Finding inspiration in other poems

[alee_grrl]

When I was a freshman in college we read The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock. Around the same time my great aunt was in the hospital. As I was walking in to visit her one afternoon I had a startling realization. Prufrock had measured his life in coffee spoons, but I had measured mine in hospital rooms. My brother was a severe asthmatic so we had many a late night emergency room visit and both my maternal grandparents had chronic health issues that often meant long hospital stays. It was an interesting realization and a fun way to relate to poetry read. It would be two years before this realization would turn into a poem of its own. My junior year I took a creative writing course and our final assignment was to write either a sonnet or a villanelle, paying careful attention to both meter and rhyme. I hesitated on a topic for this poem until I remembered the old connection I had made between Prufrock and hospital rooms. With a little tweaking I had a perfect ending couplet for a sonnet. Then I just had to go back and fill in the beginning. :) Here is the resulting work:

Measurability

Light gray walls, strewn with paintings gone unseen
encircle me. I walk through sliding doors.
Shoes squeak down silent halls, an old routine
recalled. The scent of lemon-fresh bleach bores
through nostrils covering the cloying scent
of death. I round the corner, past machines
with snacks. My stomach roils in discontent
as I recall how often I have seen
halls like these. Past the nurses station two
doors down I find room three-thirteen. I stand
a moment, letting thoughts still and subdue
themselves. One thought breaks off and then expands.
While Prufrock gauged his life with coffee spoons
I've measured mine in hopsitals' bland rooms.

Comments

[herlander_refugee]

That was marvelous. I am too embattled on several fronts right now to participate in more than passive reading. But I did want to say, I really am enjoying your insightful commentary introducing each poem.

I credit you and others here with my dreaming in poetry of late....even if, alas, it flitters right out of my head before I can get to paper and pen in the morning!

Thank you all so much.

[alee_grrl]

Thank you for the reply! :) I'm very glad you are enjoying my posts.

Maybe one of these days you will catch those dream poems before the flitter away.

[syntaxofthings]

Somehow I read "gauged" as "gouged" and got a totally different mental image at the end! I really like how the lines stop in the middle but keep rolling toward the end.

[alee_grrl]

Lol. That would definitely change the mental image at the end. So glad you liked it!

[jjhunter]

Hee! re: 'gouged' -- yes, that certainly changes things up immensely! (It reminds me a wee bit of that middle school game of taking the official rule book for the school and swapping out random nouns for the word 'pants' - the section re: locker rules & regs was always a particular favorite.)

[alee_grrl]

Never played that game before, but sounds fun and hilarious.

[untonuggan]

That's a lovely poem - I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for sharing. And as someone who also spends way too much time in hospitals, it's kind of nice to know that there are others out there.

[alee_grrl]

Thank you! So glad you enjoyed it.

It is kind of nice to know that there are others out there with similar experience. Hopefully sharing poems like these will help people find a bit of comfort.

Yay!

[ysabetwordsmith]

I like inspiration cascades. Over on crowdfunding we have done some Creative Jams where everyone can post or claim prompts for any creative material. Sometimes people use the replies as new prompts, so art can lead to poetry, or one poem can inspire another, etc.

Re: Yay!

[alee_grrl]

I will totally have to check that out. Inspiration cascades are so much fun!

Re: Yay!

[ysabetwordsmith]

This is the one from November:
http://crowdfunding.dreamwidth.org/86457.html

We skipped December but there will probably be one the third weekend in January.