April-June Poetry Challenge
In his book, Richer Entanglements, Gregory Orr suggests that there are four temperaments to a poet. He explains:
I’d like to propose that poets are born with a certain innate form-giving temperament that allows them to forge language into the convincing unities we call poems. This form-giving gift is more important than any other a poem might possess. Different poets are born with different temperaments, and the nature of their temperaments determines essential qualities of the poems they write.
To my way of thinking, there are four distinct temperaments. If a poet is born with one temperament, then he or she grows as a poet by developing that temperament, but also by nurturing the others. The greatest poem is one in which all four temperaments are present in the strongest degree, though no one in English but Shakespeare could be said to exhibit all four in equal vigor. The main point is, great poems show the presence of all four, though in varying proportions.
To celebrate poetry month, I challenge you to write four poems. Each poem will concentrate on a specific temperament. (Think of this as going to the poetry gym to lift mental weight–isolating parts of your poetic self to make a healthier writer.)
Please post your poems in the comments for feedback. And enjoy the process. 
A Glance at Characteristics and Dynamics
The four temperaments are: story, structure, music and imagination.
- Story: dramatic unity—beginning, middle, and end. Conflict, dramatic focus, resolution.
- Structure: the satisfaction of measurable patterns. It is akin to higher math, geometry, theoretical physics—the beauty and balance of equations. It manifests itself in sonnets, villanelles, sestinas (closed structures) and, to a lesser extent, in metrical lines, rhymed couplets, and repeated stanza patterns (open structures).
- Music: rhythm and sound. It includes syntax, the syllabic qualities of English that determine rhythm (pitch, duration, stress, loudness/softness), and the entire panoply of sound effects (alliteration, assonance, consonance, internal rhyme, ect.). (I realize that music is an old metaphor for the texture of rhythm and sounds in a poem, and perhaps not a very adequate one, but I’m going to use in anyway.)
- Imagination: the flow of image to image or thought to thought. It moves as a stream of associations, either concretely (the flow of image) or abstractly (the flow of thought).
(Gregory Orr, Richer Entanglements, Pages 3-4)
I’m in! This sounds like a lovely exercise. However, we’re quite far along in April already: I don’t have great confidence that I would have all four done by the end of the month. Is that ok?
Thanks for this suggestion – and for the book suggestions: I loved the Orr book, and ‘the Raindrop’s Gospel’ was so far up my alley it could have been on my doorstep.
love
| Posted 2 years, 1 month agoEla
I thought I’d left a comment saying ‘I’m in’ and what a great idea, but I might not finish by the end of this month, since we’re so far along already…
If I did indeed post that comment and it just hasn’t made it up yet, please disregard this one.
love
| Posted 2 years, 1 month agoEla
Hi Ela,
I received the first message and just now posted it. Thank you for your interest and support of this project. I hope to keep this writing prompt going for the next three months…so please take your time, enjoy, and share.
Best to you and your art,
| Posted 2 years, 1 month agoNicelle Davis
Dear Nicelle,
First, I wish to thank you! What a lovely and generous idea and gift!
; )
I feel grateful to have found you, thanks to Elizabeth Bradfield.
I’m in for April’s four poems – though it may take much of the next 3 months for them to be born!
| Posted 2 years ago; )
Gratefully,
Goldalee
NYC
Hey Nicelle,
Thanks again for doing this! I have poems to share now covering two of the four temperaments: I will present you ‘story’ and ‘structure’ today. Since I wanted to share them, I will note that they are in draft form and encourage feedback but request respect for my intellectual integrity and property.
Temperament: ‘Story’
‘Spencer Allen Nearly Loses His Truck in the Tide’
Just a regular guy in an old ford truck,
trying to turn an honest buck…
To drive the beach of Homer is a risky proposition
but the equinoctial low tides make for easier decision
a vast exposed expanse of sands don’t need so much precision,
and just a few miles north of town you barely see a soul –
you own the beach! – you and the birds – a beach bestrewn with coal!
Just a regular guy in an old ford truck,
trying to turn an easy and honest buck
with his jacket of tatters and two shaggy mutts
he gives his own orders and takes his own pride
when you don’t expect much then you stay satisfied
summer sea, winter land, always the tide.
He’s gathered quite a load of coal but wants that last big slab
(the mutts have chased a poodle and been banished to the cab)
tide’s moving in, he’s almost done, but thinks he’ll take a stab.
