Between homework, going outside, and playing games with my family, I enjoy relaxing quiet time alone with my guitars. I took it upon myself to learn some acoustic guitar "Classics" from the likes of the Beatles, Eric Clapton, and others. My one minute covers of these classics can be found here under the playlists tab. When I received my prompt for the next week of poetry, being "Consider something that happens over and over again that you enjoy," I planned to write my Terza Rima on my guitar time.
A Terza Rima has an endless form and was used by great writers, such as Dante, to write much longer works of literature than what I will present, such as The Divine Comedy. The tercets follow a rhyme scheme of aba/bcb/cdc/ded/efe... so on and so forth, until the poet decides to end it with a rhyming couplet (two line stanza), rhyming with the second line of the final tercet. In this case we were instructed to write four tercets before our closing couplet. I have chosen to compose my final tercet so that I can repeat my first line in my couplet. As with the Villanelle, it is written in iambic pentameter.
Time Spent Picking
By Caleb Gottry
Again I find myself on carpet floor.
I’m holding finished wood; I strike the steel.
I play a song I know I’ve played before.
I am no longer here alone, I feel,
For Eric, Johnny, Paul, and James have come,
Providing songs that make this day ideal.
Unhappy minors that match my glum
Turn into merry melodies anew,
But can one’s mood be changed by simple strums?
Or is it the guitar that shakes the blues,
Providing joy in isolation, or
A choice instead of boredom that I do.
For being so alone is such a chore,
Again I find myself on carpet floor.
As I mentioned in Part II, I have been spending a lot of time outside to take breaks from homework. I greatly enjoy biking and find myself free from a lot of the worries that this time has brought. My poetry teacher challenged us to write about a personal triumph and given my recent successes on my two wheeler, I embraced the five senses and wrote my sestina.
A sestina is by far the most challenging of the three traditional forms I was tasked to write. First, the poet must choose six end words, all concrete nouns (nouns that you can touch, taste, smell, feel, or see). Each line in the sextet (six line stanza) is seven to ten syllables in length and must follow the order of the end words, which is offset by one each stanza. The poem ends with a tercet where all the six end words are used, two per line. The sestina is typically left untitled.
Sestina
By Caleb Gottry
Out from the garage he takes his bike.
Then, he starts down the concrete path,
Seeing clouds that might soon drop water.
Apart from his own, there are no faces
As he pedals alone, like a lost child,
Hoping to return to a lemonade.
He rewards himself with that lemonade,
For the work he did on his bike,
Pedaling next to the cars on his path.
For now, he quenches his thirst with water,
Waiting at the light with other faces,
Maybe next to another lost child.
He hears a “Good morning” from the child
And he wonders if they want lemonade.
He returns the greeting from his bike
And then focuses again on the path,
Along the canal filled with water,
Joined by unfamiliar faces.
The wind blows against these faces.
Among men, he feels like a child,
But he soon forgets the lemonade
And moves past one unfamiliar bike.
A group in line; all focused on the path
Is what he sees, sweating drops of water.
Now he rides through dirt and water,
Conquering this challenge he faces.
Passed by a man, he, just a child
Sees their shirt: yellow, like the lemonade.
Them on faster wheels, but he on his bike,
Together, they forge a new path.
Stop before crossing the asphalt path;
Cars fueled by oil– him, just by water.
The tinted windows hide their faces
And their machines could crush a child.
He’ll have to wait for his lemonade
Until he can cross on his meager bike.
Carried home by bike before sky water.
A phone lights up faces, showing his path,
And the child drinks his lemonade.
During this quarantine, I have been learning online from my teachers through Google Classroom. One of my classes has brought forth some creative opportunity during this time: Poetry. For these past three weeks, I have been assigned to write three different poems in three traditional forms. The first of which is a Villanelle.
A Villanelle uses repeating lines in each stanza. In the first stanza, the two repeating lines are introduced separated by a third line that does not repeat, making the rhyme scheme AbA. The rhyme scheme for the following four tercets (three line stanzas) is abA, with the repeating lines (A) alternating each stanza. The poem ends with a quatrain (four line stanza) with a rhyme scheme of abAA. The poem is written in iambic pentameter, with ten syllables per line alternating unstressed and stressed. The prompt I considered to write my Villanelle was this: "Consider something that happens over and over again that you dislike."
Alarming
By Caleb Gottry
So shut my ears to that unwelcome sound–
No longer in the crazy world of dreams.
“Why must my eyes be open?” I now frown.
Dark figures sometimes cloud my nights around.
They haunt and scare and cause no sleep for me,
So shut my ears to that unwelcome sound.
Or, in a world where glories do abound,
I find myself in charge of great regimes.
“Why must my eyes be open?” I now frown.
Awake, but I’m not moving from my down.
My dark blue blanket shields the cold extremes,
So shut my ears to that unwelcome sound.
Asleep in perfect comfort– how profound!
Forgetting abnormality that teems,
“Why must my eyes be open?” I now frown.
Returning to my bed each night, unwound,
I hope to sleep ‘til safety is a theme,
So shut my ears to that unwelcome sound.
“Why must my eyes be open?” I now frown.
