To Grip a Pen

Any number of styles exist
for holding one's pen -
The Asian is different to
the European;
the lower two fingers bunched
into a truncated fist,
planted firm on the page:
a stable base for the
precision
necessary for writing
characters-
Chinese, Kanji, Hangul.
The pen held
almost vertical,
stabbing words into life
like a tattoo gun.

Reviews

[Ms. Tutolo]

This poem can definitely relate to everyone. I love that about what you wrote. Unless of course, you don't have hands...

[Zugzwang]

I'm glad you liked it and you'll be happy to hear I do have hands. Simple , everyday subjects for poems are a bit like landscape paintings or , in this case, a still life. Z.

[Breanna.Pratt]

I really like your subject, it's different from any poem I've read on here so far. It tackles a simple subject, holding a pen. Something done so universally that we think there's no way a person could mess it up and everybody holds it the same. But in fact that is quite untrue. This kind of gets at how beautiful writing actually i compared to the typing many of us do now a days with all of our technology. The last two lines really describe and hint at how beautiful writing actually is - "stabbing words into life like a tattoo gun." We think of tattoos as being painful but these lines really bring it into a new life, and really can make a reader second guess the meaning of this poem!

[Zugzwang]

Hi Breanna,
Thanks for your lucid comment. I don't often get cismic, but believe rhat wven the simple and everyday can be transcendent if we just look at it the right way. I acrawled this piece one day while my students were taking a test, and the writing morion was a bit stabbing. It's an asian thing and beautiful in its way. Another riff is the way writing can be a painful process that produces works of beauty. Not that I'm aggrandising myself, rather that's how all writers feel. Otherwise we wouldn't bother. I look forward to reading your work. Z.

[Gaia Octavia]

I really like your subject here and the imagery throughout it is spot-on. My favorite lines are
the lower two fingers bunched / into a truncated fist. Such a great image!
Side note no one asked for: I only write poetry with my purple pen in my notebooks. Typing just seems cold to me. Plus, I scratch things out and sometimes revisit to use later or as inspiration. Annnnd I write in jumbles and then have to put my verses in order half of the time 😁

Well done! I am digging this whole regularly-posting thing you've got going on 😉 Cheers!

[Zugzwang]

Haha...it's just something I knocked out while my students were doing a test. But yeah, posting regularly is a good idea ☺

[jacob erin-cilberto]

"stabbing words into life/ like a tattoo gun"

love those lines, but i am especially fond of this piece because it reminds us how beautiful actual writing is...and it is a dying art because of the keys of the computer----we don't write anymore...rarely a letter, if at all...
a lost art...cursive...
j.

[Zugzwang]

Yes, that is true but we stil see pens around the place here and there. I do miss writing letters though. The computer is a great device...how could we live without them? But still I feel there is something missing sometimes.