Sep
28

Ode to an Ocean

jamin on September 28th, 2005

I was cleaning out a file cabinet the other night when I came across some of my old essays, poetry, journal entries, and other embarassing evidence of my youth. Just for the hell of it I think I’ll post one in which I was playing around with the effect of line breaks.

Enchanted silver pillars
                          roll
                                On to the shore
like a horse
restrained by
      nothing...
Pushed        on by a Summer's
                        Breeze---
crashing
        Break-
        ing boulders to
d  u  s  t
moist and tender to the foot of
one
who walks along your edge
listening
ear pressed against a spiral
tuned to your       immortal whisper
                    soothing
drawing
      the wanderer
                 into
                    the waves

~ jamin gray, 1997

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5 Responses to “Ode to an Ocean”

  1. Calum Benson
    September 29th, 2005 at 5:55 am

    What was the effect you were going for, “almost impossible to read”? :)

  2. jamin
    September 29th, 2005 at 8:06 am

    Maybe it’s a bit easier to read double-spaced. The effect I was trying to go for is to have the shape of the lines be similar to the meaning. So the first three lines kind of roll like a slinky down stairs.

    “like a horse restrained by nothing…” trails off rather then ending with no punctuation or a period.

    I put a large gap in the next sentence to have the effect of it being “pushed on by a summer’s breeze” and then the dashes at the end felt like another way of expressing the motion.

    I break the word “breaking” into two pieces. And completely destroy the word dust into little bits.

    I put the word “one” on a line by itself.

    I place the word “edge” on the edge of the line.

    And at the end I use that staircase again which draws the eye bit by bit to the final two words.

    That’s what I was trying to do anyway. ;)

  3. Lauren
    September 29th, 2005 at 10:48 am

    It works for me. . . It’s really beautiful, actually. I like the way the structure of the words on the page mirror the meaning. The words and the format you chose convey the images powerfully. I’m guessing you enjoy e.e. cummings.

  4. Behdad Esfahbod
    September 29th, 2005 at 6:28 pm

    Liked it. We have lots of this stype in Persian modern poetry actually. Ahmad Shamlou for example:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Shamlou

  5. jamin
    September 29th, 2005 at 8:55 pm

    Lauren: Yep, love e.e. cummings.

    Behdad: Cool! Wish I could read Persian. :)