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Experimental Poetry Feature
It's been a really long time since I've done a feature journal - I figure it's high time I brought some attention to my favorite type of artists and their art. I would like to focus on the idea of experimentalism in poetry as a distinct style under the the larger umbrella of free verse. The meaning of the phrase 'experimental' and associated concepts have come under debate many times. I respect all viewpoints but I to tend to chuckle at the notion that there must be some sort of established criteria for what experimentalism is in literature - that seems oxymoronical to me. I did attempt to express my opinion on what poetic experimentalism is awhile back in an article for
: scarlettletters.deviantart.com… . This is just my opinion about the subject, expressed in lay terms. I'm not formally educated on what the literary intelligensia proclaims about such things, though I invite anyone to share links, references or opinions on the subject, should they care to do so. Here are some pieces I feel represent the best of dA experimentalism, either in form or phrasing, or both, that I've encountered:
Piscesandthediamonds is adept at stretching the notion of convoluted metaphor to its extreme, all the while maintaining poetic balance and emotive meaning.
snow in my seashell(You) broke
Away like
Tasmania,
Froze the waters
In between us;
A baby pole
To set the Earth's axis
Askew.
All the crisp, crystal
Fishes
Of our psyches;
I struggle to remember,
What were they –
My memory spinning like a
Front loader,
Leaking a liquid necrosis
Similar to the inbetween
Mistaken colour for space
That keep the stars from
Meeting.
Like a hellish-vortex
It sucks up
The angelfish,
The little neons I adore
And the kissing gouramis.
The truth is
I've played hide and seek
Until ambulance-exhaustion
And you might have been
The only
(No) one
To have brought me those
Needed
Ice-skates
To make links with your
world.
I would have skated
Through every icy-wonderland
To have found you
Perhaps
Already too
Late.
ThingsA clock
Of stars
Paw a harp
In my chest-rooms.
You
Open my body-drawers
Like a beautiful surgeon,
You tell me you find
Wind up dolls
And small, pink
Clapping
Ballet shoes:
Sugar-blood
(Fire)works -
And you
(Silently) say to me:
"Oh, your poor heart" -
Without ever knowing
How overworked
It really was.
* * *
I watch you move but
My God,
When you look
Like that
Something in me
Sinks like
Slowly drowning
Islands.
I hang off
Nervous laughter
While I turn
My gaze
Down
To my shoes,
My fingers
Make knots and seem to
Understand:
A spell,
An old therapy unsaid,
That makes itself
Inside of
You.
DirtyI've let the
Bats out of their crags:
Watched them swoop over
Tall glasses,
Unfilled for hours,
Knocking themselves over
Like drunk girls in a punchup-
The crown-smash of passionate-ignorance,
As pretty and stupid as the sound of wind chimes
* * *
The aftermath
Spills nothing
Out into the evening:
The guttural cries are
Gulped back inside with
A dirty funnel;
Dug-in and jutting out
Like an infected plant
Rising out
Of soil.
Its dark perfumes
Roll around
And bounce off
The opal-lit earth,
How violently silent,
How terribly putrid:
As quiet as a
Midnight garden.
Anagrams in the airThieved
by mouth-envelope;
my phonics
caged
in alphabet-zoos,
my heart-hospital
swirling with apiaries,
as I wait outside
a name.
If I could
eventually
say anything at all,
I’d tell you
how you loom
secret heuristics
inside those delta-pyramids
that snack on your pupils.
I’d tell you
I’d bleed out
the world’s cathedrals
in weight,
to say anything
that sparked a star
in the quiet knock
of your night.
I’d scratch
the larks
from their wallpapers,
until my nails, none,
lift their wings
and give them flight.
This thirsting
pulse
knows you
inside the highest
of blooms
and
we can never be
ungone.
WakingI found you:
Couched
In the vespertine
Glitter,
Expecting
The great tele
To moss over you.
How the shadows
Cling to your
Body,
As if you were sketched,
Over and over.
I hover around;
You are a terrifying muguet:
& I am resuscitated
In this five-pm dream.
queenhrosie has incredible depth in her poetry, as well as demonstrating some intrinsic understanding of how seemingly disparate images have inter-relational tendrils reaching out to each other, making for new journey into the literary unknown every time I read one of her pieces.
mesmeric-revelation has produced poetry with very eclectic mix of typography and semi-concrete forms personality and seems willing to push the boundaries of poetry with skillful execution.
