Apostrophe to Miranda

Inspired by Wallace Stevens, an selenic ode.

I.

The grayest tear beneath the eye
Lets loose, lets go and seems to fall
Until it starts to fly.
Little vagabond, most shy,
Most dim, your look is sly
And makes enormous motions sprawl
Upon the sheet’s enormous caul,
As lightning through a long and smokey hall.

II.

Svelte sculpture
Amidst a pursy mob,
Your image melts and then
Congeals and melts,
Congeals and melts again,
With a swallowed throb,
Like a guzzled gob
Of gossip among ganders.

Your composite cells and ours
Are of a selfsame origin,
And all our pious bells and towers
Are ringing in the swelling and the shaking of your skin.
We, the fat, should be most thin
Without your buoyant bursts of boiling flowers,
Erupting, rattling, cracked into a grin,
To wink at lesser powers.

Your belly trembles,
Do you laugh or sob?

III.

You should not be strange and beautiful 
If you were not changeable and crass"
A daughter of an angry miracle,
Being cut from pocked and speckled glass.
With each uprising gasp of raspy matter,
Through clattering lips and eyelids, you present
New starry fruit upon a celestial platter,
Changing, warping, aging, but never spent.

In an angel-haunted world, that form is truth
And sweetness which is sharp, rough, hard and spare;
Nothing wears colors of patience, love and ruth
Like a rainy statue in a rainy square.
The limit of a performative portent
Is as we shall ascribe, while time is lent.

Reviews

[Marie Anzalone]

Be wary of criticism on here until you've navigated your way around a bit. Critique is one thing; tearing down good work is another. There's a fine line between the two. Some people know the line, some do not. I have found that there are amateurs who pounce on good writers trying to prove that they know more than the writer (alas I have had the most trouble with English majors in college). I have found thatb the professionals at heart will leave something alone if they do not like it, or will gently offer definitive clear suggestions.

[emipoemi]

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I have no words........my voice is in my awe!!!!!!!!!!! This is utterly superb! Well done!

[Layley Lu]

I am happily dazzled by a lot of the words and phrases here. This is my first reading and I'm a little wonder struck. So I will read again. Have to come back ^-^

[VennelaMargame]

Thank you. I'm ambivalent about this one.

[Layley Lu]

Then maybe you will revise

[VennelaMargame]

Yeah, I'm not sure where to go with her. This was meant as a tribute to the style of Stevens, but idk if it works 100%.

[Marie Anzalone]

I have shared your work with a fellow writer with whom I think you will find confluence in style and thought. His pen name is Clockwork. You are both Classical stylists- a tough genre to both write and aprpeciate. I caution him sometimes about writing too abstractly for the audience to grasp the meaning of th work, and I would caution you the same. That said, this is wonderful. The imagery and descriptions are well-penned, an I can see the admiration for the unperfect, the angry miracle itself perhaps, shining through this. It is not often that we see poetry so focused on small detail any more, and that is a pity. We have lost the art of contemplation, it seems. Thanks for sharing- if for no other reason than bringing contemplation back to life again. High marks, my friend. You are off to a great start.

[VennelaMargame]

Well, I figured, when's the last time someone wrote an ode to the moon? Miranda's always been one of my favorite celestial bodies, just because she is such a quirky mess.

[Marie Anzalone]

Just as Diana was always one of my favorite goddesses. :-)

[VennelaMargame]

Btw, I suck. I overslept for Westkill. Idk if I want to get chores done tomorrow or do it tomorrow.

[Emily Dickinson Jr.]

The way you set up this poem is very intereting I've never seen it done outside of a textbook. good vocabulary as well but it kinda clashes I like ryme I just think it would have been less docter suesey if you had made the placement of the ryme different. As it is it seemes a little forced in my own opinion. I dont mean it badly the intent and structures all very good you just need to work on rythme and ryme a bit.

[VennelaMargame]

Hmm, what do you mean different placement of the rhyme? To be specific, I was intending a syncopated feel for it, as if it was always threatening to break into a regular rhyme and meter, but not quite getting there.

[Emily Dickinson Jr.]

if you differ the sentence lengths more and vary the placement of your ryming words that should add a more traditional ryme

[VennelaMargame]

Hmm...i'm still not quite seeing what you mean. Could you give an example? Sorry if I'm being thick.

[Emily Dickinson Jr.]

like in shakespear the iamic pantemeter a bit?

[VennelaMargame]

But the whole third section is Iambic pentameter.

[Emily Dickinson Jr.]

er Im not rly sure how to describe it rly ... its honestly something that just happens, itll probally come with experience .

[VennelaMargame]

What do you think of the other poem I posted?