"The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,

angry Poseidon--you will not meet them unless you carry them in your soul

unless your soul raise them up before you"

-CP Cavafy, "Ithaka"

What better quote to close out with than the one quote that echoes in my heart the most often? "Ithaka" is a poem about the journey, not the destination, and that for me summarizes this 20% time project.Ultimately, I did not end up writing as many poems as I had initially planned. Looking over the folder of my work, I find myself unsatisfied with the quality of some of my work. Now I see that my goals should have been less ambitious in terms of quantity and more in terms of quality. 

I also see that I was trying for two goals with my poetry: mimicking other styles and sticking with what I was comfortable with in my own. This was the wrong way to approach it. I should have sought to expand my style on the whole, examine it for flaws and try to strengthen what I liked about it. For example, I think I have a penchant for interesting figurative language, so something to seriously work on might have been not mixing my metaphors or writing in a way that is not so idiosyncratic that only I can interpret the end product--both failings of my propensity to skip sideways into the absurdly abstract.

Though I'd seen the results of this, I did not register until very, very late into the project--yesterday, in fact--that writing with pen on paper should be something that I do more often, and not just jotting down notes, but letting the full flow of a poem come to the fore. As wonderful as technology is, I firmly believe that there is something in shaping words with my own hand that helps me write more viscerally.

On the subject of writing more viscerally, I need to work on that. Often, I couch actual events in my life in my poetry in hazy language or attempt to swathe it in generality. To be as genuine and unique as I want to be, I can no longer shy from explicit, confessional writing. I am currently writing a very angry poem that I could imagine being recited with so much more drama than I could manage in performance, and it both feels good and sounds better than some of the flowery nonsense I've been producing.

Before this, I gathered inspiration like picking up lint. Now I have to visualize myself as a sponge, finding avenues to write whenever I can and looking in the most unlikely of places for subject material. Another big idea i gained from this is blogging. I have a tumblr, but I rarely actually write posts.  love it, the rational introspection and the catharsis that comes with it. I generally express myself to my friends, but a private blog would be different, just me alone with my thoughts.

I will definitely continue to read poetry voraciously and attempt my own after this. To continue to push myself, I want to seize the threads of possibility whenever they weave themselves through my thoughts. I have to stop shelving writing for something to be done another day, when I have more energy or more time or whatever my measly excuse may be.

All in all, I believe I could have performed to a higher level than I did, but that this project has been a valuable learning experience nevertheless. 

"My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow" 
-Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress"

Our research into Milton's time period has reminded me about metaphysical poetry! Starting today, probably through Tuesday, I am going to read metaphysical poetry to get some sense of it, and research it as well. I will take notes and jot down any particularly interesting styles and methods. Then I will attempt to write a poem in that style--I'm sure it will be difficult, since that poetry is vastly different from contemporary in its elevated quality and of course, the conceits.

I'm going to be honest here and say I didn't really get anything done this week. I worked on my napkin poem translation, but that's it. Still, next week, it doesn't look like there's much on my plate, so I will probably be able to extend my project somewhat farther.

I will aim to post again mid-week about the progress of my metaphysical poem.

Where am I getting all these quotes?

If you don't have the patience to Google all of these, here are the poems I have quoted from in my posts so far, as well as some Catullus and others I have mentioned.

"Poetry" is the source of my blog title and heading both, and it really captures how I feel about poetry ("there I was without a face, and it touched me"). If I start on Neruda, we'll be here all day, but check out the very sensual Sonnet XI, the complex love of Sonnet XVII, and the contrast between the achey "Keeping Quiet" and the wrenching "I Explain a Few Things." And if you can read him in Spanish, do it!

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is in my top five favorite poems, and it resonates with my feelings of uncertainty and inaction so deeply. 

"If" by ee cummings

(Check out two love poems from him that I adore, too--"i like my body when it is with your" and the incredibly romantic "somewhere i have never travelled.")

This one's so empowering: "You, If No One Else."