:thumb206292440: :thumb209402547: :thumb77032913: :thumb77572142:
Anthony-Ryan excels at finding universal elements that bind us to the natural, everyday world, but does so with unusual openness in both form and in diction.
firewaterwatching her
lips part
like a tender
gash
i swallow
the burn
treating wounds
of days and
the sway-less
flame
confusing
breaches of touch
with the blood's
holiness
she stands
like a toppled
sabbath
at the end of the table
making believe:
"you've all
swallowed
the lights!
swaying with
fire!
FUCK! YES!"
i help her
down
into a booth
speaking
gently
though now i can feel
it coming up
in me,
the violent
joy
of cerebrum
and the
narrow flaming
spire
of spine,
and now
i'm up
and waltzing
through the crowd:
"this body
can't hold me--
shit!
what is a word
like
Royalty
doing
so far from
this?"
later
shutting the door
on the night
we gathered
hips with
lips
moving fingers
and
mingling tongues
etc.
into a large
sprawl
moving
like the first
animal
from water
to land
and finally
lying long
enough
for the spinning petals
of t
she said 'you love poetry morebells
ringing at noon
as the rain
begins
to fall;
from bed i listen:
"rain on bells
rain on rain
bells on bells
we've
got
it
all"
i shake
you
awake
"did you
hear
that?"
"what?"
"they've got
it
all!"
rarewith enough time
everything is instantaneous.
spheres unmistakable
throb unseen
somewhere
in (body) every structure.
(wood)
(room)
with enough light
the night is a dark bushel of suns.
even water tends toward longing.
the moon is the largest stone in sight.
the lakes swell
with the luminous weight.
to laugh enough,
with enough
knowing
as
the sun rises
everything happens.
to have enough is rare,
and rareness is everywhere.
Mosquitothe mosquitoes and flies descend
on the sound of a Jew's Harp.
i let them land, take of me what they can carry,
and fly off.
i tell no one;
i share the secret of their delicacy,
their surgical precision.
which depths
does irritation
deny?
i deny nothing,
my blood is given to flight,
i am given a quiet poison
and from it celebrate relief.
if nothing else,
i fill decay with meaning,
and can call it growth.
Awarenessin the hills tonight,
somewhere,
my awareness is tucked
in dry briars
or the cobbled thread
of an expired wash.
I walk in the desert
without my body;
I ascend the rises
and dip myself
into the empty valleys and parched ravines
on the moon's cool fingers.
the coyotes cry out
and I answer
with my silence,
and the night's.
it becomes me.
outside my body,
I am all spirit, present,
prescient,
a thirsting liquescence,
a tumbleweed
shaping circles out of its silence.
I drift like a song
into everything,
aware.
in carnationin the
mi st,
d
in blur(red)
shap
esof
s Fo LI uGH nT d
s o (LI u n d
s o u nG d
s ou nd H
so und T)
sound,
s
lw
mo t
ion
sh
atter:
t ouch
suddenly
mo
rethan
an im
age,
you
ma king
space
in
your
war m
shapely
occupation.
Self-Intoxication explores the harrowing depths of anguish with startling originality.
Bubblegum Chaos.+ Take down the walls and try to find the pink bowels of your house.
Squeeze your pupils like you need to, as if you are trying to squeeze
a blackhole out of it. Swim in the mirrors like you're in love, or on fire.
Pedal faster.
+ Tell your melon coffee sweater to screw off. Tell your mother
I said hi. Tell the particles you inhale to slow down.
+ Turn on the radio and listen to the politicians polish and wax.
Tell Alaska she is not good enough. Fire a handgun and
look surprised when you do. Inhale the smoke like it's your mother's
purple ashes. Talk about straitjackets in public and drink too much
beer and fall on tables. Look at the bruises on your thighs
like you would at the sunset.
+ Look a deer in the eyes and try to guess who got scared first.
Take a ginger nap in a white bed and circle your hips in the closet,
eat soy beans.
+ Write about the first time you had sex. The first argy
Drugdeath.Of too many things. Of copper and of beast.
Of martians and tv. Of the nice things you say.
They are sometimes too nice, too soft,
like gum that has been chewed too long
like a country it falls apart in the mouth.
Of 20-foot waves that want to relocate to lungs, stop breathing,
stop everything else with its own solemn dance.
Of death, disease and diaries.
Of the lame, of love, of lambs.
Of the similarities in the colors in our veins,
of the drugdance, daytime television.
Of the color white inside a mouth,
of the desert in your thirsty, pill-filled heart,
of the couch where you leave your smile and your smell.
Of dramamine and dopamine, and the large mouths of rivers,
like gods.
Of closets and all that they hold in:
repression and ghosts and the bodies of ghosts.
Of trampolines and degenerative discs.
