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Hello everyone!

It is poetics Tuesday and I am your pub-tender tonight. We are serving warm soups and cool drinks along with nibbles of your choice as you dip your pens into the inkwell (okay, poise your fingers over the keyboard), put on your muse cap, flex your poetic muscles and…. wait!

Before we begin, there is a special announcement!!!

A REMINDER:
This coming Saturday, January 20, from 10 to 11 a.m. EST, is dVerse LIVE!, where Björn
will be hosting. Please read changes that are taking place as of 2024:
This will be open to anyone who wants to listen or read their poem or someone’s poem
or sharing of a poem that one likes. Does not have to be the poem shared during OLN
Thursday — it can be any poem that they have written or read.

Here are 2 changes that we are implementing for 2024 OpenLinkNight:

  1. LIVE meeting will now be once a month, Saturdays from 10am to 11am EST. During this time, there will be reading and sharing of poems virtually as we have done in previous year.

Here are the dVerse LIVE events you can book from our calendar here:
*January 20, 2024
*February 17, 2024
*March 16, 2024

2. We will offer an Optional poetry prompt. This is for those poets who are looking for poetry prompts, and participation is optional.

Wikipedia describes a city as “a permanent and densely settled place with administratively defined  boundaries whose members work primarily on non-agricultural tasks.”

Cities have also been described as concrete jungles or human zoos as more than half of the human population of the world lives in urban dwellings. And yet, when poets write on their surroundings they usually prefer to write about the countryside. There can be no denying the lush greenery, the serene tranquility and the inviting woods are the perfect muse for many.

There is no denying that there are poems about cities (which are not as many as those about the (rural landscape/nature) that capture urban life’s complexities, diversity and vibrancy. The bright lights, the bustling streets and the entire spectrum of experiences found within these urban landscapes have been the muse of many a poets.

There are poems which look at the allure of a fast-paced city life, as well as those that look at the seamier side of city life, highlighting homelessness, unemployment and street violence. There are also poems that spotlight the iconic features; architectural landmarks, museums, cultural hubs that define a city’s identity, and the readers get to see the city without visiting it.

Sample these contrasting poems by Browning and Blake.

Up at the villa- down in the city

By ROBERT BROWNING

Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,

The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;

Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!

London

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

I wander thro’ each charter’d street,

Near where the charter’d Thames does flow.

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

The London T.S. Eliot writes about in his poems is not the London Browning waxes eloquence about. It is not full of the bustle of human interaction. He writes about isolated, emotionally detached individuals whose lives do intersect, but rarely touch each other. You can read his Preludes (link below) to get a sense of it.

There are also poets creating an urban poetry of ordinary life set in cityscapes that are neither the heaven nor the hell. Their dispassionate, documentary style of writing creates a snapshot for posterity.

Read this poem by JAMAAL MAY.

There are birds here,

so many birds here

is what I was trying to say

when they said those birds were metaphors

for what is trapped

between buildings

and buildings.

Here are some more poems for inspiration.

Wherever we live, it is no paradise (though to be honest I don’t know what is!). Each place has its strengths as well as flaws. We choose to live there because the strengths outweigh the flaws, our workplace is based there, it is closer to our kids/parents or because it doesn’t matter much where we live. Whether we allow that place to grow on us or we hate it and fail to assimilate with its population is sometimes not our choice.

The Challenge

Love cities or hate them, for today’s poetics, I would like you to write a poem showing the beauty of your city or why you love the city you live in presently. If you do not dwell in a city these days, write about the city you had lived in earlier. Take us on a tour of your city and make us fall in love with it. Look out of your window, do you see people bustling by, can you see someone’s living room from there, do you see a sparrow sitting on the ledge or is there a park nearby from where you can hear kids playing and giggling! Get out in the streets, mingle with the people, see your city with new eyes and share with us. There are absolutely no restrictions on the form or the length.

 If you are new to the dVerse pub, post your poem on your blog and link back to this post.
• Place the link to your actual post (not your blog url) on the Mister Linky page. The link will be open till 2.00 pm (EST) Thursday.
• Do check the little box to accept use/privacy policy.
• Please visit other blogs and comment on their posts, we all love visits and comments.