It took me fourteen years to learn I owe
apologies to the poet Tony Hoagland
for the three credit hours labeled
"Creative Writing: Poetry" he taught last century.
We undergrads wrote in circles, never expanding
beyond the way we softened bad writing
with "please" and "thank you," collegiately
punching out poems for Monday-Wednesday-Friday,
navigating by sense of smell through GPAs
while rhyming non-stop with unfinished senses
of self. We picked at villanelles like insects
tearing food from ant-traps with tiny mandibles,
ignoring Tony as we carried unwieldy poison
to recite to doomed colonies in the earth below.
1 comment:
What's with this arbitrary subscription? I am too fortunate to have been granted this delectable morsel finally, never dreaming I'd been scanted its earlier brethren.
Did Dr. Hoagland revise the sonnet Petrarca and everyone's beloved Bard at least kept within rhymed bounds and, taking the strictures off, render a twisted child to strut his stuff on the stage of this millennium's prosperous new Eden?
Ah, but I can't help adoring your poetry and means of expression though I take issue with the form you offer the more oft unwitting reader as that most exquisite thing called a lofty "sonnet." We shall not inquire asininely "how you do it" but merely try to tastefully admire its beauties from all the angles that flash their brilliance in the morning sun, failing even in that hopeful attempt.
I love your imagery and what is it? sense of humor? La, it seems a marvel that too sweetly presents reality dressed to kill in a what? blank verse sonnet?
Lovely. And now that I finish, your blog says this "latest" was published almost six months ago? Is google playing pranks or what is going on? Either way, I like it very much.
ttfn,
Jenny
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