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| verge, chaos, viable, darker, over achiever.Image from the Internet.
The opening poem contains all the words (or variations of them) from today's Jumble.
Comments are welcomed! And couching them in Poetry is definitely NOT required.
Do not explicitly reveal any of the actual answer words until after closing time, but embedding them surreptitiously in comment sentences is encouraged.
15 comments:
FLN: Wilbur, it seems that Chet and Lois are on the same wavelength. Glad to know they both have concerned sponsors; that should help them stay on the bright. I do hope things work out well for them. Fingers crossed!
There was Chaos from, here to, there,
No start, no end, no any-where!
No light, no dark, in gray they'd merge,
But God's creation was on the verge!
He separated Light from Darkness,
Like a conscientious laundress.
Made plants and animals all viable.
The story's told in any Bible!
From the skies, as He looked down,
He saw the world was nice and round!
On the cloud, pride made Him shiver,
He was over all, The Achiever!
A fine encapsulation of Genesis' opening verses, Owen.
I see we both were moved to assign part of the solution as a proper name. Makes perfect sense to me!
"Not Rover but..."
On darker nights, the most viable creatures,
those with truly valuable features,
are the ones who best light the way--
till the dusk of night verges on the dawn of day.
Who or what are they?
Can we say?
The psychic enlightens in a seance.
The firefly illumines caliginous chaos,
as does the human with a lamp.
Is a bioluminescent bug the champ?
Zeb's service dog, a Labrador Retriever,
lights his path; he calls him "Achiever."
~ OMK
"Caring"
Vicky was an over-achiever
who developed a terrible fever.
This made her days much darker,
full of chaos, without a good marker.
But friends came to her support
and helped her hold down the fort.
They were patient and reliable,
and made her life again viable.
Before long she was back on the verge
of having good health re-emerge.
Soon Vicky could set a date
her friends' kindness to celebrate.
She threw them a glamorous party
and her toasts were sincere and hearty.
She now is well, with immunity,
surrounded by a loving community.
Your Vicky must be a deserving soul, to receive the solid and generous treatment you gave her in "Caring."
The traditional arc (a steady life, interrupted by an evil challenge--the fever!--but restored to goodness through personal effort & friends) keeps readers' interest.
This is a fine treatment, Misty, freed of the predictability of placing all clue words at line endings. There is just the one "mill" ("to celebrate"). For me, the routine of rhyming couplets wears thin after about five or six repetitions. When I find myself sticking to a standard form, I think of the sonnet as a guide--with the body of the piece alternating rhymes (ABAB CDCD) & saving the single heroic couplet for the end.
It is much easier on the eye & ear and always makes the final two lines feel like a "kicker."
But let me know if this isn't helpful!
~ OMK
In my verse today (not my best work), I used five rhyming couplets before the final, but broke the meter up by inserting (after I felt the rhythmic boredom) the half lines ("Who or what.../ Can we say?") between the regular stanzas.
The half lines didn't add anything at all to the content, but I hope they relieved the monotony.
~ OMK
I was impressed to see all the Jumble words in your serious poem, Owen, and especially delighted to have it end with both solution words. I'm always a little nervous when I see poetry or art about God--fearing it might be disrespectful. But your verse this morning was gracious and honorable, which made it especially wonderful.
OMK, I very much enjoyed your verse devoted to shining different kinds of light upon the world. And how nice to once again see a sweet pet in your poem, this time a Labrador Retriever named "Achiever" (cracked me up).
Many thanks for your advice about making my poems a little less monotonous by varying the rhyme schemes, perhaps in sonnet form. You'd think as a literary critic I'd be aware of all that, but poetry was never my specialty, I'm afraid, so now may be my best time to get caught up on all that. So, again, many thanks for the great advice, and I'll see what I can do next week.
I'll look forward to both of our next rounds, Misty to next week's experiments in verse.
I never thought of poetry as my specialty either, so this is a shared adventure in form/content.
If I have any slight advantage it may be because as an old actor I have had to speak a lot of verse in my time. Some of it was much easier to perform than others.
I have also directed a lot of actors in how to help their audiences enjoy good poetry or to (shudder!) compensate for problematic corny junk.
You never really know how awful verse can be until you have to say the bad stuff in front of a crowd. Audiences tune out on poor poetry--either as written or as spoken--faster than with anything else.
In my own attempts at writing verse I am afraid to commit to the next step--to taper off on rhyming. I do try to give up rhyme occasionally with haiku. I don't want to abandon it entirely, but neither do I want to be so locked into it that I neglect a more fundamental reason for poetry.
English verse did not start off with rhyme, and our most modern poetry often doesn't even try to rhyme. For just a few centuries rhyme has been a sort of fetish. All this begs the question: what IS "poetry," actually?
There are many theories, from scholars who probe deeper than I can go. But in a casual forum like this, I think it needs to be language the reader enjoys while being prompted to think twice (or more?) about the underlying message.
Rhyme?
It's incidental, although we have come to think it definitive.
I will take tonight off again--my "Sunday sabbatical"--but I will be looking in as audience tomorrow.
~ OMK
Finally, back home. Chet reflected on the past.
Ironically , Lois had done most of the talking. The last
Year had seen achievement over and above sobriety.
From the dark chaos of seedy bars they'd entered into society
As viable persons with self esteem on the verge
Of productive lives, from which healthy relationships can emerge.
WC
First let me compliment Owen for an excellent, stand alone poem regardless of J's. OMK, yours was great too. Nice imagery.
Misty, you started out describing chaos and pulled into the light with the help of her friends.
Have I wrapped up the saga of Chet and Lois? My audience seems to think the relationship and mutual sobriety will last if they stay on the beam.
WC
Reflecting 'soberly', Chet seems to have his priorities straight: "on the verge of productive lives, from which healthy relationships can emerge". More power to the two of them!!
I'm especially pleased in my poem of the laundress simily in
He separated Light from Darkness,
Like a conscientious laundress.
And with rhyming viable with Bible, which I considered spelling Biable. That's surely the way I pronounced it in my mind.
Owen, I agree on both counts. That simile is sermon worthy.
And VI'bel is not far from a Dixie pronunciation.
Or vah-bull as in lah-bull(liable) and even bah-bull
WC
Worked for me, Owen!
As I wrote above, I often enjoy near rhymes more than the perfect ones. Witness my "seance/chaos" duo.
It is hard to make a rule here--how to separate the treats from the clunkers. Sometimes they have a neat resonance, but sometimes we feel the strain.
It is indeed an art!
~ OMK
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