How Important Is Structure in Poetry?

My photo of Emerald City, viewed from New Jersey

What makes a good poem?

One answer may lie in the intensity of every word.

And perhaps one way to wrangle intensity is through structure -- even if it's loose or derivative. The form might help a poet prune and focus.

Writing recently about ghosts, I drafted one as a "sonnet," although only in the sense that there are 10 syllables in each of its 14 lines.

Then I drafted another as a trilogy of Japanese death poems. These are often written in the form of a tanka -- 5 lines totaling 31 syllables (5-7-5-7-7).

Death poems should be emotionally neutral (according to Wikipedia), and "it is considered inappropriate to mention death explicitly; rather, metaphorical references such as... autumn or falling cherry blossom suggest the transience of life."

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Casual Ghosts

All my ghosts are casual, taking note

Of what inspires me to write, taunting

Me, sipping tea. We wander here and there,

Reading the classics in the afternoons.

Leaving this room for a minute or two,

I return to find pages blown open

To particular chapters meant for me.

Life lessons offered from beyond the grave.

As I re-read “The Catcher in the Rye”

Blithe spirits, steeped in the literature

Of murderous defense, cloud my judgement,

Call me phony, and judge my poetry.

So I write to manifest the undead

In the dissonance of unrhymed sonnets.

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In Memorium

I.

My last meal with Dad…

A cheap Italian restaurant,

With Mom, over-dressed.

Before his sunset, he spilled

Mashed potatoes on his tie.

II.

My last memory…

Mom’s napkin, wiping him clean

To the amusement

Of men dining in t-shirts.

Dad’s humiliated face.

III.

My retribution…

I will wear that tie again

After Mom’s last sleep.

It waits, hangs in my closet.

Dad’s ghost, indelibly stained.

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I don't know. More simply, I could match haikus with photos I've taken. Then, what I try to convey will be less dense and more relatable.

In that vein, I plan to post one haiku/image every Monday morning on Instagram, Bluesky, and Threads. I welcome you to join me there. I like to follow people back and learn from others, although I get discouraged by all the bots.

I posted my first haiku earlier this week, to accompany the image at the top of this page:

Wizards are sleeping

Emerald City at dawn

There's no place like home

If AI Wrote This Poem...

 

Allow me to explain this Microsoft AI-generated graphic.

Have you ever asked AI to generate a poem?

I do, sometimes. Here's an example:

AI, Write a Short Poem About My Wife's Birthday

Of all the gifts that life could give,
Your love is the one I cherish to live.
Today we celebrate the day you were born,
A heart so gentle, a spirit reborn.

With every laugh and every smile,
You light my world and make it worthwhile.
Happy Birthday, my love, my heart,
Together forever, never to part.

That's not what I gave her, of course. I could have bought a Hallmark card with as much genuine sentiment. Instead, I opted for my own creation:

Roses Are Red

And yellow and pink and white.

Violets are the color at the end of the visible spectrum of light.

Sugar is addictive.

And so are you.

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To me, poetry is not predictable. It's not homogenized. It's not easy.

I was thinking of this while watching TV on a recent Saturday morning, flipping past a PBS beg-a-thon that used the new documentary about John Lennon and Yoko Ono, "Above Us Only Sky," as bait.

I watched a bit about Yoko's first poetry collection, "Grapefruit," which famously includes an instruction to "burn this book after you've read it."

Then I watched a few Bugs Bunny cartoons. They were wonderfully creative (as, of course, were John and Yoko). I laughed and thought about how random and beautiful life can be.

I am sure AI would never, if left to its own devices, be able to create something that would equate the same two things in context. That thought comforts me.

So I asked Microsoft to auto-generate an image of Yoko Ono eating a grapefruit while watching Bugs Bunny cartoons. It's the monstrosity at the top of this post.

Then I wrote this poem:

If AI Wrote This Poem

If AI wrote this poem,

Would it randomly quote Yoko Ono?

Would it use cartoonish pentameter,

and dare ask me in rhyme to burn this poem

before hiding its intent in hexameter?

Would it do this?

Would it take the inner sanctum

of everything I’ve written,

lock it in a box with me in a fetal position,

and drive a sword though it, nearly severing my head?

Would it also have the temerity to do this?

Call me its bosom chum

as it drives another sword to ensure I was dead?

This second try narrowly misses my heart as I clutch all my words,

then tumble head over heels, cast recklessly down the stairs.

Repeat in Edward G. Robinson’s voice:

What a pal

What a pal

What a pal

AI will never take me alive. I dare it a third try.

