the smedley log - suburban scrawl

Just by being different

Caught sight of Dana Gioia’s poem “Summer Storm” in the Garrison Keillor-selected anthology Good Poems. It’s all about idealizing the road not taken.

Click here to read the poem at Gioia’s site.

Wow, Howard, I really liked that one. I liked Dana Goia for a long while…and this one I’d never seen. Glad you keep your eye on poetry and create great works yourself. That compressed language is refreshing.

Thanks, Frank.

The compressed language is what fascinates me most about this poem. It’s as if he managed to say something in a few stanzas that I’ve been trying to figure out for years.

It’s really the most succinct statement on the subject since “the grass is always greener…”

It’s funny, when I read this last night, I didn’t even notice that it rhymed, because I was so caught up in the mood and imagery of it. I’m glad I didn’t see that part of it the first time through, because I might have judged it as trite because the of the rhyme and not seen all it had to offer. It’s interesting to me how that works sometimes.

Interesting that you mention that.

Gioia is widely noted for his efforts to reintroduce rhyme and meter into modern poetry. For that effort, he is sometimes scorned and dismissed by others.

Personally, I’ve always like rhyming poetry, but I’ve learned over the years there are many ways to rhyme, even with the words that sound totally different.