I Don't Like Soup

Original Post: 18 May 2012
Posted Here: 4 December 2017

“This is the forest primeval,
The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,”

I don’t like soup,
flavored water,
bits of meat and veggies.

But then there’s a grilled cheese sandwich
and steaming tomato soup, or
hot corn bread squares
and split pea soup with chunks of ham.

“By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
by the shining Big-Sea-Water,”

Sometimes I burn my tongue.

I don’t like poetry, either.
But what else can you do
at 4:30 in the morning?

I don’t like soup. I don’t care for poetry either. But, as it turns out, just as I’ve found some soups that I do appreciate, I’ve found some poetry that I like, too. The  first two lines of Longfellow’s Evangeline are burned into my memory. They are beautiful. The same is true for the lines quoted above from Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha (I have no idea what other works Longfellow produced.)

I’m not a poet, either. I have, on occasion, set out to write a poem, but iambic pentameter and her sisters make little impression on me. As I’ve said about my science fiction writing, I’m not good at writing from some preexisting structure. Most of the poetry which I have “written” has been captured from the aether, almost fully formed. I Don’t Like Soup, above, did indeed come to me in the wee hours of the morning.

I’m not sure where The Dying Language came from. The time period, I’m pretty sure, was while I was attending college in Cincinnati:

It was soft, and gentle,
and almost Aesthetic —
the language of our People.
And then from the Stars
came one unlike ours.
It was harsh, and hard,
and almost Prophetic —
the language of our Friends.

Perhaps I was thinking of Project Ozma or whatever version of SETI was popular at the time.

I’m not sure where I was when Where Infinity Crosses Itself popped into my head. But, as I may have mentioned before, The Muse often strikes while I’m standing at the sink doing the dishes (Janet tells people that her dish washer is 6 feet tall with a beard.)

We are at the center of the universe          
where infinity crosses itself,
where the owl Whoos,
where the meerkat stares at the horizon,
the bat calls to the rising moon,
and the coyote sings to his neighbors.
We are at the center of the universe
where infinity crosses itself.

One thing I like about poetry: It is good practice for writing concisely.

Keep reading/keep writing – Jack