‘Beyond Meaning or The Resolution of Opposites’
– a d’Verse poetics prompt
Epigraph:
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
-Wallace Stevens, ‘The Snow Man’
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Harkened through the snows of New Jersey, Heeded through the storms of Cleveland, Purest nothing, on nothing, absorbed me, Sheerest nothing, on nothing, I am Upon nothing, nothing I, one/dering About nothing, not touched much by snow, Where nothings, together, not nothing, Where something within ached to go, Nothing, listened, through blustery blizzards, Whispering, nothing, nothing, here I am Through cold nothing, I heard, I shivered, Something, mine, called [from] Jerusalem.
The prompt
The above poem is my take on d’Verse’s ‘Beyond Meaning or The Resolution of Opposites’ prompt.
The writing challenge: We were to focus on the theme of ‘paradox’ and select one of the following to build poems around, of which I selected #2:
1. Here are some lines from Paul Dunbar’s The Paradox: – select ONE and build your poem around it.
- I am thy fool in the morning, thou art my slave in the night.
- I am the mother of sorrows; I am the ender of grief;
- I am the bud and the blossom, I am the late-falling leaf
OR
2. Take the last lines of Wallace Stevens’ The Snow Man and write a poem that is imbued with the existential paradox implied there. [the meaning of which is the ridding of our usual human observation and viewing winter as a ‘man of snow’ not a snowman! (more HERE)]
- For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.