This week let’s write a poem with an epigraph. Think about your favorite author, doesn’t have to be a poet, and find a quote or a clever line from their work, then write a poem in reaction to it, using the line as the epigraph to your poem. If you can’t think of any, may I suggest the opening line of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked…”
Take your time then post your epigraphic poem in the comments below.
Living Poetry 
LikeLike
Posted by Bartholomew Barker | January 12, 2022, 7:44 PMAsylum I
The Willard Asylum for the Insane, upstate New York, closed its doors in 1995. Four hundred suitcases were found in the attic, the contents photographed by Jon Crispin.
Linger on images. Each photo. Loss.
Untouched.
Hairpins. Pliers. Sequined belts.
Wooden leg
in a box.
A woman’s list:
Black dress, blue skirt, jacket with fig trim.
Needles and threads. Baby shoe.
Shakespeare’s Tragedies.
Curling iron.
Glass vase.
Revenants. Rummage.
Wedding photos. Fork. Spoon.
Music book.
Cancelled clock.
This poem is forthcoming in “Asylum,” my poetry collection that will be published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company this spring.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Posted by redfoxpoet | January 11, 2022, 11:00 AMA life in photographs, an interesting angle.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Posted by Cassa Bassa | January 11, 2022, 3:36 PMThank you, Cassa. The intention is that these items are in the suitcases, so they represent many lives–lives lost. People who thought they were going to have a life, but their suitcases were put in the attic of the asylum, and the people subsequently died there. Maybe it’s not clear from the poem, which is part of a manuscript that includes other poems about insane asylums as a metaphor for living in a household of abuse.
LikeLike
Posted by redfoxpoet | January 11, 2022, 8:06 PMThanks for the background info. I find the metaphor interesting and well used. I am very interested in reading more.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Posted by Cassa Bassa | January 12, 2022, 5:18 AMA nice list poem. The inclusion of Baby shoe made me think of the famous (though possibly apocryphal) six-word story by Hemmingway. Nicely done.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Posted by Bartholomew Barker | January 11, 2022, 7:31 PMThank you!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Posted by redfoxpoet | January 11, 2022, 8:06 PMThis show how affective a catalogue poem can be. Very moving.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Posted by ts19page | January 12, 2022, 9:47 AMThanks so much!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Posted by redfoxpoet | January 12, 2022, 10:18 AMSomber Advice from Mark Twain:
Sotto Sorrow
The day was overcast and cool
leaves floated woeful in the pool
gray-green pallor robes the sun
in some dull crepuscular omen,
A day aligned for the forgetful mind.
Work laid aside, book spread along the spine
eyes droop and waver
while the indolent heart begins to savor
A bass note, work laid aside
no use for industry this tide,
the inner ear scans seas of warning
gaps in rhythm, a glitch of mourning.
Thus defenseless, lay down your day
the best laid plans in disarray.
Huddle there, an afghan for your chair,
and watch the pale day fade into its lair.
So much was promised to be done
work denied with denied sun
the subdued heart can not rise up
as barely damp the chasmal cup,
Idleness goes finest with this flow;
Ah, never put off till tomorrow
what you can do, sotto sorrow,
the day after tomorrow.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Posted by ts19page | January 10, 2022, 6:33 PMLove the Burns reference in the 4th stanza and the excellent ending. Great stuff!
LikeLike
Posted by Bartholomew Barker | January 10, 2022, 7:02 PMI’m impressed with your enjambments–very skillful! Some really fine lines, too: “work denied with denied sun,” “thus defenseless, lay down your day.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Posted by redfoxpoet | January 11, 2022, 1:50 PMThank you for this more detailed compliment, appreciated!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Posted by ts19page | January 12, 2022, 2:38 PM“Be Still and know that I am God” – Psalm 46
Eight words
taken in or out of context
a whole, intact
beautiful and dialectic
When spilt
endlessly alive, sparkling
hues of many colors
on the pages that are our mind
Be still and know I am
a name without a name
a tense
all tense
Be still and know
a call to us
reach outside
the knowable denotation
Be still
an imperative
important today
as it ever was
Be
finite flesh
grasp the complex plane
and the tree, still too soon
No words, a null
a call to hesychasm
let there be silence in our restless left hemisphere
beyond human words
a+bi, a=0… maybe mu, maybe not
The only word that was ever spoken
The word we try to understand
The Word that calls to us, always
LikeLiked by 5 people
Posted by Chris Clarke | January 10, 2022, 1:23 PMLove the flesh and the tree stanza. Nicely done!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Posted by Bartholomew Barker | January 10, 2022, 7:00 PMI enjoyed the way you break down this well-known line, inviting us to think about each word.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Posted by redfoxpoet | January 11, 2022, 1:52 PMTo me, this poem reaches for the transcendent and achieves. Doing this is brave, because it is difficult to bring a reader in to any uncommon territory. The wonderful thought that the phrase is dialectic was arresting for me, for this idea contains communion with the sacred. And that we are like sunlight split into many colors of being is a beautiful image.
“..Be/ finite flesh/ grasp the complex plane/ and the tree, still too soon..” are what I consider to be the the striking point of the mystical sense of the tree of immortality not yet within our grasp, and the intent of the title phrase.. The ending seems to echo the call to the unspoken awareness. The poem works for me. Really rewarding to read.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Posted by ts19page | January 12, 2022, 11:20 AMThank you so much!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Posted by Chris Clarke | January 12, 2022, 12:03 PMhttps://poets.org/poem/not-small-voice
An epigraph poem using the line “This is not a small voice you here” by Sonia Sanchez
Untitled by Lisa Tomey
This is not a small voice
you hear.
Tracks of tears
crease their faces
with memories
too often made
daily by the rumble
by the traction
by the violence
on streets meant
to walk, play, work
with purpose
This is not a small voice
you hear.
Wails at the nonsense
cries at the anger fueled
by the fights inside and out
hosted by the blue lights
the red lights
the swirling lights
as if
we cannot see
what’s happening
on the very streets
where people cheered
for the rights of birth
That small voice
is the voice of newness
but what about the dawn
the early light
time to clean up
from the night before
only to find
the dawn’s early light
is another chapter
in lost voices.
Do not let those voices die.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Posted by Lisa Tomey | January 10, 2022, 8:29 AMBravo Lisa! Great great work on this epigraph.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Posted by Cassa Bassa | January 10, 2022, 3:15 PMThank you!
LikeLike
Posted by Lisa Tomey | January 10, 2022, 5:12 PMIt should be “hear” – sorry
LikeLike
Posted by Lisa Tomey | January 10, 2022, 5:13 PMExcellent and timely!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Posted by Bartholomew Barker | January 10, 2022, 6:56 PMNice work on employing ‘the dawn’s early light’, with a whole new perspective, different to the original yet the difference is the point of the whole work. Marking a loss is fending off loss.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Posted by ts19page | January 12, 2022, 11:31 AMhttp://flickerofthoughts.com/2022/01/11/when-the-east-meets-the-west/
LikeLiked by 5 people
Posted by Cassa Bassa | January 10, 2022, 8:12 AMLove the second stanza, especially the “fold your smile into my silken sheets” Excellent!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Posted by Bartholomew Barker | January 10, 2022, 6:52 PMI really liked the ‘silken’ put next to the idea of the East, or Chinese thought. Also the first stanza quoted has a ‘silken’ feel. Silken goodbyes.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Posted by ts19page | January 12, 2022, 12:20 PMThanks for the comments 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Posted by Cassa Bassa | January 12, 2022, 8:12 PM