EXCITING NEWS!

I've yet to share this with you all, but I got into English 80 at my school, which is the intro creative writing course. What does this mean? POETRY IS MY HOMEWORK! It's wonderful, it's actually multitasking to upkeep this blog! What I'll be doing is posting all the poems I write for that class up here to share with you guys, starting with the one today. Our first assignment was to write a poem that "meanders" a bit before it gets to its meaning (I write a lot of these poems, but they all have to be fresh. So no recycling allowed). This poem I wrote today on the subject of tea. I'm an avid tea drinker and probably drink more of it than any of your European grandmothers. I've never utilized tea as a metaphor in my poetry, let alone think about the symbolism that it can convey. And I like it. You will definitely see more poems about tea in the future.

Side note: the teas I describe in the end of the first stanza are white tea (made from baby tea leaves, I like to think of it as young tea), rooibos (not really tea but an herbal variety, full flavored and very energetic, for lack of a better word), Gunpowder tea (usually a green tea, which is mature leaves, named so because of how they're packaged to look like bullets and often stored in metal containers), and Pu-erh (oolong tea fermented in caves, most oxidized, "oldest" tea leaf I suppose). They are in some ways different stages in the tea's life, as well as humans (birth, adolescence, war, death).

You now know more about tea than you probably ever cared about.

DepraviTea

In under three minutes, a teakettle
Produces a raspy postlude.
The leaves bloom in the heat,
Their diffusion, their perfumes
Caress the clarity, suggest a mood:
Simple white, clean and sincere,
Rooibos from Bourbon Street.
A musket green with notes of metal,
Oolong stored in tombs.
But the actual tea is one to fear.

Harmful if swallowed. Do not ingest.

Once it is tossed, no one grieves.
The essence is the sole value.
We drink our tea with little haste,
Unaware of travesties,
Incognizant of our profanity,
The sin we never knew.
Are we steeped tealeaves?
Are we the this kind of humanity,
Exploited of our victories,
And then left to waste?

Cheesy Poem with a Cheesy Nautical Metaphor

So tomorrow begins the start of a new term, and so of course I needed to write a poem. The weirdest thing about this year is that I know what to expect, but then I have no idea what it's going to be like. Naturally, what came to mind was the sea. A sailor may think he knows the waters that he frequents, but they are different every day, every voyage, and so the best he can do is assume that anything will be partially familiar and partially chance. Thus I came up with this.

It's nice writing poems again. I usually balk at first, but once I realize that I really should be writing, I let it all flow out. Yay, powers of inertia!

I have been here before,
But in the second time around,
Differences abound.
A wave breaching a familiar shore
And yet aware of little more.

So what can I expect, or brace?
As if the certainty dried out
When the sail came about
And I returned to a place
That thrives in morphing space.

So I close my eyes, let the rope slip,
For I must conserve when needed,
When adversity is greeted,
The weather may be fair this trip,
But many forces damage a ship.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Posting more often?

I'm trying to ease my way back into this blog after writing so much so often in Norway (I SWEAR I'll finish the project, or maybe restart it. It failed the day that I decided not to post, since you have to post EVERY DAY. This is a long parenthetical). Anyway, I traveled back to college today, and so I felt like the occasion was momentous enough to REQUIRE me to go back to writing a poem, even though I wasn't all crazy about it. Be that as it may, I'm still satisfied with the results.
Also I'm not gonna sleep well tonight because I'm so excited for moving in tomorrow.

When any other figure is wrong,
When any other weather is a storm,
When any other joy is amiss.

I may be one to stand alone,
Yet this puts me in a perfect tone.

But is this home?
Is that what I call this?

Was I without it for so long,
Or does it assume a form
Of whatever I need, like foam?

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Dartmouth Appreciation Poem

So right now Dartmouth is having Dimensions for all the prospies who could potentially come here. Seeing them run around made me think about where I was a year ago, and how I had (almost) never thought of being here now. And how fortunate I am to be here. Yay nostalgia. Yay prospies.

Also if the rhythm and structure seem familiar, it's because I blatantly copied Robert Frost's "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" because I was too lazy to come up with my own structure. Also it seemed fitting because Frost went to Dartmouth for 3 months before he dropped out to take care of his mom. So.. another Dartmouth connection! So metaphysical.


When from a year I am detached,
Nostalgia cannot quite be matched.
Believe in life’s telicity,
A chance that I wisely had snatched.

Emotional simplicity,
And joy’s unkempt felicity
Could do no good service to sing.
Oh, too much electricity.

A pity to forget a spring
When one answer was everything,
When one choice had power to steer
The way even a cloud could fling.

Uncertainty predestines fear,
A shadowed future. In a year
How did I ever end up here?
How did I ever end up here?

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre