Best Ars Poetica Poems
A poem should be smooth and flat
As a jagged rock
A poem should wander
As well as be expected
Wandering through a mind
Still minding it's own business
A poem should laugh and cry
As we wade through tiered rivers
A poem should drown us
As we take in breath
Liquid life forming gills
Filtering our bottled fear
A poem should be intoxicating
As cutting as a broken glass
I'm not sure if I understand the form but I gave it a go.
Ars Poetica
Horace circa 19 BC gave some sound advice to
poets on the art of writing poetry and drama.
The following thoughts may echo in our minds,
most likely, the intent of what he may have meant . . .
A poem may excite and delight readers with its
imagery, meaning, metaphors, and so much more
A poem may speak of “home” and what it means
to each of us as we grow up and reach adulthood
A poem may excite one’s imagination to learn
of people, places, events, and things in our world
A poem may speak to one’s emotions—
love, lust, hate, happiness, sadness, and more
A poem may speak to palpability—
touching, feeling, embracing, kissing, and more
A poem may address courage—
to stand for something meaningful against all odds
A poem may address a weakness—
cowardice, avarice, and even a temptation
A poem may address humility—
in realizing that being humble can be strength too
A poem may address faith—
believing in yourself and others, and a cosmic destiny
A poem may address morality—
as good and evil, right and wrong are with us always
A poem may address objects and images—
that tickle one’s poetic imagination and certitude
Gary Bateman, Copyright © All Rights Reserved
January 10, 2018 (Couplet)
A BRUSH OF ARS POETICA
Rhythmic verses wherein death paints a picturesque of life
or life itself is written in lethargic-dying state:
a dusty stocked vocabulary still cuts like a knife
when done and re-phrased witty, nonparallel and ornate.
Like the azure fluffy clouds parading affront the sun,
its smiling hue of yellow-orange kisses sleeping hope--
softly flaming those frugal thoughts in grace and wonder stun,
remarkable enough to line dream stanzas ropes and slopes.
Strokes cast spells of rattles, rambles to erratic silence
allowing trembles to twang murmurs upon hardened hearts
same as magnet it attracts eyes and ears to your essence
because your speech ushers morals incubating fresh starts.
_______________________________________________________________
***Sponsor Thomas Martin
Contest Name Ars Poetica
++Placed 1st++
O.E. Guillermo
2:26 pm, March 06, 2015
***I define art of poetry as variations of light and dark, life and death, pale and vibrant, real and fiction... Writing poetry resurrects life even to a scene spelling disaster and death. Art of poetry embodies every angle aiming to touch the senses. Deep and superficial, all around breathing or not screams/is an art of poetry.
A poem of a poem
A poem may be wonderfully challenging to write.
Why should it be too easy, if it is to be a delight?
Nothing that has value comes without some struggle or a fight.
A poem may flow with grace, flawlessly for our delight.
Why should it stutter, stumble, deny, defy the skill to write?
Anything of beauty and truth should not spite one to fight.
A poem may sit on a page, no need to pick a fight,
Rather, it could care less if it causes one grief or delight.
Something of moment passes and becomes the cause to write.
A poem fights, it writes of one grief or delight, moving,
But sitting still as a rock, unchanged, its role is changing
Everything and always, without rest, its war is raging.
Ars Poetica
Poetry should woo you with the subtlety of a snake charmers flute
sway you side to side, captive, held in its sensuous grasp.
The words should lead you blindfolded through a myriad of meaning
allowing you to feel each step, each syllable, each inflection.
Rhymes glide frictionless against the grain of reason’s
attempts to intervene, to interpret a heart.
Every pause a calculated hint of passion’s smoldering depth,
the Yin and Yang of its heartbeat. Cadence should slow the rapid reader,
invite the trinity – mental, physical, spiritual - to dally in reunion.
The start should lead you forward to quench an insatiable thirst,
fueling the desire for more. The ending should return you
to the beginning of your love, rekindle the waning flames
of an appetite – semi-sated – yet still hungering.
