Two Poems

We've been working on poetry in my Grade 8 class. The process is to find a poet we admire, explore how they write and adopt an element of their technique in our own poems. As I worked to model for students I wrote two poems. The one I shared for students to work on with me is called "Medusa". Gwen Harwood's cycle of poems called "1927" gave me inspiration.

The other poem I didn't share because I'm a little unsettled by it. The inspiration came from a poem I stumbled across by Stephane Mallarme. Every now and then a poem or a piece of prose will reach off the page and punch you: not just because it's a great poem; also, I think, because it is saying something you are just then ripe to hear. My poem responds to the idea of cutting into the future but the metaphor seemed too raw to use as a model for students. Still, I think it's a poem worth sharing. Here's Mallarme's poem and then my own. And below that is the my poem "Medusa" which I shared with students.

Stéphane Mallarmé

A Toast

Stephane Mallarme
By Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841–1919)
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Nothing, this foam, virgin verse

Depicting the chalice alone:

Far off a band of Sirens drown

Many of them head first.

We sail, O my various

Friends, I already at the stern,

You at the lavish prow that churns

The lightning’s and the winters’ flood:

A sweet intoxication urges me

Despite pitching, tossing, fearlessly

To offer this toast while standing

Solitude, reef, and starry veil

To whatever’s worthy of knowing

The white anxiety of our sail.

Undefined

cogdogblog - https://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/5702592254/

Purity, a knife, cutting

Into the virgin white 

Of the blank space.

My cursor doing

Violence to the 

Peaceful undefined. 

With good intent,

I break forward

Seeking to shape

A new understanding.

But the chaos

Of my voice

Cuts and cuts 

And cuts 

Again.

Searching for this

Elusive meaning

I am   

Most alive.        

Medusa. 

By Powerhouse Museum from Sydney, Australia
Girl (Cook family) on front doorstep carrying a
toy 'Life Savers' truck, Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51424376

My Brother thought up the name

For the girl next door.

We played with her sister

And ran and explored

And did what young kids do.

When the younger sister appeared,

We’d scream “medusa”

Invoking the Greek monster who,

We had read, was so ugly 

That mortals were turned 

To stone 

Just by looking at her. 

We’d run and hide

Leaving her standing alone 

On her doorstep. 

Only now do I look back. 

Remembering our cruelty 

And hoping her heart 

Was not too much hardened

By the ugliness she saw.