Thoughts About Poetry: 3/30

Today I tried to write another Tretina. It was a poetic form I was introduced to by Tom Daley. It's like a sestina, except shortened to ten lines instead of the daunting 39 lines. Three three-line stanzas using three ABC ending words in the order of:

ABC
CAB
BCA

With the last line using ABC at once.

I wrote my first tretina in Tom's workshop. It was called "Homecoming" and was later published in French Connections. One of the best things I've written, to be honest. Never shared it online, don't want to now, though I still read it now and again.

Nearly every year since, for NaPoWriMo, I've gotten the urge to write another tretina. You can see a link to most of them here.  I'm not happy with most of them. Except for the one I wrote tonight.

In a Miles Davis documentary, he told a musician he worked with, "You know why I don't do ballads anymore? Because I love them." Meaning he loved them so much he didn't want to just repeat over and and over and ruin  his enjoyment of them. I feel that way with the Tretina form.

You might not get the impression with the selection I linked to, but I like how the flow of repetition in a tretina has the potential to create a kind of prayer or mantra effect with each poem.

I've only been able to create that really effectively once, with my first attempt.

If I try to recreate it, I often try too hard, and it falters.

Still, I try every year, out of sentimentality.

What's something you keep trying to recreate.

NaPoWriMo, Day One, Poem One

A tretina to start off the month. Took longer than I thought. No title yet.


Poem

Until you called me, the year wasn't over.
My dad in the ground, your good lay gone to Vegas, 
your need to say we both had a loss.

I stayed quiet.  You were never at a loss
of times taking space in my pew, time leftover
to track your man's move to Vegas.

Did he stop in Georgia en route to Vegas
to tap that MySpace girl, compounding your loss
of one night stand, unyielding pillow talk gone over

and over till he played Vegas odds, took the loss and ran.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty-Six, Poem Twenty

Tretina
using an online 3 word generator 

When writing with family, remember personal umbrella,
watch flying volleyballs, stray bottles of pop,
relatives old enough to know terms like pop or people named Spike

like Uncle Brian, who jumps to spike
the ball, bouncing off the umbrella
into your salad, lettuce, dressing, going popl

all over your notebook, just missing the soda pop.
Not far away, your uncle's vodka mix that could spike
into your own, and fancy toothpick umbrellas,

wind taking those umbrellas, wayward spikes, Pop's
propped up picture crucified for Sunday.

NaPoWriMo 2024 Afterthoughts

The work is done, and like most recent years, I'm sitting wondering how and why I did it.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty-Nine, Poem Twenty-Six

A tretina again.


This is what you do if you have hate.
It's small enough for your pocket,
keep it there, far from fine crystal.

People you know buy you crystal
shirts and stockings, cracked by hate
if you take it out of your pocket.

They will try to pick your pocket
make you swallow back your hate
cut your throat with shards like crystal.

At night, hurled hate, smash cornerstones like crystal.

NaPoWriMo, Day Seventeen, Poem Seventeen

Trying the tretina again.

Thanks for your comments. More please. I'm insecure and needy like that.


On Obsession

On my bed is a week's worth of clothes and work.
None of it substitutes your absent body.
I think about writing a third poem,

about you, except I already wrote that poem
and forgot about it, felt it didn't work
when truthfully, none of them may, their bodies

of words insufficient to lure anybody,
let alone y0u, who told me you were the poem
e.e. cummings didn't write. I said I'd put in more work.

Time slowly tells my body of work: silence is the best poem.

Recaping My 30/30

In case anyone was wondering, there was a reason I labeled my poems as 5.5, 12.9 and such at certain points. And it wasn't just to boot my numbers, though that inevitably happened.

This past April, I made it a side goal to have all 30 poems be "serious" efforts. This meant I couldn't count any single haiku, limericks or poems I considered "gimmicks" like the seaweed baby poems from past years or the Jesus poems that have come up this year. Of course, this meant I was prone to create almost as many "non-serious" poems as serious ones. The result was less than what I hoped for, and in the end I did rely on a gimmick of sort in the form poems like the tretina and, of course, the sonnet.

I consider most of my 30/30 months failures, whether or not I've finished. The one success I'm happy with from this year(aside from finishing nearly two hours early) was finally writing a sonnet after having avoided one for over five years. I didn't even do one with hundreds of opportunities to do so during last year's 365/365 challenge. Too intimidated. I'm in no rush to do another after doing fourteen in a row (fourteen fourteen line stanza'ed poems, get it?) but at least I did one or two half-decent ones. Maybe even a decent one or two.

As I get more "successful" during these writing challenges, I reflect back to when I participated in things like National Poetry Writing Month way back before my local scene made them trendy. I did it to get the bad work out of me and produce better work. If I am producing better work as I think I am, I think the sheer volume has less to do with the quality of my work than ever.

It makes me wonder if the current trend will reach a critical point, leading the next challenge to be something like, "Write on very memorable poem, then walk away."

Thanks to everyone who read my work, whether you commented or just silently trolled.

NaPoWriMo, Day Two, Poem One

Tretina

My life will never be an open mic,
standing up, being seen to be seen,
standing up, mispronouncing next up's name.

Will anyone remember my name
when it's not repeated on a mic
over and over again, soon not even seen

scrabbled in pain, my pen chewing scene,
handwriting louder than voice on mic,
you already can't hear me say hi, my name,

the mic says to the scene, is no name.

NaPoWriMo, Day Nineteen, Poem Sixteen

I wrote my first tretina in a workshop with Tom Daley. It was so successful, and I liked it so much, that I've tried to write more since. This needs work, but I do enjoy the process of writing one still.


Edited: This poem for my father made it's way into Issue 1 of Spoonful. Click here to read it.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty-Six, Poem Eighteen

Tretina
using an online 3 word generator

Nothing you do can push back the morning.
Time to take your ticket to the dodgem,
no shirt dark enough to hide you from rumor.

Funny how rumor rhymes with rumor.
Both can feter upon your back.
Track them on you like a game of dodgem

No matter what, you can't out dodge'em
remember how humor also rhymes with rumor,
how you want to drain yourself of both each morning.

Morning time, the dodgem game is fixed, according to rumor.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty-Eight, Poem Thirty

Stopwatch Tretina

Two types of battles over time.
Those you acknowledge, those you don't
for fear that others take a side.

No one will ever take your side.
Your either there for their time
or against them. Never say you don't

take a side. They think your clock hands don't
exist, ready for their twice-a-day aside,
more unwavering and final than even time.

Fight for yourself. Time don't take sides. He takes winners.

NaPoWriMo, Day Twenty-Six, Poem Nineteen

Tretina
using an online 3 word generator

Writing nothing is walking in a desert
listening to yourself for lightning, thunder
wishing you had even a pin

to prick a cactus or even to pin
invisible medals to your chest in the desert
so not to fall over, your ears thundering

to give up, that some times there's thunder
without rain, nothing at all to pin
an idea on, no magics "S" to turn desert
into dessert, desert the thunder, ride the lightning pin to win.

NaPoWriMo, Day Sixteen, Poem Sixteen

Something in the tretina form. Weird one tonight. Hopefully, I'll hit a better streak by the end of this week.


Poem

You go to the other side of your bed,
make sheet angels to represent old girlfriends.
Tonight, though, they're all there at once. They talk,

but not with you. The way they talk
as if you were never even in the bed,
forgetting it was you who evoked your friends

in the first place. They make new friends
with each other. This is a fantasy you never talked
yourself into, your exes sharing secrets in your bed.

Even your bed makes friends with the ghosts you're afraid to talk with.