Interact 4 "The Nightingale" Angeline

[twelveoone]

I feel a bit out of my league introducing Angeline in the Interact series. I am glad she consented. Quite a few thing impress me about her, the variety of styles, “languages” she writes in, the amount of work, most of which is near flawless. Yes, I am intimidated by her, but I am intimidated by anyone who writes sonnets (and repulsed, a dead form from a dying language). Fortunately, she writes other things besides sonnets. I also admit her jazz poems I have trouble with as I am not familiar enough with the language to appreciate them fully. One does not have to comprehend fully to recognize quality.
Before we open the discussion of “The Nightingale” I would like to impose upon her, and ask her for a her thoughts on poetry in general, and on some of her favorite writers in particular.

Again, if you wish to merely comment on this or vote do so here
http://www.literotica.com:81/stories/showstory.php?id=157022
where it counts, this thread is for questions and discussion of.

 

[twelveoone]

The Nightingale
by Angeline ©
I love your heart more than I love your crown.
~Hans Christian Anderson

I came to the window,
the branch closest to it,
and he watched me.

The old man watched me,
sitting in the tatters of his skin,
brittle as a dying branch,
pale and parched.

His lusterless eyes watched me.

All these riches are nothing,
brocades woven in shining threads,
brilliant gold, turquoise lapped
against ivory silk.

All these riches are nothing
to the dust of a man,
to an arid ruler fading
into twilight’s expanse,
shrinking on a velvet throne.

I sang for him.

He was so still, my heart
moved in my breast,
my sharp eyes moist.

I sang for him,
crept closer, fluttering,
offering small lilting notes.

I sang to him~

Live a little longer,
old man, live
a little longer.

Even in the cage,
I sang. I tried to love
the jeweled perch for him.
I sang. I tried for him,
but I was dying.

I am no creature built of tin,
covered with rubies, sapphires.
I cannot match a ticking beat,
a calculated chirp.
When evening shadowed
through my cage and laced
against my wings, I could not match
the brilliance of their emerald eyes.

He watched me.
and said,
Nightingale, live
a little longer.

He fumbled at the cage,
and I am free.

I listen to the forest
sing to me. I sing
to the night, the sky.

 

[twelveoone]

First two questions

1.) who are your favourite poets? why?
2a) is there anything you would change at this point?
2b) Answer this after the thread dies down, what changes would you make now?

 

[twelveoone]

Alright, so I'm a bit of a slacker, I just got around to voting and commenting, came across this:
"the branch closest to it,
and he watched me.

The old man watched me,
sitting in the tatters of his skin,
brittle as a dying branch,"
The double use of the word "branch", this is fantastic, repitition of a word in a contrasting context. Very subtle.
Here are the questions, was this deliberate, and do you use this often? I noticed another grouping here.

 

[Angeline]

Thank you, 1201, for this thread--which I think is a great idea in general--and for giving me an opportunity to talk about poetry and my poem. I'm pretty long-winded, so you'll probably be sorry you asked before we're done.

As I told you yesterday, I'm a little embarrassed by the thought that my writing might intimidate anyone (well besides me) because I'm here to learn and grow like so many writers. When I came here almost three years ago, my poems and writing style were excoriated. I think I' ve learned much since then from other writers here--especially Eve, Lauren, smithpeter, and Senna Jawa, but really so many of you. I never wrote a sonnet or any form poetry before here. JUDO--a very gifted writer who posts here occasionally now, helped me learn how to do sonnets, and I studied examples of other forms online. The best thing about this forum is the way people help each other.

In my opinion, the main thing that needs to be understood about poetry is that it's communication, like any other form of writing. If a reader doesn't understand because a poem's language is so obscure or it's riddled with errors, why even bother--it doesn't communicate. I don't understand people who share their poems but say they only write for themselves, but that's me.

But!

Poetry does differ, to me, from other types of writing in that it should make the reader experience through the senses by its images and metaphors, etc. A good poem puts you in its writer's world. Maybe you don't understand it exactly the way the poet meant it, but you feel it, you connect it to your own experiences and, if it is a very good poem, you are transported. That's what makes it art, in my opinion.

The aforementioned explains why I love the writers I do. They have different approaches, but they all make you feel. I am trained in literature, so I love the classics, but overall my favorites (and really it's a long list, lol) are probably Yeats, Neruda, a little-known Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad, and a 1960s-80s New York City poet, Ted Berrigan. I have recently fallen hard for the writer Sandra Cisneros (who like Virgina Woolf mainly writes prose but has a great poetic sensibility--in Cisneros' case filtered through a working-class, Mexican American upbringing).

