Bindewald: Poetry

Philosophy

I have a hard time believing that free verse is poetry and not just bad prose. I believe that poetry should have rhythm, rhyme, rhetoric, and restrictions to separate it from its arhythmic poorer brother. The challenge is to work within those restrictions and still reflect natural language. How pretentious is it for poetry to merely be prose read dramatically?

I am also a big fan of split infinitives.

"In the Well: Reflections on the Great Wave of Kanagawa"

Link. (eInTheWell.pdf, 48KB)

Audio. (inTheWell.mp3, 2:57, 5.42MB)

History. I have this picture hanging in my office and I was contemplating writing a poem about the three different elements: the wave, the men, and the mountain. Respectively they are the 'changer,' 'the changed,' and 'the silent observer.' Then one of my co-workers looked at the painting and said, "The thing about it is that there's another wave right behind it."

DUDE! As often as I had looked at and contemplated Hokusai's painting--one of the most famous images in the world--that thought had never occurred to me.

What better form to imitate the steady march of all those waves than a pantoum?

"On Hold"

Link. (eOnHold.pdf, 33KB)

Audio. (onHold.mp3, 1:16, 2.32MB)

History. My wife sent me a poem, probably a haiku, by one of her co-workers' husbands. Not to be topped, I dropped a haiku series. I later learned that there is such a thing as the American line, a line of seventeen syllables. I could have re-written using the American lines, but....