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

[geekmama.livejournal.com]

How beautiful! And how wonderful that such unimaginable (to me) cold is so inspiring.

*shivers*

It's cold and dampish here today -- must be in the 50's! BRRRRRR...!

[honorat.livejournal.com]

In the 50's! Cold!? All right I'll give you damp--damp can make cold a lot colder. It's a cliche here that the cold is dry, but it's true. The snow is so dry it can hardly melt into water. It's like fine diamond dust, not even slippery. The windows of my car never frost up! NO moisture in the air at all. Last week the muskrats were swimming around in circles in the lake trying to keep the ice back. This week, I'll bet they're hibernating. I wish I was--but so far my alarm clock keeps waking me up. It's not the cold that bothers me, it's the frozen eyelashes by the time I get to my car!

I'm glad you can enjoy my winter vicariously. One has to do something constructive with it!

[demishock.livejournal.com]

Pretty!

How come my English teachers never gave us cool assignments like that???

[honorat.livejournal.com]

*Puts on English Teacher Hat* Here you go demishock! Have an assignment. :D If, in your copious amounts of spare time, you do it, do let me know! LOL.

Have a good day.

[demishock.livejournal.com]

I sense a challenge. Oh boy...

I'll see what I can do. Just keep in mind, my mother and sister are the ones in my family with the poetry gene; I like stories. ^^; So I haven't written a poem since I took Creative Writing last year... I'll try it, though...

[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]

I'm really not normally a poet myself, but since I teach poetry, I have to give it a try once in awhile. I'm starting to like sonnets though. This is my third this year.

[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. :-)