Today we have the pleasure of welcoming a guest-blogger at our bar. Oloriel who is a great poet many of the wordpressers have come across. She is an occasional visitor to the bar, and often stun me with her words. You can find her blog at olorielmoonshadow.wordpress.com
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Greetings to one and all! Oloriel here, tending the poetics and the bar tonight.
One of the topics that marked my previous year, and melted into the current one, is definitely the topic of home. I was born, bred, raised and still live in the suburbs. There is things and emotions you notice, that differ, at least for me, when I travel from my place to another. Over the years there has been images that etched themselves in my head as “suburban things”. Recently, I have begun noticing and exploring how it is so very similar in poetry. I discovered poems characterized as Suburban poetry, and it is what I would like us to attempt tonight.
What makes a poem into a suburban poem? I would not want to go on a limb and define it myself, nor use some strict formula or definition. I would say it is the feel that the poem leaves, the difference in scenery, the constant physical and metaphysical presence of animals, wilderness, gardens, curtains. Combinations that seem esoteric, worded that way, whilst in a modern poem they would be a normal thing.
I have prepared this one poem to serve as an example of Suburban poetry. It is a poem called “Suburban” and is by Michael Blumenthal.

Suburban

Michael Blumenthal, 1949

Conformity caught here, nobody catches it,
Lawns groomed in prose, with hardly a stutter.
Lloyd hits the ball, and Lorraine fetches it.

Mom hangs the laundry, Fred, Jr., watches it,
Shirts in the clichéd air, all aflutter.
Conformity caught here, nobody catches it.

A dog drops a bone, another dog snatches it.
I dreamed of this life once, Now I shudder
As Lloyd hits the ball and Lorraine fetches it.

A doldrum of leaky roofs, a roofer who patches it,
Lloyd prowls the streets, still clutching his putter.
Conformity caught here, nobody catches it.

The tediumed rake, the retiree who matches it,
The fall air gone dead with the pure drone of motors
While Lloyd hits the ball, and Lorraine just fetches it.

The door is ajar, then somebody latches it.
Through the hissing of barbecues poets mutter
Of conformity caught here, where nobody catches it.
Lloyd hits the ball. And damned Lorraine fetches it.

How does one go about writing a suburban poem?
I would say, keep yourself emotionally in the suburbs, shed the characteristics of a modern environment. Be free, be strange.
I suggest including flora and fauna in your poem.
Rhyming and repetition do a great job at depicting the haziness of the suburbs
Think of motives of longing, melancholy and repeated cycles
When you post your poem, link up and don’t forget to read, comment and join me here at the bar. I am looking forward to experiencing your stories!

Biography: Oloriel is a poet and artist hailing from Belgrade, Serbia. She loves dreaming up things then making them happen, whilst also being a wife, mom, artist, photographer, translator and designer. Her greatest wish is to one day become a chef, and make the best pies in the world.

When you have written your poem, link it up on Mr Linky. Visit other poets and comment, and please leave a little comment here below. We love you all.