Today’s poem comes from a poet blessed with a cool name: Thom Gunn. The double-n and the quick one-two of the single syllables make him sound as much like a pirate as a poet–not that the two occupations are necessarily exclusive. Think of the samurai composing haiku after decapitating someone, for instance.
OK, don’t think of it.
The poem, “On the Move,” was inspired by a movie, The Wild One. Does that make it ekphrastic? Or just wild, man, like young Marlon Brando on his motorcycle? Having never seen the movie, it’s not for me to say, but I can say this: Poetic lines jump off the page as they do in any good poem. You don’t have to look for them. They will look for you. Exhibit A:
On the Move by Thom Gunn
On motorcycles, up the road, they come:
Small, black, as flies hanging in heat, the Boys,
Until the distance throws them forth, their hum
Bulges to thunder held by calf and thigh.
In goggles, donned impersonality,
In gleaming jackets trophied with the dust,
They strap in doubt–-by hiding it, robust–-
And almost hear a meaning in their noise.
Many people say, “I’m no poet and know nothing about it,” yet, if you shared a poem like “On the Move” with them and asked them to cite the line with greatest poetic merit, they would, 90% of the time, nail the it. That is what makes poetry, poetry.
Reasonable readers may disagree, choosing the last line, for instance, but for me, it’s the line “In gleaming jackets trophied with dust.” Taking a noun (trophy) and making it do double time as a verb? Great stuff. And the fact that “dust” can become a brown badge of courage on a leather-jacketed motorcyclist? Only a poet would come up with that one.
Vroom-vroom. It’s March. Write like a wild hare in gleaming fur trophied with dust. Drive the grammarians crazy. Make the occasional word a verb in noun’s clothing.
10 thoughts on “No Need to Find the Most Poetic Line. It Will Find You.”
Let me applaud why I thank you for posting this great poem by Thom Gunn by repeating only the power words in each line. I think it shows how each line jumps off the page and the sum ends up greater than the parts .
Move
motorcycles
black flies hanging heat
distance throws hum
bulges thunder
goggles
trophied
strap robust
hear noise
Great choices on Gunn’s word choice!
I felt most of the lines were poetic. My personal favorite is “Small, black, as flies hanging in heat, the Boys,
Until the distance throws them forth…” Really two lines, but the thought needs some closure. I loved the ending, too. Alarie
It is one of Gunn’s earlier works, so I guess talent will out at a young age (if you take up your trade at a young age). Can’t say I’ve ever tried writing about a movie, but I may try, and I know what movie it’d be, too. Dr. Zhivago.
I could maybe write a couple of Zhivago poems myself, though they’d have little to do with Russia. Our cats went dashing from window to window, frantically searching for the wolves that were howling.
Russians who view the film find it laughably western in style, but there’s no denying it had its Romantic moments. Therein lies the danger. Writing about the capital-R Romantic can lead to a bog of despair, unless your name is William Wordsworth and there’s a lake somewhere nearby.
(Oddly, when I read the novel, I found the poems at the end a bit clunky. But I attribute that to translation, which is a mean wolf when it comes to these little lambs we call poems.)
Good idea to let loose and just see what develops, yes. I have been languishing more often than not, to my dismay. Time to just jump in more– thanks for the reminder!
With poetry, “jump” is always sound advice.
I’ve never been much of a fan of Gunn’s work. As in this poem, too often his striving for “poetic” effect results in strained and contrived lines, like these two:
In goggles, donned impersonality,
They strap in doubt–-by hiding it, robust–-
I’ll have to read more of his stuff to form a more informed opinion. Not sure how young he was when writing this, but the “poetic” sin is more the province of an inexperienced writer, I’d say.