ozarque ([info]ozarque) wrote,
@ 2007-08-20 10:23:00
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Poem; "DenverBear"...
[I wrote this sometime in the late 70s, I think... ]



DenverBear

This brave new zoo discarded bars
and spread broad space and stone about,
with dens and caves and demi-lakes
and moats to keep the people out.
They have a bear there, large and white,
that paces on a great grey rock,
ten feet forward, ten feet back,
within a cage without a lock.
There was a time when he was caged,
there was a time when he could see,
but then his eyes went bad on him,
before they came and set him free.
Blind to the rock he moves upon,
he does not know the bars are gone.

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[info]lovecraftienne
2007-08-20 03:31 pm UTC (link)
Your use of poetry to tell science fiction inspired an idea in me the other night: it has been suggested that many children's rhymes are historical remnants, like London Bridge and Ring-a-round-the-rosie (or whatever your local variant was). While the veracity is in dispute, it's what came to me as an interesting way to try to tell a short story: tell it by a collection of children's rhymes, perhaps collected and annotated (but emphatically *not* explained directly) by a scholar?

I might give this a try this coming weekend.

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[info]orbitalmechanic
2007-08-20 03:46 pm UTC (link)
Have you read Jane Yolen's take on that idea? Sister Light, Sister Dark mixes folktale, narrative, pseudo-scholarly articles and song/poetry.

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[info]lovecraftienne
2007-08-20 06:54 pm UTC (link)
I haven't, thank you, I'll look at it.

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[info]communicator
2007-08-20 03:35 pm UTC (link)
Very moving, it made me cry

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Response to communicator...
[info]ozarque
2007-08-21 01:04 pm UTC (link)
Thank you. It's been more than thirty years since I saw that bear, and I still can't get it out of my head or my heart.

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[info]magdalene1
2007-08-20 03:37 pm UTC (link)
I love it!

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Response to magdalene1...
[info]ozarque
2007-08-21 01:04 pm UTC (link)
Thank you.

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[info]fadethecat
2007-08-20 03:42 pm UTC (link)
Brilliant, and painful. The very simple rhyme and scansion on that poem help the message, though I'd probably need to go write an essay to figure out precisely why. Possibly because of the way the structure calls to mind cheerful children's poems, in contrast to the way the subject matter resolves.

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[info]gramina
2007-08-20 04:43 pm UTC (link)
Possibly because of the way the structure calls to mind cheerful children's poems, in contrast to the way the subject matter resolves.

Also, I think, because the structure is, well, structured. It's pretty much unvariant: only two lines differ *at all* from the strict four-iambs-to-the-line pattern. (Iambic quatrameter?), and those two vary only in missing the initial non-stressed syllable. The pattern of four strong beats, and only one soft beat between them, is very strong. It's a sonnet rhyme-scheme (though sonnets are pentameter, iirc), and again, there's no messing about with the rhyme scheme -- no near-rhymes. Everything's precise, everythings exact, everything's measured. Restrained.

And I suspect that using the four-beat pattern in a sonnet rhyme scheme also leaves the reader feeling constrained, like something that "should" be there is being cut short, cut off, cut away. Feeling deprived, without knowing quite why.

It is an excellent poem. IMHO etc.

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[info]acw
2007-08-20 10:33 pm UTC (link)
It's not quite a sonnet rhyme-scheme, since the odd rhymes in the quatrains are missing, but it certainly has that sonnet feel about it, down to the sonnetty kink at the joint between the octave and the sestet, when the poet begins to explain why the liberal zoo's design change came too late to help the bear.

There's a minor tradition of sonnets in tetrameter; a good start is Millay's Three sonnets in tetrameter, of which I think the best is See how these masses mill and swarm.

