.

Another Coffee Shop, Another Crush

Another coffee shop, another crush,
a moment frozen just before my turn,
a chance to grin and let her make me blush,
a true inscription on a Grecian Urn…
The crowded room abuzz, the slamming doors,
the step by step; these morning-people low
like heifers while she blends and pours
and chats the chat. That’s all I need to know—

when she blithely prevents the barista from making my drink
and she sidles instead to the racking and clacking and steam,
and the drink she presents me with leaves me unable to think:
it’s a sweet cappuccino inscribed with a heart—and a dream.

Alas! Now she’s the one who starts to blush:
another coffee shop another crush.

.

.

It’s February in Sacramento
and I’m Just Sitting Here

We held hands here. The paint was peeling on
the bench, our sides were pressed together, words
in short and gentle strophes pulled us on
to blended interruptions—dizzy birds
we were, who finished one another’s song,
whose wings collided once, and then held on
for life. The place where love first made us strong
was here. And here I learned that you were gone.

Gone in the Valentine breeze, in the trees, in the tiniest
petals—the Cleveland Select—like confetti and scattering
rice, like the loveliest promise of spring in the shiniest
bloomy and blustery burst—now all of it’s shattering.
Neither remaining nor vanishing, petals persuasively
beckon with flurrying reveries—spreading invasively.

.

Note: “Cleveland Select” is a type of ornamental pear tree that blooms in February with such a burst of tiny white blooms it sometimes seems like blowing snow drifts. It’s sometimes considered an invasive species.

.

.

Daniel Kemper is a former tournament-winning wrestler, a black belt in traditional Shotokan karate and a former infantryman. He has a BA in English, an MCSE (Systems Engineering), and an MBA.  He quit a 25-year IT career in 2023 and went all-in on poetry. Since then, he’s had works accepted for publication at The Blue Unicorn, The Lyric, thehypertexts.com, The Creativity Webzine, Amethyst Review, Rat’s Ass Review, Formalverse, The Literary Hatchet, and Ekphrastic Review. He was an invited presenter at the 2023 national PAMLA conference and will preside over the Poetics Panel at PAMLA 2024. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by The Blue Unicorn and has been the featured poet at the historic Luna’s Cafe and the Sacramento Poetry Center.

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22 Responses

  1. Clive Boddy

    Well crafted, you paint a credible personal snapshot within the bustle of everyday life.

    I’m always a fan of poignant love poetry.

    Give us more of these!

    Reply
    • Daniel Kemper

      Hi Clive,

      Thank you for the props. I work hard at trying to open some depth in various ways. I’m glad some took hold. I will indeed work on more of these!

      Reply
  2. Roy Eugene Peterson

    These two well-crafted poems invigorate the imagination and inspire memories of similar experiences. The first poem with the personal presentation of the making of the coffee with a heart inscribed in cream is infectious and reminded me of a Cinnabon girl I once knew. The second is a winsome memory that causes us to pause and sit awhile in a place where dreams were kindled and then disappeared in the mists of time. I agree with Clive. The more love poems and sonnets the better the world would be.

    Reply
    • Daniel Kemper

      Roy, I really appreciate your note on the craft of these poems and the better compliment that they trigger a memory– trigger the winsomeness of a memory.

      In better days, the woman who became the mother of my children worked in a similar position and I used to buy a single diet coke there every day to have a chance to chat…

      The latter, actually spins off of a lost love I still ruminate over. “Learned that you were gone,” doesn’t map to the situation. She’s still alive and well, I believe. It does map onto the realization that it was over.

      More love poems there will be…

      Reply
  3. Paul A. Freeman

    Enjoyed both, especially the innocence of the crush and blush of the coffee shop.

    Thanks for the reads, Daniel.

    Reply
    • Daniel Kemper

      Hey Paul, you know, the innocent poems are both the most difficult to manage (and not veer into cliche or the maudlin) and the scariest, the most vulnerable to present. I’m gratified you tuned into the innocence and sent me such positive vibes. Thanks, Paul.

      Reply
  4. Phil S. Rogers

    Poems that bring back memories, mostly good, from sixty + years ago.
    Thank you, Daniel!