I love, love, love Siken, and if you love me, you will buy me his anthology Crush (not really--it'll probably be my birthday present this year). I quoted "Driving, Not Washing" (you probably can't open that link at school, but I promise it's not dodgy, and it has some of his other poems, too).

"Shoulders" is the sweetest poem ever, touching a chord of universal empathy. Naomi Shihab Nye is lovely in general.

"Termites: An Assay" is very different, short and punchy, but contemplative rather than provocative. I'm definitely not biased because I've got (MERS Coronavirus) assays on the brain.

Seamus Heaney is awesome--you may remember him from Beowulf. "Blackberry-Picking" is vivid and grounding in an ephemeral moment.

"Those Winter Sundays" made me cry. Something to remember around Father's Day.

"The Fish" reminds me of my own more immature style, interestingly. Not to say that Elizabeth Bishop is immature in any sense. It's a cleverly-executed poem with plenty of buildup. It's just the accumulation of detail that I feel is similar. The difference? Her closing sticks with you.

"Howl." Oh boy. Ginsberg. You beautiful mess.

To be edited with next week's! And hey, if no one looks at this (likely), it is at least a useful personal reference. I get broken-up bits of poems stuck in my head sometimes, so it's nice to have a list of likely culprits.

"angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night"
-Allen Ginsberg, "Howl" 

As always, Coffeehouse proves a font of poetic inspiration. For example, I have been enticed to revisit "Howl," (read aloud by Gowan) which I had disparaged upon my first reading two years ago (blasphemous for a lover of modern poetry). A warning to anyone who looks the poem up--the Beat poets were shocking for their time and still obscene today, so tread carefully.

Hello to my three commenters! I'm very flattered. I might try to put up some of my work on here by next Friday, but I have to confess that I'm cripplingly shy about it, so we'll see how that goes, I suppose.

Poetry is never predictable for me, and two days ago, I was struck by a bolt of inspiration and of course, I was electrified and captivated and the bell rang far too soon. So this week, I will aim to finish that poem. And return to my napkin-thief poem translation as well, doubly egged on by the reminder of a friend's napkin collection. Who collects napkins, anyway? Catullus and Amy Pan.

Next week will also be a week for a hundred visions and revisions (I go back to "Prufrock," always, always). I want to dig up a few old poems from last year and rework them with my new knowledge. One of those will probably end up being posted up here. I am also going to refine a poem from a month ago and flesh it out more thoroughly because it ties back to Friday's theme--I am writing out my feelings of inadequacy in the face of towers of demanding college applications.

Also inspired by Coffeehouse, I want to do a lighthearted little monologue sort of poem like two people (Arohi and Brendan) shared, just a snapshot of what a typical day is like. My poems last week were a lot more serious, as is the current one I'm working with, so this will be a change of pace just to keep me on my toes and not sinking down into the mire of artistic angst.

"Victory filled up the little rented boat, from the pool of bilge to where oil had spread a rainbow around the rusted engine to the bailer rusted orange, the sun-cracked thwarts, the oarlocks on their strings, the gunnels--until everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow! And I let the fish go" 
-Elizabeth Bishop, "The Fish"

Having finally polished up my Catullus 8 translation, I came up with a new idea for my response. While I am finishing up the Latin advice to myself, I am also writing a direct response to Catullus's poem from the perspective of an exasperated friend. I would empathize with that theoretical friend because it feels like I am all too often in that position myself, advising them to stop moping and get a move on with their life! "Wretched Catullus..."

I went to Fall Forum yesterday, a day-long event for Latin students from all around Georgia, and so I am even more fired-up about Latin than usual. The namesake of a year-long team I have in my AP Latin class is from a Catullus poem complaining about his friends stealing his napkins (they are very nice napkins), and I'm thinking it's about time that I turn to that one. That will be part of my project for the week.

The other part of my project uses an unintentional burst of inspiration from this past week as a springing-off point. After a tiny, family Diwali celebration, I wrote a poem that was very much about the senses, the sights and the feel of the ceremony. I will once again create a poem a day like I did a few weeks ago for my project, but this time, I will focus very much on the outward physical experience of the day and extend it back to my emotional state. I will write in the afternoons, as I am expecting a more relaxed week. I will likely do a mid-week blog post on Wednesday.