Each of those writers comes from a very different experience, but their poems draw you in and make you see through their eyes. Neruda and Farrokhzad are the most obviously sensual, but they all have that in common.

Oh and sonnets don't have to be dry at all. Many of mine tend to follow Elizabethan tradition because of my academic background but look at this one by the former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins:

All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
and after this one just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here while we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.

I'll be back to answer the other questions in a while. I have a baseball-card buying date with a very impatient young man now.

 

[twelveoone]

Thank you, 12, for this thread--which I think is a great idea in general--and for giving me an opportunity to talk about poetry and my poem. I'm pretty long-winded, so you'll probably be sorry you asked before we're done.



In my opinion, the main thing that needs to be understood about poetry is that it's communication, like any other form of writing. If a reader doesn't understand because a poem's language is so obscure or it's riddled with errors, why even bother--it doesn't communicate. I don't understand people who share their poems but say they only write for themselves, but that's me.

But!

Poetry does differ, to me, from other types of writing in that it should make the reader experience through the senses by its images and metaphors, etc. A good poem puts you in its writer's world. Maybe you don't understand it exactly the way the poet meant it, but you feel it, you connect it to your own experiences and, if it is a very good poem, you are transported. That's what makes it art, in my opinion.


that's 1201 - I worked hard to get that number.

I'm not sorry so far.
I thank you for these words, look forward to more
"imabic bongos" is great, I am here to learn

 

[Angeline]

that's 1201 - I worked hard to get that number.

I'm not sorry so far.
I thank you for these words, look forward to more
"imabic bongos" is great, I am here to learn

ok 1201! I fixed it.

 

[Angeline]

Re: First two questions

1.) who are your favourite poets? why?
2a) is there anything you would change at this point?
2b) Answer this after the thread dies down, what changes would you make now?

The Nightingale, which is also posted in illustrated form at Lauren's excellent site [no-troy], is the second poem I wrote in a collection of poems based on fairy tales. The main question for me related to how I wanted to construct it to begin with and how I might change it eventually, is how much do I want to draw on the actual fairy tale?

The story by Hans Christian Anderson is beautiful and metaphoric. I see it as being about giving, going beyond one's own desires--at great cost--to give someone else what he or she most needs. The heart of the story is that a nightingale feels compassion for a dying emperor and then is captured to be his prized possession, which almost destroys her. Ultimately, he realizes that her freedom is the greatest gift he can give her, which he does.

There are so many lovely details in the story though that I could have worked into the poem, and I had to decide how far I wanted to go with it. I did various versions, but I realized that too much detail was weakening the poem--taking it on too many tangents away from the message I wanted to get across. That is basically summarized in the Anderson quote that precedes the poem:

I love your heart more than I love your crown.

because the nightingale sees in the emperor what no one else around him does--a person, and he comes to see that she is more than a treasured possession. She is a living being that needs to be free.

So I might edit it more to make images stronger or get rid of unnecessary verbiage that I hadn't noticed in earlier versions, but I don't think that at this point I'd do more than that.

It's important for me always--as a writer--to keep in mind that I am learning and (I hope) improving, so I'm never done editing. If I feel that I've grown since a previous draft and I can make something I wrote better, I go back and change it.

 

[Angeline]

Alright, so I'm a bit of a slacker, I just got around to voting and commenting, came across this:
"the branch closest to it,
and he watched me.

The old man watched me,
sitting in the tatters of his skin,
brittle as a dying branch,"
The double use of the word "branch", this is fantastic, repitition of a word in a contrasting context. Very subtle.
Here are the questions, was this deliberate, and do you use this often? I noticed another grouping here.

You have sharp eyes!

I do get into repetition--sometimes too much and I have to edit it out. Poetry is musical to me, I hear poems in my head as having specific musical rhythms, and repetitions often sound like chanting to me. Sometimes I go overboard though, and I have to remind myself that the rest of the world isn't in my head hearing the same sound, lol.

In that particular passage I kept the repetition for two reasons: first, I wanted to show that although these two beings, a dying emperor and a wild bird, seem very different they are in fact similar in their need to express love, a desire to give. This is not something immediately understood about the emperor in the story or my poem, but it's true.

Second, I was referring in this:

The old man watched me,
sitting in the tatters of his skin,
brittle as a dying branch

to a line from a William Butler Yeats poem, Sailing to Byzantium:

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick

It's such an evocative image that always stuck with me, makes me think of a thin branch and transience, which to me is descriptive of the emperor.

 

[twelveoone]

You have sharp eyes!

