I'm reading the first couple of stanzas of John Wiener's "Ode on a Common Fountain" for the first time ever. It could have been such a lovely weapon a few years ago, when, upon reading a poem of mine about the Common and the fountain there a person noted, "You should say 'Boston' Common, there's a lot of town commons in the world and your reader won't know what you are talking about. Why be cagey?"
Um, because never in my life have I ever in my head or in conversation referred to the Common as anything but the Common and anyone who says the Boston Common sounds dumb, that's why. And besides, here's a lovely poem, about the same fountain and common as in mine, which I hadn't even known existed when I wrote mine, that does the same namelessness, so there!
So, it's little things like that that add up over time and make things difficult to comfortably return to writing my own way, as I had referenced in the previous post about meta-poetics (stuff that's about the about, and not really stuff about poetry...)
Here's my little poem. I like it.
February in the Common*
there's the waterless fountain
here's the dissembled newspaper,
whipping through the cement walkway,
littered with dirty ice piles
these are the bare branches
alone together alone together alone together
this is February in its relentlessness
still
the cherubim hold hands
*at one point, I was bullied into titling this poem "February in Front of the Fountain at Boston Common." How AWFUL is that?
This is a link to "Ode on a Common Fountain" from Selected on Google Books
Um, because never in my life have I ever in my head or in conversation referred to the Common as anything but the Common and anyone who says the Boston Common sounds dumb, that's why. And besides, here's a lovely poem, about the same fountain and common as in mine, which I hadn't even known existed when I wrote mine, that does the same namelessness, so there!
So, it's little things like that that add up over time and make things difficult to comfortably return to writing my own way, as I had referenced in the previous post about meta-poetics (stuff that's about the about, and not really stuff about poetry...)
Here's my little poem. I like it.
February in the Common*
there's the waterless fountain
here's the dissembled newspaper,
whipping through the cement walkway,
littered with dirty ice piles
these are the bare branches
alone together alone together alone together
this is February in its relentlessness
still
the cherubim hold hands
*at one point, I was bullied into titling this poem "February in Front of the Fountain at Boston Common." How AWFUL is that?
This is a link to "Ode on a Common Fountain" from Selected on Google Books