Why Poems Anyway?
Some like them, some hate them! I’m neutral on poems before chapters in books. If I’m in the mood for them, I’ll read them; if not, I’ll skip them. One of the books that inspired my trilogy was Watership Down, by Richard Adams. I can’t remember whether I saw the illustrated movie or read the book first, but I loved them both. Anyway, I re-read Watership Down while editing Antuna’s Story and noticed Richard Adams placed a poem before each chapter. I liked some, others I wasn’t sure how they related to the chapter. Yet it inspired me to place poems before each chapter of Antuna’s Story and The Rise and Fall of Antocracy.
Unlike Watership Down and most other books where I have seen pre-chapter poems, I decided not to use verses from other authors; but rather write my own. Why? Because I already had the insect and insectoid characters in my books periodically speaking in rhymes. So, I thought it would be more appropriate for my insectoid narrator, the fictitious author of the story, to write poems consistent with the insects’ love of rhyming and poetry. At the time, Antuna’s Story made up the first six chapters, and The Rise and Fall of Antocracy comprised the latter twelve chapters of a longer book I called Poo-ponic Plague. When I wrote the poems, we didn’t waste any time, and Narrant and I wrote the eighteen poems over about a twenty-four-hour period, certainly in less than a hexay. At Narrant’s suggestion, I separated the longer book into two.
Why discuss the poems here?
I know very few people read my blog. How do I know that? Because I can tell from the sales that very few people have discovered my books yet. So, I want to treat those super fans who have found my books and loved them enough to seek my blog. So, if you are reading this, you are among a privileged few–self-selected, since you enjoyed my books enough to want more of my or Narrant’s writing. For that, I want to reward you not only with more writing but also with some insights into how my mind works. What better way to communicate that than to analyze some poems for you? Don’t tell your friends you read it here; then, you can impress them with your grasp of poetic elucidation. If you are writing a book report on my novels, you have my permission to use my annotations to impress your teacher; but be sure to recommend the trilogy to all your classmates.
Let’s begin
In this and my following several blogs, I will free-associate about my (er, Narrant’s) poems to anyone interested enough to read my ramblings. So, as tradition goes, I’ll start with chapter one. First, I’ll present the poem, and then I’ll blabber. Here goes:
A marooning like a bolted hatch can unfasten portholes to a new sphere.
And what is the island on that frontier? But terrain that engulfs one’s eye
as it juts out in the vast sea of its new atmosphere.
For this poem, a short phrase repeated two or three times in the book—‘an island from home’ inspired me. Antuna first said this phrase as she described how the insects’ environs were uprooted and moved to another planet. Antuna used the word ‘island’ and realized that places she recognized were now in a completely foreign environment. This notion made me think of how it would feel to be shipwrecked and stranded on a desert island. Free-associating, I used ship-related references like ‘bolted hatch’ and ‘portholes’ to twist an old saying, when God closes a door, he opens a window. I didn’t remember the saying as a religious reference when I wrote it; I only later realized it was a quote by nuns in The Sound of Music (the first movie I ever saw at a theatre). Did I just age myself? But that’s okay; doesn’t all good poetry bring up deities? Oops, am I saying now the poem is good? I’ll let you be the judge.
Free-associating further, I fixated again on the word ‘island’ to consider why Antuna might have made such an analogy. I threw in the terms frontier, sphere, and atmosphere, not only for rhyming wordplay but also to highlight the insects’ amazement to find themselves in a new wilderness, on another planet, within a novel stratosphere. And I used the terms terrain, engulfs, vast sea, and juts out to highlight that although Antuna’s island was not in the ocean, it was still a recognizable area surrounded by the unknown, just as a desert island must seem to those surviving a shipwreck.
How about another?
To keep me writing more and more blogs for those who like them, and so that each one is not overly long, I’ll present two to four poems per blog. I hope you are game, or if you like, omit a blog, like skipping the poetry if it’s not one you like. Anyway, for those interested, here’s the poem for chapter two:
Colonies, like selves when young, we need to shield and nurture.
And as they grow and inchmeal strive, unveil their budding nature.
As they stretch and blossom, they’ll see their strength as awesome.
But to over-exercise one’s stature may jeopardize all’s future.
The second chapter brought to my mind the age-old debate in psychology known simply as Nature versus Nurture. Said otherwise, how vital are inherited tendencies as opposed to environmental conditions to an individual’s development and resultant behavior? Or what motivates one more, inherited traits (for insects, this may be instincts) or learned behaviors? I stretched this debate to consider whether these factors might influence how an entire society develops. Free-associating again, I considered that when circumstances thrust the colony as a whole into a new environment, one could see it as a newborn (or with insects, a new hatchling) navigating its new world. I used terms like young, grow, shield, inchmeal strive, and budding to convey the development of the fledgling society on Poo-ponic, comparing it to an infant that needs protection.
In later lines, I foreshadowed what may happen when individuals within the colony begin to fall back on their old instincts (or nature) and ignore the new lessons they learn (or nurture) about working together. I chose the words unveil and blossom to contrast the earlier terms shield and budding and imply development. I used stretch to complement the terms strength and over-exercise to signify a mounting obsession with physical might and power. And these notions reflected a rising concern about stature for the insect leaders and its impact on the colony’s future. As our favorite insects in this story enjoy verse, Narrant selected the words stature and future to rhyme with nature and nurture, and he chose awesome to follow blossom. Who is the narrator here anyway, Narrant or me?
