Poem in alcaic style – Part 1/3

Photo credit: BBC

This is part 1 of a 3 part poem inspired by alcaic stanzas on the theme of living life well.

It has the right number of syllables.   But it was too hard to follow the long/short syllable format and I don’t think alcaic stanzas are supposed to rhyme.

A big thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read it!

PART I. EPICUREANISM

All that exists, is matter in motion.

In essence atoms, travelling in The Void.

Indestructible though some collide

Others clumped to give the world creation.

 

Even our dear gods, are of atom and void.

Perfect beings in, imperturbable bliss.

Unconcerned with human frailties

No divine retribution to avoid.

 

All that we can know depends on sensations

when atoms collide, with human sense organs.

Prompted from birth prior to reason

Pursuit of pleasure our chief direction.

 

Right pleasure is found, not in self-indulgence

But in likeness of, our dear gods serene.

The highest pleasure comes down to this:

A mind where fear and pain have no remnants.

Alcaic stanzas

Picture credit: Philologia

I’ve decided to experiment with Classical poetry and approximate Horatian alcaic stanzas.  I don’t pretend to know much about it, but the basic pattern seems to be this.  A stanza is alcaic if:

1. it has four lines of 11, 11, 9 and 10 syllables, respectively
2. the first two lines are divided into two parts by a complete pause after the fifth syllable
3. it has a rhythmic pattern of long and short (rather than stressed and unstressed) syllables.

The rhythmic pattern is:

1. long long short long long [complete pause] long short short long short long
2. long long short long long [complete pause] long short short long short long
3. long long short long long long short long long
4. long short short long short short long short long long

An oft-cited example written in English is W H Auden’s In Memory of Sigmund Freud.

I’d be interested to know what you consider to be the positive and negative qualities of alcaics.  Lord Tennyson is reported to have described the Horatian Alcaic as ‘perhaps the stateliest metre in the world except the Virgilian hexameter at its best’.

‘Ninefold Style’ Poem

Photo credit: Tim the Yowie Man

In response to a poetry challenge devised by ninefolddragon is my poem on meditation.  A big thanks to ninefolddragon for inspiring me to write.

The Ninefold Style poem is described by ninefolddragon as:

. . . a new style of poem that is defined by having three stanzas each with three lines and nine syllables. The first stanza must represent the aspect of body; it can be visceral and evoke the five senses. The second stanza must represent the aspect of mind; it can be about thoughts and perceptions. The final stanza must represent the aspect of spirit;it should evoke emotion or some concept of the supernatural realm.

Body

A physical space that contains our

lungs. Expanding and contracting, it

spaces each breath, autonomically.

Mind

A private space occupied with the

apparent experience of one’s

continuity as a person.

Spirit

Infinite space in which you exist—

between thoughts you can rest for a space.

What once was covered is discovered.

Nocturne E Flat Major Op. 9 No. 2

Chopin

Performed by Valentina Lisitsa

Freediving

Photo credit: Daan Verhoeven

I’m drawn to the thought of freediving – underwater diving without the use of breathing equipment.

I love how freedivers describe breath hold diving as entering a meditative state – the sinking into mental calmness and silence, and the rising of moment-to-moment awareness.

For freedivers, that present moment awareness must cover watching over their physical safety.  In ‘regular’ meditation, we can focus just on the experience of thoughtless consciousness.

If you freedive, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!

Breath suspension during the transcendental meditation technique

Psychosom Med. 1982 May;44(2):133-53.

Farrow JT, Hebert JR.

By observing people meditating, the authors found that breath suspension (or pauses in breathing) coincided with periods of thoughtless awareness:

We observed, over four independent experiments, 565 criterion-meeting episodes of breath suspension in 40 subjects practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique (TM), a simple mental technique involving no breath control procedures.  . . . Many TM subjects report experience of a completely quiescent mental state characterized by maintained awareness in the absence of thought. Eleven TM subjects were instructed to press an event mark button after each episode of this pure consciousness experience. The temporal distribution of button presses was significantly related (p less than 10(-10) to the distribution of breath suspension episodes, indicating that breath suspension is a physiological correlate of some, but not all, episodes of the pure consciousness experience.

(This post is not an endorsement of Transcendental Meditation, which is one of many techniques that involve breath suspension and not one I use.  But Farrow and Hebert’s finding is consistent with my own experience.)

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

It will hurt and heal you a hundred times over.  Shortlisted for the 2015 Manbooker Prize.

Poem by Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Ah, Love! could thou and I with Fate

conspire

To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things

entire,

Would not we shatter it to bits–and then

Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s

Desire!