Of family time ruined with cocaine
or slamming bathroom door
vespera's poetry always singles in on the human element, utilizing a style that makes everything seem like a personal and private letter that came from a locked box in the attic, and penned in a vibrant code.
Aadea produces poetry that seems to harness the eddies of chaos itself.
i just have to say thisthere's a fight going on somewhere
inside my knees and a little hammer
resting its face against the walls of my neck
i know i shouldn't
but i'm thinking of all the places i told you
i hated being touched and wishing i had told you
how much more i loved it when you touched me
like i was a live eel or teacup or a dragon with five heads
and still swinging over an ocean, dazed
i'm dipping my toes in the sink
swaying over porcelain
thinking how great it would be
to fall and be caught
hear you say
it's crazy
ridiculous how dirty you are
this just won't do
this just won't do.
dear sexy tattoo artistI realized I was a whore the day they tugged my hair
and veins opened up like both flowers and talons
expansion & I
love the slope of a neck that is bent back in a way
it should not be, like a long flight of soft stairs.
I am going where I am told I cannot go
for waves
for aggression and cold.
"Something not good" and they all nodded
but I laughed and kissed them all because we were brothers
Someone pinches my shoulder softly, I am a dirty drunk and I guess this makes me sad
because I feel freakishly old and terribly young and I am climbing my body, slipping on wounds
but if i had only one word
it would be
stronger
mothheadthere are only so many things that can be kept. i am clutching my teapots and empty orchestras, carving them into my breasts, pressing hard against my
lips and swallowing - my gums, the world, the air - it all feels swollen. i am defiant, and yet only for the sake of defiance.
--
the likeness
of a land of rabbits. screeching - wailing
burrowed drugs, a brewing of stealth discharges from fingertips.
the man beneath
me is rasping ageless music
now -
and it lifts me.
--
dearest winter burglar,
starfeasts are unnecessary
let's create samba
watch as our skulls
roll down crystal hills
and land like porcelain injuries
you're so coldhis two fingers locked around her wrists
branded her spine to his gothic ledge. he took her
sparrow jaw and snapped it closed. he kissed her
foreground and buried fingers in silence. laughed
like the product of moss and wheat - she is
a lilypad on a january night and forgetting
easy and beautiful.
untitledi could never achieve anything more stupid than this. this is the fold in the page that your elbow kissed when you brushed my words away and laid down so that all i could hold was your breath, hot and terrifying against the place i despise most. you thought to do this once and only once and i will say that i do not want this ever again. i do not want to be the one ripple in a sea fighting against the shore. i do not want to be dragged against the sand and sharp rocks or weighed down with this salt. every night that i am alone, i leave this place. i'm pounding faster against the coast, the footfalls erased in each angry beat of the ocean. every step builds my ship higher and i promise you that i will be leaving. my sails will take me. you will not be my anchor.
Honorable mention:
6Either way
It is past seven and there is a rumor that you are coming home.
When I saw you last, I found
that word in your mouth. It was
foreign, a small success for your vocabulary.
I stalked it all the way back to the house,
sucked it clean and dry and no longer holy,
hanging by a horrifying thread.
What will be the first thing you speak of tomorrow;
what wills your growth, what wills you to change?
If we are wanted,
if the earth swirls right, almost cloudlessly,
if you should find my hand and whittle out
a new word—
If you hiss
like a turntable
as you try to spin me round and round—
It is only seven; I trust you with the time.
Our Meaning and PurposeI:thumb257098953:
All of death is death. Life,
too, is like death.
The way it erupts over you
laughing and spinning.
II
I was confused
so I asked God: What should I do?
Move your body and have emotions. The birds were dancing.
Could you be more specific?
But now God was busy arguing with Moses.
III
All of life is life. Death,
too, is like life.
The way it erupts over you
laughing and spinning.
IV
Tomorrow is the sound
of a question falling
on a bed of questions.
Today I hold out
your name, God,
in the public square.
Yesterday reason, the slayer
of song, wended its way
into our will.
V
All of light is linking. Dreams,
too, would see us separated.
The way it erupts over you
laughing and spinning.
VI
All of God is God. Dark,
too, is like God.
The way we usurp it
laughing and spinning.
:thumb258102426:
1020 OceanNo one thinks:thumb254345817:
to dream
Black Mercy
scrapes, churlish
from sense-slick
long ago
I was often there
in promenade,
sick by the clevelander,
pools dissolving
into dead or dying eyes
borne on
tres delinqentes
in its full descent
to plasma-blue
2 bleu,
ce ciel est bien au bleu.
ResolveWalk in the sand, drown your dry cracked feet in the ground.
