A shit poem

I started this blog with an idea of doing ekphrasis as a writing exercise using my own photos. I realized that what I have been doing might not be technically ekphrasis (I’m not moving you through the photo using poetry to describe it), but it has been a great exercise to get me creative again.

In a poetry class, I did have to write one about a famous work of art; I picked my favorite painting “Guernica” by Pablo Picasso. I knew that I had saved the poem and went back to look for it in my computer. I found it and… what a pile crap this poem is:

April 28, 1947

(Based on Picasso’s “Guernica”)

Spring, nineteen thirty-seven, Guernica

Franco the Butcher, Adolph Hitler

Birth modern warfare.

The sky drops, bombs explode

Bull of Brutality slams into the City

Darkness pushes from the edge.

A woman holds her baby dead

Another runs, fear swells her legs

From a burning building another falls.

Horse of innocence screams

As do the all faces, gaping mouths,

Clenched fists that speak of the brutality.

A soldier’s fallen body, his sword broken,

The Flower nearly trampled.

The poem isn’t full of imagery at all, I do too much of the telling and not enough showing, especially in the first stanza; I just tell you flat out who is involved in the war—no elevated language, no imagery. I got some imagery in as the lines go down, but it doesn’t move you through the painting… nor is it any good.

Why did I post it then? As a “what not to do”? No, I’ve decided to post a poem that I wrote that I dislike, and challenge myself to do a rewrite. Let’s see what I come up with in a few weeks.