Great cartoon!
Interesting images that work into a coherent piece, hard to do with such sparse words.
I really like the imagination in this, the giving life to an inanimate object. Just what is your stone, though? I can't be sure...
my stone is a smooth river stone, from the bed of the Provo River. True things about it are: It will NOT grow hair, it does not know how to swim, it doesn't sing about blackbirds....por not loud enough to hear anyway....
I love rocks.
And I love your poetry.
I ran out of words to describe why. So I just read it and enjoy reading others describing why it's so great.
Not good. Great.
I just sit here and fill myself up with it. And wonder at this thing called the internet, that brought it to me when I can't go out and get it on my own.
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