December Post #1 - Poetry

[highlyeccentric]

At majoline's request, some thoughts on the year of poetry posting:

I'm finding it really hard to envision *ceasing* to post daily poems. I thought, when I wrote a series of reflections for poetree a few months ago, that I would be incredibly glad to stop, but now I'm faced with two points of consternation: one, what are the chances that I will finish the two anthologies I'm working through, and two, what am I supposed to do with things I read now?

I really struggle with the process of reading without some form of associated output, can you tell?

It's interesting how separate poem-a-day remains from my teaching. I'm teaching detailed poetic analysis and I really have no desire to try that out on the poems I post here - although this week I learned about 'zeugma' and you bet I'll post here the first poem I find in the wild with a zeugma in it. I want a whole poem FULL of zeugmas!*

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This has been your first December prompted post! Pls to be giving more prompts.

Week 1 - Poetry meme, as per majoline
Week 2 -
Week 3 -
Week 4 -



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* Tangentially, today I taught my class about Dad Jokes. I told them many zeugmas were puns, but not all puns were zeugmas, and then they wanted examples of non-zeugma puns.

Comments

[majoline]

I've been really enjoying your poem postings, so I'm glad to see you might not be stopping?

I'm glad you don't feel you need to analyse them, that way you won't burn out.

* Tangentially, today I taught my class about Dad Jokes. I told them many zeugmas were puns, but not all puns were zeugmas, and then they wanted examples of non-zeugma puns. This is hilarious.

[alexseanchai]

Uh...what's a zeugma and what have they to do with puns?

[highlyeccentric]

I WAS HOPING SOMEONE WOULD ASK THAT.

So a zeugma is what you get when you hang two parts of a sentence off the one verb or preposition. Bonus points if the verb or preposition has to operate in a literal sense for one and a figurative for the other. The example in our textbook was from a poem by Pope: 'Or stain her honour, or her new brocade'. A better example of the punning capacity is from Pickwick Papers: 'She went home in a flood of tears and a sedan-chair'.

[alexseanchai]

Oo okay.