"Until the tinkling bottom had been covered with green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered with thorn pricks, our palms as sticky as Bluebeard's"
-Seamus Heaney, "Blackberry-Picking"

More than any other Catullus poem thus far in my reading, I connected with Catullus 8. I do not think we gain anything from taking the classics too seriously--they hardly took themselves seriously--but I do sometimes laugh off Catullus's impact. Some of his poems are silly and borderline childish, but 8 is not one of these. While maudlin, it struck a chord with me.

This poem's economy of expression is amazing. He conveys so much with a few words arranged in a lovely rhythm. English is considerably clunkier. I have been researching other translations, and in the process, I came across a translation by the poet Louis Zukofsky. He played with the Latin and added in literal English to fill in the cadence of the words. At first, I was insulted by how he ran roughshod over the Latin. Classicists often have this pitfall where grammar is held about everything, perhaps because grammar is what we have the most information about in regards to Latin texts. Latin is not a modern language. It is a series of ancient, fixed points that we study to align. 

Zukofsky's Latin knowledge is rudimentary, but he knows so much about poetry, and in reading his translation the second time through, I was charmed. He takes "Miser Catulle," literally "Wretched Catullus," and turns it into "Miss her, Catullus?" This fits the theme of the poem perfectly, insulting as it is to the proper structure and as much as it seems he is a clueless English speaker mangling the language. It made me think about my translation a lot. In the end, I have decided that I will still stay truer to the Latin than he did.

The line in particular that gave me the most trouble was the beautiful "quod vides perisse perditum ducas." It is impossible to convey it in English with the same slick structure. I spent nearly twenty minutes on Friday shaping and reshaping my translation. The best I have come up with so far is "that which you see to have been lost, consider to be lost" (Catullus refers to yet another woman who has left him, telling himself to recognize that she is truly gone).

I have been so caught up in reading and rereading and translating that I have not met my goal of writing my own Latin poem based off of this yet. Therefore, I will let this goal carry over into next week from where I have progressed from this week. My other poem next week will be about my parents, inspired by Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays." My aim with this poem will be to make it a little longer and more drawn-out--I want to expand my style to be able to write a poem that is more than twenty lines long.

"So far the hairline cracks wandering the plaster
still debate, in Socratic unhurt, what constitutes a good life"
-Jane Hirshfield, "Termites: An Assay" 

I'm sitting right now with my dog Timber curled up over my feet and I'm trying to shape everything I feel for this little ball of fur into coherency and it's not working, it's really not. I know exactly what I want to say, but I'm unable to match the tone properly. 

The best solution to this? More puppy cuddles.

In all seriousness, though, it has been an engaging, challenging process in trying to write this poem. I have been exposed to so much love poetry of the romantic nature and while, yes, those feelings do bubble to the surface and pop in neat poetic turns of phrase, there are so many other kinds of love that make you crazy enough to want to write about them, aren't there? Still, condensing instinctual squishy feelings into orderly lines continues to be difficult.

Yesterday, trying to write this poem in class? I got halfway stuck on a sentence and nearly cried. Not because it was hard--though it was (trying to find serious poetic synonyms for fluffy-snuggly-cutie)--but because I was struck by how much I love this silly mutt. And I found myself thinking of Love That Dog by Sharon Creech, a book that entranced me as a kid without a dog who wanted one so, so badly. I said last week that I was aiming for a universally heart-string-plucking kind of poem, but now I realized who I really want to do justice to is that kid.

The poem is still dragging its feet a little bit, and I am currently switching back and forth between editing and re-editing it and typing this post. I expect I will be struck with more ideas for its improvement tomorrow morning, as that is usually how it has gone over the course of this project.

