Grex Poetry Conference

View Responses

Grex Poetry Item 94: The Creator
Entered by flem on Fri Jun 4 02:44:16 UTC 1999:

This was written after reading Erinn's "Time Honored Tradition", 
item:61.  Thanks for the inspiration!

The Creator   6/3/99

As I hold this half-formed wooden figure, 
I feel that much closer to my maker.
I know what it must have felt like 
Just before the breath of life was 
Granted Man; I feel a shadow of God's joy
As I, too, little god of little wooden
Men, shape little worlds.  
My people speak to me, 
Silently they call on me to free
Their crudely moulded bodies from the 
Grain of cedar, oak, mahogany.
Simple folk, stiff and silent always,
I feel so much love for these, my children.
Fashioned in the likeness of their maker,
Crudely, clumsily, they love me too.

6 responses total.

#1 of 6 by orinoco on Sun Jun 6 22:30:44 1999:

This is a wonderful idea - especially the last line.  The image of the artist
as God is pretty common, but the idea of the artists creations loving him as
he loves God is a twist I haven't seen before, and I like it.  

The only complaint I have is that some of the line breaks are in awkward
places.  Splitting "wooden men" across a line break is especially clunky. 
Is there some sort of meter scheme here that I'm not seeing that forces you
to break the line there? 

Other than that, as I said before, I like this a lot.

#2 of 6 by arianna on Mon Jun 7 11:52:03 1999:

WOW!  *I* imspired this?  
I'm floored.  Absolutely knocked asunder.  Thank you for the honor!

#3 of 6 by orinoco on Wed Jun 9 18:41:11 1999:

(10 bonus points for using "asunder" in a spontaneous exclamation)

#4 of 6 by flem on Wed Jun 9 22:34:35 1999:

re resp:1 - The meter was simply me trying to avoid iambic, since the 
  first few lines, which were the ones that suddenly came to me, and of 
  which the rest of the poem is just an elaboration, were not iambic.  
  Rather than attempt to change them, I tried to stick with the 
  opposite of iambic (whose name I can't recall off the top of my head;
  dactylic perhaps? hmm...), which resulted in odd line breaks 
  sometimes.  But more natural line breaks would have made me slip 
  into iambic.  When that happens, it's hard for me to get back out.  :)

#5 of 6 by orinoco on Thu Jun 10 23:44:46 1999:

Ahh.... I get it.  Hmm...

Well, I'd still consider moving the line breaks around now that you've got
it written not-in-iambic-meter, but that's just me.

#6 of 6 by flem on Sun Jun 13 06:12:56 1999:

I don't know.  I mean, lots of the "classic" poetry I read has line 
breaks in places that appear funny to me if I've been reading free verse 
recently, but it manages to make sense anyway.  I think that when 
reading poetry, the ability to, when necessary, *ignore* line breaks is 
important.  A lot of the singsongy effect that inexperienced poets get 
(not that I claim to be experienced or anything) when they try to write 
metered poetry, especially with lines of fixed length and/or rhyme, is 
due to a tendency to try to make line breaks coincide with rhythmic 
pauses.  Conversely, I picked a random Shakespeare sonnet just now and 
found this couplet:

     Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
     Calls back the lovely April of her prime.

When I read that, I pause at the comma, run straight through the line 
break as if it weren't there, and put a very slight pause between "back" 
and "the" in the second line.  
  Now, I grant that in the Shakespeare example the line break doesn't 
separate a phrase like I did with "wooden / Men", but then I never 
claimed to be on the order of Shakespeare yet.  :)

Response not possible - You must register and login before posting.