Day 18 - Levertov, Me, and a Morning of Writing

So here was the morning assignment. I wanted to use the structure of her poem, "About Marriage". Which I won't adequately show here because of the blog restrictions on line length and spacing. This is her first line:

Don't lock me in wedlock, I want

marriage, an

encounter -

So I took this idea of marriage and made it my own concern. The feelings I have about calling Valerie my "wife". I think it makes her less. Like she's a half person identifiable only by her title, that she would be the same as other "wives". I frequently just say "Valerie".

The middle part of Levertov's poem was about an encounter with birds. I frequently dislike poems about birds or flowers or anything where poets just list off scientific names to birds or flowers. I hate any poem that starts with...."I spied a bird while sitting at my desk" and then so forth onto comparing that bird to the world or their life and then the bird flies away and I'm at home gagging.

So thinking of that, I forced myself to write myself sitting and writing and thinking about stuff. Now I'm not sure if the middle works yet. But I like how the poem turned out I think. Levertov study, away!

A Four Letter Word

I don’t say wife when I speak of you
it is tethered
to old earth-
(heavy, connoted)

I tell them instead of the rainstorm
built for us

(the sun, sensing its time

nudges at my attention

I have a fan set

to Paper Storm

and my yesterday knots

have piped from me

into the watertable

I keep my books close

a room of teachers often

but sometimes an audience

the applause of pages

somewhere near

you are cleating the earth

to move at your speed

my words are wings

we have become momentum)

there was a rainstorm
that while we walked through
woke every tree
though it felt like we did
like we were inevitable here

Day 16 - Part 2, Levertov Study

Let me show you what I mean by a close study. I try to write a different version of the poem I'm reading. I try to imitate it with my own words. I try to stay in the same cloth. In further drafts, I'll break the seams. But for now, and this one is the closest I may have written, I stay close. First is Denise Levertov's poem. Afterwards is mine.

Gone Away

When my body leaves me
I'm lonesome for it.
I've got

eyes, ears,
nose and mouth
and that's all.

Eyes
keep on seeing the
feather blue of the

cold sky,
mouth takes in
hot soup,
nose

smells the frost,

ears hear everything, all
the noises and absences,
but body

goes away to I don't know where
and it's lonesome to drift
above the space it
fills when it's here.


MY VERSION NOW. Though it's daunting to put up a poem right after a master like Levertov.

I Need What I Don't Want

When my guilt leaves me,
I'm lonesome for it,
I still have

anger, confusion,
closed eyes and fists,
but that's all

Anger
keeps the mind
filled with blood,

though confusion,
makes my years
fold together
like a map

the present gets crowded

perhaps because I close my eyes
and still smile
smiles of fists, smiles
that shout 'regardless'.

I need guilt to steer
because it's lonesome
to walk without the past
guiding at the elbow.