Rascal Writer

Art is that which steps outside of prescriptive boundaries, rejects the painting by numbers of form! https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/rogue-planet-found-floating-through-our-galaxy-scientists-say/

My poetry soul

cannot be tethered

to form.

 

I am not bound

by the gravity

of purism

 

for it tries to hold me

fast, stuck in it's grasp

as it crushes

my heart, squeezes

the breath

from the lungs

of my creativity.

 

I am more

a free agent,

a celestial body

floating in deep space,

a rogue planet

in the Milky Way

of words.

Free-floating me

formed in the dense gas

and fake dust around

perfect poetry.

I am rejected by 'parent'

writers, as I am

in the gravitational pull

of other bodies 

beyond their solar system.

30/10/20

 

i

Author's Note

Reviews

[Richard🖌]

Ah, my fine poet friend, John ✍

As a dedicated, long-tenured teacher of poetry, I think one of the most phenomenal aspects of this art of ours is its endless variety and flexibility to fit into any artist's medium of hues, colors, textures, visions, thoughts, feelings, desires, needs, values, hopes, dreams, imaginations, emotions, fantasies, angsts, pleasures, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera; utilizing any form of poetry imaginable in expressing it in part or all.
And, make no mistake, if it's poetry, it is in some poetic form … otherwise, it would not be poetry, but common prose (everyday talking). Purely by definition, for writing to be "poetry", it must be composed/written/spoken in "poetic voice".

Let's consider French poet Arthur Rimbaud (1884-1891), considered the original poetic renegade against classical poetic forms, the creator of Symbolistic Poetry (Free Verse/Poetic Prose), who, in 1871, wrote two letters explaining his poetic philosophy, commonly called the "Lettres du Voyant" ("Letters of the Seer").

(In the first letter, Rimbaud explained):
"I'm now making myself as scummy as I can. Why? I want to be a real poet, and I'm working at turning myself into a seer. You won't understand any of this, and I'm almost incapable of explaining it to you. The idea is to reach the unknown by the derangement of all the senses. It involves enormous suffering, but one must be strong and be a born poet. It's really not my fault."

(In the second letter, he expounded his revolutionary theories about poetry and life, while also denouncing and criticizing some of the most famous poets that preceded him, while holding Charles Baudelaire in high regard, although, his vision was hampered by a too conventional a style, according to Rimbaud. Wishing for new poetic forms and ideas, he wrote):
"I say that one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet makes himself a seer by a long, prodigious, and rational disordering of all the senses. Every form of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he consumes all the poisons in him, and keeps only their quintessences. This is an unspeakable torture during which he needs all his faith and superhuman strength, and during which he becomes the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed—and the great learned one!—among men.—For he arrives at the unknown! Because he has cultivated his own soul—which was rich to begin with—more than any other man! He reaches the unknown; and even if, crazed, he ends up by losing the understanding of his visions, at least he has seen them! Let him die charging through those unutterable, unnameable things: other horrible workers will come; they will begin from the horizons where he has succumbed!"

Here is one of Rimbaud's most famous poems, composed in his own poetic prose form/style, Free Symbolism, in rebellion of rhymed and metered poetry. Note that he presented his work in Quatrain form:

"THE DRUNKEN BOAT"
--by Arthur Rimbaud

As I was going down impassive Rivers,
I no longer felt myself guided by haulers:
Yelping redskins had taken them as targets
And had nailed them naked to colored stakes.

I was indifferent to all crews,
The bearer of Flemish wheat or English cottons
When with my haulers this uproar stopped
The Rivers let me go where I wanted.

Into the furious lashing of the tides
More heedless than children's brains the other winter
I ran! And loosened Peninsulas
Have not undergone a more triumphant hubbub

The storm blessed my sea vigils
Lighter than a cork I danced on the waves
That are called eternal rollers of victims,
Ten nights, without missing the stupid eye of the lighthouses!

Sweeter than the flesh of hard apples is to children
The green water penetrated my hull of fir
And washed me of spots of blue wine
And vomit, scattering rudder and grappling-hook

And from then on I bathed in the Poem
Of the Sea, infused with stars and lactescent,
Devouring the azure verses; where, like a pale elated
Piece of flotsam, a pensive drowned figure sometimes sinks;

Where, suddenly dyeing the blueness, delirium
And slow rhythms under the streaking of daylight,
Stronger than alcohol, vaster than our lyres,
The bitter redness of love ferments!

