Poetry: #88 Pandora's Box
And how I built poems back then
Pandora’s Box
This new heart is rock it won't break it won't stop not until the world see's it talk when all is over and the frock rests upon its stand to dry alone give it time to be atoned while the wet water drips the sun fades and tips the earth to the chaos and wit of all the demons hidden behind the shadows, forbidden leaving their lairs, forsaken claiming the world as a prison the end of love and hate replaced by misery and fate the last that reminds within is a secret not known by sin hope, redeeming in its nature like silver and gold it's pure but no luster to catch the eye in the night it could die incessant desire for our survival the longing for impending revival hope, that will surpass all trials
What are your thoughts on this poem?
My Thoughts on Poem Drop 88
This is another outtake from the Demise chapbook, and was written back in 2015.
“Pandora’s Box” is more or less a descriptive listing of metaphors which stems from the battles that occur in one’s heart. The fights between good and evil, time and emotion, love and hate. As ironic as it might sound, I feel these metaphors are rather straightforward and don’t need much dissection. What is this heart? “Rock.” Why? “It won’t break, it won’t stop.” Forever? “Lemme put it this way.”
I think it’s worth mentioning that the beauty to me of this poem is not just in the traditional rhymes, but the metaphors and the syllables, the mathematical and the complex union of these varied things. And this is the true Pandora’s Box in my humble opinion because I’ve not really dug into these concepts in this series yet.
The metaphors and their beauty are plain for all to see, but the syllables, the beat, the rhythm, the structure… Did you notice anything about it? A lot of my early work was playing with simple and complex schemes of rhymes and rhythms. Particularly how I might break one while maintaining the other, or break both and keep the flow of thought and the poem intact. I was playing with them. I was influenced by Progressive Rock in my highschool days, so it makes sense that I’d do something like that which breaks the mold.
This poem is comprised of a simple rhyme scheme, and while it appears straightforward the poem itself is complexly structured. Lots of my older poems have old written notes and counting columns accompanying their non-digital versions to track the syllables and rhythm and rhyme schemes, but I drifted away from that style of writing somewhere during the Used chapbook for the most part (the next collection to be featured in this series starting in October).
But, I want to talk about the complexity of this poem—since I have the structure notes—to show that poetry, like music, is not solely what you see and read (or hear); poetry can be far more complex, dense, and mathematical.
And yes, there will be math and counting involved here on out. You’ve been warned.
I will refer to the matrix below to relay some intentional design choices.
The Beginning:
The beginning lines (lines 1 and 2), the thought I started with. They possess syllable and word count symmetry (5&5, 6&6). These lines were the thought that spurred the rest of the poem into existence. You’ll see in my Simple Thoughts poem drops in a few weeks what those thoughts look like without the inspiration of a fully fletched poem (maybe I’ll challenge myself on a podcast to write a full poem…) But that’s where many poems start for me, with that Simple Thought.
The Middle | The Expansion:
There are many ways to name the middle of a poem. Some I have used in the past: the meat, the ranting, the growth, the decay, the expansion. All relay how I viewed the poem. Most are the growth or expansion of the thought (check out poems from The Search For), some decay into ranting (check out poems from Demise). These are tricky at times to write because I don’t always know how to bring the poem to a conclusion. This poem is one of those I could’ve went on thinking of metaphors and exploring them and moving on to the next and the next and the next, but I found myself trying to confine them into specific structures. The key word here is “trying”. Teenage Craig didn’t have the patience to really wait for preciseness when he wanted to speak the metaphors (shame on him).
This poem’s expansion of thought fluttered between syllable counts of 8 and 7 as a primary objective, or motif. The duel between these numbers is the battle of the ideas inside Pandora’s Box, or inside one’s heart. The word counts used here were way to balance and organize some of the ideas, to provide a path for me to navigate one metaphor or thought to the next. You’ll also notice several of the rhyming lines have the same word counts before transitions to other rhymes as an example of this.
The rhyme scheme here is mostly AA BB etc but as the poem expands so do the rhyming lines before contracting once again. I don’t have evidence this was purposeful, consciously anyway. I’d also like to say the rhyming of “eye” and “die” on the 9th rhyme (or I Rhyme) was purposeful, but I think that was coincidence. Depending on how you view the rhyme scheme, you may limit poems to AA BB AA BB format even if lines 1 and 3 don’t rhyme because it’s a way to describe the scheme of a poem. I, and I remember this vividly, set out in my early poetry years to write poetry that would need to be notated in such a way that you couldn’t be concise (because why not?) An example of what this might look like is: AA BB CCC DDD CCC BB AA where the rhyming pattern was exactly as noted, making AA BB AAA BBB AAA BB AA not apply (I was a rebellious kid, what do you expect!?)
Now, I want to bring your attention to Lines 8 and 14. Notice how they have syllable and word count symmetry? Did you notice they are also extremely similar in sentence structure? “The X Y and Z” structure was by design believe it or not. This is something I do often in my poetry when the words slow or I lose sense of direction while writing, I circle back to lines that stand out and since it is a shorter one, Line 8 stood out. What’s even more fun is putting these two together:
The sun fades and tips
The end of love and hate
They might not rhyme, but they’re still a cohesive and thought-provoking metaphor that can stand alone.
The Ending | Conclusion:
The ending lines (lines 21 – 24) had to happen because the previous line ended without a rhyming partner and it didn’t sit right. So I added a line, which didn’t match the motif and so I added another, which didn’t match either. One of the things I do with poetry is open a certain way, deviate from it, and then return to the original writing scheme or land on something new. It all depends on whether there is growth or decay in a poem. Starting negative but ending positive means growth, for instance. Here I wanted to repeat the symmetry of the first two lines and complete the expansion of thought in the middle of the poem. So instead of 5-5 and 6-6 I opted for 6-6 10-5 10-5 6-6. This brings symmetry above and below in two ways, condenses more syllables into fewer words, and brings the poem to closure. All threads here are tied, I can move on.
Pandora’s Box Poem Matrix:
Question Section
Do you notice these more complex patterns in poetry you read? How often do you think about lines that don’t sit right with the rest of the poem? Do you like mathematical poetry or symmetrical poetry or simply adore the metaphors? Or is there some other poetry you like?
I hear another poem is coming every Saturday!