Good morning, Poetry People. Or afternoon, evening, or whatever. I have an incredible video to share with you while discussing how I used today's prompts in my creation. This Roger Waters reboot of Comfortably Numb features a striking dystopian landscape complete with damaged buildings, bomb blasts, and crowds of displaced people. It is a stark reminder of the conditions some people have endured in the past and are currently facing now. Here is what Roger has to say about the video.
Before lockdown I had been working on a demo of a new version of ‘Comfortably Numb’ as an opener to our new show "This Is Not A Drill”. I pitched it a whole step down, in A Minor, to make it darker and arranged it with no solos, except over the outro, where there is a heartrendingly beautiful vocal solo from one of our new sisters Shanay Johnson.It’s intended as a wakeup call, and a bridge towards a kinder future with more talking to strangers, either in "The Bar” or just “Passing in the Street" and less slaughter “In Some Foreign Field.” Here it is. Love R.
The video is by Sean Evans. The mix is by Gus Seyffert.
I think it is quite rude of ProWritingAid to tell Sean Evans that he should spell his name differently. Sean, you can be Stan, Dean, or Sian Evans or you can be Sean Evan. Your name cannot be Sean Evans, Boyo! At least not according to ProWritingAid.
I mean, what the hell?
I guess if I ever again have a moment to write a smackerel of fan fiction, I'll have Sam and Dean Winchester go incognito as Sam and Dean Evans. Yes, Grammarly and ProWritingAid, the word I intended to use is smackerel. I'm not writing about fish.
Overall, I find programs such as Grammarly and ProWritingAid useful, but sometimes I find them ridiculous. Especially when they tell me a character or a real person can't be named the name I've just typed. That assertion is simply uncouth.
Thanks to Scottish Tommy for posting this and many other wonderful videos. Please be sure to check out his Odysee channel. The link for this video is above.
I wrote my poem prior to discovering this video, but I think they complement each other perfectly. I can't share the poem here because I am submitting it to Dragon Soul Press for potential inclusion in the forthcoming Soul Ink anthology. I will provide a synopsis of the work.
The poem is a Haibun. The theme is death. I focus on the differences between the kinds of deaths I've witnessed during my lifetime, including the passing of family members, patients, and pets as opposed to casualties of war. I have never had the firsthand experience of seeing people killed by an invading army. Such a thing seems unimaginable, and yet there are people living with this experience every day.
The Senryu at the end of the Haibun seems, on the surface, to compare a waterfall to experiences and memories.
I have encountered much disagreement about what a Haibun should encompass. There are those who say a Haibun should always be non-fiction. There are those who say that the Haiku or Senryu at the end should be unrelated to the subject in the prose portion. I say the poet should write their Haibun about whatever they wish to write it about and have the Haiku/Senryu relate to the prose portion or not as they see fit.
I'm not a professor of poetic knowledge. I have no degree in poetry. I'm not even Japanese. I have loved Japanese poetry forms ever since my class studied Japan when I was in the fourth grade. I'm self-taught, and I'm not a stickler. I say Haibun away in whatever manner suits you.
If you're wondering how long a Haibun should be, I usually confine my prose portion to 100 words, but I have occasionally written longer Haibun.
Now for the prompts.
Today's NaPoWriMo prompt asks participants to:
Take a look around Poetry International for a poem in a language you don’t know. Now, read the poem to yourself, thinking about the sound and shape of the words, and the degree to which they remind you of words in your own language. Use those correspondences as the basis for a new poem.
I found the thought-provoking prose poem I Have Thought that I Thought of Death by Estonian poet Jaan Kaplinski.
Trying to do the thing of comparing the sound and shape of Estonian words to English made my brain hurt, so I simply used the theme of the poem.
I used the prompt word waterfall to create the Senryu portion of the Haibun. I found this prompt in one of the first posts from Chèvrefeuille's Carpe Diem blog.
Unfortunately, Chèvrefeuille has been unable to keep up with blogging during the past few years because of personal circumstances. He has left the blog up as an archive and it contains a wealth of prompts and poems for the seeker's enjoyment.
Here is the music I listened to while creating this post. I was pretty intensely "up in my feelings" about my poem and the new Comfortably Numb video. This powerful game soundtrack from Destiny 2 helped me become energized yet grounded so I could continue with my work. I find video game soundtracks very useful as background music while creating.
~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~
