Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Poetry is very subjective, you can even enjoy it when in a good mood, and not care for it when you're in a bad mood, or vice versa. Here's one from the New York Times about a wreck

A Voice From the Wreck
By Chad Abushanab

I’m an accident on the south side of the town,
on the outskirts, where the desert holds its ground
against the streetlights’ last defenses. I’m the fire
leaping from the Chevy’s frame to smite the sky
and drain the cool out of the night. I’m the cell phone
in someone’s shaking hand, woken up
by the explosion in the street, the calls for help.
I’m an ambulance, a siren in the dark.
I’m the stoplight. I’m the kid out driving drunk,
vodka on his breath and bile in his throat.
I’m the headlights slamming final recognition.
And when you whisper names like curses
in your room, I’m the smell of gasoline in bloom,
the bloodstained moon behind the clouds.
I guzzle broken bones and busted radiators,
coolant running thick in thirsty gutters.
And if you ever manage to shut your eyes, to sleep,
I’ll wander from the wreckage as you dream.

- so, doesn't rhyme, wanders about, but sorta stays on theme.

The first half seemed to be heading somewhere on a story line I could appreciate, but the 2nd half lost it. The last two lines don't even belong. Those should have been cut.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/magazine/poem-a-voice-from-the-wreck.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fautomobiles

The NYT has hired Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize winner and a former poet laureate of the United States.

She edited “The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry,” and her “Collected Poems: 1974-2004” was published in 2016.

I imagine those are far better than this, which she says this about: "Staggered lines and irregular rhymes offer little reprieve from a world spellbound by despair and pervasive violence. Classic Greek hexameters alternate with shorter, bumpier cadences; "

Which to me means that the writer wasn't going to polish this into a perfect rhymed and metered poem - like Shakespeare, nor go for message over meter, like rap - think Eminem.

 Chad Abushanab is the winner of the 2018 Donald Justice Poetry Prize. His debut poetry collection, “The Last Visit,” was published by Autumn House Press in March 2019. The speaker in Chad Abushanab’s poem is neither witness nor victim but oracle. Staggered lines and irregular rhymes offer little reprieve from a world spellbound by despair and pervasive violence. Classic Greek hexameters alternate with shorter, bumpier cadences; each return to the left margin allows us just a gasp of air before snapping us back as desolation sweeps in once more. Hopelessness galvanized by rancor, retribution on a loop: The damage runs deep. This voice will haunt for a long time. Selected by Rita Dove

So, that's what the NYT and Poet Laureate like in a poem.

I figure, it's not my thing, but, now and then some of you readers really appreciate the variety of things I come across, so I thought, post it, let you all decide. I can always delete if the majority of you think it's either mediocre or sucks. If not, this poet gets some free publicity for writing about a car crash. Not too many people have the moxy to try that. 

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