William+Marsh

"Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of the joke, you've lost the whole thing." --William Stanley Merwin

1st Poem
My eyes slowly adjust as I prepare for a sleepless night dwelling on dawn. 1:32 I roll over restlessly, in my relentless search of sleep. I relinquish myself to my occupied mind. My mind races as fast and far as it can. I play out the next day from the moment I wake up to the moment I fall asleep. 1:33 I am absolutely astounded at the progression of time. Hours work out to mere minutes. A watched pot never boils A watched clock never turns I look out my window, the streets are abandoned. All that is notable is the idiotic intensity of illuminated strings along buildings. I close my eyes and focus on sleep The cold air invades my nostrils A cacophony of creaks and groans fill the void of silence. 1:34 I desperately delve into the depths of my own unconscious 7:32 And just like that all of my distress disappears In it's place euphoria and excitement overpower my fatigue as I throw myself from my bed.

2nd poem (rough)
I lay awake, eyes resting but mind wrestles with my unconscious I struggle to sleep but fail in my everlasting endeavor I immerse myself in what I imagine to be the next morning My eyelids spring open weightlessly My limbs fall weightlessly as I focus my attention on the nothingness staring me in the eye Nothingness...Does such a thing exist? It can't be a thing if it's nothing And yet there it is, staring at me. How would I know if it were staring at me if it's nothing, like something that can't be seen? A vacant stare that vacates your mind

Vague light brushes against my eyelids My eyes spring open once more, but not to nothingness Instead, to the light of day and elation

2nd poem(edited)
I lay awake, eyes resting but mind wrestling with my unconscious I struggle to sleep but fail in my everlasting endeavor I focus on my body as a whole My mouth goes dry My limbs go numb My mind goes blank, yet sleeps evasive immersion eludes me I open my eyes and am met with a vacant stare My mind starts playing tricks on me, projecting objects and images into the darkness ahead of me What is my mind trying to show me? What is th-- --

Ode to beanbag chairs:
You don't care if I have proper posture My posture shapes you Making a crevice just as deep and wide as it needs to be To fit my form perfectly I come home from a long day, and there you are; just as you were, waiting for more molding. As I sit, you conform to the contours of my body It's never the same to take a seat, it is always different; always changing Yet at the same time, it //is// the same; comfortable.

Notes for revisions: -Embellish on details -Describe the beanbag chair -Personify the beanbag chair -Make it seem like the only beanbag chair in existence

Riff poem: //First line taken from "Baba O'Riley" by "The Who"//
"Teenage wasteland" Or it's formal name, high school. Some thrive in this environment Yet others fall into cataclysmic failure Thrown to the wayside by their classmates Nomadic groups form as they trek across this four year long journey. Lessons are learned with leering eyes Bridges are burned without remorse Never looking back, always straining their eyes on the ever distant future 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' 'Where do you see yourself in 10 years?' Why? Where I am now is what matters Let time tell the tale, not me. After all, It's just a teenage wasteland

Sonnet:
How I loathe this, with such passion rage Writing, this ghastly abomination It is late, I am tired; yet I write

This work so trite, it hurts merely to read But then again, maybe it's not so bad Maybe it's not all that hard after all

But who am I to judge my own writing? To judge my own writing is hardly fair This is not a typical sonnet

I've doubled the amount of syllables Each line has 10 instead of 5, so ha. I am very near to the end of this

I hope you did enjoy this sonnet If not, neither did I, thank god it's done

Study of my own poetry:
In my own poetry, a common technique I like to use is alliteration; or the recurrence of the same sound in closely connected words. A good example of this is in my riff poem: "Teenage wasteland" Or it's formal name, high school. Some thrive in this environment Yet others fall into cataclysmic failure Thrown to the wayside by their classmates Nomadic groups form as they trek across this four year long journey. Lessons are learned with leering eyes Bridges are burned without remorse Never looking back, always straining their eyes on the ever distant future 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' 'Where do you see yourself in 10 years?' Why? Where I am now is what matters Let time tell the tale, not me. The very last line of my poem reads “Let time tell the tale”. Four out of five of those words start with t, and three out of those four start with a hard ‘t’ rather than a ‘th’ sound found in ‘the’. I also use a large amount of descriptive writing to flesh out my poems. In the edited version of my second poem I describe the physical state of my body, such as my limbs going numb. =// Randall Jarrell //=

=// Detailed study: //= Randall Jarrell is an intriguing poet. He was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1914. After graduating from college, he joined the air force but soon became a celestial navigation tower operator. During his tour of duty, he wrote many poems about the hardships and stress of war. All of his poems are fairly short and morbid. All of them are in someway related to death and dismay. They also typically have an animal or a reference to animals as well as freezing cold.

I interpreted the cold to be talking about the cold, unforgiving nature of war. In //The death of the ball turret gunner// and in //Gunner//, both references to freezing happen very soon before something about him dying. On the other hand, the freezing could simply be the fact that air at such altitudes are incredibly cold, which would make unheated things freeze. But being that it is a poem, I doubt that the freezing is as literal as that.

In all three of the poems I examined (//The death of the ball turret gunner, Gunner// and //Eighth air force//), he mentions death. While this is unsurprising for war, I find it interesting that in two of those poems it is his own death, rather than a comrade’s death. A possible relation to his own morbidity is in fact his actual death. He had attempted suicide once before, and he died by being struck by a car. The coroner ruled it accidental, but it’s possible that he had intentionally placed himself in the path of the car.

Randall Jarrell was seen as a man with empathy for others and an almost painful sensitivity to the hardships of others; among many of his other skills and capabilities. In his poem //Eighth air force// you see some of his empathetic side. He mentions puppies in his poem, which I read to mean the new recruits of the army, untouched by the horrors of war. He then talks about “the other murderers” implying that once a soldier has been trained to kill and carries out their mission, they are no better than a murderer. It is clear that Randall Jarrell had a very morbid opinion of war, with very little sense of self-righteousness or glory.

Yet at the same time, while he sees this as the life of a soldier, he accepts it. He accepts that war is in mans nature and that soldiers have to kill. Diplomacy can only go so far, and obviously by being a poet he is trying his hardest to make it work; but he realizes that there are other methods and is far from naïve to them. In the last stanza of //Eighth air force// he wrote "Men wash their hands in blood, as best they can: I find no fault in this just man." He accepts that even if their hands aren't clean (both literally and figuratively), and absolves them as best he can.