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[info]gramina
2007-08-20 10:53 pm UTC (link)
Ah, yes, I see -- it's a half-blank version, sort of, of a Shakespearean sonnet. (AuAv BwBx CyCz DD)

In a way, though, that still meets what I was thinking of -- the broken expectation, the what-you-think-is-there-but-isn't. Just as the bars of the cage-that-was aren't there, just as the freedom-that-appears isn't there, either, even in the new zoo.

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Response to gramina...
[info]ozarque
2007-08-21 01:06 pm UTC (link)
Thank you for the encouraging words.

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Response to fadethecat...
[info]ozarque
2007-08-21 01:05 pm UTC (link)
Thank you.

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[info]foomf
2007-08-20 04:56 pm UTC (link)
I remember that poem, that was yours? Cool!

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Response to foomf...
[info]ozarque
2007-08-21 01:07 pm UTC (link)
Yes, it was mine. Thank you.

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[info]memegarden
2007-08-20 05:32 pm UTC (link)
The short rhyming lines make me think of a box step and so illustrate the topic.

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[info]nrc_eu
2007-08-20 07:18 pm UTC (link)
I love the structure of this poem, but what really touched my soul was the message. How often do we allow ourselves to be confined by bars that are no longer there? We become caged by habit. We do a particular thing in a paraticular way so long that we fail to see a different way, maybe a better way.

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Response to nrc_eu...
[info]ozarque
2007-08-21 01:08 pm UTC (link)
Thank you, for the encouraging words, and for understanding what I was trying to say.

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[info]yaochi
2007-08-20 08:53 pm UTC (link)
And so he paces on his rock,
His mind so tied it won't unlock.
Yet there uncaged before the crowds,
He walks the edges of those bounds.

In freedom he cannot perceive,
The missing bars which still do bind.
In places that his paws can't find.
Lost in the cage within his mind.

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Response to yaochi...
[info]ozarque
2007-08-21 01:10 pm UTC (link)
Well done; thank you for posting it.

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Re: Response to yaochi...
[info]yaochi
2007-08-21 02:35 pm UTC (link)
I enjoyed your poem.

When I got to the end, my mind kept going.

So it goes.

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[info]idiotgrrl
2007-08-21 12:35 am UTC (link)
That got to my gut the first time around and nothing has changed since.

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Response to idiotgrrl...
[info]ozarque
2007-08-21 01:12 pm UTC (link)
Thank you. I think the earliest publication was in More On the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense [ordinarily referred to as the Moron Book, thanks to its cumbersome not-chosen-by-me title].

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[info]rabidsamfan
2007-08-21 04:15 am UTC (link)
God, I loved that Zoo when I was growing up in Denver... Zoos with traditional cages were such a shock to me when I first saw them.

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Response to rabidsamfan...
[info]ozarque
2007-08-21 01:15 pm UTC (link)
I think most zoos have now replaced the traditional cages with the new enclosures, but when I was a child only the traditional ones existed. And seeing them made me so miserable that I refused to go to zoos.

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Re: Response to rabidsamfan...
[info]rabidsamfan
2007-08-21 01:31 pm UTC (link)
At the Denver Zoo, the only animals I remember being in the traditional sort of cages were the monkeys, and they had a tunnel out to Monkey Island which was a moated island with huge trees and lots of ropes and things for them to play on. There may have been some other animals they hadn't made the switch for yet, but I only remember a few bars between me and the animals I was watching, and those only in the "Houses" where the animals that didn't like the cold retreated in the wintertime. Denver, when I was growing up, also had a lot of North American animals, and I miss that at other zoos.

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[info]catsittingstill
2007-08-21 04:15 am UTC (link)
I really like that poem.

Thank you for posting it.

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Response to catsittingstill...
[info]ozarque
2007-08-21 01:15 pm UTC (link)
And thank you in return, for really liking it.

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Re: Response to catsittingstill...
[info]catsittingstill
2007-08-21 02:25 pm UTC (link)
:-) Liking it was involuntary, actually, so one might argue there is no need to thank me. But I'm glad it pleases you.

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