    Reply
    • Daniel Kemper

      My pleasure Phil. Thank you for the positivity and letting me know that I evoked something good.

      Reply
  5. Joseph S. Salemi

    In both poems you’ve interrupted the iambic-5s with a group of lines in a different meter. Why is that?

    Reply
    • Daniel Kemper

      Hi Joe,

      Looks like a clear case of poetus interruptus, huh?

      Ha!

      Actually, I saw your post earlier and the day has been like that. I want to have a thoughtful response and glean as much as I can from engaging. Finally getting a chance.

      Specific to these sonnets: Turning meter as well as content at the volta—has great expressive potential.

      In the first, the anapestic run speeds the read the way the speaker’s heart speeds up in the moment. The reader experiences the increased heartrate of the speaker and doesn’t just read about it. In the second, a dactylic descent drops off as the speaker drops into sadness.

      Why write this way? Indeed, why did Beethoven’s horn entry famously interrupt the first movement of Eroica? (Or the C# only four or five bars in, which has been called, “Possibly the most famous note in all symphonic music.”) So the general answer is, as Beethoven wrote prior to unveiling Eroica, ““From today on, I will take a new path.”

      But new, how? New, why?

      I’m an OCD rhyme-and-meter poet (RAM poet) . Sonnets have rules, if you will. Iambic meter seems more assumption more rule—anapestic, trochaic, or dactylic sonnets seem o.k. to me. Also assumed is a single meter. The rule of being precisely metered can be precisely kept and yet the expressive space opened up dramatically. Trochaic sonnets? 2x space; anapestic, 3x; dactylic, 4x!—Combinations of them? x64!!

      But how to present such sonnets? Evan and I have labored at this. Separate the sections visually? Maintain a unified form? It’s tough. Second, how much metrical change is too much? Time and acclimation will answer the first. The second has perils that SCP is uniquely positioned to address.

      Sadly, Beethoven’s innovations eventually led to postmodern garbage in later composers. I worry about that. I think the max is one meter per section (3 quatrains + couplet). The first two generally need to have the same meter unless there’s a really clever transition, e.g. Q1=iambic + fem ending & Q2 = trochaic.

      Will people try to push it to ridiculous non-sonnet extremes, e.g. 14 changes? Yes. But SCP is uniquely positioned to be a forge that ensures quality and not perversity results from continued innovation. Inevitably, I’ll put something out where everyone will look at it and say, “Daniel, er. uh. no. Get on with the next.” OK. Bellyflop. Dare greatly again. That kind of course correction and yet validation is priceless.

      Reply
      • Joseph S. Salemi

        That’s all very well, but that’s not what the SCP is about, or what it was meant to promote. We’re not interested in exploring new techniques but in preserving the old ones.

        Two of your sentences are red flags, in this regard. You speak of a possibility that “has perils that the SCP is uniquely positioned to address.” Then you speak of how the “SCP is uniquely positioned to be forge that ensures that quality and not perversity results from continued innovation.”

        Well, since when have you decided to sign us up for your chosen campaign for “continued innovation”? Every time you say such things you reveal how you want to generate some kind of revolution in metrical verse, and how you want to dragoon everybody else in metrical poetry to follow your lead and try out your experiments.

        What Beethoven did has no bearing on what we do here. He had his art, and we have ours. You seem to be on a mission to revise things, to change them, to improve them — but the great majority of us here simply want to perpetuate what we have inherited, and work in the modes that we have spent years mastering. It’s one thing if you want “to take a new path.” But why ask the SCP to ratify it and encourage it?

        We’ve had this argument before, so there’s no need to rehash the matter. All I can add is this: I don’t believe the SCP is here to provide support for anyone’s special aesthetic or metrical agenda.

    • Daniel Kemper

      Hi Sally,

      I think it might be useful to add a few other thoughts. First is that certainly some meter changes are more easily pulled off with subtlety than others. Flowing from iambic meter into trochaic at the volta is much easier, especially if bringing feminine endings into the mix.

      Next is that this sort of thing simply takes some time to get used to, both in terms of the specific, individual poem and also poems that change meter in general. Obviously, it also takes more work on writing them as well, testing, tweaking, plumbing the nuances of the technique.

