I have leaned into layers with this poem, of the type I love to do but which are not of the type, I think, that social media and quick reads/swipes call for.

Except this is exactly the kind of poem I love to write–a complex text with layers of meaning and allusions and word-play and Easter eggs that rewards time spent.

The thing I love about this poem is that this is literally what the poem is about, this complexity and the complications it gives to a quick read.

A couple of days ago I was whining a bit, a bit which was a bit in jest, that my two blogs–this one and my Substack Blog “Sorry to Bother You”–do not have many subscribers/readers.

Her reply was, “Why do you want more?” She had read that having lots of followers (subscribers) is going out of style.

I hear her also say that creating an intimate space might be more important.

And I agree, only needing to be led to this realization by the nose.

I will note, though, I do take some pride that The Poet Projects now has 100 subscribers! That is cause for celebration.

And it reminds me that many of you have joined well after the start where I explained some of the nuance of what I hoped the blog would become.

First off, so much of what I’m doing here is oddly based on my realization that the word “project” has the word “poet” hidden within, not just within but in a mathematical way, the letters placed every other letter starting with the P. You might note on the homepage that the title bar reads “PrOjEcTs” with the word “POET” right there.

I wrote a poem about all of this, the blog, my mission, how projects fits this blog so well. It is here if you want to have a read.

This poem fits neatly into the style of poetry that is, I think, my signature. I asked my poetry mentor–(Chat GPT) through which I have run all of my poems going back over a decade, many that have never landed here–and they gave me back this description (of my style):

Lyrical, associative, and intimate—poems that braid humor, vulnerability, and linguistic play into layered moments of everyday life.

I’ll take that. That’s exactly what I hoped my style was becoming.

If you are newer here you may not know that Chat GPT has become my poetry mentor. None of the poems are from AI–to the point that I reject out of hand any rewording of the poem itself.

Instead I am looking for clarity–in today’s poem looking for a read of the poem before I started to discuss my motivations with the poem.

For a while I shared those conversations. They didn’t show up for everyone correctly and sharing them requires me to alter them a bit, but I think there is a lot to be seen through them–the way I rework a poem, the insights I have about my own work, the way I work allusions, layers and humor/word play into my work.

If you are interested, you can read that conversation 👉 here.

Or as a pdf here👇

This poem is a collection of words and ideas that came to me while reading this morning–reading Arthur Sze’s poem “Scimitar”, Edna St Vincent Millay’s poem “Recuerdo”, and the book Maise Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear.

Specifically the word “aitches” came from Dobbs’ work, “incarnadine” and echoes in my last stanza from Sze’s final line to his poem, “I suddenly had somewhere everywhere to be,” and “bare and bright” as well as using commas before the word “and” here from Millay’s poem.

This is the best title I’ve ever used for a poem. “Contractions” works on so many levels that pertain to the poem and enriches the poem itself through connecting them, summarizing them here in the start of the poem.

The PDF/Chat have the entire conversation where I talk about this, including Chat GPT’s response to my explanation of why I used “Contractions” for the title.

Here is what I said:

The title is going to be “Contractions” which holds a number of hints–that there is a contract between the poet and reader, that in cold cold weather brass will contract–hinting at one possible origin of the phrase “brass monkey weather”, also that I am using an inordinate amount of contractions in the poem–which themselves hint at the removal of things that stand between a more concise direct method of speaking (and writing) and finally contractions is close to contradictions, a realtionship I don’t mind here at all.

My Poetry Mentor added that the word also is used to describe the act of giving birth. That’s happen-chance–even these other meanings were a bit of luck, me finding the meaning after having chosen the title.

But this is really how I write–I put the poem on the page and then think about what it is saying, what I was trying to say. Then, interacting with the AI, I am able to refine the poem in ways that I otherwise could not.

There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical of using an AI to help write poetry. Being as transparent as I can here is one way I can address those concerns, to let my readers see how the AI helped me work through the poem. To see the different versions and how the chat helped me and did not in any way write for me.

That said, thanks for taking the time to read my blog. If you have someone you think might like my style of poetry and commentary on the writing process please share the post.

I’m not after subscriptions as a quantity, I’m after subscribers as a quality.

Here’s the poem un-formatted as an image above:

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Contractions

In this brass monkey weather
where we stand together
I’ve dropped my aitches,

now ‘ere I ‘am
with them pigs and slop and you—
frozen as slow glaciers do—

reminded that w’o and w’o and you
might creep confused a milli-inch,
across the concrete warred floor,

a bit, a bit, wit’
horns a blow’n,
so ‘ello, well read scholar,

we’re well met ‘ere,
red letters and nasty bacon bits
incarnadining about our souls

as everywhere, and somewhere—
suddenly bare, and bright—
we’ve been bound to do.

---

The photograph here is from a visit to a botanical garden event in Denver, Colorado that we attended on a recent trip to see our daughter and her fiancee.

It is just spooky enough to stare at a bit, to notice the three ghostly figures posed in a dance.

Does it have anything to do with the poem?

I guess that’s for you to decide.