Would you like to link to
ClaireWorks? Please use
one of the buttons below. Thank you!
Webdesign & contents
by ClaireWorks.
Copyright 2000-2001
Beverly Claire L. Fangonon.
All rights reserved.
All graphics & photographs
by ClaireWorks,
unless otherwise indicated.
Life is a Lark...Not!
Pain & Poetry: You Shall Not Be Spared 28 March 2000
Taciturn is an adjective you would never use to describe the proper noun "Claire". Unfortunately for you the reader, and, if you happen to be my friend, for you, my friend, I have not only chosen to blah myself to oblivion, I have also chosen to write poetry. As if there weren't enough lousy poets in this world!
Beat poet Allen Ginsberg wrote: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness". Ginsberg passed away in 1997, but his soul has to see this present generation destroyed by madness as well, although what is being destroyed are not only the best minds, but also the very ordinary ones, like yours truly's.
It will be to your relief to know that my poetry, destroyed mind aside, is not about the maudlin. I choose to write about the mundane, such as the last bastard who broke my heart. Screw sentimentality. When it comes to words, I am hardly circumspect, so go ahead and declare me culpable. I've always wanted to be an iconoclast, but am no good at polemics and my poetry could hardly be called revolutionary. Certainly not maudlin, but still the same old, same old.
What is poetry, in the first place? Anything that doesn't fill a paper from left to right and has bad punctuation. No, no, the word "poem" comes from the Latin poema, something composed and created. Poems can be defined as composition characterized by compact language in which words are well chosen for their sound (such as rhyme and rhythm) and suggestive power or imagery, as well as for their meaning, connotative or otherwise. Edgar Allan Poe described a poem as "a rhythmical creation of beauty".
While my poetry can hardly be described as rhythmical or beautiful, they are creations, so that's one out of three. Not bad, given the fact that I'm not much of a poet.
It has been taught to me that the enjoyment of poetry is greatly enhanced by a knowledge of its technique. A good poem is supposed to have harmony of form and content, of thought and language, of mood and movement. Thus, in an effort to learn more about technicalities, in my freshperson year at the University of the Philippines I judiciously read about stuff such as the common meters in English poetry: the iambic foot, trochaic foot, anapestic foot, dactylic foot as well as less common foots (not "feet", "foots" sounds better as it rhymes with "roots"): spondic, pyrrhic and others, all the knowledge of which have now vanished from the cobwebbed corners of my mind.
In writing, unfortunately, I hardly ever pay attention to whatever technicalities I learned about poetry, not because I don't want to but mostly because I am so bent on taking whatever load it is off my chest at the moment that I lamentably forget rhythm, meter, verse, foot etc. Which puts in question the nature of these writings; in other words, are they really poetry, and if so, are they worth reading at all? Well, I leave that for you to judge. I lay my poems prostrate upon thy feet. Audacity is mine, vehemence is my tool, and to disconcert is my aim. Oh, and what an arduous task I ask of thee, to read these writings in the name of friendship!
Unless you are the latest bastard who broke my heart. Or any of the past bastards, for that matter. No, I am no longer in conflagration over the insults you heaped upon my cavilling self. But still I wish thee ill.
Nah, just kidding. Of course not. You helped me grow up, that's what you did. Not that I needed any help. But you did make me write more. And for that I am grateful. And vengeful. May the gods have mercy upon your unappreciative, unrepentant, unforgiving soul.
Click on the book to open the ClaireWorks Poetry Folio
The poems here aren't beautiful. They are not edifying, nor inspiring. A lot of them are mad drivel, frustrated cries, unmet longings, angsty balderdash. Most are quite pathetic. This folio is a raging inferno of unwanted emotions, and I am only putting it up because...honestly, I need something new for the month of September 2001 and couldn't muster the energy to come up with anything, so I decided to upload some old poetry instead.
[I apologize to anyone who reads these poems only to find out that I am not the person they thought I was. Welcome to the ugly side.]
