Poem post: "Februrary" by Jack Collom
February
By Jack Collom
It is all kind of lovely that I know
what I attend here now the maturity of snow
has settled around forming a sort of time
pushing that other over either horizon and all is mine
in any colors to be chosen and
everything is cold and nothing is totally frozen
soon enough
the primary rough
erosion of what white fat it will occur
stiff yellows O
beautiful beautifully austere
be gotten down to, that much rash and achievement that
would promote to, but
now I know my own red
network electrifying this welcome annual hush
* * * * * *
I'm making a poetry post to soothe my nerves as I try to do travel planning.
I don't know Jack Collom's work at all, but the Poetry Foundation Website seems to tell me that he wrote both for children and for adults. Is that important to know for this poem?
Maybe? I'm really interested by the way this poem begins by using rhyme in a way that feels almost naive and childlike.
For example, that opening quatrain has simple AABB rhyme, but the line lengths and rhythms are comically irregular -- the first line has 10 syllables and seems like it's setting us up for iambic pentameter, but the next three lines are 12, 11, and the goofily overrun 16.
Also, I notice that that simple rhyme of know/snow is already softening by the time we get to time/mine.
And the diction is weird. The first line has that conversational, hedging "kind of lovely," but then the awkwardly formal, "that I know," which looks like a filler phrase to force a regular rhythm and rhyme (yet isn't doing that).
Then Collom plays his first real trick on me -- "a sort of" which echoes "kind of" but turns from a hedging phrase into something wondrous: "the maturity of snow / has settled around forming a sort of time."
That's gorgeously disorienting, and I feel in it the cold breath and the white expanse of snow.
All through here, in phrases that look like they're going to be ordinary, even banal, I keep getting a word that's slightly different from the one I'm expecting. The more I look at the lines, the more the wording break down. I can put together a sort of sense for the first stanza, but the grammar won't settle down and let me parse it. "Pushing that other over either horizon" -- that other what? Other time?
So this first stanza takes the shape of an awkwardly built quatrain, but clearly the poet has set other processes in motion.
(Processes of melt, right? I know you see it.)
Still, at least in form, that's a fairly regular stanza, if one that seems a little shoved-together, like a snowbank packed by the plough.
But the next stanza is only two lines long, and the couplet of chosen / frozen has shifted off-kilter:
Okay. Clearly one cool formal thing that's happening in this poem is that the stanzas are melting and dwindling away, like snow melt and runoff, and as the line structure and the grammar melt, the rhyme is kind of skidding and floating around.
(Or maybe you see it as sticks and grass emerging through the remnants of snow?)
"Everything is cold and nothing is totally frozen" feels both true and playful, but I really fall in love with this poem about here:
-- Which feels like the poet saying to me "look, friend, I know what I'm doing. Trust me." Now (as a devotee of experimental and formal poetry) I feel like I know what I'm listening for, here where the grammar falls apart and instead of the rhyme being obtrusive or awkward, it becomes a happy surprise, a structure I can grab onto.
(And it's about to melt, too -- we'll get one more thing that feels like a rhyme, "occur/austere" and that's pretty much it, unless you count something like "to/to" ...)
I don't know Collom's intentions, of course, but I feel like he's deliberately making me move awkwardly through this poem (like walking on the irregular surface of snow? Too much of a stretch?) -- wrong-footing me right away in that oddly clumsy initial stanza, and then springing the rest of this melting, in-between landscape on me.
In the middle I think a little of Wallace Stevens and by the end I think of e e cummings.
There are lots of other things to notice here, though -- what stands out for you? What do you think is happening at the end?
* * * * * *
Is anyone else having trouble with formatting? Dreamwidth keeps murdering my careful line spacing in an exciting new way.
{rf}
By Jack Collom
It is all kind of lovely that I know
what I attend here now the maturity of snow
has settled around forming a sort of time
pushing that other over either horizon and all is mine
in any colors to be chosen and
everything is cold and nothing is totally frozen
soon enough
the primary rough
erosion of what white fat it will occur
stiff yellows O
beautiful beautifully austere
be gotten down to, that much rash and achievement that
would promote to, but
now I know my own red
network electrifying this welcome annual hush
* * * * * *
I'm making a poetry post to soothe my nerves as I try to do travel planning.
I don't know Jack Collom's work at all, but the Poetry Foundation Website seems to tell me that he wrote both for children and for adults. Is that important to know for this poem?
Maybe? I'm really interested by the way this poem begins by using rhyme in a way that feels almost naive and childlike.
For example, that opening quatrain has simple AABB rhyme, but the line lengths and rhythms are comically irregular -- the first line has 10 syllables and seems like it's setting us up for iambic pentameter, but the next three lines are 12, 11, and the goofily overrun 16.
Also, I notice that that simple rhyme of know/snow is already softening by the time we get to time/mine.
And the diction is weird. The first line has that conversational, hedging "kind of lovely," but then the awkwardly formal, "that I know," which looks like a filler phrase to force a regular rhythm and rhyme (yet isn't doing that).
Then Collom plays his first real trick on me -- "a sort of" which echoes "kind of" but turns from a hedging phrase into something wondrous: "the maturity of snow / has settled around forming a sort of time."
That's gorgeously disorienting, and I feel in it the cold breath and the white expanse of snow.
All through here, in phrases that look like they're going to be ordinary, even banal, I keep getting a word that's slightly different from the one I'm expecting. The more I look at the lines, the more the wording break down. I can put together a sort of sense for the first stanza, but the grammar won't settle down and let me parse it. "Pushing that other over either horizon" -- that other what? Other time?
So this first stanza takes the shape of an awkwardly built quatrain, but clearly the poet has set other processes in motion.
(Processes of melt, right? I know you see it.)
Still, at least in form, that's a fairly regular stanza, if one that seems a little shoved-together, like a snowbank packed by the plough.
But the next stanza is only two lines long, and the couplet of chosen / frozen has shifted off-kilter:
in any colors to be chosen and
everything is cold and nothing is totally frozen
everything is cold and nothing is totally frozen
Okay. Clearly one cool formal thing that's happening in this poem is that the stanzas are melting and dwindling away, like snow melt and runoff, and as the line structure and the grammar melt, the rhyme is kind of skidding and floating around.
(Or maybe you see it as sticks and grass emerging through the remnants of snow?)
"Everything is cold and nothing is totally frozen" feels both true and playful, but I really fall in love with this poem about here:
soon enough
the primary rough
erosion
the primary rough
erosion
-- Which feels like the poet saying to me "look, friend, I know what I'm doing. Trust me." Now (as a devotee of experimental and formal poetry) I feel like I know what I'm listening for, here where the grammar falls apart and instead of the rhyme being obtrusive or awkward, it becomes a happy surprise, a structure I can grab onto.
(And it's about to melt, too -- we'll get one more thing that feels like a rhyme, "occur/austere" and that's pretty much it, unless you count something like "to/to" ...)
I don't know Collom's intentions, of course, but I feel like he's deliberately making me move awkwardly through this poem (like walking on the irregular surface of snow? Too much of a stretch?) -- wrong-footing me right away in that oddly clumsy initial stanza, and then springing the rest of this melting, in-between landscape on me.
In the middle I think a little of Wallace Stevens and by the end I think of e e cummings.
There are lots of other things to notice here, though -- what stands out for you? What do you think is happening at the end?
* * * * * *
Is anyone else having trouble with formatting? Dreamwidth keeps murdering my careful line spacing in an exciting new way.
{rf}