Next week, I will be getting back to Catullus! I will be translating this lovely little poem, Catullus 8, which consists of advice--to himself. To follow this up, as soon as I'm satisfied with my translation of his work, I will write one of my own, advising myself. And yes, I will attempt Latin, though of course I barely grasp poetic meter in writing and have no idea how to go about constructing it. Towards the middle of the week, I will probably consult with my mentor on that. If that proves to be too much of a mountain to climb, though, I am fine with producing something that follows the constraints of Latin prose instead, albeit with some of the freedom of structure of English (a highly hybridized animal).

"The road will only be wide. The rain will never stop falling"
-Naomi Shihab Nye, "Shoulders"

I'm pleased with the results of this past week. As someone fascinated with linguistics, it stands to reason that words would spur me on to create work in which I can take pride. This week was also light on schoolwork, so I felt like I had the time to breathe and sit down and really think over my poetry.

That said, the next week is set to be pretty stressful. I don't think it will be useful to push myself to write something new every day, and I probably won't get much enjoyment out of it. Instead, I'm picking one project to do for the entire week, to return to and to polish and polish again: I'm going to write a poem about my dog. 

Something that I've thought and rethought over the years is whether the subject of a poem matters. Does the relevancy of the material affect the poem's impact? One can relate to one poem more than one can another, always. But could a cat lover read a poem about a dog and be moved? When I read Neruda's "A Dog Has Died," I nearly cried. I am inclined to believe it's because of his way with words, his "my hairy dog was jumping about with all the voltage of the sea's movement." 

Another poem which actually made me sob at 3 AM--things I do with my free time--was "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden. It impacted me because I thought of my own parents, of course, but why? Because it provoked empathy like I'd never felt before. 

So yes, good poetry makes you sit up and listen to a story that might otherwise bypass your ears like background noise. Not to be too ambitious, but that's my aim for this week. I'm going to write a poem about my dog that would make a cat lover smile at a puppy.

"Every story has its chapter in the desert, the long slide from kingdom to kingdom through the wilderness, where you learn things, where you're left to your own devices..."
-Richard Siken, "Driving, Not Washing"

This week at Coffeehouse, I had a discussion about why teenagers don't default to short stories or to weepy memoirs when they are at their most vulnerable, but choose to write poetry over everything. I told him that I thought it was about escaping the confines of form, not having to follow a formula or stick to a structure. 

I think that answer may have given the impression that I think poetry is easy. Far from it--if there's anything I've learned over the past few weeks, it's that I don't understand how they do it, not at all. I want to see a journal of Neruda's discarded scraps, or where ee cummings threw up his hands and abandoned a few whimsical words, thinking them too cluttered. I know it's not realistic for me to produce quality work all the time, but I'm disappointed most in my lack of inspiration.

The assignment I gave myself this week was definitely difficult. Maybe I should think through writing poetry when I'm still bleary and my eyes ache too much to look at the screen. What is left written when I leave for school in the mornings is consistently incoherent, and I'm left a lot to try and clean up in the afternoons. Still, I suppose it's something that I managed to meet my goal of actually completing the poems. I think maybe my Tuesday one will make it into the collection, but not the others.

Coming up with inspiration on my own has clearly been difficult, so I'm going to return to mining from other sources. I love weird words and words from other languages that we don't have equivalents for in English. Tomorrow morning, I'm going to compile a long list of interesting words I've come across, then use a random generator and write a poem based on whichever word it lands on. I'll try not to keep it to any particular tone--it could be emotional, or it could be totally silly. After all, my first poetic inspiration was Shel Silverstein, and he could do both effectively.

As for my good friend Catullus (he'd probably write a revenge poem abut me for my overt familiarity, oh dear), I'm planning to translate some of his poetry about his more platonic relationships. I'm particularly inspired by one translation I've seen of a poem to his friend Licinius Calvus--it actually did the poem justice, surprise, surprise. So that will serve as my model this week.

"You, if no one else, will condemn with your tongue the erosion each disappointment brings"
-Tino Villanueva, "You, If No One Else"

This week, I accomplished one of the general milestones--I discussed translating Catullus with Dr. Patrick, my chosen mentor. I'm going to go in one morning next week to have a longer discussion with him. In addition to this, I want to check out some of the books he has in his classroom.

