Poetry and Bananas

I am a poet.  There, I said it.  Now you can all point and laugh, or whatever it is that we do to self professed poets these days.

That being said; I have an opinion about how poetry should look to me.  I can't say if it's right or not.  I just know that there is a certain way that I like to write, that actually feels like poetry to me.

I can defend this point of view with this brief explanation:  What does it mean when someone stands back from something, and exclaims "That is poetry!" ?

In my experience, they are referring to something that is beautiful to them, something that flows easily, something that seems natural, and maybe even lasting in nature.  

I've heard that exclamation in reference to sports.  When a difficult run or catch, or unusual move is pulled off with an effortless kind of grace by the athlete.  It looks like poetry.  Because it is what it is.  

I've heard that in reference to architecture, paintings, sculpture, natural landscapes, and the occasional nude man or woman.  In all cases, referred to as 'poetry', due to how it looks, and more importantly, how it makes the observer feel inside.

That's essentially what poetry is to me:  A group of words, no matter how you put them together, that flow naturally, and make you feel their beauty on the inside of your soul.

On achieving the goal of producing poetry, as I've defined it; I will be charitable, and say that I succeed about 10% of the time.  

The other 90% of time made up of near misses, never should've attempted's , and what was I thinking's.  

The 10% of the time that I succeed at putting words together in a pleasing way, at least to me (remember, this is all subjective!); it tends to flow out of my fingers effortlessly.  Whether it is from a well thought out beginning, middle and end; or from the seed of one word or phrase.  

It is beautiful.  Just like the tuned athlete in motion, it flows without effort for both writer and reader.  With natural starts, stops, and pauses; unforced rhymes and ideas.

To be honest, I was going to take this opportunity to complain about something that myself and a friend have dubbed as "Banana Poetry".  Called so, because it drives me bananas.  

It is the practice of some poets, to dice up their words.  Whether to force a rhyme from the middle of a sentence; or to create unnaturally paused two to three word lines.  

I will give an example using the first five lines of Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken":

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

I suppose a scholarly person could describe that as "An example of a-b-a-a-b poetry stanza, blah blah blah"

Whatever.  It's pretty, and a great start, to a great poem, that people can generally look at, and call it "Poetry".  

Ok, now what if I break it up like this?

Two roads

Diverged

In a yellow wood

And sorry 

I could not

Travel both

And be one

Traveler

Long I stood

And looked 

Down one as far

As I could

To where it bent

In the undergrowth

Does that flow as nicely?  Does that make as much sense?  

Ok, I know art is subjective.  And poetry, being art, is no exception.  But the Frost structured original, flows much nicer to me, and is poetry so much more, than the one I broke up for the example.

Same words, same poet; but phrased very differently.

You see, to me, a poem has natural pauses.  Just like punctuation, but you don't even need punctuation in the damned thing, because of how you laid it out.  And how the poet lays it out, with all it's implied pauses and stops, is how it is to be read in the readers head.  And if you didn't mean for the reader to stop at a certain word at the end of a line for a breath; then you've kind of failed at your job.  Because that is what readers do at the end of a line in a poem; they stop to take a breath, so to speak.  

And then another one that drives me bananas.  The ones that cut and hack, just to gain a rhyme.

Just imagine lines of a poem, that are cut off midstride, just to attain that magical a-b-a-b rhyme rhythm.  Which is very overrated.  Yet pretty sweet when you come by it naturally.  

Well, anyways, that is just some commentary by me.  About what poetry is to me, as of this date: 10-5-13.  

I'm sure next year, I will feel differently.  

Oh, and incidentally, when I bitch about a style that drives me bananas:  It is because I've probably tried it, many times; and I hated it, couldn't make it work.  So that's why I don't like it.  As it doesn't feel like poetry to me.

That's not to say it doesn't feel like poetry to YOU.  Or someone else.  So save your hate.  I know it's subjective, I've said so three or four times now.  

When something is poetry, you KNOW it.  From balls to brain.  Nobody has to tell you.  

Cheers, to poetry, in all it's myriad guises.

Aviation Myth and Legend

I'll bet you know some aviation myths.  They could be misconceptions, half truths, outright lies; many different things.  But many of them do have value, regardless.

Why?  Because they do many things.

They can teach, as in a parable.  Does it matter if a parable is true, if it teaches a valuable lesson about something?

