White Noise by The Famous Brett Watson, 10-Sep-2001.
The following poem, entitled Forgotten Realms, was written by myself primarily as a poetic exercise. I was inspired to do this upon reading some poetry written by other random persons on the web. Most (but not all) of the poetry I encountered was simply an outlet for existential angst and Weltschmerz, which may have provided catharsis for the author at the time, but didn't make for very good poetry as such. I was left thinking that I could do better, and so I set myself an exercise to test this opinion.
The exercise involved rewriting in poetic form some scenic depictions I had previously written in prose form. The original prose was written in about 1996 to serve as "room descriptions" for a multi-user virtual environment, but the text was lost a few years later. The exercise was fairly well-defined: I had to include all the important points of each location (from memory), and each location was to be dealt with in one stanza. I chose six locations from the original selection of twenty or more: two sets of three adjoining locations. In order to give the realm descriptions a bit of context, I added one stanza header and footer, opting to keep the language more prosaic but with a well-defined metre.
Here, then, are the results of that exercise — now that I've finally completed it (which is ironic, given the closing stanza). Please enjoy. Further comments about the poem follow it.
I once was inspired (for various reasons) to write of a realm of my mind's own invention; to carefully render in phrases poetic a landscape unheard of and places unknown. Random it was in construction and layout, for each piece was added as I was inspired, and having its basis in whatever image from mem'ry or fancy came foremost to mind. Let me describe this eclectic invention and tell of those places, their mood and their beauty; for when they're forgoten my effort is wasted, but should they uplift you my work is worthwhile.
Nearly still the inky bay nonetheless reflects the watching moon's unblinking face in dancing motions: quicksilver glow that to and fro with caprice upon the crests of gentle swell alights. Moored yachts, a forest of masts with pendular sway, each marking slow time to its own tardy metronome, or chiming like an upturned bell as wind slaps the rig. Wavelets lap the sandy shore, and from the deeper waters now a "plop" and expanding rings mark the place where some misguided fish has leapt a moment in the air. A gentle breeze wafts in and beckons us follow up the grassy hill behind. Let us go there...
Hush! The bustling, gusty breeze makes fuss in long grass with abstracted purpose; urgently insisting our silence for its unfinished business. And, with ripple and sway in the shimmering moonglow, the grass believes itself another bay; in restless dreams it rolls and turns as rhythmic waves on boundless sea. Beset in black velvet, the jewels of heaven gleam serenely from their unfathomable abode. And lo! An eager star streaks blazenly across the heavens — expending itself in angelic glory that we might watch in awe. Surely it meant to guide us — to the crest of the hill it pointed! Let us go there...
Hill's crest bears a melancholy crown: a fence of loose-hung rusted chain, adorned at front with skewed and broken gate. And within this token boundary: graves; rectangular reminders of unknown lives long spent. No breath of air so much as stirs to break the ghostless silence; the stars and moon and grass ignore the border of this dismal and unhaunted plot. The tombstones tease your mortal soul: questions penetrate your mind as headstones through the sod, but phantom answers elude your grasp. Perhaps, in time, you would have an answer from these stones. But we cannot stay here...
Picturebook cottage in meadows of warmth and sunlight; the honey-buzz of insects and the smell of warm, damp hay. Smoke from the chimney tells of homely industry behind those paint-splash curtains: the pie in the oven; the promise of comfort and company; the simple pleasures of hearth and home. In further meadows horses idly graze, swishing tails and flicking ears abstractedly, intent on juicy grass. Unconcerned hills roll westward, slumbering in quilted landscape; a path beckons east through a great wall of trees that huddle and conspire to hide what lies beyond. Let us go there...
Sandy trail through the silent grove whose shade grants respite from the sun's relentless rays. The patchwork light of the canopy patterns playfuly on the ground, as through wind-lapped waters onto the still below. And hewn from self-same trees, without much finish or pretense, a cabin stands sentry on the lonely track, casting critical but silent eye over all who pass. What secrets behind its sternly bolted door, underscored by rust? Secrets they shall remain, for the track compels us further on to where the sunlight breaks full force into this quiet cave. Let us go there...
Trees shrink to bushes as we emerge onto the strand. The sky is a vast, flax-blue silken sheet spread smoothly above the gleaming sapphire sea below. The white sand shines warmly up at you as midsummer snow: powder squelching underneath your soles and between your toes. White waves hiss against the smooth, hard shore; the foam as quickly spent as champagne froth. Receding waters draw you in seductively: a palpable force that undertows your soul, making you yearn for the touch, and thrill, and pleasant rude shock of the wet embrace. But we cannot stay here...
And so ends our journey through realms near-forgotten (I hope you enjoyed your short stroll through my fancies), but let me in closing leave you with a question — a little memento to take as you go. Objects of fiction are often neglected: invented today and discarded the morrow; have we any duty as authors and poets to give our worlds closure and not just forget? Doubtful am I that we bear such a burden, despite feeling guilty for unfinished fiction; but if I in turn am but someone's creation, I beg you, my author, do better than I!
"...the author and finisher of our faith..." — Hebrews 12:2 (KJV)
All in all, I'm pleased with the results. Some bits are very good, other bits are pretty ho-hum, but given the self-imposed constraints of the exercise, the overall result is not bad at all. The first and last stanzas were not a part of the "poetic imagery" exercise, so I won't discuss them, but I have some comments to make on the techniques used in the construction of the other stanzas. These comments follow.