I know the skies bursting with lightning, and the waterspouts
And the surf and the currents; I know the evening,
And dawn as exalted as a flock of doves
And at times I have seen what man thought he saw!

I have seen the low sun spotted with mystic horrors,
Lighting up, with long violet clots,
Resembling actors of very ancient dramas,
The waves rolling far off their quivering of shutters!

I have dreamed of the green night with dazzled snows
A kiss slowly rising to the eyes of the sea,
The circulation of unknown saps,
And the yellow and blue awakening of singing phosphorous!

I followed during pregnant months the swell,
Like hysterical cows, in its assault on the reefs,
Without dreaming that the luminous feet of the Marys
Could constrain the snout of the wheezing Oceans!

I struck against, you know, unbelievable Floridas
Mingling with flowers panthers' eyes and human
Skin! Rainbows stretched like bridal reins
Under the horizon of the seas to greenish herds!

I have seen enormous swamps ferment, fish-traps
Where a whole Leviathan rots in the rushes!
Avalanches of water in the midst of a calm,
And the distances cataracting toward the abyss!

Glaciers, suns of silver, nacreous waves, skies of embers!
Hideous strands at the end of brown gulfs
Where giant serpents devoured by bedbugs
Fall down from gnarled trees with black scent!

I should have liked to show children those sunfish
Of the blue wave, the fish of gold, the singing fish.
—Foam of flowers rocked my drifting
And ineffable winds winged me at times.

At times a martyr weary of poles and zones,
The sea, whose sob created my gentle roll,
Brought up to me her dark flowers with yellow suckers
And I remained, like a woman on her knees...

Resembling an island tossing on my sides the quarrels
And droppings of noisy birds with yellow eyes
And I sailed on, when through my fragile ropes
Drowned men sank backward to sleep!

Now I, a boat lost in the foliage of caves,
Thrown by the storm into the birdless air
I whose water-drunk carcass would not have been rescued
By the Monitors and the Hanseatic sailboats;

Free, smoking, topped with violet fog,
I who pierced the reddening sky like a wall,
Bearing, delicious jam for good poets
Lichens of sunlight and mucus of azure,

Who ran, spotted with small electric moons,
A wild plank, escorted by black seahorses,
When Julys beat down with blows of cudgels
The ultramarine skies with burning funnels;

I, who trembled, hearing at fifty leagues off
The moaning of the Behemoths in heat and the thick Maelstroms,
Eternal spinner of the blue immobility
I miss Europe with its ancient parapets!

I have seen sidereal archipelagos! and islands
Whose delirious skies are open to the sea-wanderer:
—Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep and exile yourself,
Million golden birds, o future Vigor? –

But, in truth, I have wept too much! Dawns are heartbreaking.
Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter.
Acrid love has swollen me with intoxicating torpor
O let my keel burst! O let me go into the sea!

If I want a water of Europe, it is the black
Cold puddle where in the sweet-smelling twilight
A squatting child full of sadness releases
A boat as fragile as a May butterfly.

No longer can I, bathed in your languor, o waves,
Follow in the wake of the cotton boats,
Nor cross through the pride of flags and flames,
Nor swim under the terrible eyes of prison ships.

[John Alexander McFadyen]

Indeed Richard. Coincidently I came across Rimbaud today for the first time and read his sordid story. He lived as he believed and he wrote as he lived! Many thanks for such a considered and informative, indeed learned, comment.

[Richard🖌]

I'm very familiar with Rimbaud.
Your poem inspired me! 🤔

[Richard🖌]

BTW,
The many moons past when I first served on the Café (before the great delete), my pen name was Rascal.

[John Alexander McFadyen]

I understand why!

[Richard🖌]

"G R I N N N !"

[Victim of cyber bully a..]

Thank you for writing a poem about me . It was really pleasure to read.

[John Alexander McFadyen]

Ha,ha. We are both rascals then SoS! Many thanks for reading.

[Victim of cyber bully and slanderious lies]

I think one of the nicknames of Arthur Rimbaud was dirty rascal so we are in good company.

[AJNJ]

What chokes and squeezes creativity is best left alone. We need the space, the freedom to express, without the hindrance or encumbrance that structure may impose on us . Let's flow unrestricted....as our muse permits...well stated sir.

[John Alexander McFadyen]

Indeed so although I do like variety and trying new forms from time to time. Thank you very much AJNJ

[AJNJ]

You are welcome 😊