Old Poetry Poetry Poets Essays Forums

Notes To A Neophyte

Take the general mumble,
blunt as the faceless gut
of an anonymous clam,
vernacular as the strut
of a slug or a small preamble
by snail under hump of home:

metamorphose the mollusk
of vague vocabulary
with the structural discipline:
stiffen the ordinary
malleable mask
to the granite grin of bone.

For such a tempering task,
heat furnace of paradox
in an artifice of ice;
make love and logic mix,
and remember, if tedious risk
seems to jeopardize this:

it was a solar turbine
gace molten earth a frame
and it took the diamond stone
a weight of world and time
being crystallized from carbon
to the hardest substance known.

Leave a guest comment (subject to review)

    : Comment:

    Name: (required)
    Email: (required, hidden from spam)

Comments


  • vieve
    November 19, 2008
    Edit | Reply
    I'm surprised that there aren't any comments on this. A pretty good description of her method, however dense. If only for these lines:

    metamorphose the mollusk
    of vague vocabulary
    with the structural discipline:
    stiffen the ordinary
    malleable mask
    to the granite grin of bone.

    It's excellent - read this people!!