      Formatting is not inconsiderable. My intent is a unified poem with a pronounced change, not a partial poem, then a departure, then a return. The idea of separating into spaced stanzas was to give the reader some indication of the coming change. The tradeoff is in the continuity. I often say reading a poem is like learning to sing a new song; they often take turns that are not expected the first time through.

      Differing meters have the ability to convey additional layers of mood, but usually not by themselves, but in combination with other effects. In order to most effectively study that, the controlled environment of a sonnet is a perfect test bed. In other circumstances, knowing exactly how an effect is produced might be complicated by a host of other factors.

      There’s more to say, but I’m starting to fade a bit. Quite an exhausting couple of days.

      Reply
      • Daniel Kemper

        Just woke up and a quick example popped into mind to show a better flow of iambs to trochees– it’s not revised, but to get the idea.

        I felt the awful nausea come, be tough–
        get done what you must do, and getting sick–
        it doesn’t have to end the night. Enough.–
        At last I’m done, and go inside to lick
        the wounds of love by drinking more, the tougher
        I was, the better. Whether I was sicker
        for love or Angels’ Envy–Fuck it, suffer
        if suff’ring comes. Just pour the liquor
        languished longer savored stronger, pacing
        down the alleys, drunk and pausing, pissing
        down the steaming drains but never facing
        facts of my behavior, why you’re missing:
        the path of alchohol that, undiverging,
        has led me on from singing into dirging.

        The transition is better than with anapests and certainly dactyls.

  7. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Daniel, I find these two poems engaging and intriguing. They remind me of the fact that Shakespeare’s sonnets represent a marked departure from previous sonnet sequences. Whether it catches on is another matter.

    Reply
    • Daniel Kemper

      Hi Susan,

      I’m glad to have you give these a go. It’s very funny that I never thought about Shakespeare’s work being itself a significant departure. How strange–right in my face and I didn’t think of it! lol.

      As to whether it catches on– fair point. It’s very, very early in development. Certainly, depends to a great degree on those who are skilled enough and brave enough stepping out and taking a chance to compose a few. Classically in change management, one anticipates a quintile will be early adopters and one quintile will never make the change. But it’s too early even for that.

      And of course, these things ebb and flow beyond our lifetimes. I’m not sure Shakespeare was ever forgotten about, but certainly Bach was for a bit. Anyway, these polyphonic sonnets, if you will, are really only the starting point of developing all the things form can do for us…

      Reply
  8. Margaret Coats

    Two remarkably well pictured emotional incidents, Daniel. As a pair, they represent striking extremes of a slight and perhaps insignificant affection beginning, contrasted with the end of a lifetime love. You will have your own answers to the questions about change in meter, but let me offer a precedent of form change in medieval French drama. Octosyllabic couplets are ordinary talk, but when conversation is elevated to offer high praise or to describe a miracle, a lyric song form is introduced. Since the song is still octosyllabic, the meter does not change, but the effect is based on recognition that the basic kind of poetic discourse is temporarily abandoned for another, both within the larger context of drama.

    Iambic meter, especially pentameter (rhymed or blank), seems basic to formal poetry in English today. And a sonnet (your two poems are sonnets) is one of the basic recognized forms. Keeping the sonnet form you, Daniel, alter the meter at different points in different ways. Form change, like the short song forms added to medieval drama, is not open to you if you want to preserve the sonnet form–and to make use of it by creatively placing your meter change.

    In the first sonnet above, you move to anapestic meter in the third quatrain, to express rising emotion, which is then reined in and defined by the concluding couplet. In the second sonnet, you change to downward dactyls to present the emotion of permanent loss. This takes up the entire sestet of the sonnet, including the couplet. In both poems, the volta or turn is at the usual line 9, but the meter change helps achieve the desired effect–and to emphasize the finality of that effect in the second poem here. Meter is just one of the ways by which the effect might be achieved, but that is what you show here.

    I happen to find the technique more effective in the first sonnet, and that may be due to the contribution of other means such as diction. Still, both represent an experiment worth trying, and quite successful enough to observe in both lovely poems.

    Reply
    • Daniel Kemper

      Two remarkably well pictured emotional incidents, Daniel.

      –Thank you for your props, Margaret. Means tons coming from you.