I do get into repetition--sometimes too much and I have to edit it out. Poetry is musical to me, I hear poems in my head as having specific musical rhythms, and repetitions often sound like chanting to me. Sometimes I go overboard though, and I have to remind myself that the rest of the world isn't in my head hearing the same sound, lol.

In that particular passage I kept the repetition for two reasons: first, I wanted to show that although these two beings, a dying emperor and a wild bird, seem very different they are in fact similar in their need to express love, a desire to give. This is not something immediately understood about the emperor in the story or my poem, but it's true.

BTW this poem was not my choice, you are turning me into a fan. Repetition is such a tricky thing, I find this masterful:
all "watched me" with variation

and he watched me.
The old man watched me,
His lusterless eyes watched me.
He watched me.

and in this line "eyes" introduced, his , yours, comparision

His lusterless eyes watched me.
my sharp eyes moist.
...I could not match
the brilliance of their emerald eyes.

another set of three "sang"slight variations ending with two "sing"'s near the end.

"I do get into repetition--sometimes too much and I have to edit it out."
This is important, in a longer piece, I think it strenghens it, but, how do you know when enough is enough?

 

[Angeline]

BTW this poem was not my choice, you are turning me into a fan. Repetition is such a tricky thing, I find this masterful:
all "watched me" with variation

and he watched me.
The old man watched me,
His lusterless eyes watched me.
He watched me.

and in this line "eyes" introduced, his , yours, comparision

His lusterless eyes watched me.
my sharp eyes moist.
...I could not match
the brilliance of their emerald eyes.

another set of three "sang"slight variations ending with two "sing"'s near the end.

"I do get into repetition--sometimes too much and I have to edit it out."
This is important, in a longer piece, I think it strenghens it, but, how do you know when enough is enough?

This is sort of a hard question, lol, because I don't have an objective answer. After I write a poem, I read it over and over and over--both to myself and out loud. Sometimes I even record myself reading so I can listen to the flow of it. I tinker until I feel I've got it.

That goes with my idea of poems being musical--I want to hear the rhythm of it and make sure it sounds right (no "off" notes). It's more something I feel is right, than know in a logical way.

In those passages I wanted to use the repetition of watching to show the emperor's growing understanding that the nightingale would not survive if he kept her imprisioned, or even his growing recognitition that what he was doing *was* imprisoning her. The repetition was a metaphor for that, and I knew the poem was long enough to handle it.

 

[WickedEve]

Just stopping by to say that I love this poem by the poetic Angeline bird.
"I do get into repetition--sometimes too much and I have to edit it out." I love the rep in this poem. It ties it all together and makes it sing.

 

[flyguy69]

I even found the repetition to be metaphoric for the imprisonment. It conjured images of monotony and confinement for me.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

I just want to state how much I'm enjoying these Interact threads (even if I haven't been doing it lately), and plug another two poems by Angeline that, with Nightingale, make a group of illustrated fairy tale poems that I personally find fascinating:

- Fairy Tale
- His Shadow Speaks

There's also an audio version of Nightingale read by Angeline here, and (you'll love this ) an interview (here) she gave to my website about a year ago on some of the themes in this thread.

 

[Angeline]

I just want to state how much I'm enjoying these Interact threads (even if I haven't been doing it lately), and plug another two poems by Angeline that, with Nightingale, make a group of illustrated fairy tale poems that I personally find fascinating:

- Fairy Tale
- His Shadow Speaks

There's also an audio version of Nightingale read by Angeline here, and (you'll love this ) an interview (here) she gave to my website about a year ago on some of the themes in this thread.

Thank you darling. Now everyone can see that stupid pic of me you posted beotch.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

It's all part of the plan.

 

[flyguy69]

I just want to state how much I'm enjoying these Interact threads (even if I haven't been doing it lately), and plug another two poems by Angeline that, with Nightingale, make a group of illustrated fairy tale poems that I personally find fascinating:

- Fairy Tale
- His Shadow Speaks

There's also an audio version of Nightingale read by Angeline here, and (you'll love this ) an interview (here) she gave to my website about a year ago on some of the themes in this thread.

Oh my! Put your hand over your heart before you click this link, boys. Angeline's mellifluous nightingale will pull it right through the wall of your chest!

Thank you, Lauren, for contributing to our understanding of this remarkable poet.

I never knew she was so precocious!

 

[Angeline]

Oh my! Put your hand over your heart before you click this link, boys. Angeline's mellifluous nightingale will pull it right through the wall of your chest!

Thank you, Lauren, for contributing to our understanding of this remarkable poet.

I never knew she was so precocious!

Not to mention all of about 10 in that photo.

 

[flyguy69]

Not to mention all of about 10 in that photo.