Step on ideas of glass empires, visions of what the dust has been.
Beyond the curving dunes you feel the antispace, the vacuum of possibility.
Step forward, human child, relentlessly drawn into the coming dayfall.
Light shower your nakedness in the potential final dawn.
Leaving red steps in your wake will show your juggernaut resolve,
and you must point your heels in all directions. Let nobody think
that you were ever sure of where to go. Mark the journey,
because it outlives the destination that will devour your body.
Nothing runs like the horizon, until you lift your eyes.
psychiatry of lonely nightsThe Psychiatry Of Lonely Nights
I.
we open your chest,
we find his words tucked inside
they hide within each crevice
each folded, words from letters,
you stored them in your ribs,
you'd swallowed them whole,
flossing them between bones
and sealing them closed
only to open to us lonely nights
or a sleepless time
or a remembered phrase at the bedside
once covered over by parietal
peritoneum and solemnstitch,
hopethread, worryneedle,
pierce of each enunciation
and far-off thought
cut apart by an ample knife
a thoughtful gaze
heart hurt to see the sight
feeling like concrete
sifted around the valves
off-set with cracks
all shuddering with each repetition
he is gone &
he is far away &
your thoughts thread into your eyes
your fingers reach toward each letter in your chest
when we lift words, tentative at the corners,
your breath trembles and refuses to leave,
pain all in your hand that shakes on the precipice
between heavy shoulder gaping wound and
visceral pericardium, tattooed with
what wa
3Gauge your days by:thumb160524280:
who runs through your house,
by the flags they carry there,
the words they leave on your rug,
by the color of the smoke you inhale after
their tomes stop burning
:thumb182256191:
Put some original text herePut some original text here
and then a body underneath. Put down
that ants have gotten into the body,
that the roses are red as humble ants storming for a kiss
and the little legs of rain itself shall slumber
light underneath each horse,
each door, the dress, the grave.
This is my sad sharp lettering, my downpour
in the making – the mind brings the grave,
sweet violets soup the beloved's bed,
and we are motionless; we are
stopped with sense; we are bodies
within voices, the memory of glass.
Dress some original text here. Put out a love
to beat upon her door with its awful lettering,
a kiss to horse upon memory
lying there in the dry recess underneath my voice,
a storm vibrating to the last of a terra-cotta dress
in the rain. Put the downpour to mind.
We are heaped for the storm.
The rain drums down like an awful text.
The senses cry out as they quicken –
put some original text here:
She wore a minute more, though
the rose was dead. She wore
a terra-cotta dress and the rain,
s
watch a monkey build a watchfor the better
of worse
I was made this way
dropped different & drifting
some distance from divine
a tool gifted with the
breath to blame
its maker
what nature has nurtured
these cells
will divide
I can't figure out
the life of me for
the life of me
omnipotence
or at least no
impotence
fostered conception
(with no conception)
of immaculate design
of the miraculous
as mine
the impetus of this
existence
often impetuously
inclined
despite whomever's
taking measure
the
descent
is
never kind
forgotten's
all I'm getting
we're all given
up
by time
FragmentationThey sent the figments away so
I could see the leftover everything
Carne ValeI am
a reveller
in your
Cimmeria;
let us have reels
and igneous
moulds filled
with our mingled
pearlescence
These new nacre,
then, are spawn,
the object
of our proliferation
This is the dawn, the doom,
the spell
of my phalanx-projections,
the appendages of
an indexed heart
My brine, my bile,
are futility
without the spark
and wonder
of you
in my life
Men used to oath
on their liver
so would I oath
upon you;
upon a conjoined heart
that may never be
I speak of pipe dreams,
of cave ins, of apocryphal
fantasy
that only illustrates
how fearful I am
to speak your name
I am unfaithful,
inconstant, like
any Sapphic acolyte
Bacchynalia; Dionysia:
painted with
watercoloured lines
across a driftwood
skeleton
I am a lust for words,
a vacuum that is filled
by a microcosm being
I long for you
I don't demand
that you disavow
the mask
that has made
your beautiful image
for so long
I recall legends
of lovers
prohibited from laying eyes
upon their bedmates
Their demi-god companions
always grieved
at the
v.it was all backwards
flipping of calendar pages and being called on or called
something other that a babysitter
it was all garage and cold concrete and
garagesmell
like potting soil and motor oil
it was all soap and smoke and honey
the fullest kind of empty
a blue-white buzz of florescent lights
it was everywhere and everyone taking
turns laying out and down
everyone surrounding you
it was secret inches
and lifting of clothes
spied underthings and
being covered with fingers. . .
it was all wanting and heated palms
a shelvy kind of filled up
there wasn't any room for mirrors or
maiden voyages
for fat fistfulls of water or
turpentine or bleach
there wasn't any room for clean
there was only space enough for dizzy and
heavy and lead and every liquid in you
quivering for riotous blinking of eyelids
for exhaling and blood pumping
thick and slick from each ugly pump for
everything in you feeling like atlas pages
charted mapped-out like topography.