That hunk of coal, though close to shore, is in a deeper region:
as soon as he pulls up his truck, he rues his rash decision –
his vehicle sinking in the sands dooms this and every mission.
Just a regular guy in an old ford truck
trying to turn a simple and honest buck
it doesn’t look so simple now that his rig is stuck
He digs in the quicksand to no avail
all hopes of driving away curtailed;
he gives it up for lost, gets ready to bail.
Ground giving, sinking, fluid, it’s acting just like water
well, normally it’s under sea, so water’s been its tutor
the sea’s an endless gaping maw, it gives no mead nor quarter;
it wants his truck! He knows this, drags his tools above the tideline
his tools, his dogs, himself – relegated to the sideline
a wretched, truckless future stretching clear within his mind’s eye.
We found the guy with his sinking truck
ruing his rashness and cursing his luck:
we swore we’d get him out of the muck.
We’d put down boards for the spinny wheels to tread
jack it up in front to lift up its head
but first, for goodness sakes, let’s unload the bed!
So certain had he been of the ocean’s claiming all
that salvage of his mobile goods had been his only goal
and so his sinking truck was packed with hundredweights of coal!
So we helped him shed his load and bring the tools where we could use them,
our optimistic flurry seeming merely to confuse him
but jacked and treaded, towed, there’s just no way his truck was losing!
So our regular guy in his rescued truck
made haste for home as soon as he’d gotten unstuck
with a new respect for intertidal muck.
Temperament: ‘Structure’ (Villanelle)
Journey’s Mirror
If I’m alive, it must be meant to be
there must be some end point to all my journeying
my end, my death, is all that calls to me.
So many charts and plans are sent to me
adventures’ invitations, constant learning
if I’m alive, it must be meant to be.
But yet a constant shadow pulls on me
participation’s liveliness deterring
my death, my end, is all that calls to me
Life’s chartless plan promotes its liberty,
its winters hint at signs of joy returning
if I’m alive, it must be meant to be.
These plays of life flick by like shoals at sea,
mere ripples on the ocean of my yearning
my death, my end, is all that calls to me.
Mind’s mirror must distort reality
| Posted 2 years agoand keep the whirlpool of my vision churning:
if I’m alive, must it be meant to be?
my death, my end, is all that calls to me.
Hello again!
I have two more poems to share, representing ‘imagination’ and ‘music.’ Truth be told, I found it harder to produce poems that represented just one of these features: in fact, both of these poem drafts could probably fall under either ‘imagination’ or ‘music.’
Well, here’s ‘Music:’ ironically, it’s the only one of the four I’m posting that doesn’t have a set rhyme/rhythm scheme.
Water
When the snow melts, all is familiar and yet strange:
tools, posts and barrels emerge from the white unchanged,
each in its place, though grass and metal are revealed
with sorry tale: underneath all that whiteness, it was dark!
The yin-yang of the harlequin’s painted face haunts me,
relearning our topography minus its frosting:
the black underside of the searing white snow
is rust and death to blades of steel and grass.
The snow melts, revealing what we knew was there -
top-heavy weight of awkward liquid on a friable tilth:
a thirsty land that follows snow’s runoff down the bluff
in chunks – real estate sledding headlong toward ocean.
The smile on the harlequin’s painted face haunts me,
harbinger of melting of more than just water;
as the white shades to black, I hear ironic laughter,
black earth gives chase, the white water departs.
Snow’s leaving leaves a strange spring, a cyclic returning,
seeds hidden like Persephone in the black womb of snow’s blanketing;
snow leaves, and takes some earth with it, and spring is dry
wind buffeting the sunseekers in new round of sprouting.
Black and white harlequin, where is the reason
for your swift departure from our growing season?
You lay on the ground drying air when you’re freezing
but when the seeds are sprouting is when you’re a-leaving.
And here is ‘Imagination:’
Crazy-Tired
Will there be
a true sound
in the clang
of my insanity?
Will a phoenix’
egg be found
in the holocaust
of my exhaustion?
Will I find
fertile ground
in the standstill
of my debility?
Can the thread
| Posted 2 years agobe unwound
through the maze
of my craziness?
Sorry – ‘Music’ should be the second of the last two poems posted and ‘Imagination,’ the first!
| Posted 2 years agoDear Ela,
Thank you for your post. I’m still working on my poems for this challenge…man this is a challenge.
As soon as I have posted my own attempts, I’d love to start a dialogue about the process–what we learned–how we think we might improve.
Thank you for loving poetry,
| Posted 1 year, 12 months agoNicelle Davis