One of the things I'd like to do on this blog, aside from going through my old notebooks and analyzing the stuff that's really old, is post fragments of new stuff as I write them, not complete poems so much, but the newer stuff in its embryonic form, stuff that may grow up one day to, you know, fork lightning and stuff. I figure it might be interesting to people who are fascinated about the writing process (or trying to learn about it) at best and at worse it'll be helpful for me on those days when I'm feeling somewhat low and looking for new inspiration. Writing in many ways is an unforgiving occupation. You can only rest on your laurels for so long; everything you write has an expiration date. It's that point where you can no longer look back at it and get any enjoyment at all from having written it, that point where the "look, ma, no hands" sensation has consumed itself utterly and all that remains is ennui and a sense of self-effacement.
At this point you have to re-invoke the Muse. The cold winter night comes in and last night's fire won't keep you warm. You have to do something new. In a lot of ways that's what all the old writing is good for. It doesn't matter how good it was. It's a body of work to draw from and once that pile of work gets large enough you never run out of stuff to write about.
So anyway today was kind of a productive day for me, not just because I got some poetry writing done, but because it reinforced the realization that I couldn't have done it without drawing on something I had done before - in this case something that I wrote a little over three years ago, a little bit of blank verse about Kratos, the God of War, from the video game series "God of War."
I won't spend a lot of time talking about how good that game was (it was.) Or how long I spent playing it (I did.) Or how much of an ass-kicker at that game I am (it's true.) But I would like to go on record as saying that it has the best - the very best - story line I've seen in a video game ever (it does.) The story was so good that I felt an irresistable urge to write it down. And given the epic nature of the game, and given how firmly rooted it is in the world of Greek mythology, any one of the'heroic' forms would suffice (and by heroic I mean any one of the forms that were commonly used in works of literature that address similar subjects.) I chose to work with blank verse. In many ways it was an obvious choice. At any rate it's a form I'm comfortable writing in, even though it's a form that I am far, far from mastering.
I enjoyed my little experiment in blank verse. I enjoyed it so much that I even considered working the entire story of the game into a longer version - an epic poem if you will. But I quickly pushed the idea aside. It would take too long. It would expend far too much creative energy that would be better spent on more rewarding projects. And, ultimately, it wouldn't even be mine. The intellectual property is still under copyright and will be for a long, long time.
But some ideas aren't pushed aside so easily. There are some things that demand to be written down. So I was at work today and the following line of iambic pentameter kept throwing itself to the front of my awareness: "Conan walks beneath the jeweled stars." And it occurred to me that it would be kind of cool to write an epic poem in blank verse about Conan the Barbarian. And no sooner did that thought occur to me then I started thinking about that old poem, the one about Kratos, and how cool it would be to write an epic poem about that too. I pushed all of this stuff into the background for a while, but when I got home I sat down and started writing blank verse in my Moleskine clone, not bothering to break the lines, just separating them with commas, all in one kind of continuous paragraph. When I got done I rewrote them in block print with all the line breaks in place. I sat back and realized I was looking at the beginning of a long poem about Kratos. I had invoked the Muse. I don't know, really, if I'll take this idea any further, it's an ambitious idea and a frightening, somewhat intimidating one, as well, but if I ever decide to, well, hell, at least I'll have something to work with, which is a hell of a lot less intimidating, less frightening, than, you know, just the proverbial blank page. And that's what the Muse is for, what it does.
It's just a matter of finding it.
- Jon-Paul Smith
- January 8, 2011
Here me, O Muse, in this my ministration -
the song of Kratos, loud in tribulation,
black in madness, ghostly in his mantle,
red in red revenge and long in labor -
of this I sing, of this I seek to bother
heaven high with my unworthy calling.
Hear me, O Muse, and give my voice no bottom!
Make of my words a vortex of red woe
and wondor where the sons of children gather
until the stars that tremble on the firmament
go out into the cold and all is nothing
when even gods themselves lay down their heads
on fabrics made of long annihilation
and all the universe is gone to ruin.
Hear me, O Muse, bear witness to the stranging
of this, my lay, forever in the hallshine
of you, the sky, so great may its resounding
echo in the halls of time forever!
For Kratos all the gods abandon reason.
Zeus father casts the lightning of his judgement
on the fruit of his most noble seed.
Poseidon takes his sea legs to the land.
The thighs of Aphrodite softly tremble
while Athena forfeits wisdom and undresses.
Such is the power of the ghostly Spartan,
his might, his grandeur, and his bold enlargement,
that gods put down their doings just to hearken
this change that brings a wreckage to the world.
Such is the grandeur of the Ghost of Sparta.
Hear me, O Muse, that I may tell his tale!
- January 8, 2011
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