"C R A S H !"
I want to write a noisy poem.
The idea occurred to me two or three years ago. I was reading Virgil’s Georgics. In a note to the section on beekeeping, the editor quoted a nineteenth-century British writer, I believe, who described a traditional method farmers used to lure a swarm of bees to settle where it would be convenient to gather their honey. The technique was the same described by Virgil nearly two thousand years earlier. Basically, the farmers collected cans, tools, and other objects and made as much noise as they could. The noise, counterintuitively, was supposed to attract the bees—teenage bees, no doubt. Bees are deaf, as it turns out, but the practice nevertheless survived for centuries.
I began writing a poem based on the quotation, but wasn’t satisfied with it and put it aside.
A little while ago I read D. H. Lawrence’s Aaron’s Rod, much of which takes place in Florence shortly after World War I. Fascists, anarchists, and members of other parties roamed the streets. A long discussion in a café is interrupted in mid-sentence by an anarchist bomb:
“C R A S H !”
That’s pretty effective, I thought—in a negative way. It’s like an abrupt cut in a movie. But how noisy is it?
I realize that words and sounds have a complex relationship and that any number of ways of reproducing or describing sounds with words can be very satisfying. Here, I’m simply curious about what people think of as a “noisy” poem. Any examples?
The idea occurred to me two or three years ago. I was reading Virgil’s Georgics. In a note to the section on beekeeping, the editor quoted a nineteenth-century British writer, I believe, who described a traditional method farmers used to lure a swarm of bees to settle where it would be convenient to gather their honey. The technique was the same described by Virgil nearly two thousand years earlier. Basically, the farmers collected cans, tools, and other objects and made as much noise as they could. The noise, counterintuitively, was supposed to attract the bees—teenage bees, no doubt. Bees are deaf, as it turns out, but the practice nevertheless survived for centuries.
I began writing a poem based on the quotation, but wasn’t satisfied with it and put it aside.
A little while ago I read D. H. Lawrence’s Aaron’s Rod, much of which takes place in Florence shortly after World War I. Fascists, anarchists, and members of other parties roamed the streets. A long discussion in a café is interrupted in mid-sentence by an anarchist bomb:
“C R A S H !”
That’s pretty effective, I thought—in a negative way. It’s like an abrupt cut in a movie. But how noisy is it?
I realize that words and sounds have a complex relationship and that any number of ways of reproducing or describing sounds with words can be very satisfying. Here, I’m simply curious about what people think of as a “noisy” poem. Any examples?
posted by Joel at 12:42 PM
4 Comments:
I was a teenage yellowjacket.
G.M. Hopkin's "God's Grandeur" is pretty loud. All of that crashing shook foil and all.
That should be Hopkins'
Also, Sting got his name from when he was young, didn't suck and was in The Police and would wear a black and yellow striped sweater. Is there a connection?
Evidence would show that Sting is also deaf.
I thought of Vachel Lindsay's "General William Booth enters into heaven" with its "big bass drum."
I'm too clueless or old to get the yellowjacket reference (though I do know Sting).
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