9 - Thorns are Anapestic Pests

I am taking a class in contemporary poetry - on-line because I injured my foot and cannot go to the college. The textbook is phenomenal; kudos to my professor for choosing it. It is "The Discovery of Poetry" by Frances Mayes.

It has chapters on meter, rhymes, types of speaker in the poem, imagery, etc. There are fun exercises to do, because the book is explaining poetry to would-be poets.

Each chapter has a selection of great poems of all times, and a good explanation of what most of them mean.

Each week we discuss a different chapter in our on-line forum, and the professor writes comment on our posts.

She also introduced us to poetry websites: Poetry foundation .org and Poetry Everywhere. There is a community of writers who recite their poems on YouTube, and who post videos of interviews and public readings. Many poets, including our professor, live in the SF Bay Area. We are lucky.

We are now learning meter.
Homer and Ovid wrote in Dactyl Hexameter. It is stately, and optimal for  narrating stories.
Shakespeare and Marlowe wrote in Iambic Pentameter. It mimics the English spoken language.

My latest assignment consisted not of analyzing a poem, but of writing one of my own. It had to be in Anapestic Tetrameters: da-da-DA, da-da-DA, da-da-DA, da-da-DA. (4 feet).
It has the same rhythm as the poem "T'was the Night Before Christmas." We are in October already. Christmas is in the air. And I can't walk.

Thorns are Anapestic Pests
By Laura Tonesi

 
If I thought of my life as a rhyme to be told
it would gallop ahead and be great and be bold;
but I fell on a thorn and all came to a halt
and my knowledge, experience, are serving for naught
.
Now the chickens are eating my flowering plants
and, unable to stop them, I wish I had wings.
So the lesson, my friend, these lines to complete
is: forget of your head, and do think with your feet.