I've made good headway with Catullus. I've been perfecting translations of Catullus 48, 81, and 99, all centered on Iuventius. I thought I loved him before, but I appreciate his work more and more with every poem I read. However, it hasn't been easy. 

Sometimes a phrase or a line will have a certain beautiful symmetry in Latin, for example, which is impossible to replicate in English. There's a construction of "usque...usque" which can only be translating clumsily using words like "keep" and "still," clunky at best. Also, why do the Romans have so many words meaning "sweet "and so many sobriquets? Maybe because Latin is the first Romance language. English, meanwhile, is coming up short in that department. 

I'm hesitant to hit up the thesaurus. I think the best thing to do is have Dr. Patrick take a look at my translations and give me some tips, because there's a point at which you hit a roadblock with honing something, and I've hit mine with Catullus 48, at least.

The Shakespearean sonnet is finished and could use some editing, but I'm quite proud of it. The Neruda sonnet is more difficult. The more deeply I feel something, the more difficult it is to excavate it, and when I do, it's all but impossible to buff it to a clean shine. My emotions feel rough-hewed around the edges, but not with the raw appeal of Neruda. That's what makes him Neruda and me an amateur, I suppose. I haven't given up on it yet, though.

Coffeehouse is coming up on Tuesday. As an NEHS member, I'm required to bring something to share. I do truly want to read out "bring me back in your bucket of sand." I've been steeling myself for this for weeks. That won't stop me from being a nervous wreck when I get up on that stool, but I think writing this down will force me to be accountable to it. I was so confident in it before, though, and now I just keep going over it again and again, changing "fat" to "voluminous," "scrap" to "fragment," then fretting over whether I've ruined the tone.

I get up at around 5:30 every morning. This week, rather than try for one of the tough themed poems, I'm going to set myself a challenge of another kind (in addition to climbing the mountain of my fear of public performance at Coffeehouse). Every morning this week, from Monday to Friday, I will write one poem. Every afternoon, I will edit that poem. My biggest problem with this project has been pushing myself to produce content without second-guessing myself, and this will compel me into it if nothing else. 

We'll see how well this goes. Fingers crossed that I'm not so much of a zombie when I first wake up this week that everything is just an ode to brains.

"If fear was plucky, and globes were square"
- e e cummings, "If"

Last week I cruised along smoothly, but this one was a little rougher. I don't want to pin all the blame on a busy weekend and a rough week, but it has been that. I'm determined that nothing will slow me down next week, though.

What I did accomplish this week was a more thorough exploration of Catullus. I love his poetry dearly, all of it, but it's so hard to find something that's suitable to share with an audience. He can be very colorful in his language and never really holds back what he feels. Entertaining to read, but hardly appropriate to translate. I had to back off of three poems of his after catching what he was really saying. 

That being said, I've decided that my first goal for translation will be to tackle his poems addressing his lover Iuventius. The first of these was in fact what spurred me to choose this for part of my project (it is a lovely poem with terrible, awkward translations). Funnily enough, only two of them were apparently written while he was in his favor. The other four are indignant tirades against (alternatively) Catullus's ex and the other men he dared to date. Catullus is the man. I mean, really. This will involve a lot of squinting and trying to find new syllables for "sweet." Honeyed vocabulary is somewhere Latin has us English-speakers beat, I'm afraid.

Speaking of the sorrows and struggles of speaking English, my other goal for the past week hasn't quite set. Writing sonnets is slow-going, and I've never been the most graceful at following rhyme schemes. As such, I haven't actually finished my Shakespearean sonnet on my frustrations with English as a language I am obliged to use. I really do plan to have it finished by tomorrow, though.

This project really is wonderfully enabling. I managed to scribble out another one of those just-feel-it-out poems, and while it doesn't slot in with my goals, I think it merits a mention.

