Catullus #85
I hate and I love. How can this be,
you ask?
I don't know, but I feel it happening,
and it destroys me.
I like the poem; I'm sure it sounds better in the original Latin, but I don't have that to offer you. Anyway, for my poetry class we were supposed to capture the feeling of that poem, though not necessarily imitate it. I wrote one poem and hated it, but I couldn't come up with another one until this morning, which poem I love and therefore turned in. Thus, again, love and hate. Still, here on my blog I'll post both poems starting with the one I love:
After the Flood, Vermont
As those who hate keep shouldering
what’s done, the roar of rivers banking them
on solitary journeys,
so I wander the valley
to sink stones where the old bridge once stood
like a mountain, and to watch whitewater
disappear downstream. Trees, shingles,
and earth are caught in the bends, though the flood
settled with time.
Months ago, what did I believe
about permanence? I’d never seen floorboards
warped; I’d never plucked nails from rotten planks
as yesterday, rebuilding a home on the other side.
Now, the road I followed here falls fifty feet
into a slow river, its gentle push carving anew
paths between boulders and debris.
Who loves
nature with its stubborn rebellion against us,
its red dawns, rolling hills, and hurricanes? The rain
slid down the slopes like sweat and could not be
contained, like love or hate. The thunder shouted
and my shout drowned in the fierce beauty of it.
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This poem loosely deals with a feeling of love and hate, but not with regards to relationships, more with regard to nature. If you read this poem alongside "The Morning Hills" by W.S. Merwin, you'll notice I stole a bit of the structure from him (but good poets steal all the time, so it's alright), but you probably can't do that because I can't find that poem online anywhere. Still, maybe at a bookstore... Anyway, I'm sure this poem's not perfect (they never come out perfect at first), but I like the overall feeling of it and it's something that I can relate to. Even if I've never experienced the actual details of a poem, I like to be able to get into it and feel it at some level. Question: should I change the tense in the last 4 lines to be present tense? Anyway, this is loosely based on the flood damage that happened in Vermont due to Hurricane Irene. That's that about this poem.
This next poem I'm going to talk about now and not afterwards. Frankly, I like some of the lines, but not the overall poem because I don't get into it or relate to it. I've never had an experience like it, nor would I want to. At first, based on the prompt, I was thinking about relationships (who doesn't with prompts like love and hate), but I don't think I write good relationship poems in the first place and therefore I normally avoid them. If there's something good about the following poem, feel free to let me know; it's obviously not the worst thing I've written (or I wouldn't post it here), but the speaker is so much not me that I'm not a personal fan of it. Something about it feels incomplete and empty. Anyway, without further ado:
Remnants
I.
It destroys me: punching
numbers on the phone,
hearing the tone
disconnect at your end,
beneath your thumb.
My wall is dented
from thrown phones.
II.
It destroys me: shooting
the breeze with an old
picture of you. Mute mouth
and cold ears, our conversations
crawl on in silence.
Back then, what words sounded
were gunshots.
III.
It destroys me: embracing
the purple sweater you tried on
at the mall, last year.
I finally bought it last week,
but you have escaped my arms,
and I'm merely clutching at sleeves.
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