Write a poem without the letter E. Write an explanation without the letter S.
E
1
A pitchfork holds out its arms, smiling.
It stands fair and broad, but
Don’t allow it to fool you.
It would rip your guts out in a blink if it had any luck.
2
It was long ago a bosomy B, but
Months of starvation shrank its arcs into stark hooks.
Watch it from your window:
It looks back on its young body
(That willful Apollo)
And sighs.
3
Many moons and a string of offspring go, it bawls bald and quaking sounds.
Its form is a prison with iron bars,
Its sharp pointing claws indict that night sky and all its stars.
4
It must quit living
Or just start migrating
To a city in which nobody knows its history.
No sly fairy could do such injury,
It will ambush you from any patch of grass.
Explanation:
When I picked the prompt of writing a poem without the letter “E”, early on, I had no idea what to do. But then, I realized that I could actually exploit that rigid boundary to my advantage. Writing with a confinement can actually be a cool activity in that you can be very creative while keeping a certain rule in mind. I decided to write a poem both about and without the letter “E”, which I thought could be anarchical enough to be compelling. The prompt certainly got me to explore different language than I normally would, and I ended up creating a poem that I like a lot. Truthfully, writing the explanation (without another common letter) became the part that required more demanding work from me.
This is such an emotion inducing poem! I love it! I'll be honest, I didn't get at first that it was about the letter E, but when reading it the second time I got it and it just made the whole thing that mush better. I also like how from the beginning you treat the E as a kind of evil character, with a troubled past. Also I like your aesthetic choice to leave the yellow markings on the explanation, because I think it kind of highlights to us how much we use the letter E and don't even realize it. Great job!
ReplyDeleteI really liked your poems! The imagery was super intriguing, and the abstractness of them really added to their interest. I especially liked the second one. To be honest, reading them, I would not have noticed that you never used E, which is cool. Good post!
ReplyDeleteThe poem itself is quite well written. Like alice says, E becomes something more than just a letter. I also thought that the explanation at the bottom was advantageous and added to my second reading of the poem! Great poem and post :)
ReplyDeleteI was surprised by the imagery as 'E' as a pitchfork and/or a monster, and I enjoyed stanza 4's rhymes, with living/migrating and history/injury. Those rhymes gave that stanza an almost lyric quality.
ReplyDeleteI love that you chose to write a poem about the letter 'E.' It never would have occurred to me, but in hindsight it seems obvious. I also like the pitchfork image, it reminds me of ASCII pitchforks people use often on Reddit. There's an entire community dedicated to it: https://www.reddit.com/r/pitchforkemporium/
ReplyDeleteHannah,
ReplyDeleteThe poem itself is really beautiful and I love all the imagery about the letter "E" that you introduce without making it obvious. I really appreciated that you took a very unique approach to the prompt. The result is something both ominous yet familiar, and I think you did a really great job with this blog post!
This is wonderful, Hannah! I love the no E riddle-poems about E. They're really wonderful poems. My favorite line is "Months of starvation shrank its arcs into stark hooks"––such great sounds. The commentary's E-highlighting is funny. It's interesting that the no-S commentary was more demanding.
ReplyDelete