      The French form you mention contains intriguing techniques that I might borrow for my other longer pieces, e.g. a follow-on to “Sotto Voce.” But I think before I release that or pieces like it, much preparation is needed, of which, more later.

      [sonnet] If I understand you properly, these ought not be separated as they are because they are sonnets. This connects to my mention of taxonomy. It’s a tough call. It deserves testing. That’s one of the reasons I chose a sonnet–a controlled expiriment. No confusion of what produced an effect.

      Anne Finch, who is kindof wonderfully loony, promotes rare meters and I think would agree a sonnet in other than iambic pentameter is still a sonnet. Probably she’d think blank and free sonnets were sonnets, which I do not. I value her for her promotion of dactylic verse. Can a poem be 14 lines, perfect unrhymed meter and be beautiful? Yes. Can we taxonomize that as a sonnet, no. Not if we want our discussions about poems to be as precise as we expect our poems to be. Can a sonnet change meter and still be a sonnet because each example of meter is perfect? I’m open to debate. Is it a valid thing to do and within tradition, though innovative? I believe so. Does it imply that I have a nefarious agenda to think SCP is a perfect place to vet that? I don’t think so. (Not that you were the one who asserted that.)

      You nail it for what I’m trying to use meter to do. And I agree with your assessment about relative quality. It’s simply more difficult to write in dactyls. I don’t want it to be; I figured with sufficient training it would come to be as easy as iambs, but it doesn’t. Even if it does come much, much easier. In any case, a polyphonic sonnet (let alone other innovations, like merely writing traditional forms in perfect dactyls) takes time to get used to, right? Eroica took about three years before critics stopped shoehorning it as a fantasia and saw that for it’s incredible innovations, it was still sonata form. I find parallel and inspriration there.

      I hope this does justice to your thoughtful response.

      Reply
  9. Daniel Kemper

    Hey Margaret. I want to give the reply this deserves, but I’m running out of gas. Let me just drop something playfully snarky and promise to start again tomorrow on taxonomy. But first: Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

    If precedent is only found in a different language, different genre, and a period of time when modern English didn’t yet exist, then we’re in pretty rare territory, don’t you think?

    more later, I promise.

    Reply
  10. Daniel Kemper

    This is a response to Dr. Salemi and there will be nothing further on this thread or similar personal wrongs. I direct the quote to myself.

    1 Corinthians 6:7
    To have [conflicts] at all with one another is defeat for you[, Daniel.] Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?

    Reply
  11. Margaret Coats

    Thanks, Daniel, for your most adequate and appreciative response to me above. To respond at last to your observation that precedent in another language is “rare territory,” I say that is a problem mainly for those who refuse to read elsewhere. And with regard to innovation such as Shakespeare’s, it is really the quality of many of his sonnets, and the lack of significant structure in the sequence, that is remarkable. Shakespeare did not invent his form or rhyme scheme, he did not use novel meter or (as far as I remember) mixed meter in any single poem, and he makes use of established and widespread Petrarchan tradition even in many of his own most original sonnets. They can be recognized as units in the Petrarchan manner. The overall lack of structure may be attributed to the publisher, who may have collected and published the sonnets without the author’s cooperation, and who may have included sonnets by others, in order to produce a more saleable volume. For this latter view, I refer to Joseph Charles MacKenzie, who said so strongly in comments elsewhere on this site.

    But for real precedent in English to what you are currently proposing and doing in sonnets, let me suggest the Victorian period. There was ample innovation in many aspects of the sonnet, and while I don’t recall any of mixed meter, I would not be at all surprised to find it. The place to look (whenever you have plenty of time) is the five-volume Anthem Anthology of Victorian Sonnets. It is a most thorough sampling of British sonnet authors, but the great expense of the collection will mean it is available only in selected academic libraries.

    I hope you had not intended an absolute end to this thread, but I had wanted to suggest that your innovative agenda has precedent in English, even if not in the same particulars.

    Reply
  12. Joshua C. Frank

    Interesting concept, changing the meter in the middle of the poem, a bit like a chorus in a song. However, my personal preference is more traditional forms, and from what I’ve seen in this comment thread, I think many agree with me.

    Otherwise, these are good,

    Reply

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