Poems that Hook

The Ancient Mariner by Gustave Dore
in the public domain

 

Sometimes it is a particular poem that draws a child—or youth or adult--into the world of poetry. It grabs the reader’s attention, sparks imagination, pulls at the heart or mind and they are hooked. Something about the narrative, or the cadence, or the musicality of the poem speaks to them and they are changed in some way. They become avid readers—and sometimes writers—of poetry. Here are two accounts of such experiences.

A Tale of Penance

A 1797 British poem did what no other poem could do for me. I was a sophomore at Los Angeles High School and only slightly open to poetic expressions, but when Mrs. Edwards assigned Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, little did she know what lasting influence it would have on my life. This narrative poem starts simply with a sailor returning from a long sea voyage who stops a guest on his way to a wedding in order to tell him a tale, which the listener cannot tear himself away from. The tale is at once a confession, a psychological study, penance, and a warning.

As a sophomore I hadn’t thought too deeply about these matters. Looking back, I see how many life lessons I gained while reading this. I couldn’t go at the slow pace of the nightly assigned pages which limited us, so I gulped down the entire poem in one night. The poem grabbed me by the throat and squeezed so hard it made me bleed so many emotions and empathy over the pages and into my heart. As the sailor was forced to tell his tale over and over, I became his advocate, doing the same for the poem itself.

The content alone took hold of me, but along with it, I learned the techniques of personification, repetition, rhyme, alliteration, building suspense, and inviting the reader to suspend disbelief, techniques I still use.

When others ask me to tell them my origin story, I warn them they are about to become my “wedding guest.” I still talk about getting “rid of the albatross around my neck,” and at every opportunity I quote the lines:

“Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where,
nd the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.”

This poetic experience taught me how to keep my readers’ attention and imbue feelings into my poetry. Having been a teacher myself, I am aware that I may never know the influence of something I taught on my students.

My last time in a bookstore, I found an illustrated copy of the poem and bought it for my granddaughters, but then found I couldn’t part with it and kept it for myself.

~ Evie Groch

About this piece, Groch says, “Research shows that things we learn in the first twenty years of our lives, our most impressionable years, carry their influence over us forever. Of course we can change, but a foundation is laid on which we build and the values we hold dear. After having done research on the generations and their unique profiles, I find this to be more and more true. Many things I learned early on in life still serve me well today, like the lessons I took away from an assignment from Mrs. Edwards.”

 

Tyson West records his experience with a poem that was one of my favorites as a child. Groch says she often quotes words from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” I have often quoted a few lines of “Little Orphant Annie” (sometimes spelled “Little Orphan Annie” as well as Henry Wadsworth’s poem, “The Children’s Hour.”

 

From Project Gutenberg

If You Don’t Watch Out

My old home town wedged in the last Appalachian wrinkle
before land leveled west to the Hoosier State
a good Ohio away
left empty my longing for a tornado to twist my boredom to Oz.
Save dread of atom bomb fallout
we slept safe from Jets rumbling Sharks, hurricanes, and heroin.
I ambled through A Child's Garden of Verse
to learn only God can make a tree,
until on the first day of April,
alone, alone, seated on a large flat stone
in tween hunger green among Jell-O salad,
Appian Way pizza, and all
the Disney I could dream
Little Orphant Annie came to stay.
She cleaned my rhyme and meter up,
and shooed the boredom off the porch,
then opened wide my wardrobe’s portal
pulling me deep into poesy’s carnivorous blossom
where two great big Black Things snatched me,
charmed, and cursed my foolish and forever dance.
Annie lost her parents’ love while I spun
with the planet of my clan’s private mythos
orbiting the black hole of mom
and dad’s immigrant never enough.
Though teachers baked sports
as red, white, and blue American pie
I never clutzed the gridiron or B ball court
let alone reached rarified
STATE WRESTLING CHAMPION.
Still mom and dad pardoned
my passion for patterning sounds—
after all I huddled at home studying and they could see
my eyes followed the shape of girls.
Annie addicted my soft soul to the needle of verse—
yes, she and her goblins got me
and taught there were other rhythms for me
and a story sails true only
through the way its words are trimmed.