6/1/2015
Note – It is the nature of the poet to provoke – not to explain. He may provoke anger, joy, laughter, tears, thoughtful reflection or horrific revulsion. The poet may never know what will resonate with the reader, what the poem will find in them,
what word or phrase will haunt them, taunt them, console them, entice them to read another poem.
it'd be indefinable and unknown,
especially unknown! and these unknowns,
they'd complete us...
it'd start with a cosmic sentiment,
a serendipity that's bent
toward this infinite-in,
where love in a radiant bouquet
bursting to blossom would begin --
there, where there's a music in you
eager to play in a mellifluous-voice
which only the heart can hear,
and it'd take you into a melodious rhythm 'n roll,
a riff 'round the sound of a whirl'd
swelling with a kiss of bliss,
'tis this that'd speak in that uncommon tongue,
the Poetic one --
it'd risk absurdity in an u n f e t t e r e d language,
divested with an unbounded-eye,
(not limited to the fatal-skin yer' in,)
that'd look and look and dare to see,
the beauty of this conflicted sentimental-reality,
this creative-destruction outpouring
into the middle of things
where good Homer nods
over a potpourri that is the Art of Poetry
Freedom is an alter ego like a mask
Behind which censor has no eyes, and balm its blood applies.
Poetry is my freedom when wings cannot fly
The pain of the arrow in my solitary eye ...
You wrote me as a poem, I write you back so I
Can write a poem that invite your poem to tea.
I sometimes see me in the mirror of words
And cannot recognize who I am
How many points of light forms my face alone
Making a fable on the faulty foundation of sense
Are these suppose to be revelations
For I have longings carved like a Grecian Urn
The stillness of that eternity frightens me
Like is a simily ... a wave of action towards a full intent
So many symbols, and everyone alienating
Why can't we tell truth in Images
Like eggs. A cycle from essence to existence
And through all the purposes of each motion
Phases of a common solution?
Mirrors are not reservoirs, you know, they preserve nothing
Let culture preserve what it will
My art shall do the selecting of what the will must be
For I must preserve truly if only preserve me
And do not fear now, some conflict between you and I
That my preservation can be your destruction is such a lie
Broken mirrors make distinctions
A thousand shards point their image at a single eye
But feel, when you cannot see
Feel the universal solution ... for we are only solutes
In the solvents of our meaning
You and I the tangents of a simple circle converging
I love the breaking of isolation
The conversation dissolving us again
Into a common brotherhood, beyond the blundering pain
Our life is fragment of everything now
Politics, economics, physics, dreams and faith
Word is but a mirror before us, the senses little gates
The mirrored shadow has only one moral imperative here
To haunts us till we make it right
I exorcised the ghost that bind us up with fear
And long to break the mirror too
And feel my wings flying in the perfect nothingness.
Wait for me, brother. I am coming too
Swinging on a beam of star, sipping on love's dew.
Measured in unmeasured meter
Defying our partition into syllables of spoon
Rhyming to mate a synonym exactly to the moon
Everything in this solution is never abstraction
Never more a ritual of dump imperial traditions
I shall break the mirror then, the first act of our liberation
And the water shall turn to wine.
A poem is like the ripples in a pond,
As the muted sound.
Like the reflection of the sun on an aluminum foil,
As the muddy soil.
Like a rain drop,
Dry as the desert crop.
Like the myriad colors in a shaft of light,
As the imagination takes flight.
Motionless like the shifting sand,
As a marauding band.
Like the glimpse of a familiar face in a milling crowd,
As the flash of lightning in a foreboding cloud.
It should grab you like a snare
As a shooting flare!
Ars Poetica In Wire And In Cage
Some say that poetry, like God, gave birth to itself
Peculiar notions not meant for human consumption
Words settle well in vast tracks of time
Digested universes know them by their sound
Poetry lives inside live wire
Flows on electric currency
Structures cages, woven words, unheard
Takes measurements to find meaning
Anything can sound like poetry
There is no overtime when you create new things
Created on 6/02/15 for “Ars Poetica” Poetry Contest – Sponsored by: Thomas Martin
A poet shouldn’t write what others want to hear,
One must not feel intimidation, nor fear.
A poet must write about his own experience
He should capture his own life’s true essence.
At nearly nineteen years of life I’ve learned,
A true artist’s voice is not pleasant to be heard.
A poet’s life truly is nothing to be desired,
A poet doesn’t have a job, he never gets hired.
Any man can live a life plain and normal,
But being a poet is much more exceptional:
Telling your thoughts with no care in the world,
You can freely make your voice be heard!
Poetry is a busy crosswalk downtown,
when everyone moves together with elbows
held a little wider than normal.
Poetry is a middle-aged man, creased
and folded, sprawled out on the neglected
weeds in Woodruff park, eyes wide shut.
