June 2018
Joan Colby
JoanMC@aol.com
JoanMC@aol.com
I read this poem at a "Blues" event at Water Street Studios in Batavia, IL. on May 20. I was asked to respond to the question "How have the Blues affected your writing style?" Here's my response.
The musical aspect of poetry is very important to me. I "hear" a poem as I write and inner rhymes and line breaks are influenced by that. It's not just the metrics of the blues that attracts me, but the subject matter: hardship, resignation, inspiration, passion, the elemental forces of life that so clearly and sometimes harshly resonate. I like the tactic of repetition in poetry, an essential strategy of the blues--how we respond as reader or listener to refrain. The first poets were singers and the blues are poems, fierce and memorable poems that come from the soul.
The musical aspect of poetry is very important to me. I "hear" a poem as I write and inner rhymes and line breaks are influenced by that. It's not just the metrics of the blues that attracts me, but the subject matter: hardship, resignation, inspiration, passion, the elemental forces of life that so clearly and sometimes harshly resonate. I like the tactic of repetition in poetry, an essential strategy of the blues--how we respond as reader or listener to refrain. The first poets were singers and the blues are poems, fierce and memorable poems that come from the soul.
CLIO SINGS THE BLUES
She clutches the mike
To her lips and croons
I hate to see the evening sun go down
Struts across the stage,
Cigarettes, whiskey, cocaine,
A tight black dress. That man of mine.
She can’t help but address
The way he slams the door
On memory: the holocaust,
Strange fruit, abandoned children,
A woman stoned for passion,
Every single war.
Those repetitions, that’s what she
Deplores. Phantom refrain:
Remember remember
Her voice hoarse with it, infusions
Of lemon, vinegar and gin. Dark lady
Haunting time with her song
All that happens, happens again
As sound waves break
In an ocean of torment. The world’s
Sadness in her throat,
Weary flatted notes.
© 2018 Joan Colby
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