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Since my last blogging effort met with little success, i have decided to eschew quality in favour of quantity. I'll try to put up a poem every day for a little while, and we'll see how they're received. If nothing else, this will motivate me to keep writing. Of course, criticism is always welcome.
Here's one that's been sitting on my profile for a while. It is an experiment in changing the theme of an acclaimed poem while retaining the same general syntax and structure. The famous poet and critic T.S Eliot once wrote that immature poets imitate, and mature poets steal. I am no kleptomaniac, but i have decided, in this instance at least, to take up Eliot's advice and purloin some syntax and structure from Ezra Pound's first canto- and quite shamelessly too. The gods of poetry will have their revenge I'm sure.
Tomatoes
And then went down to the garden,
Set seeds to earth, below the godly soil, and
We set up stakes and posts in that fair ground,
Bore roots beneath her, and our herbs too
Sharp in taste, and rains from skyward
Lifted them upwards with radiant bloom,
Demeter’s this bed, the florid goddess.
Then we sat about, wind breathing new life,
Thus with full hope, we watched over the bed till week’s end.
Sun to his slumber, shadows o’er all the garden,
Saw we then the fruits of patient labour,
For the tomatoes flourished, and birds came calling
For a chance at life, but saddened ever
By glitter of sun-rays,
And our dutiful watch.
 
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Never give up quality for quantity.
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I agree. I was hoping that the quality of the poem might redeem that little quip. Any other thoughts on it at all?
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I expected pictures of tomatoes.
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where's the red?
interesting poem..
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On March 10 2012 00:35 Galaxy_Zerg wrote:
where's the red?
interesting poem..
Ha, interesting point. Well, "florid", for example, has come to mean red: the word comes from the Latin "flos", literally, "flower". Though, and quite fittingly, florid can also mean "elaborately or excessively intricate", also when referring to prose or rhetorical constructions; perhaps I've dug my own grave in that sense.
I guess the emphasis is not so much on the tomatoes themselves, but rather on the way in which a poem is constructed. For example, Paul McCartney before releasing the song "Yesterday", referred to it as "Scrambled Eggs". The melody remained the same throughout the writing process, it was only the lyrics which he changed, thus affecting the general interpretive theme of the song. I guess I've tried to do the same thing here: retain the melody of the original poem, or the syntax and structure, but impart my own lyrical or thematic interpretation to the piece.
What tosh, here are some tomatoes:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ub4sl.jpg)
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EPT