~ Tyson West

Did you know that James Whitcomb Riley first published “Little Orphant Annie” in the Indianapolis Journal, under tit title, “The Elf Child”? According to Wikipedia,  Riley changed the title to “Little Orphant Allie.” Allie was the nickname of Mary Alice Smith, an orphan who lived and worked in the Riley household while James was a child. The poem later inspired the comic strip, “Little Orphan Annie,” and the Broadway musical, as well as several movies and other spin-offs.

 

What brought you to your love of poetry? A poem? A poet? A teacher or mentor? A member of your family? It is not too late to submit your story (in prose or poetry or a combination of both). Just go back to the guidelines posted April 1.

 

Bios: 

Evie Groch’s opinion pieces, humor, poems, short stories, word challenges, and other articles have been widely published in the New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Contra Costa Times, Games Magazine, anthologies, and many online venues. Her short stories, poems, and memoir pieces have won her recognition and awards. erTravel, language, and immigration are special themes for her work.

Tyson West has published speculative fiction and poetry in free verse, form verse and haiku distilled from his mystical relationship with noxious weeds and magpies in Eastern Washington. He has no plans to quit his day job in real estate. He was the featured USA poet at Muse Pie Press from December 2019 through December 2022. 

 

 

November Poetry Challenge - What if . . . ?

Perhaps among North Americans the best known “What if” poem is “Whatif” by Shel Silverstein. You can read it at http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/shel_silverstein/poems/14819. It was written for school-age children and reflects many of their fears. A child who has friends whose parents’ marriage has fallen apart, may worry about whether his or her own parents will get divorced. What, the student may wonder, if I’m late for school, or fail the math quiz? Silverstein did a good job of summing up the concerns of these young people in his poem. Perhaps the most poignant – and prevalent – “what if” among Silverstein’s readers is “What if nobody likes me?”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “what if” poem may or may not have inspired Silverstein. Coleridge’s “What if You Slept” has an entirely different atmosphere: He did not gather concerns or fears into his poem. Rather he used his imagination to devise a magical situation.

What if You Slept?

What if you slept
And what if
In your sleep
You dreamed
And what if
In your dream
You went to heaven
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower
And what if
When you awoke
You had that flower in your hand
Ah, what then?

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

This poem is I the public domain.

Another good “what if” poem is “What If (This Week),” by Grace Paley, in her book, Begin Again: Collected Poems, p. 161.

The November Challenge:

As you have doubtless figured out by not, the November Challenge is to write a “What if” poem. Your poem can be as imaginative as Coleridge’s, or you can use Shel Silverstein’s poem as your prompt.

Title your poem unless it is haiku or another form that does not use titles. It may be free or formal verse. If you use a form, please identify the form when you submit your poem. Please single-space, and don’t use lines that are overly long (because the blog format doesn’t accommodate long lines).

You may submit a published poem if you retain copyright, but please include publication data. This applies to poems published in books, journals, newspapers, or on the Internet.

The deadline is November 15. Poems submitted after the deadline will not be considered. There is no charge to enter, so there are no monetary rewards; however winners are published on this blog. Please don’t stray too far from “family-friendly” language. No simultaneous submissions, please. You should know by the end of the month whether or not your poem will be published on this blog. Decision of the judge or judges is final.

Copyright on each poem is retained by the poet. If a winning poem is published elsewhere later, please give credit to this blog.

How to Submit Your Poem:

Send one poem only to wildamorris[at]ameritech[dot]net (substitute the @ sign for “at” and a . for “dot”) . Include a brief bio which can be printed with your poem, if you are a winner this month. Please put your name and bio under the poem in your email. Put “What if poem in the subject line.

Submission of a poem gives permission for the poem to be posted on the blog if it is a winner, so be sure that you put your name (exactly as you would like it to appear if you do win) at the end of the poem. Poems may be pasted into an email or sent as an attachment (no pdf files, please). Please do not indent the poem or center it on the page. It helps if you submit the poem in the format used on the blog (Title and poem left-justified; title in bold (not all in capital letters); your name at the bottom of the poem). Also, please do not use spaces instead of commas in the middle of lines. I have no problem with poets using that technique (I sometimes do it myself). However I have difficulty getting the blog to accept and maintain extra spaces.

Poems shorter than 40 lines are generally preferred but longer poems will be considered.

© Wilda Morris