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Steven in Florida

You went to sit in a screen enclosed patio
Sailing on the rocking chair
Among the rows of silent neighbors
In a panorama of walled settlements
Where the palm trees look alike
And the hot tubs bubble with steam.
Your mind entered the world of your books
Of sea captains and naval maneuvers
And your body became soft skin.

Above the giant ravens cast their shadows
With the wingspan of a man
To point where the ambulances arrive.
How was it that day they chose you
As they circled in the brushstrokes of clouds?
Did they offer loud trumpets of sound
As you deserved, lifting you in slow circles
Towards the Florida sun?

I was to visit you one winter
When the North wind burnt my eyes.
We would seek out the humid swamps
And continue our talk of the miraculous
Strolling in a jungle of primal palms,
Far from the yellow-eyed ravens.

It took but a few months for the sterile lawns
To overcome you, you who loved me so,
Your heart burst totally and fast-
And off you disappeared
As the ship’s surgeon in Nelson’s fleet.

Last few words: 
To my best friend of 45 years, Steven Stravinsky, a physician and renaissance man. He retired and, as so many do from the Northeast, moved down to Florida. It has been over a year since he died (age 71) and a recent trip there finally opened me up to a poem.
Editing stage: 

Comments

Mark this is a fantastic, deep write.
Images collide in front of my eyes the quiet marsh and the wild spirit.
I absolutely love it. I am excited to find a way to present it in social media. Is this okay?

IRiz

as would be my friend.
Deep thanks for your comment

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

Mark,
I also took a liberty to quote you on www.instagram.com/Neopoet/
Could you follow the link and check if this is all right with you? click on likes if you like it.

IRiz

what a wonderful thing you have done for us poets on the Instagram site!!

Loud Applause!!! Brava!

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

i am so glad you like it!
for the preliminary posts https://photos.app.goo.gl/X2jHpzEBLSZKUmDy5

including this poem
the name will be in the comments
and also one more time full text of the poem

IRiz

as would be my friend.
Deep thanks for your comment

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

This is a tender moving write Mark A zeitgeist of love and friendship lost, universal in its appeal and as always smooth and eloquent. The tears palpable
I think this poem is also a learning opportunity for me as I studied the breaks and didn't understand something Every line starts with a capitol Letter as if the beginning of a sentence yet I cant read those lines as such

EX:
In a panorama of walled settlements
Where the palm trees look alike

My sense of things prevents me from reading these lines as they are separated as if complete sentences

I read it like this

In a panorama of walled settlements where the palm trees look alike.

EX:

It took but a few months for the sterile lawns
To overcome you, you who loved me so,

I read it as

It took but a few months for the sterile lawns
to overcome you, you who loved me so,

EX:
Your mind entered the world of your books
Of sea captains and naval maneuvers
And your body became soft skin.

I read it as

Your mind entered the world of your books; of sea captains and naval maneuvers
and your body became soft skin.

Forgive my retentiveness but its like I'm reading musical notes and while I fully get the content I'm perplexed by the structure and accents

Having said that a beautiful poem in its entirety!

I do not know at what point many poets stopped capping the first letter of a line. Certainly if you look at a "modern" anthology, say the one by my bedside by Oscar Williams, all 100 poets from Whitman to Hughes (where that anthology ends) cap, with the exception of Cummings. A critic, Alberto Rios, summarized it this way- why cap?

•to remind myself that I am writing a poem;
•to underscore to myself the integrity of the line, which is after all what distinguishes poetry from all other literary genres;
•to connect myself to history for a very brief moment before I go on to say what I myself have to say now;
•to give each line--however subtle--its own authority;
•to suggest that, although I may be telling a story, it is not a regular story, and certainly not prose;
•to make my enjambment have to work honestly, and to give my end-stopped lines greater Moment;
•to build up thoughtful pacing in a poem, suggesting or invoking a little more strongly all the reasons we break lines to begin with--breath, heartbeat, dramatic intention;
•to recognize this use of the shift key as a self-conscious act, which raises the stakes for everyone and everything--the poem, the poet, and the reader;
•to do more work in this small moment, knowing that work makes more things happen;
•to rhyme--that is, to use this recurring, predictable device of capitalization in the ways that poems have often used many devices, such as rhyme, to give structure and sensibility to the poem; knowing that I'm going to capitalize the first word in each line gives all my poems at least some rudimentary structure;
•to understand that a poem cannot be contained--rather, it launches outward and away from what we know; that is, capitalizing the first letter of a line can be predicted and controlled ahead of time, but that's all that can be controlled, so that the poem, each line of the way, is launched, and this launching, this kicking away from the shore of the left margin is always an act of power, imagination, and adventure.