Poetry is the free fruit for children
podium in between the produce
and clearance aisles, oranges
and apples withered to marbles.
Poetry is a crying baby
at the 3 o’clock movie theater.
Poetry is a young boy in the park,
battered by curiosity, in a fight to the death
with furry flowers, their guts filling the air
with each oaken swing.
Poetry is giving a nod to the mailman.
Poetry is the unintentional eavesdropping
of the worst idea for a screenplay
ever fielded.
Poetry is the gait of a man recently
in love, thinking of hands
suddenly adored.
Poetry is the enigmatic ether that fills
the summer air so thick you have
so do the breaststroke just to
get back home.
And how can you ever think to write it
if you are stuck inside behind
grating blue screens or
painfully white paper?
ars poetica: brother, 4.25.18
someday, he will sit stiff
on our piano bench
to which he has grown accustomed, and i,
home, will sit nearby
in our cozy armchair,
an old accomplice to my posture.
i can’t remember the last time i saw him relax
this boy, this impossibly-almost man.
he will play me what he is able
of the opus he meticulously composed
in the year since we last met,
in the year since he told me
he wished he knew who i was,
who i had become since moving away.
i can still feel his excitement in the message
i received last month once he had finished.
i will revel in each chord progression,
every stylized transition,
any idiosyncratic modulation,
all exemplifications of his desire to see G*d.
let Him be manified.
and i will congratulate my brother,
for i have grown to admire the passion
with which he worships the One Who Loves.
i will ask to read him this poem.
and during these moments, we will glean
a piece of each other that we usually cannot hold.
i think this is what love can look like:
distant hearts drawing near, speaking
a language without words, the language
that lets them feel they are not alone,
not so different after all.
I saw him in my dream
Or my dream saw him.
Girded in instructions,
Sitting opposite as a timed
adder. Listening to my glottis
spray,enchanting words elating
his heart and whipping his ear.
Diverse heads held many heads:
Head with debt and some deposited death.
Sat i with him in closure,
Pushing my lips forward for enclouse:
'I'm a poet',and all of that i've said.
But was veiled yet to me that he had a news.
For so long had i been loquacious,
He pushed forth his words: tentatively audacious.
And like the purposed wind flew.
His product did my brain told me audibly,
But when my eyes untrust themselves,
My brain seemed mute.
He'd said: 'Their is a female poet in hebrew
Her name is 'monume?'.
I'm i sure i got the name.
Even there lies the mistake.
Just returned from hoping around the air,
And the air refused to bear the burden faithfully.
Or you know the name:
That poet of strangling fame?
Ho me,if thou do,
Maybe she's hidden by her variant skill.
Or nature pleaded to have her in her bossom.
'Monume?'
I swallowed an apricot seed when I was younger.
Everyone told me it was hard work to grow fruit trees
especially when winter marches south and tries
to pry all those tiny orange dots from stubborn
wooden hands. I kept it safe, though, tucked away
in the pit of my stomach where despair and embarrassment
lived. I fed it reassurances: I swallowed strawberry
sunsets and ate the pithy vernal blossoms of childhood.
I even drank the recommended 36 ozs of filtered water
every day. Years later now, its branches weave their way to my brain
alongside curious blue blood. Apricot juice seeps
into my veins and fills my body with sweet, yellow-orange
nectar. Fruit falls out of my mouth, staining snow white pages
in splotches of nostalgia each time I sit down to write.
I saw him in my dream
Or my dream saw him.
Girded in instructions,
Sitting opposite as a timed
adder. Listening to my glottis
spray,enchanting words elating
his heart and whipping his ear.
Diverse heads held many heads:
Head with debt and some deposited death.
Sat i with him in closure,
Pushing my lips forward for enclouse:
'I'm a poet',and all of that i've said.
But was veiled yet to me that he had a news.
For so long had i been loquacious,
He pushed forth his words: tentatively audacious.
And like the purposed wind flew.
His product did my brain told me audibly,
But when my eyes untrust themselves,
My brain seemed mute.
He'd said: 'Their is a female poet in hebrew
Her name is 'monume?'.
I'm i sure i got the name.
Even there lies the mistake.
Just returned from hoping around the air,
And the air refused to bear the burden faithfully.
Or you know the name:
That poet of strangling fame?
Ho me,if thou do,
Maybe she's hidden by her variant skill.
Or nature pleaded to have her in her bossom.
'Monume?'