A Lyricand so it was
that I stared,
more enraptured
by the back of your
head – your hair
has grown,
so like those
coin-caught
emperors –
than by the
incompetence
of Roman
generals;
that combination –
rose-ribboned
high notes,
curlewing truths,
and your profile
all Xenophonic
style –
that coincidence –
phone, Veyne,
and you
the very
picture of
all I’d like to
be;
and so it was
that I flew,
gentian-shy,
fleeing the
centuries
I knew;
no fledgling
was I,
zephyred in
cherub sky,
just a
moon-lost
bird
wing-heavy
Of course, this is by no means an exhaustive list of even my own personal favorites of experimental works; not even by the artists I've featured here. I invite anyone to post links to works you think are experimental as a comment here, as well as offer your own thoughts on this characteristic of literature.
----------------
Adopt-A-Writer
I would like to offer up my services as an adopter/mentor for poetry in the group
. I don't know everything about the literary craft (obviously). I am completely self taught and am still trying to learn as I go. But I've been doing this long enough that I think I can help someone who is maybe just starting out and needs feedback, guidance, or even full on instruction. Even more experienced writers looking for someone to bounce ideas off of or to provide formal critiques for are welcome. I've been a member of the group for nearly a year, and I do have one reference, now (hopefully, my former adoptee wouldn't mind giving me a small note of recommendation if asked 
.) You can find out about how the group/concept works here: adopt-a-writer.deviantart.com/…Here is my poetry mentor profile: thetaoofchaos.deviantart.com/a…
If anyone is interested in this program, either as someone wanting to be 'adopted' or as someone willing to offer their time as a writing mentor, please note me and/or sign up at Adopt-A-Writer. I really think it's a worthwhile venture. Also, I know there may be other groups out their that perform the same or similar function - I'd be willing to join another group, if you're already a member and you're more comfortable there or if you just want to mention one here, that would be cool.
Cheers.
Shane
spoems
This Journal Skin was designed by Night-Beast
Searching for Inspiration During Black History Mth
Searching for Inspiration During Black History Month A short time after my long and unwitting creative hiatus came to an end, having returned to dA to begin sharing newly minted poetry along with my thoughts, I happened upon this article: It is, after all, Black History Month; a time people are called upon to consider the history and cultural, political and scientific achievements of this racial group within the context of the United States. While I have, for the most part, dutifully pondered this subject at the requisite times in the past, reading this article in this particular moment had a new effect on me. You see, taking up the daily act of writing or contemplating writing poetry, for me, means reading poetry. When this article came out, I did what many dA denizens would do: comment on the article to get the badge. This article asks the reader to find and document black artists who have inspired you. As I have renewed my interest in reading poetry, I started to wrack my
Yo!
So, apparently, I've come back to dA. Looks like some things have changed around here. In any case, at least for the time being, I've actually been logging on and doing things. I even posted a poem! dA is a great barometer for my artistic activity and general interest level. The reason I took a multi-year hiatus from dA is not because I specifically grew bored of the site, or because I no longer had the appetite for conversation with the many great people that I knew and interacted with every day. While I certainly enjoyed and greatly benefited from those relationships, it was not the primary reason for being here. The reason I first created an account about 14 years ago is because I wanted a place to share my poetry, and to read the works of others. For me, writing poetry is always closely tied to reading poetry. When I'm reading, I'm writing; the two are inexorably linked. One day, it seemed that I had no desire to write or read any poetry, prose, anything. My
Holidays, DDs, and White Feature
For me, the holidays are always a time to reflect on the state of life and things. I look on this past year, and in spite of whatever happenstance I might consider as negative, such as health issues or the general and seemingly unending malaise of the world, I am forced to conclude that it was, in fact, as good a year as I could want. As joy often goes underreported, I’m here to say that good things did and do happen. And they will continue to happen.
In the realm of DA, I received a DD feature on my poem Pertrichor http://spoems.deviantart.com/art/Petrichor-469483593 , thanks to LiliWrites (https://www.deviantart.com/liliwrites) . Considering the recent changes to the
easy
"I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love."
- O'Hara
© 2011 - 2024 spoems
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