There is also the subject of the poetic line. For me, a line must have internal integrity. (in free verse!) A line must have an internal completeness in sound and connection to the rest of the poem. In rhyme, the rules change, as we tend to read through the line to the next line, because the rhyme creates the "poetics". In free verse, the line demands and reads a slight pause in my mind, in the sound of the poem. That's why I don't get free verse poems with the last word of a line as "the" or "and"...what make this poetry as opposed to contrived prose? To prose just trying to look like it's poetry?

All that said I have no problem or prejudice against those who do not cap. As long as the poem feels like a poetry, it suits me fine, and many of the fine poets here do not cap, and it is not a distraction to me. As long as the line, even if it's a single word, has integrity.
It seems almost an even split today as to those who cap and those who don't. For the time being, I have chosen the cap team. But I fully understand your point of view!

Thanks for your meaningful comment on my poem. It is much appreciated in this difficult poem to write.
And let's just stay away from Florida, Ok?

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

A great explication!!!!! I thank you for that !!!!!! ;)

A Rhetorical response

Do poets forget they are writing a poem?

Is underscoring every line with a cap and a period possibly in conflict with a certain full gesture of phraseing, compromising it?

Pacing as in even rhythm; and what of the modernity of progressive jazz / modern poetry and its asymmetries as in shifting moods like shifting melodies

What of using the shift key strategically to emphasize the musical eminence between words or phrases with irregular formatting, semicolons etc. to emphasize the emotive or phrase sensibility of a poem?

EX:

Because the butterfly’s yellow wing flickering

in black mud

was a word

stranded by its language

i've seen a lot of shift key. see this month's "Poetry" (from Chicago, the oldest monthly in USA, I still get it...) Everyone is dancing around with the shift...and to what end?

In the end I believe the shape of a poem is, of course, important, but it's really about the sound, the read in your head. I read poetry aloud in my head, or aloud if I'm alone, it took years to train myself to do it unconsciously, but I realized it was the only way for me to get the most out of a poem. I would try to dance around the form, give pauses and stops as the poem presented itself and found in the end usually I found if I just read the poem aloud with a certain stance, a certain pace, the form really didn't matter. So that may be the single largest shift for us poets writing in the 21st century.
Redefining poetry into a visual form, not oral as is the primal soul of all poetry.

I'm sure you too have considered this, and everyone has their own take on it. One thing for sure, on the other side of the poetry today is performance and rap, which is totally oral: it's great to listen to but unless you perform it right, well, me reading rap is ridiculous. But I suspect a huge % of the growth in poetry is rap, not Poetry Magazine or New Yorker published poets or the poetry we write. But I think it's great and let there be commerce between us!

Back to the shift key...I suppose I'm also on the punctuation team usually. Poets have so few tools, why not use punctuation? it can affect the read, the sound, the feeling of the poem, like an exclamation point, adding some direction.
As so many do not use it, I'm fine with that, no problem at all...but don't use sometimes, inconsistently in a poem- that usually looks amateur to me. (With exception of say Paul Eluard, French surrealist, only ending each poem with a period...)

How you set it up should affect the read and the meaning:

Because the butterfly’s yellow wing

flickering in black mud

was a word stranded

by its language

a whole other take away.. each line has a different integrity.

>>

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

Thank you Mark for taking the time with your thoughtful and in depth response. It feeds my soul.

Best Z

The poem is alive with sentiments and emotions about someone who has left an indelible impression...may his soul remain in eternal peace...
............................................

raj (sublime_ocean)

the poem and the explanation of "capping". I am a frequent "capper" and I understood exactly what you mean, in saying that it seems to give each sentence integrity and underscore it's authority, no matter how subtly. I felt the alien atmosphere of the landscape and the dwellings in the lines:
Among the rows of silent neighbors
In a panorama of walled settlements
Where the palm trees look alike
And the hot tubs bubble with steam.

I found the scene looking very prehistoric; like a dinosaur might walk by and a huge dragonfly whirr past. Thanks for sharing, ~ Geezer.
.

There is value to commenting and critique, tell us how you feel about our work.
This must be the place, 'cause there ain't no place like this place anywhere near this place.

A beautifully written tribute.
You really do have a way with words and an expansive vocabulary.

I, as a - de"cap"itator was almost swayed with your Capital idea and much impressed with the comment, but, I'll stick with my humble lower case.

Enjoyed the whole thread.

Obi.

I find your work most clever with deep humor and irony. '
It is important for us to have a dialogue about craft as they evolve in the comments. I'm glad to have interested you!

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment
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