Actually starting each stanza is quite a challenge, and I think I did very well on that account in the first realm of night. The sentence construction, commencing with "nearly still" (rather than the subject — the bay), is a poetic device that I fail to use to good effect in any other stanza. It definitely helps to start with something slightly tangential to the scene, filling in the rest of the picture as you go along. The subject material here — a moonlit bay — is fairly cliché, but the order in which the ideas are introduced make it interesting. Another winning factor in this opening phrase is the metre: the words have a good rhythm and flow.
I'm also quite pleased with the depiction of the yachts. To those who would nitpick about mixed metaphors, I find the progression from "forest" to "metronome" and finally to "upturned bell" to be quite reasonable. In quick succession we see the parallels between the masts and three things that sway: the forest depicts the collective nature of the yachts; the metronome is a closer parallel to the actual motion of the mast, and also that (unlike trees) each yacht marks its own time; the "upturned bell" (a simile rather than a metaphor, as it happens) ties the motion to the sound, whilst admitting that the sound isn't actually produced the way a bell does.
The other poetic device in this stanza that just barely warrants mention is the use of sound. The phrase, "marking slow time to its own tardy metronome," uses the long "o" sound three times — a slow sound that sets the pace for the image thus depicted. Similarly, the phrase, "wind slaps the rig," was deliberately chosen to have clipped sounds, again reflecting the action taking place.
The second realm of night also makes use of sound: the "s" sound is heavily used in describing the wind in the long grass — the sound of which is the only audible thing in this virtual locale. I'm quite pleased with the anthropomorphisation of the wind as "busy" — engaged in a lot of activity without evincing much actual purpose. This is immediately followed by a contrasting anthropomorphisation of the grass, which sleeps and dreams oblivious to the wind's frantic activity. This in turn introduces the metaphor of the swaying grass as a restless sea. The rhythm of this description also fits beautifully with the image, I think.
I'm somewhat less impressed with the stars in this stanza, but I was obliged to include them based on the rules of the exercise. I also needed an excuse to move on to the next stanza, and that excuse took the form of the shooting star. There was a shooting star in the original prose, but it didn't really point anywhere.
The challenge in the third realm of night was to produce a particularly unspooky rendition of a graveyard. Like most of the scenes here, this image is loosely based in a distant memory of mine: the experience of being in a country graveyard in outback Australia late at night. I must have been pre-teen at the time, but for some reason this graveyard completely failed to inspire any fear in me at all. Instead, I wondered what these people could have told me of life beyond, and silence was my only answer.
The notion of an "unhaunted" graveyard is a nice twist to what could easily have been just another cliché, but other than that, there's nothing terribly special about this stanza. It was actually the last one I finished, and it could have suffered from "let's just get this damn thing finished" syndrome. On the other hand, I do like "ghostless silence".
The first realm of day is yet another cliché given as poetic a depiction as possible in order to cover its unimaginitive basis. Hey — this was an exercise in poetic language, not originality. The opening has a few things going for it: it engages four of the five senses without being too obvious about it — did you notice? The meadows of warmth and sunlight are passably metaphoric, and the "honey-buzz" of the insects sneaks nicely under the consciousness as a sound effect.
The warmth and relaxation of the house and its surrounds are further reinforced by the image of idle horses and anthropomorphised hills which slumber under their quilt. The horses and hills form a nice couple: the horses concern themselves only with eating, reacting in reflex only to the pesky flies implied by twitching ears and tails; the hills don't give a damn about anything at all and are having a nap if you don't mind. Such a soporific scene needs a bit of a teaser to motivate us to move along, and so the naughty trees provide the tease by conspicuous conspiracy. Gad, even my critique of my poem is poetic. But let us move on...
The second realm of day doesn't have all that much going for it, frankly. The ordering of ideas in the introductory sentence is fair, but not as good as the first realm of night. Once again, the subject matter has to be rescued from its own triteness by interesting phrase, and I'm not sure I'd call the rescue attempt successful. The simile of the light through the tree canopy as light through rippled water is appealing, but that simile existed in the original prose. All in all, I think this stanza was fairly forced: I had a number of lines to write about it, and it started to look a little padded out. I'm not sure that I could improve on it much, given the rules of the game.
The third realm of day, on the other hand, is quite a success — a good way to finish. The opening line is nondescript, but the rest has a lot going for it. Most notable is the ongoing use of sound — similar to but more pronounced than the sound of the wind in the second realm of night. White noise sounds like "s", "f", and "sh" are used all the way through the second, third, and fourth sentences, providing the sounds of sand and sea.
This stanza also contains the poem's only instances of oxymoron — two in total. The first is the sand, which is described as "midsummer snow". The second is the "pleasant rude shock" of entering the water. I think both of these descriptions are heightened by their inherently self-contradictory nature. I'm especially pleased with the overall effect of the last sentence, which describes the receding waves. If you've ever stared at the mixed motions of the water where waves recede into the sea, I think you'll know what I mean by "undertows your soul"; and if you've ever cringed in anticipation of that first big wave getting your dry body thoroughly wet, I think you'll know what I mean by "pleasant rude shock". Heh.
Your feedback on this poetic exercise is welcomed. Conversely, I'm generally happy to provide my opinion on the use of language if you want it.
Author: The Famous Brett Watson