Elements

When I was in college, I took a poetry class. Looking back, I learned so much in that class; my writing changed a lot afterward. That said, I was skeptical of many things at first. The professor’s philosophy about poetry differed from mine at the time. But as I tried the things I was hearing, my writing improved; some of the professor’s tenants that made me bristle are now core elements of how I write.

One time, the professor asked us to read a poem entitled “Tonight” by Michael Collier. Then, he asked us to write an imitation of this poem. He didn’t really define “imitation.” He left that up to us.

I was skeptical of such an exercise. How could someone really imitate another person’s poem? Were we supposed to imitate the structure? The tone? The feeling or subject? In the end, how could imitating someone else’s poem result in anything original or worth reading?

Despite all my questions, I did the exercise, and I was surprised at the result. I ended up with a poem called “Elements” that was truly mine (even a favorite) but was just as much inspired by Collier’s poem. When I compare the poems, the main imitation is that the speaker is an observer and experiences feelings of loss or exclusion. My poem adds religious themes that (hopefully) point the reader to something beyond loss, and even show the speaker a path out of his present state.

Since writing “Elements”, I have imitated other poems, such as Ben Jonson’s “Hymne to God the Father”, a poem whose form really struck me. Recently, I finished an imitation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” My poem is called “The Crow” and captures (comically) my antipathy for those birds.

“Elements” appeared in my first collection, The Wind and the Shadows. I hope you’ll also read Michael Collier’s “Tonight,” as it is an excellent poem, worth imitating 😉

Elements

Looking in the laundromat window,
you can see
a couple kids engrossed
in the ritual of play:

a sagging table becomes
their sea-worthy vessel,
its low bench the plank
off of which they gleefully
walk each other.
Then they crawl into an empty dryer,
fly through space, and step out
onto alien, threadbare terrain.
They try to diffuse the dollar-bill changer,
but, It’s too late.  Back to the ship,
and it pops into orbit like a cork,
riding the plume of bubbly flame
spurting from the change machine.

Children, you think.  But in the recitation 
of words, they make laughable props 
the flesh and blood of other worlds, elements by which 
they participate in the acts of gods and heroes,
by which they defy fear,
by which they escape the pane
soaking up your silhouette,
a stain through which you stare
at the choking washers.