#17

My poem this week, "Traveling Charleston and Main" is about the discriminations between different classes, but it was meant to be more than that. The setting of this poem is in a older time (the early 1900's). The young women are meant to be whores or prostitutes. I'm not sure how many people caught that. The word bedclothes seemed to catch some people off guard the intended meaning for this word was for bed sheets. When I did some research on the dialect of the 1900's this was in there and I thought it was cool. So, as far as the title goes I picked Charleston because it is known as the Holy City and I thought that might give the old women more of a reason to scowl and heave. I chose Main because this was the main road lower class women of this time were forced to do. That you all for the comments. I was unsure how everyone would feel about the language and was relieved to find that almost everyone liked it.

Traveling Charleston and Main

From when ce do these churlish people come?
Is it not enough to be a lady,
to curtsey gracefully, polite fully so?
We do wear our dresses and keep our manners.

Is it not enough to be a lady?
We cross our legs and pin our hair,
in fear of the cold night's draft.
But the women in bonnets scowl and heave as if we did something wrong.
We pull the Gents aside privily,

for they too fear the cold night's draft.
So we warm them in our weary bosoms,
but we pull them aside privily
and are steadfast within our tattered bedclothes.

Though we warm the Gents in our weary bosoms,
we still curtsey to all, polite fully so.
We are always steadfast within our bedclothes.
So from whence do these churlish women come?

#16

Even though I did not speak out in class I did find some interesting things that Billy Collins made reference to in his poem "Journal"(page 20).

Corot: was a French landscape painter and print maker in etching.
Catullus: was a Roman poet of the 1st century BC. The works that survived are still widely read today and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.

Camus: was a French author, philosopher, and journalist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957.

Anodyne: is a medicine that relieves or soothes pain by lessening the activity in the brain.

Kingfisher: Because I didn't know what it was... Is a bird.

Leonardo's Codex: I looked at a picture of the this. It had many doodles and drawings in the margins.

I really could not believe that I had read through this poem the first time and didn't even realize that I had read over so many unfamiliar things. The poem seemed familiar and comfortable enough without knowing the exact meanings and that really amazes me. Collins is pretty awesome if you ask me.

#15

A Cross Haiku

For my newly created form I used a non-traditional styled Haiku with the use of Acrostics.

My example:

Ted

Trees have a time to
expand, during a season
drenched enough at the heart.


The first words of each line spell out Ted and the first letter of each word makes the statement: That Ted as death. Not the best example but I ran out of time. It was a fun form to try out and if any of you have some extra time I encourage you to try it as well.