Sunday 4 November 2012

Antipoems


At Jim Murdoch's excellent blog The Truth About Lies there's an ongoing discussion under the title Am I an antipoet?

I thought I'd try for an antipoem. To tell you the truth I don't know if the anti-sonnet below is an anti-poem or not! What is an antipoem anyway? As near as I can figure it James Joyce's Finnegans Wake could be the finest example of an antipome.

Here's mine. Maybe after all is said and done it's a kind of anti-antipoem. In other words simply a poem.


Cats and poems have 9 lives


This early morning
sounds now
with quick bleats
from an unseen cat
high in a pine
all long night
it is this lost silence
as it was
when the lamp buzzed
outside the window
and went out
and there was a cough
like somebody passing
and the cat is still where it was



2 comments:

  1. i like this ...even if not an antipoem...growing up in Belfast and studying drama...we all said "pome"...thought it was right!! thanks for reminding me of this.

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  2. Thanks Gerry. I too like to use 'pomes' - the very word holds a promise to ripen almost like a fruit, a pommo d'oro.

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