The Dreaded Poetry Post
April is, as you are all no doubt aware, National Poetry Month. Many of my Writer Friends and Writer Acquaintances have very bold plans for the month, like writing a poem every day. Seriously. There’s tons of them doing it.
It makes me tired to think about this.
Because I love you (I do, I assure you, love every last one of my handful of readers) and do not wish to alienate you at this early, fragile stage of our e-relationship, I will not follow suit. I will, however, give you a very few nuggets of poetic gold and/or horse manure to ponder. You be the judge.
For today, please enjoy/disdain/mock/scorn/delight in the very first poem I ever had published (in my hometown newspaper, no less!), a copy of which is even now hanging on the wall of my nonagenarian grandmother, confusing anyone who stops long enough to read it. (You’ll see.) I wrote it when I was nine and had fallen hopelessly, haplessly in love with Miss Edith Hamilton and her wicked, wickedly thorough book of mythology. Norse, Greek, Roman gods, all with their similarly gleaming muscles, cruel appetites, and casually incestuous, forked family trees? She exposed them all to my wondering, innocent eyes. Ah, Edith! You ruined me.
Brace yourselves.
Apollo was the god of the sun,
Zeus the Father of All,
Aphrodite, the goddess of love:
Troy, Greece, a broken wall.
A war can kill so many,
but the will of Zeus decides
whch of the ages should live
and which should die.
A giant horse rolled in one day
and it would be his will —
Zeus destroyed near all of Troy,
all Trojan blood was spilled.
Voila, my literary debut, written years before I knew what a Trojan was.
I’ve written a few others since then. Who knows? With enough encouragement and a few dozen margaritas, I might post some of them here this month. If you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.
04/05/2010 at 3:33 am
Love that you still have your poetry from when you were nine. I have mine, too, but yours is far superior. I wrote poems about sandwiches and porcupines (terrible rhymes). Maybe I’ll take you up on this challenge and post some of the grad. school stuff — darker pieces I desperately hoped were not the dreaded “McPoem” profs. loved to mock.
04/07/2010 at 12:16 pm
Lori – I can no longer be your friend. I read your poem on your blog. You were SUPPOSED to post a cruddy one. Huh. Backstabber.
Let me go send you a copy of my ABC roadkill book now…
04/07/2010 at 2:09 am
That is stunning for a nine year old! Well done, little Nikki.
04/07/2010 at 12:14 pm
Vonna – Thanks! If I showed you my high school angst poems, you wouldn’t say that. All “My love for you is limitless, my soul a fury” crud. Ah, to be young and delusional again…
04/10/2010 at 9:04 pm
You wrote this at nine? I am impressed. I write magnet poetry. Bad magnet poetry. But I’m trying to read a poem a day (at least). There’s something so soothing and restorative about poems.
04/11/2010 at 1:34 am
Nan – Thanks! I am not exactly sure what magnet poetry is, but I think I can guess. The kinds you make up with those pre-printed magnets? I have a set, of course. All writers must.
I love Pablo Neruda, Mary Oliver, Emily Dickinson, Seamus Heaney… Billy Collins… the list goes on. But Neruda is my go-to guy – poems to dig you out from under. Love him.
04/11/2010 at 11:44 am
Yes! That’s what magnet poetry is. I keep those magnets on my refrigerator. When my dog was a pup, she chewed up a few of the choice words so now it’s very challenging.I’m often missing some important verbs. (I could get another set but what’s the fun in that?)
Yikes! I don’t know the poems of Pablo Neruda. I’ll put him on my to-read list. 🙂