Original Poetry: A Cold Season

[honorat]

by Honorat

This is an assignment I gave my students: Write a sonnet with the rhyme scheme: quiet, kiss, riot, abyss, trees, June, peas, prune, crystal, bar, pistol, guitar, brooded, concluded.

So I did one too, and here it is for what it's worth. You can guess what kind of weather we've been having around here--it's -25 C.


Inquire into origins of quiet.
Winter mystery touched with snowflake's kiss
On frozen branches, in icy riot
Tracing fractals. Glimpse into the abyss
Of darkest lake, a silver sky in trees
Caught a prisoner forever from June
warmth and the flirting fragrance of sweet peas.
In some distant hand, chill knives of frost prune
the soft lines of life into sharp, crystal
Planes, glittering. From summer's heat a bar
Forever, the black ice cracks, a pistol
Shot. The lone wind strums through boughs like guitar
Strings, its bitter song; a cold thought brooded
O'er arctic world, unmoving, still, concluded.

Comments

[aft-and-daft.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is really cool how you managed to make a coherent poem out of a bunch of rather random words. Very impressed! :-)

If I ever get myself back to college (I will when the kiddos get bigger), I really will have to take some English/Literature courses. Actually, I was shocked the other day when I realized that I have never taken a college level English/Lit course - 3 1/2 years in college and never took an English/Lit course, when I nearly was an English major (I was going for a degree in history instead). Something to look forward to, I suppose. :-)

[honorat.livejournal.com]

The words were indeed very random--I got the assignment from another teacher. College English/Lit courses are fun (not that I'm biased or anything)--weird some times, but fun. I read some of the great poets and despair at how beautiful their use of language is and how impossible to do anything even a tenth as well. I always like having adult returning students in my class--they're often afraid they'll be left in the dust by bright young things, but they really have a great deal more experience and motivation. And "brains is brains" no matter how old one is. Or as Plautus says "ingenio adipiscitur sapientia" roughly translated as "he who is born an idiot will die an idiot". You write well, so you should do well in College Lit. It's always good to have something to look forward to.

[aft-and-daft.livejournal.com]

>College English/Lit courses are fun (not that I'm biased or anything)--weird some times, but fun.<
LOL :-)

>I read some of the great poets and despair at how beautiful their use of language is and how impossible to do anything even a tenth as well.<
I understand the feeling. Though I think writing (or in my case, *attempting* to write) makes one appreciate great writers and poets so much more. :-)

>I always like having adult returning students in my class--they're often afraid they'll be left in the dust by bright young things, but they really have a great deal more experience and motivation.<
That is reassuring to know. :-)

>as Plautus says "ingenio adipiscitur sapientia" roughly translated as "he who is born an idiot will die an idiot"
LOL!! hee hee hee, that's a qoute worth remembering for choice moments. *g*

>You write well, so you should do well in College Lit<
aw, thanks. :-)