Thursday, February 12, 2009

Remember this

A few summers ago I wrote a sonnet every day for a week or so, trying to get poetically limberer. I was looking at old drafts today, and found them. They're awful. In the same word document, there's another one from a year or so later about the experience of reading the earlier ones. It's even worse, barely even comprehensible, except for the final couplet, which kind of struck me. Or really just the last line, but it needs its penultimate friend for set up. It's one of a genre of pleasurably stark statements of bitterness that I find in my drafts and notebooks but usually edit out of anything I hold onto, and I'm sharing it . . . well, I'm not sure why, but here it is:

So records kept bring joy but also pain.
Remember this before you write again.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Poetic Limberger met overripe Brie;
"Though we smell like hell,
Come away!" said he.

The Brie shyly simpered and wrinkled her rind;
She sighed and replied:
"You're so very kind!"

Happy Valentine's day!
ox
Cancrizans