AUTISM: A POEM

This blog has been created as an open experiment of poetry composition, perhaps a glimpse at an emerging manuscript as it matures. This working manuscript should not be considered as complete or published. Instead, this should be viewed as merely an early stage in the process of creation.

I have placed below some of the pages from an isolated venture in one of my typescript loose-leaf folders. The contents here represent portions of an ongoing personal project with a particularly narrow focus intended to eventually develop toward a book-length poetry sequence with the tentative working title of
Autism.

The poem will grow as new sections are added. The individual posts are designed so that they may be viewed as independent items; however, I have consciously carried themes, images, and similar language through the extended sequence with the hope that connectivity and continuity will be preserved among numerous sections of the long poem.

Readers are asked to regard this piece as a work in progress, a partial or rough draft rather than a finished product (even if some selected segments previously may have appeared in print), and I request everyone realize various edits, emendations, or expansion may be made to the posts at any time in the future. Moreover, at some point the entire sequence will be removed to undergo a complete revision.

Therefore, I urge visitors to become followers of the blog by clicking the link in the sidebar, as well as to follow on Twitter for updates. Readers are also invited to browse my personal web site for additional information.

Indeed, a significant part of this experiment involves a certain amount of transparency that includes the possibility for readers to communicate responses and offer constructive suggestions, both of which I welcome through post comments or e-mail messages.


Also, I advise that the order of the numbered sections is not meant to be at all definitive since the long poem’s sequence will certainly be reorganized as the work in this temporary format starts to resemble a completed manuscript and begins to assume a more formal shape that might eventually be suitable for publication. In fact, I welcome interest from book publishers as well.

Thank you for taking the time to examine this trial stage, a test which I perceive as a preliminary process in the composition of a possible poetry manuscript. —Edward Byrne

Thursday, October 7, 2010

AUTISM: A POEM


. . . . . XXIII. Wind Currents at Dusk

New gusts rustle through the few
. . . . . trees that edge our backyard fence.

Their thick branches shift slowly
. . . . . in the wind with the strict rhythm

one might find in a chorus line,
. . . . . as though a whole row of dancers

had been choreographed to move
. . . . . in time with the mellow melody

of an orchestra’s tune. A gray
. . . . . haze of chimney smoke unfolds

and gently rolls over the steep
. . . . . slope of our roof. It slips across

the darkening lawn disappearing
. . . . . below, sifted by stippled patterns

of shadows in the trees. My son
. . . . . watches all through his bedroom

window, counts each black leaf,
. . . . . calculates the world around him.

2 comments:

  1. What a painterly scene you create; also one that's aural, echoed in the carefully chosen words that produce the "mellow melody" of the leaves as they fall, the "strict rhythm" in which the stanzas fall one to another, all the way to the end where the counting (full of meaning) continued.

    There seems also a bit of sadness, introduced with those first words "New gusts" and carried through to the reckoning of autumn's meaning, reflected in the "gray haze", "darkening lawn", "shadows", every "black leaf" your son "calculates", looking for answers.

    What a lovely line is "sifted by stippled patterns / of shadows...." Your use of the word "stippled" -- the pattern or way engraved -- is wonderful here.

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  2. Thank you, Maureen, for your comments, which reflect precisely what I was hoping to communicate and the manner in which I had attempted to portray the moment.

    I was particularly pleased by your reaction to the use of "stippled," which was the very last word added to the poem during revision.

    Ed

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