Thursday, January 27, 2011

Pantoum-ming Again

The pantoum-style poem seems to suit me fine...I will eventually want to move on but today will share another pantoum I wrote in response to a workshop assignment.

Each of us thought of  five words that have weight to us. One of mine was "process."  Each participant thought of the first word that came to mind when they heard "process" and I wrote each of their words down. This gave me the following word list, which we were challenged to use in a poem. It's a great exercise and I was fairly pleased with the result. 

Poem extracted from the following word list:   Process, design, progress, mind, journey, maze, time


Too Slow
by Susie Talbot

She tried to pry open a rosebud
To make a flower sooner
Because it takes too much time
Wanted to see the flower

To make a flower sooner
She forced the rosebud’s progress
Wanted to see the flower
The opening process too slow

She forced the rosebud’s progress
To see its lacy design
The opening process too slow
Wanted to rush its journey

To see its lacy design
With more than her mind
Wanted to rush its journey
Tore through its maze of petals

With more than her mind
Because it takes too much time
Tore through its maze of petals
She tried to pry open a rosebud

Okay now.  The next challenge was to turn this poem into free verse rather than a pantoum with the repeating lines.  So this is the result of that.

Free Verse:

Too Slow
by Susie Talbot

She tried to pry open a rosebud


To make a flower sooner
Because it takes too much time
The opening process too slow
Wanted to see the flower
She forced the rosebud’s progress
To see its lacy design
With more than her mind
Wanted to rush its journey
Tore through its maze of petals

She tried to pry open a rosebud

Which one do you like best--the first or the second version?  Thanks for your input.


2 comments:

  1. Susie - i like the second one. something about the symmetry calls to me. And the second one tells about a moment in time, while the first left me expecting something more - a 'and so...' conclusion or something

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  2. very fond of the pantoum and yet the free verse had a lovely rythym. Both have nice visual presentation.

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