Raven Cycle poetry hour

by hamsterwoman

Summary:

Five poems about Gansey (Gansey's limerick, Blue's découpé, Noah's triolet, Adam's sestina, and Ronan's haiku)

Notes:

This is all meguri_aite's fault. She challenged me to write 'a Gansey poem', throwing out the following ideas: "Make it as ironic as you want: Gansey writing a sonnet to Dead Welsh King boyfriend, or idk, a set of haikus where all cast members sing odes to Gansey (I'm especially looking forward to Ronan's XD), or anything, really."

So of course this turned into everybody writing poems about Gansey. Or, more specifically, Gansey, Blue, Noah, Adam, and Ronan writing poems about Gansey, as in character as I could make it, given the basic premise of these five writing poems.

Now also in graphics form on Tumblr here

 

 

Gansey's Limerick

There once was a poser named Gansey
Who talked unremittingly fancy.
He was searching all over
For Owen Glendower
And other such things that he can't see.

 

 

---

 

 

Blue's Découpé Poem

how do I count
the depth and reach
sight and grace of every day's quiet sun-light?
freely strive, right passion
use old childhood’s faith (seemed lost)
breath
     tears life better

 

 

---

 

 

 Noah's Triolet

Gansey will keep us together, us five,
All snug in this wonderful place.
Blue and us Raven Boys, them four alive,
Gansey will keep us together, us five.
Going along in the Pig for a drive,
Shopping, talking, just passing the days,
Gansey will keep us together, us five,
All snug in this wonderful place.

 

 

---

 

 

Adam's Sestina

Oblivious hero-king of Aglionby
Gifted in friends, in smiles, in dreams, in words,
What are you searching for? Such a strange drive
For one who can have anything, from old
Coffers or new. Perhaps not a charmed life
But closely guarded, grown from such rich soil:

A sense of self no fear, no doubt can soil.
Alone, amidst the din of Aglionby,
Privy to secrets of a deeper life
Which can be glimpsed in dreams. Just simple words
(But tinged with something infinite and old):
A fistbump and, "Hey, let's go for a drive."

Eclipsed by orange and by fumes, we drive
Out to the countryside. Virginia soil
Seems too bleak to sustain something as old
As what we search for. Back in Aglionby
Are books and homework, candy-bars and words,
But he is chasing dreams beyond this life,

Beyond us all. But, surely, what is life
If not this search, if not a restless drive
For dreams (or monsters), and a place where words
Take root and grow in unknown soil,
The branches reaching back to Aglionby.
We know he'll have no chance to grow old

(We two), but like the knights-errant of old,
We follow him in darkness, dreams, in life,
Stretching beyond the walls of Aglionby,
Beyond the space where one can fly or drive,
Beyond the roots that drink from common soil,
Into the world of dreams and dreams of words.

For such as this, there can be no words,
No novel coinage or forgotten old
Name for this, for him. We will not soil
The time remaining of our shared life
With doubts. We will go for a drive,
Have pizza, fix the Pig, talk Aglionby.

When Aglionby's walls fade, when ends the drive,
When dreams of old rise from a monstrous soil,
Then I will speak the words to save his life.

 

 

---

 

 

Ronan's Haiku:

Gansey is a dick.
Won't let me borrow the Pig.
Haikus are fucking lame.

Haiku have five syllables in the last line, Ronan. Also, the plural of "haiku" is "haiku".

Gansey is a dick.
Won't let me borrow the Pig.
HaikuSSSSS suck. Fuck off, Gansey.

 

 

Notes:

1) I feel like a limerick would be what Gansey would choose to write about himself, because it's self-deprecating and jocular, which are things Gansey tries to be and frequently fails at. And of course he would have a big word in there even while lampshading it. This limerick also has no punchline, which feels apt.

2) I wondered for a long time what kind of poem Blue would write, because she doesn't strike me as the poetic type. And then I remembered about a way of writing found poems where you take an existing poem and cut words out of it (in the technique I've seen, preserving the order, though that doesn't seem to be required in general) and arrange them into a poem of your own. This is called the cut-up technique (or découpé), and seems like exactly the sort of thing that would appeal to Blue if she absolutely had to write a poem.

I figured Blue would pick for her source something thematically fitting and likely to be studied in high school, because I don't think she's sitting there reading poetry on her own, so, the source is Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 43 ("How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.")

3) A triolet seems like a very fitting poem for a ghost, because it's cyclical, repetitive, and simple.

4) I'm actually not a fan of sestinas as a form (to put it mildly), but it seemed superbly fitted to Adam's sensibilities: rigidly ordered and very demanding in largely arbitrary ways, coming back to dwell on the same things over and over, and rather ponderous.

5) Ronan would probably actually write something in (bad) Latin, imitating Martial or such, but sadly that was not an option available to me. And in the absence of Latin, he would of course do the least amount of work, thus: haiku.