Poetry

The Canadian poets in A Cappella all seemed to write about the same subjects in their poems. Many of the poems were about childhood or family members or faith or farm life. For instance, Di Brandt, Sarah Klassen, and Patrick Friesen all have poems in A Cappella written about their mothers and father.
Di Brandt takes on an unusual structure for her poem. No words are capitalized, there is no punctuation and phrases blend together without line separation. Upon first reading, this structure makes the poem difficult to read. Brandt's poem talks describes her thoughtful, mild-tempered mother when Brandt was a child.
Sarah Klassen's poem, "Russian Fables," reads more like a story. It starts with Klassen's mother singing stories to her in Russian and blurs into the story of her mother's childhood in Russia. It is composed of prose stanzas and while most of the stanzas are five lines, one is only four lines while another is seven lines and another is eight lines. While this poem is easier to read, the structure is still a little unruly.
Patrick Friesen writes about his father in his "pa poem 1: firstborn." Friesen, like Brandt, does not use capitalization or punctuation except for ellipses. He describes his father's silent nature as a fear of words using the image of the first day his father heard him speak. I like this poem and its imagery and insight into the father's mind.
I started to wonder about the strategy the authors used when writing. When I write I guess I do not usually write about specific events. I write about more abstract ideas like faith, love, or grief. I found it hard to connect with some of the poems about specific family members and I wonder what audience they were written for. Did the authors sit down with an idea in mind? Did they say "today I am going to write a poem about my father"? I have only done that once or twice when I wrote a poem in honor of my grandfather. I take after the Romantic Era; I write what and when I am inspired to write. I love writing poetry but when someone tells me to write a particular type of poem or a poem on a certain subject by a certain date I cannot do it. I cannot force a poem into being.
None of the poems rhyme either. I find it harder to understand prose poems. Most of the poems I write rhyme. I like the rhythm that rhymes give a poem and find it hard to find the rhythm of prose poems. But I have also heard others say the opposite- that they do not understand rhyming poems and like prose poems better.