They can generate interest in something.  There is that old saying, "There is no such thing as bad publicity"; which as a lot of truth to it.  If there are crazy stories floating around about something, it does make people interested.  Which is in no small part due to our train wreck mentalities as humans.  I still don't know why I slow down to look at car crashes.  If I saw someone horribly injured, I'd have a hard time getting the image out of my head.

They can assuage fears of the unknown.  Maybe someone doesn't have the time or savvy to really understand a concept of how an airplane flies; so a story is told to them about how wings make lift which might be not 100% technically true.  But now they feel better about airplanes, and maybe an upcoming trip.

Aviation Legend, is another thing entirely in my opinion.  These are the things that really happened.  But they were never officially written down or reported.  This can happen for various reasons, similar to reasons you might not report every incident with your car:  Insurance, bad press, etc.

But the aviation legends, are the really interesting stories, even if they get exaggerated over time;  until they begin to resemble myths themselves.

I wrote of one such legend in my first Tales of The Wrench collection.  Specifically, the short story entitled A Tale of Two Towers.  That story was heavily based on events that actually took place in the mid 1990's, in South America.  A Douglas DC-8 really did become lost in the clouds on a test flight, and it really did crash through two huge radio/television antennae on top of a mountain (after narrowly avoiding the mountain itself!).  It really did get tangled up in the support cables, and lose almost 8 feet of it's right wing.  Then it managed to land safely.

You won't find that reported anywhere officially.  It never happened.  But it did.

I've been looking on and off for any mention of this accident for years.  But I have yet to find anything.  I know there is a stack of 35mm photos of the plane right after it landed.  They show the tattered end of the wing where it was severed, the cables wrapped around the wings cutting into the flaps and leading edge, and the chunk of metal antenna structure that bounced along on top of the wing.  But I don't know who has them.

I helped repair the aircraft after it was ferried back to the States.  But I didn't take any pictures myself.

I remember how it looked when it landed.  With strips of "battle damage repair" metal riveted in place over the jagged cuts in the wing trailing and leading edges, from the antenna support wires.  The boilerplate splice that was Huck bolted onto the right wing, attaching a salvaged wing tip in place for the ferry flight.

How we carefully repaired all the damage, and the crazy looking three or four layer doubler that served to splice in that 'new' right wing tip, when it was all said and done.

 I felt it was important to write that story down, and share it.  Because of how marvelous it really is.

All stemming from a mistake of losing track of where you were in a very mountainous area; everything that followed was a straight up miracle of ability, engineering, and luck.

That the aircraft was able to full-throttle climb it's way up the face of that mountain, plow through a couple pretty substantial metal structures, lose a large wing section, and still be able to fly safely and land; is all a testament to the machine and the engineers at Douglas Aircraft.

That the flight crew was able to react to the mountain to begin with, accept what had happened, and stabilize the aircraft for flight and landing; is a tribute to their training and skill.

That's why that story is important.  It shows what can happen, and still be walked away from.  It provides confidence and a bit of pride.

As well as that underlying parable lesson: Don't get lost flying around in the mountains.

Connor's Family Tree Report

My 13 year old son had to write a Family Tree report for school some months back.  And what he came up with was......let's say "creative".  We had him change it to be a little more factual.  But I saved the first draft of it, just because it was rather awesome in it's own way.

I'm just going to put this here for posterity.
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Connor Robel’s Family Tree Report 2013 (1^st Draft)

My family mostly came from the countries bordering the Northern Atlantic which includes Scotland, United Kingdom, Ireland, East Europe, Hungary, and other countries.  They all came on schooners and frigate ships.  Some of them were poor and came to America to work or own farms.  While some other people came to America almost as wealthy as the Queen of England. 

The Putz’s were the first to come to America.  Of course, to actually get to America, they had to sail past the Statue of Liberty.  After that, they fled to Michigan to start a new life on a farm.  Of course, in 1913’s storm of the century, the Putz’s barn almost collapsed because of the 67 mile per hour winds.  The Putz’s survived the gale but at a cost of their barn.

Arnold Edward Feher was married to Jean Francis McCann, but later served as an ambulance driver during World War II.  Years after that ordeal serving the Army, he went into retirement for the rest of his life.  Dying in 2009, the end of a veteran. 

One of the dominant traits passed on are us having no widow’s peak for our hairlines.

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I rather like the part about the Putz family 'fleeing' after their passing of the Statue of Liberty.  

That, and the whole "wealthy as the Queen of England" thing.  

My son, has this way of making logical leaps in his mind; so that things make sense to him.  This is that, put into writing form.

Cheers