[OBSOLETE] Themed Weeks Master Post

[jjhunter]

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Anonymous Feedback Poll

[jjhunter]

Any excuse for a poll is a good one! Please take a quick moment to go through the poll and give feedback re: the comm to date. Your choices are anonymous; aggregate results can be seen by all. If you want to provide more detailed feedback but aren't comfortable doing so when signed in, this post like all poetree posts allows anonymous comments without a captcha.

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And now back to our regular scheduled program with alee_grrl!

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.