Poetic Allegory -- "The Swamp"

8 October 2017 | txnativegop

[txnativegop]

An area covered in still water

The smell of stagnation will overwhelm

Even the strongest of sweet fragrances

Diversity of life easy to see

It is a swamp its denizens harmful

to all life save for native residents

Its water riddled with bacteria

Its bottom - vile, sticky trapping the lax

Various denizens like mosquitoes

and snakes will create disease, suffering

that will spread to locales very distant

unless decisive action is taken

to check the contagion of the swamp

Pesticides will control it for a short time

But disease will very quickly return

Teeming diversity hides great evil

of its pestilence and its sickly airs

A disease filled swamp is best when it's drained.

[txnativegop]

This poem is what I wish President Trump would start doing at a quicker pace.

Let me know what you think.

[Daffynition]

Keep your swamp friends close, and your swamp enemies closer.

[txnativegop]

that and snares and shotguns and knifes :^)

[Daffynition]

[txnativegop]

I’d like to think that I’m pretty good at spotting liberals. LOL

[mairdie]

I always like seeing these issues turned into poetry. It’s fun to read while thinking about important topics.

[mairdie]

A political poem from Governor Lewis Morris, 1708/9.

As Ravens and Night-owls their Voices betray
So Asses are certainly known when they bray.
And Spight of the Noise and bustle they've made
Mankind will believe that a Spade is a Spade.
That Bullies and Bankrupts, and Men without Store
Dull wretches that have not one Virtue or More,
The Pests of the Country, whose Practice has been
To flatter the Governor, and Lie to the Queen,
Have right to no favour in a Well-govern'd State
But to Swing in an Halter, or peep through a Grate.

****

I happened to hit the research institution when the curator was gone on vacation. Their replacement, when asked for copies from Morris' files, handed me all of them and pointed at the xerox machines. I whispered to husband that our vacation plans had just changed and we stayed three days copying every handwritten paper in Morris' files!

[yldstrk]

that is so cool

[mairdie]

He co-wrote the first play published in America. That was in the files, too! Politics back then sounds a lot like politics now. Except the sponsors you had to placate were back in England, so the politicians were always in ships going back and forth to regain favor and positions.

[txnativegop]

then I’m happy. I fired up some neurons first thing in the morning!

Thank You, FRiend!

txnativegop

[txnativegop]

Thanks for the poem. and lucky you for getting copies of all of his papers.

:^)

[mairdie]

7th great grandfather. I was EXTREMELY lucky!

[txnativegop]

Congrats!

:^)

[mairdie]

So tell about your poetry. When did you start writing and what type do you write?

[txnativegop]

I started writing poetry in 2010.

I was in college at the time and suffering through an English literature class. I don’t read much fiction and had never read poetry.

I made a sarcastic remark about the uselessness of writing/reading poetry to her.

She immediately challenged me to try writing some poetry and then tell her it was useless. I had a big helping of crow and must admit I truly love writing poetry.

I write stream of consciousness, usually while listening to music.

My subject runs from nature,business, life in general and politics.

I do not write much blank or free verse to speak.

This poem that I posted is a form I refer to as Icosastich (or 20-line)this is a personal development and is written in pentameter (not Iambic).

I really don’t care where the syllables are stressed or whether they are stressed at all.

For me, it is about the story I am trying to tell.
I write couplets, tercets, quatrain, quintet, sestet, Sestina, Mirror Sestina, Double Sestina (Non-rhyming), Mirror Double Sestina, septets, octaves, Villanelles, Terza Rima etc.

The size and style of the poem fit the story I am trying to tell.

I do prefer the shorter (in length) poems, they are more difficult to write.

I Love A Challenge! :^)

And thank you mairdie for the interest.

FRegards,

txnativegop

[mairdie]

I do care.

I love the combination of individualism in your pattern, along with your formal understanding of what you’re doing. I absolutely believe that there are body rhythms in all of us and that the most natural way to write is to be sensitive to the rhythm rather than coerced to a formal pattern developed by someone else.

When looking deep at the guts of poetry, one thing that amazed me was the variability from formal shapes. Almost every single line was off in syllables or accent, even among those best known for rigid formulation. If that’s the case, then why stick with the formal forms to start with?

So, yes, what you’re doing sounds great!

[txnativegop]

Thank you so much for the compliment, mairdie.

That is truly meaningful for me.

txnativegop

[mairdie]

This might amuse you. It's an analysis of the stress in Night Before Christmas. The red dots show where there's variation off the traditional form. The top link goes to the phoneme analysis of the poem.

Stress Analysis

[txnativegop]

Thanks! :)

[mairdie]

What I’ve been doing most recently, poetry wise, is trying to figure out how to identify one random poem as being by Henry Livingston or not being by him. We did all of our previous analysis by comparing the bodies of work of Henry and Moore. Mac suggested we might be able to identify a work by Henry by putting Henry up against a body of random poets. So that’s what we’ve been doing. I collected one offs of a huge variety of people publishing in the same papers at the same times. Mac got one paper out of it so far on analyzing the bodies by phonemes. But what I desperately want is to find a way to chunk all the tests together into a black box that includes probabilities based on their origins and be able to have it spit out a probability for the poem. We have another large body that we use as a countertest set that is poets guaranteed NOT to be Henry and we test the poem against that set, too.