Let's see... a year-old interview, makes you 11 now!

I should feel guilty about my fascination but Damn! That voice, those lips....

 

[twelveoone]

In my opinion, the main thing that needs to be understood about poetry is that it's communication, like any other form of writing. If a reader doesn't understand because a poem's language is so obscure or it's riddled with errors, why even bother--it doesn't communicate.

Quick note here - she what she says - go back and look at the words, what is the most obscure word you can come up with here; brocades?
Very simple words, very simple tool (repetition), very, very effective poem.
A lot of the better poets here do this, if I may drop a few names, Pat Carrington is another good example of the effectiveness of simple words. jd4george, I consider a master of repitition. I mention this, because, in most cases this is the direction one should head towards, not away.
Note in the examples I gave of Angeline's repititions of where she uses variants and where she doesn't.

I shall be back later with an explanation of the psychological patterning effects she sets up with this.

As I said Ange, you're turning me into a fan.

 

[Angeline]

Quick note here - she what she says - go back and look at the words, what is the most obscure word you can come up with here; brocades?
Very simple words, very simple tool (repetition), very, very effective poem.
A lot of the better poets here do this, if I may drop a few names, Pat Carrington is another good example of the effectiveness of simple words. jd4george, I consider a master of repitition. I mention this, because, in most cases this is the direction one should head towards, not away.
Note in the examples I gave of Angeline's repititions of where she uses variants and where she doesn't.

I shall be back later with an explanation of the psychological patterning effects she sets up with this.

As I said Ange, you're turning me into a fan.

I gratefully welcome all to like my poems, lol.

You bring up an interesting point. It is very easy to overwrite poetry. We've all done it. I know I have and still do. A mentor of mine--an amazing poet--once gave me the following simile. He said poetry is like baking cake. The best cakes are simple because the basic ingredients come together to make it good. You don't need to add lots of frosting and decoration to make it appealing. Simple is good.

Writing poetry has been, for me, a process of learning what not to say. The first draft of a poem is the beginning of a process of whittling it down to what's essential. I keep going back and taking out words I don't need. Sometimes I need to put a poem away for a time so I can gain the necessary distance to do that. It's easy to fall in love with one's own words, but I I find that the more I write, the better I become at recognizing the excess and scraping it away. I very much admire writers like Eve and the late smithpeter because their poems are naturally unadorned. smithpeter was a master at saying volumes in a few lines.

 

[twelveoone]

branch repititon 1

"I came to the window,
the branch closest to it,
and he watched me.

The old man watched me,
sitting in the tatters of his skin,
brittle as a dying branch"

By the double use of branch here, she sets up an indentification of the nightingale with the old man, and begins to define the relationship. Note, also introduction of "watched me" also word "dying".

 

[twelveoone]

"Watched Me" I sang Repititon 2&3

I even found the repetition to be metaphoric for the imprisonment. It conjured images of monotony and confinement for me.

flyguy nails it...

all "watched me" with variation

and he watched me.
The old man watched me,
His lusterless eyes watched me.
He watched me.

I sang for him.
I sang for him,
I sang to him~

I sang. I tried to love
the jeweled perch for him.
I sang. I tried for him,
but I was dying.

Note here who is dying

 

[Angeline]

Re: "Watched Me" I sang Repititon 2&3

flyguy nails it...

all "watched me" with variation

and he watched me.
The old man watched me,
His lusterless eyes watched me.
He watched me.

I sang for him.
I sang for him,
I sang to him~

I sang. I tried to love
the jeweled perch for him.
I sang. I tried for him,
but I was dying.

Note here who is dying

Good morning.

Well, there is literal death and there is spiritual death. The emperor's impending death is a release from a long life; maybe it's his time and his imprisomment of the nightingale is an attempt to not let go. She is dying inside because she needs freedom, but maybe her attempt to prolong his life is a way of imprisoning him. Maybe she is less selfless than she may seem. So in a sense, they both contribute to each other's pain or loss.

I often see things in my poems long after I write them that I find revealing--as if I may have subconsciously revealed something that I wasn't aware of consciously at the time of writing. Does anyone else ever feel that in their poems?

On the other hand, maybe I should just have some coffee and not think so much.

 

[PatCarrington]

Re: Re: "Watched Me" I sang Repititon 2&3

I often see things in my poems long after I write them that I find revealing--as if I may have subconsciously revealed something that I wasn't aware of consciously at the time of writing. Does anyone else ever feel that in their poems?

On the other hand, maybe I should just have some coffee and not think so much.

yes. i do.

just like your poetry, you have so very much to say.

drink the coffee, but don't stop thinking.