Improv theatre. Let's rip off another better poet I like today. Week 1.

Still not entirely sure I am totally comfortable with just ganking someone's work since academic honesty has been drilled in my head ever since I went to SCAD, but let's give this a crack. I was reading the list of poets we will need to know, and a poem caught my attention--Robin Redbreast by Stanley kunitz. I was having a fangirl moment for the whole poem, so, I had to steal part of it. What better part than the first line? Prepare to IMPROV!!!

WARNING: this is a lengthy post. Ignore it if you want to.

This is the block that I have decided to steal specifically:
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It was the dingiest bird

you ever saw, all the color

washed from him, as if

he had been standing in the rain,

friendless and stiff and cold,

since Eden went wrong. 

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I am very interested in colors as they pertain to a poem, and how they are important in the poem itself, so I stole this very first line that I liked. So, now it is time to get something else going from this. maybe not the whole thing though--maybe just a line or two, and I'll mix it with some of my own. I'll take this line:
[All the color washed from him as if he had been standing in the rain, Friendless.]

First, I've compressed it into one line to see if that's an alright transformation. I like it well enough, but I think I'll apply my slap-chop and make this into a salad:
[Friendless, he had been standing in the rain, all the color washed from him]

I actually like that above line a bit better for my own style, so I'll use that as the line I start from. It now actually sounds like an alright starting line, and I've gone from the idea of being colorless that the poem sets up to the color of rain, which always seems to either be grey, or maybe blue. I like that color scheme--I write entirely too much about the sea, and it always ends up with a green or blue tint in my mind--If I make absolutely no sense, pay me no mind at this point. I am just typing as I think, which can be a very dangerous tactic. Literally I am improving as I go. Time to riff this thing to death:

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Spring up as a Typhoon in Heat
By: David Mathis
with help from: Stanley Kunitz

Friendless, he had been standing in the rain, all the color washed from him.
Streets, paled to grey under a relentless horde of callous raindrops,
Steamed indignantly. With each crashing wave, fueled by internal combustion,
He felt more and more like a wet newspaper, water-streaked and running.
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This is what I have for a first stanza, but I don't like it at all. So, I have to smash it, because smashing things is the greatest way to reform them. First, I have decided that I don't at all like the end of the second line, and it feels like some sort of horribly thought-out enjambment. For that matter, I am not sure I like the image of the wave, and I really was just grabbing for straws by the time I hit newspaper, because I was much too focused on getting that color I wanted. Even though the original idea was to emphasize the color, I will step off, and crack open my Queen of Hearts girl's diary which I have bought to write down my thoughts, and steal some random ideas out of that:

I am a huge Regina Spektor fangirl, and I recently came across somebody asserting that the Russian part of "Appres Moi" is actually a poem, and one of the lines is supposedly:
[While the slush in thunder / is burning in the great darkness of Spring]

I can't even describe how much I love the phrase "while the slush in thunder is burning in the great darkness of Spring." Furthermore, it seems applicable to add this phrase to something about rain. I just need the thunder, and also to reduce the things I hate about this poem so far. If I could, I would like to steal from two sources. A quick search has netted me a poet by the name of  Boris Pasternak--the man supposedly responsible for that new piece of poetry--and I find I love just about the whole poem. Seems to have been translated from Russian, which confirms the report. Now, if that is actually what she sings, cool. If not, I still love it. A different piece from that same poem has now also grabbed me:
[Beneath--the Earth is black in puddles]

This also gives me a frame to work within. However, I have a contradiction: the first line is talking about colorlessness, and the next two lines are talking about darkness. Black isn't colorless, unless I find a way to twist the language to make that happen--a feat I may as well attempt:

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Twice now, I've Lost a Child
By: David Mathis
With help from: Stanley Kunitz and Boris Pasternak

[Friendless, he had been standing in the rain, all the color washed from him]
as he glared silently into a roaring storm cloud which leaked its grime-encrusted
underbelly all over the street. [Beneath that storm cloud, the Earth was black
in puddles], blotched with corrosion--a budding season taped over by
reruns of trashy soap operas.

[The Slush in thunder is burning in the great darkness of Spring]
like phosphorus ignited and splashed in ragged chisel lines down
icy mountain tops. All the while, the rain dribbles down walls,
collecting in basins to form puddles. They simply reflect the ebon sky like malformed eyes,
staring straight into the underbelly of a storm--unmoving, undeterred, unfaltering.
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I am much happier with this version of the poem. It is a bit darker, and it has a lot of sections from other poems, but I think that this is a start. And with this, I will stop torturing you. get on with your life and go read someone else's blog.

Check you around.

P.S. I've only lost one child--not two.