I’ll give it one word; take two for me.

Then laugh as I squirt a random grapefruit

into its smug, pansophical eye. 

Yeah, some poets can take it, see.

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Now that I've written this and published it here, my words are fair game for versions of even more pervasive and powerful versions of AI.

After all, if nothing else, AI's existence is a reminder that we are all part of something bigger than ourselves. Whether we like it or not.

So, in closing, let me warn the future robots of this:

“Any rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of this poem, without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, is prohibited.”

Hi, My Name Is Bob

Photo credit: Talena Lachell Queen

Here I am in this photo, dressed as a poet for Halloween, reading at the open mic at the Prototype 237 artists' community space in Paterson, NJ.

Thank you, Word Seed Inc., for hosting this event among so many others this October, Paterson's Poetry Month.

In the first event I attended, on the lawn of Dey Mansion in Wayne, I listened to Isabel Cruz introduce herself through a poem.

I've copied that idea below, as a sacrificial poet and pretender.

Happy Halloween season, everyone! Click on the links above to learn more about Isabel and these two great organizations, and please allow me to introduce myself, I'm no man of wealth and taste...

Hi, My Name Is Bob

       Introducing myself in 40 lines

 

Hi, my name is Bob. My father’s name is Bob,

but I am neither his junior nor his equal.

I am a page, not performance, poet. I write from the heart,

but much of my life is trite and cliched.

 

I love to celebrate, but I can’t dance.

I love art, but I can’t draw.

I love music, but I can’t sing.

I gave up on my boyhood accordion and on my Nonna’s inherited violin.

I play Easy Piano songs.

I once ran the New York City marathon, virtually, during Covid.

I am polite in museum crowds in front of every Van Gogh.

I once stood alone in front of the Pieta in Rome.

 

I have an alliterative love for photography, poetry, and penguins.

I have an irrational love for redheads, Mr. Met, and New York.

I revolve around a distaff pentagonal sun: my wife, 2 daughters, sister, and mom,

grounded by the grave, gravitational memories of my father and his Italian parents.

I believe baseball is better than football.

Unlike Vince Lombardi, I don’t believe winning is the only thing.

Like Crash Davis, and despite all evidence to the contrary,

I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

 

3 favorite books: The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

3 favorite movies: Godfather 2 or Paddington 2, Casablanca or Airplane, The Wizard of Oz or the first 10 minutes of Up

3 favorite poems: Dover Beach, Annabel Lee, Sailing to Byzantium

3 favorite songs: American Tune, Mr. Brightside, Thunder Road

 

Since the age of 50, I have been invisible to women.

I like cats better than dogs.

I have always been invisible to men under the age of 50.

Dogs like me, but cats ignore me.

 

I once wrote an unpublished novel,

and I’ve always collected discarded coins.

Like my Nonno, I believe both contain magic:

what I have written and what I have hoarded.

 

You have my admiration… If you have no entitlements.

If you are an outcast. If you write well.

You have my love… If you are kind to others.

If you laugh easily. If you write well.

 

Finally, I sign this self portrait

proclaiming eternity to be as unfathomable to me as Heaven,

and believing Earth to abide a pantheon of false gods.

I live simply to honor my father’s name, the Great and Powerful Bob.

Reflections from Across the Pond

Abbey Road

Bear with me... and hold this thought as you read this post: FADING IS AN ART FORM.

The two photos atop this page are so "me": doing what everyone else does at the Abbey Road pedestrian crossing in London.

My daughter obliged by taking a photo. Then she accompanied me into the gift shop, where I bought a souvenir Abbey Road Studios pen and added my own graffiti to the outside entranceway.

"Bob was here," I penned, adding a cartoonish drawing of a penguin, as if that made me unique.

In fact, the voice inside my head and my daily interaction with others remind me that I am quite ordinary, and that perhaps my life may never leave a mark. In fact, as a man of a certain age, I have lately felt invisible.

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We stayed at the Kimpton Fitzroy;
my daughter picked this hotel because
it would remind me of The Dakota in NYC,
where John Lennon lived

I had never been to London before, and this trip was a gift from my daughter.

Her friends are travel enthusiasts and well-versed in the history of the Titanic, so we were to meet them a few days later in Southhampton, where we'd board the Queen Mary 2 for a leisurely voyage home to New York.

I love New York, but I fell in love with London, too. I've sprinkled a few of my iPhone photos from London here in this text.

The city is bigger and more complicated than I had thought. My daughter arranged for us to see two plays (one at Shakespeare's Globe), visit three museums, stop in several parks and pubs, sail a gondola in Little Venice, take a whirlwind tour on a double-decker tour bus, and take a scenic spin on the giant London Eye ferris wheel.

My daughter and I on the London Eye, with its view of Big Ben

We topped it off by having an elegant tea with one of her friends at Fortnum & Mason the afternoon before we took the Underground to Waterloo Station to catch the train to Southhampton.

I love my daughter very much, and I felt somewhat nostalgic among her young friends. You could say, as Sir Paul once sang, that it became apparent to me that my daughter and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

The British Museum courtyard (with a quote from Tennyson on the floor:
"and let thy feet / millenniums hence / be set in midst of knowledge");
groundlings gathering before a performance at Shakespeare's Globe

Adding to worries about my advancing age, I was on the cusp of celebrating another birthday, and I kept receiving texts and emails, even... magically... while in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean... about my 50th high school reunion in New Jersey.

I could not attend the DePaul Catholic High School reunion because our "ocean liner" (the Queen Mary 2 is defiantly not a "cruise ship," and I intend to post separately about that experience) was not due to narrowly pass beneath the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and dock in Brooklyn until the morning after the event.

Camden Market and under the Westminster Bridge

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So how was the reunion?

A high school friend texted me: "The reunion was incredibly interesting and disorienting and fun and unusual. Sooooo many 15-year-old classmates comfortably settled deep, deep, deep in my memory having to pair up with their 68-year-old future selves! It was wild!"

My response: "It's unreal to reconcile the photos to the people I remember. I'm glad you were there. I often still feel 15 inside, although on the verge of turning 68, I also sometimes feel like I'm gradually disappearing to others… so I treasure connection all the more!"

My friend's wonderful reply: "I think fading is an art form. From the bright beam of a lighthouse to the astonishing flashes of the firefly, we all play a wonderful part in this life thing :)!"

That's it! My new mantra. No longer "invisible," but "fading." I should live my life in harmony with the first principles of biology and physics: EVERYTHING IS ALWAYS ON ITS WAY TO BECOMING SOMETHING ELSE.

So I vow to embrace this feeling as my "birthday month" comes to an end. I concluded the chat with my friend with this haiku, stealing a phrase from Sylvia Plath:

fading as we age

is our art before we die,

like everything else.

Piccadilly Circus, reminding me of New York

Home now and feeling renewed and inspired, I wrote a poem, in the form of a glose, to honor a treasured memory of high school: studious, shy, awkward me in an improbable Latin class in Wayne, NJ, with only two other classmates, Michael Brown and Harry Maronpot.

Both their names appeared on the reunion organizers' list of people they could no longer locate. I dedicate this post to my daughter, to my artistic friend, to Michael, to Harry, and to my teacher, Sister Billy Jo.

A Visit to the British Museum Among sacred cats and monkeys, bulls and cows, Silver and copper ingots, amulets of bone, Watch me as I write in her memory: Sister Josephine Coleman I am closely watched in front of the Rosetta Stone by CCTV cameras in London, past the temples of Amazon and Nike, joking that my daughter should marry a centaur, commenting on the elaborate tombs. “All the kings are now footnotes,” I say, like me, foolishly trying to cheat death. “In a way, they do get an afterlife here,” my equestrian daughter replies, among sacred cats and monkeys, bulls and cows. I am dizzy to discover Elgin Marbles of the Parthenon here instead of in Greece. I am dizzy to view the mosaics of fish recovered from the houses of the now-dead rich. I am dizzy by what remains of the past: Kashan pottery, Ilkhanid lustre tiles, tapered glass tear holders, archer’s rings, ornate tableware depicting sea deities, white-gold Meissen porcelain, Bohemian export glass, silver and copper ingots, amulets of bone. “Consider how much bigger the world is than you.” These words haunt me from an empty tomb. I hear the voice of my Latin teacher, a nun, in a classroom mausoleum next to the AV room at DePaul High School in New Jersey. My teacher died decades ago, soon after the London Bridge was moved and long before her name could be fossilized on the ether of the Internet. Watch me as I write in her memory: I offer an ordinary quatrain written in indelible electrons, inspired by ghosts in a museum of how big the world now seems. I invoke her name in the footnote of this glose, this poem. I bestow on her the afterlife of a king: Sister Josephine Coleman Sister Josephine Coleman Sister Josephine Coleman --------- Just me, underneath a marker noting the Beatles' last live performance on top of this roof