I've been obsessing over Neruda enough that my goal for next week will have to be related to him somehow. I have a friend about whom I have been intending to pen a poem for months now and I think a serenade in his style would be suitable. Even if this friend never, ever, ever sees this. Whoops. 

So to recap: my Catullus translations will continue with me wrangling Catullus 48, 81, and 99, with possible polishing-up of 24 just for some harmony. It would be nice to get two of the three going by next Friday, but I'll also have my Neruda sonnet to piece together. We'll see how that goes. I also need to reorganize my Google Drive folder for this project, as it's getting annoyingly crowded, and ensure I have typed up every scrap I've written lest I lose it or (as I nearly did last week) write some other random stuff on the back of the paper.

"And it was at that age, poetry found me"

- Pablo Neruda, "Poetry"

I'm drawing inspiration from Neruda to start--if I ever learned Spanish, it would be so I could appreciate the words in all their unadulterated glory. 

Translation is something I'm going to be thinking about extensively in the coming weeks.

 Part of my poetry project will be translating verses by Catullus. If old Gaius Valerius was around today, I'm firmly convinced that he'd be a rapper. He wrote about everything under the sun in the same whiny voice you hear in every high school hallway: complaining about his friends to his friends, talking trash, pining for his girlfriend, pining for his boyfriend...With this in mind, I believe to truly bring Catullus to a contemporary audience, it's necessary to use contemporary language. I'm not saying that I'll translate 'superbus' as 'cool', but I will avoid the missteps I've seen others make, such as translating 'osculationis' as 'kissification.' 

 I adore Catullus's poetry and I want others to share that appreciation, and for that to happen, he has to be made accessible again: a poet of the people.

The other major part of my project is writing my own poetry. By the end of the semester, I plan to have an anthology of sorts. I chose to do this for my project because I enjoy writing poetry and I know that it's good for me, intellectually and emotionally, but I can so rarely find the time to squeeze it in to my day when everything else seems so pressing. I have only ever managed to write poetry in the past when I have a sudden burst of feeling or a stray thought strikes me from the side and jolts me into it. With this project, I will try and write at least two poems a week and translate one (though I will probably hike up this goal based on my progress in the next week or so). This will compel me to sit down and write, even if I'm insecure, even if I'm lazy, and I think I will ultimately better myself for it.

With my first few poems, I have simply let the inspiration flow, going with impulses and feelings. The onl
y themed poem I have done so far is one drawing from the style of Richard Siken--his love poetry with a bitter twist. While Siken uses imagery aligned with cowboys and monsters to construct his metaphors, I've decided to play with it a little by using knights and fairies as my governing figurative themes. Though I like some of my concepts, I don't think the poem has quite the impact I aimed to capture, so one of my goals for next week.

So far, these are the poems I have written:
"Falling, Not Flying" (the Siken-inspired poem)
"Nor Art Can Cure" (a poem I was motivated to write after passing over a quote from The Aeneid)
"So an Ex-Catholic and a Hindu Agnostic Walk into a Bar.." (something of an emotional vent--this one may be too personal to make it into my eventual anthology)
"ambition" (this is going to be a poem that accumulates two-line-long sections over the course of this project; each of these sections is a small frustration over senior year or a fear for the future)
"bring me back in your bucket of sand" (one of my metaphors in attempting to write another poem ran away with me)

What's coming up next week? I'm going to attempt a more structured poem. Because I think the irony is a lot of fun, I'm going to write a Shakespearean sonnet about how much the English language annoys me sometimes.  I'm also going to try to translate one Catullus poem, with a literal translation on Tuesday and Wednesday, a prettier translation on Thursday, and final cleaning up and sharing with friends on Friday during the day and class-time to see how I measure up.

So far, I'm thrilled about this project, and it's going smoothly. I have more trepidation about the future, though. I am nervous about running out of steam or beginning to hate the project, though it's undeniably something I'm passionate about. I think it's important to ground myself every now and then by reading poetry or just sitting down and letting thoughts come to me, writing them down with no real goal. This might help take the pressure off.

For the moment, however, it's full steam ahead!