poetry and proses

i like poems

i like poems
 and i like proses
some really stink
 but some smell like roses

poems homes

one thing i learned from elly is the joy of keeping a `~/poems`.

whenever i find a poem that i like, i copy it into a text file and keep it there for future perusal. it brings me lots of joy.

> ls ~dozens/poems

dirt-man.txt
emperor-of-ice-cream.txt
goodbones.txt
invitation.txt
i-thought-that-love.txt
purplecow.txt
the-eel.txt
turtle.txt

my taste in poetry, as it does with most things, skews toward the absurd. (see: dirt-man, purplecow, the-eel.) but there are some others in here that are more traditionally straightforward and earnest in their construction and subject. real "poem" poems.

although, this distinction rankles me, ruffles my feathers, strokes my fur the wrong way.

there is no quality that distinguishes a "real" poem from a poem that is less than, or not real.

a poem is a bit of language a bit of phrase that expresses a thought or feeling or experience or object playfully, beautifully, sorrowfully. they can happen anywhere. sometimes i am reading a bit of prose and a particular sentence leaps off the page and i say to myself, that is a poem.

formatting poems

formatting poems in markdown with whitespace and linebreaks and whatnot can be difficult, especially if you don't want to use `code` blocks or `pre` blocks.

i like poems
 and i like proses
some really stink
 but some smell like roses

that's fine if you don't mind monospace fonts. but sometimes i don't want monospace fonts. i just want nice looking type formatted a certain way.

the solution, ~acdw shared with me recently, if you are using pandoc, is line blocks!

just precede each line with a vertical pipe like so:

| i like poems
|  and i like proses
| some really stink
|  but some smell like roses

output:

| i like poems
|  and i like proses
| some really stink
|  but some smell like roses

the sonnet

i have a favorite summertime lecture series. it is called MIXED TASTE and its tagline is "tagteam lectures on unrelated topics" and in that regard, it is just what it sounds like: 20 minutes of an expert speaking on their area of expertise, followed by a brief intermission, followed by another 20 minutes of expert and their expertise. at the end of the evening, there is a Q&A session during which audience members try to draw connections between the two topics.

it is always a hoot.

one expert recently spoke on the sonnet, its origin, the different forms of sonnets that have evolved over the years, and the "american sonnet" which apparently can take any meter or rhyme scheme, including "none" as long as it has 14 lines.

(this thought is unfinished)

:wq

Thoughts? Comments? Let me know at dozens@tilde.team

Filed under:

title: poetry and proses
author: dozens 
url: gemini://tilde.town/~dozens/gemlog/29.gmi
created: Sun, 31 Aug 2025 07:41:16 -0600
updated: Sun, 31 Aug 2025 07:41:16 -0600
tags: carnival