Pseudo-ku for Hope
i. Your Eyes
Silent pools
sheltered by clouds:
a lone ripple
shimmers.
ii. Your Hair
Sun filters
through fields of grain-
honey-colored
silk.
iii. Your Skin
And even
Aphrodite
should be jealous.
iv. Your Voice
Nightingale's
cry expires- like
the mist, like
my words.
The general form for pseudo-ku, which I break in pseudo-ku three, is a 4-line syllabic one. The first line is three syllables and introduces either a thing doing the action or the first thing up for comparison. The second line is four syllables, and develops the first idea further and usually segues into the second idea. The third line is four syllables again, and this time introduces the second idea, but usually in a passive way. The final line is one or two syllables and concludes the idea set forth by the third, while often inviting comparison to the idea introduced in the first and second lines.
I wrote these for my beloved girlfriend Hope, since it was her birthday on Friday and I didn't get to see her.
Posted Oct 16, 2016, 9:20 PM UTC · edited
Who doesn't love Sudoku?
As far as suggestions maybe changing "a lone ripple/shimmers" to "lone rippling/shimmers" would maybe do more for the structure of the piece (although the third line would be a tad less passive).
iv. worries me a bit, because a nightingale has certain narratives attached (Ovid's Philomela) that make this final stanza overwhelmingly bleak for me (in a way i don't think was intended).
Otherwise there are some really interesting things going on here, and I hope to see some more iterations on this.
Yeah, it was definitely not intended to be bleak. Maybe melancholy, but not bleak. What happens in Philomela?
Philomela tongue is cut out and the Tereus rapes her repeatedly until she escapes and find her sister (Tereus's wife) and they kill his son and feed the boy to him. He finds out and vomits and chases them down to kill them, they turn into birds. Ovid likes turning people into birds.
Mandelbaum's translation is especially vivid in this.
Oh wow. That does make the poem seem grim...
I'll have to take some time to think about this.
Yeah, btw I would recommend read Metamorphoses, because the entire western canon easily sits on its shoulders (at least shakespeare sits on his shoulders firmly). Its beautiful and surprisingly sympathetic to women and animals. Sorry, I just really love the work.