Pantoum Poetry

The pantoum style was orginally sung, but the importance of rhyming has diminished throughout the years. It is traditionally composed of four-line stanzas, with the second and fourth lines used as the first and third lines of the following stanza. Often times, the first and last lines of the poem are the same also.

Parent's Pantoum

by Carolyn Kizer

Where did these enormous children come from,
More ladylike than we have ever been?
Some of ours look older than we feel.
How did they appear in their long dresses

More ladylike than we have ever been?
But they moan about their aging more than we do,
In their fragile heels and long black dresses.
They say they admire our youthful spontaneity.

They moan about their aging more than we do,
A somber group--why don't they brighten up?
Though they say they admire our youthful spontaneity
They beg us to be dignified like them

As they ignore our pleas to brighten up.
Someday perhaps we'll capture their attention
Then we won't try to be dignified like them
Nor they to be so gently patronizing.

Someday perhaps we'll capture their attention.
Don't they know that we're supposed to be the stars?
Instead they are so gently patronizing.
It makes us feel like children--second-childish?

Perhaps we're too accustomed to be stars.
The famous flowers glowing in the garden,
So now we pout like children. Second-childish?
Quaint fragments of forgotten history?

Our daughters stroll together in the garden,
Chatting of news we've chosen to ignore,
Pausing to toss us morsels of their history,
Not questions to which only we know answers.

Eyes closed to news we've chosen to ignore,
We'd rather excavate old memories,
Disdaining age, ignoring pain, avoiding mirrors.
Why do they never listen to our stories?

Because they hate to excavate old memories
They don't believe our stories have an end.
They don't ask questions because they dread the answers.
They don't see that we've become their mirrors,

We offspring of our enormous children.

This poem is the classic story of “when I was a kid…” transformed into literature. The first stanza references the constant rush for young people to grow up without appreciating their youth. This neglect leads them into an unsatisfying adult life, unable to take advice from their elders. In the fifth stanza, the parents are resentful of the children for outshining them. This is a result of their lack of patience which has been displayed throughout the poem.

                The repetition of almost half the poem supports it's consistent significance. Each reoccurring line is a reoccurring trait or problem in the relationship of parent and child.  The envoi of the poem does display the reflection of the parent on themselves, realizing that the child is indeed their creation and can only blame themselves for the result.

Spring Pantoum by Maylee Bossy

(please comment on this poem)

Sunlight bleeds through forest canopy
Slipping between my fingers
The daisies glare at me with sympathy
When crushed their scent still lingers

Slipping between my fingers
White petals soft caress
When crushed their scent still lingers
Care free, I could care less

White petals soft caress
Green blades tickle my feet
Care free, I could care less
It's nearing summer's heat

Green blades tickle my feet
Content, yet all alone
It's nearing summer's heat
Reaching for a home

Content, yet all alone
Desperately searching for what I won't find
Reaching for a home
Each breath awkwardly timed

Desperately searching for what I won't find
Sunlight bleeds through forest canopy
Each breath awkwardly timed
The daisies glare at me with sympathy

Villanelle Poetry

Villanelle style poetry is nineteen lines with two repeating lines and two refrains.
They follow the rhyming pattern of aba aba aba aba aba abaa.

This is a recitation of the the poem by the author:

"Do Not Go Gentle ino that Good Night"
by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

This poem portrayed a vibe of warning or caution. The author is warning the reader not to be deceived by the night, despite his good intentions. This poem appeared to me as a wise man or elder or veteran warning a young soldier before going off to his first call of duty.

The repeated title throughout the poem incorporates the deceitful night in to many types of people including the “wise men” in the second stanza and the “wild men”  in stanza four. The wild men mentioned also made the mistake of approaching the night, or perhaps a war, unprepared and regretting that decision on the way home.

The last stanza is the author requesting his father to enlighten him of the fears and dangers of the night, so he doesn’t have to experience them first hand. This is why he asks to be cursed and blessed because it will be painful to hear all to horrors but later he will be happy he did it. He learns from the repeated verse “rage, rage against the dying of the light” can be seen as a metonymy for running off adrenaline from the enemy, with the dying of the light being the disappearance of life.

One Art
By Elizabeth Bishop
(please comment on this poem)

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.