Of Gods or Monsters: A Short Poem While I Work on Emma Jean

joybragi84
3 minutes ago
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Daedalus, Icarus, Theseus, the Minotaur, and Ariadne: A Copilot produced image from a prompt by me.

Man, oh, man! In the last blog, Copilot did such a great job creating an image to go along with my poem about nature that I thought I would give it another chance to create an image for me today. Well, it sucked at its job in this instance, and after three attempts, I came back to this highly flawed original. What is wrong with this image. Oh, about a dozen things. Daedalus and Icarus are father and son, but in this image, they look the same age. I have no idea why Icarus would be holding the far end of Ariadne's string. Theseus is the only one who should be attached to the Ariadne's string. While the Daedalus myth and Minotaur myth are interconnected (Daedalus builts the Labyrinth for King Minos.), Icarus is not connected to Theseus and Ariadne. Also, Theseus is taller than the Labyrinth walls. It wouldn't be much of a trap if you could see over the walls. However, rather than waste more energy reprompting, I will accept the errors, there are many others, and let you gaze on a pretty, if inaccurate, image while reading a good poem. I just realized that I forgot to put Prometheus in this. Hm...

As I hint in the title of today's blog, I am working on Emma Jean. It is one of the longer poems in Atheists and Empty Spaces, and, I must admit, a hard one to fix. I love Emma Jean's story, but I always find myself hemmed in by the synonyms for colors when revising. I'm about halfway through the poem and thinking about scrapping the whole form and starting the story from scratch. Hm...

Here is Of God or Monsters. As always, ENJOY!

Of Gods or Monsters

Love was but is not

The wax on a feather

Before it gets hot.

Icarus, yes,

That is us.

Love knows how to raise

Around a minotaur

An inescapable maze.

Daedalus, yes,

That is us.

Taught by the spider,

Love strengthens the thread

That ravels inside her.

Theseus, yes,

That is us.

Jealousy is Love’s death,

Pride a searing, white sun,

A tomb for a bull god,

A Dionysian Isle,

Fire stolen from the gods

In a theistic myth.

Prometheus, yes,

That is us.

Michael Thomas Thoughts on Poetry, Short Stories, Essays, and Ramblings-It's All Here in...

Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.-Edgar Allan Poe

Poetry is when emotion has found its thought and thought has found words--Robert Frost

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance--Carl Sandburg

I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry--John Cage

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you--Joseph Joubert

Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own. ~Dylan Thomas

Of Gods or Monsters: A Short Poem While I Work on Emma Jean

Of Gods or Monsters

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I find that I cannot exist without Poetry--without eternal poetry--half the day will not do--the whole of it--I began with a little, but habit has made me a Leviathan.-John Keats

We do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value.-T. S. Eliot

A man may praise and praise, but no one recollects but that which pleases.-George Gordon, Lord Byron

The great beauty of poetry is that it makes everything in every place interesting.-John Keats

The purpose of rhythm, it has always seemed to me, is to prolong the moment of contemplation, the moment when we are both asleep and awake, which is the one moment of creation.-W. B. Yeats