Contemporary Life

Ink has another use! Writing poetry and Chinese Brush Painting 

are two of my favorite uses for ink, but here is another.

*Spotted about San Jose Town on Columbus Day.*

I like the drapey dress, but I was taught to conceal bra straps

(and to use safety pins for control if necessary) and am having trouble

with the new ways, where straps should be coordinated and

actually part of the outfit.

Here is a poem set in a much earlier time!

It is from that wonderful anthology, 

The Voice That is Great Within Us; 

American Poetry of the Twentieth Century;

edited by Hayden Carruth, Bantam, 1970, pages 616-617.

(This anthology only ever seems to have been offered in the mass market paperback edition, which is now sadly yellowed and fast

getting worse. Poets are arranged by birthdate and so is the 

Table of Contents. I can't figure out HOW the tiny-print credits are arranged, or maybe I could tell you which of Merwin's books contain this poem.)

GRANDMOTHER WATCHING AT HER WINDOW

There was always a river or the train

Right past the door, and someone might be gone

Come morning. When I was a child I mind

Being held up at the gate to wave

Goodbye, goodbye to I didn't know who,

Gone to the War and how I cried after.

When I married I did what was right

But I knew even that first night 

That he would go. And so shut my soul tight

Behind my mouth, so he could not steal it

When he went. I brought the children up clean

With my needle, taught them that stealing

Is the worst sin; knew if I loved them

They would be taken away, and did my best

But must have loved them anyway

For they slipped through my fingers like stitches.

Because God loves us always, whatever

We do. You can sit all your life in churches

And teach your hands to clutch when you pray

And never weaken, but God loves you so dearly

Just as you are, that nothing you are can stay,

But all the time you keep going away, away.

W. S. Merwin

(1927-     )

Most of these 22 lines have 10 syllables. with a couple of 8 syllable lines for relief, and a nine syllable line and an eleven-syllable line that does not break the two-syllable word at its end. The speaker is always the grandmother. There are no stanza breaks. There is some interior rhyming, and some end-rhymes, but they are not obtrusive. 

Your task: try to write a poem about this length where the speaker is of another generation 

than your own. Usually use 10-syllable lines, and make it at least sonnet-length (14 lines.)

As always, I would love to see any poems that result from these tasks. I am trying to also do them myself, gradually.