01-14-2013, 12:19 PM
Billy, interesting point about the capitals on each line. Let me explain how they got there by giving you the genesis of the poem.
At the end of November, I went to visit my mother in Houston with my wife and two kids. My mother has a lot of Dr Seuss books, since I have four nieces who also visit her on a regular basis. While I was there, my four year-old insisted I read him "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" over and over at bedtime.
When we went back home, I could hear that rhythm while others were talking if a phrase or sentence matched it or came close. After a while, I started re-composing these phrases in my head to make them fit. Sometimes, I would rephrase a sentence my wife had just said, just to amuse ourselves in the car and whatnot.
So, in late December I decided maybe I should use that rhythm-seeking part of my brain to write a poem. When I first started composing, I knew nothing about theory. All I knew was that I wanted it to be a somber meditation on the 40th anniversary of Apollo 17, the last moon mission. I grew up about 20 miles away from NASA's Johnson Space Center, and my wife used to be an aerospace engineer for the Space Shuttle project.
I had recently read Kipling's "Recessional", a favorite of mine, so I used it as a pattern for the meter (dah-DUM dah-DUM dah-DUM dah-DUM). It was a wonderful coincidence that the phrase "We came in peace for all mankind" on the Apollo 11 lunar plaque also has the same meter. I found out later this was called iambic tetrameter. In the poem, the first letter of every line is capitalized. I borrowed that too.
In the first draft, there were no stanzas, and my friends said they got lost in the middle when I showed it to them. I changed it to 4-line stanzas, but it still looked too dense, so I added the Roman numerals and Epilogue sub-heading.
That's why the poem is structured the way it is. No theory, just borrowing and reader feedback.
At the end of November, I went to visit my mother in Houston with my wife and two kids. My mother has a lot of Dr Seuss books, since I have four nieces who also visit her on a regular basis. While I was there, my four year-old insisted I read him "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" over and over at bedtime.
When we went back home, I could hear that rhythm while others were talking if a phrase or sentence matched it or came close. After a while, I started re-composing these phrases in my head to make them fit. Sometimes, I would rephrase a sentence my wife had just said, just to amuse ourselves in the car and whatnot.
So, in late December I decided maybe I should use that rhythm-seeking part of my brain to write a poem. When I first started composing, I knew nothing about theory. All I knew was that I wanted it to be a somber meditation on the 40th anniversary of Apollo 17, the last moon mission. I grew up about 20 miles away from NASA's Johnson Space Center, and my wife used to be an aerospace engineer for the Space Shuttle project.
I had recently read Kipling's "Recessional", a favorite of mine, so I used it as a pattern for the meter (dah-DUM dah-DUM dah-DUM dah-DUM). It was a wonderful coincidence that the phrase "We came in peace for all mankind" on the Apollo 11 lunar plaque also has the same meter. I found out later this was called iambic tetrameter. In the poem, the first letter of every line is capitalized. I borrowed that too.
In the first draft, there were no stanzas, and my friends said they got lost in the middle when I showed it to them. I changed it to 4-line stanzas, but it still looked too dense, so I added the Roman numerals and Epilogue sub-heading.
That's why the poem is structured the way it is. No theory, just borrowing and reader feedback.