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Living Dead

The riffled rush of water mingles with
The wind among the Ponderosa pines
As damp chill of late summer mountain rain
Soaks through my shirt and clings and binds it to
My skin as if I were a mummy wrapped
In strips of liquid linen, parody
Of Karloff’s walking dead, where echoes of
The screams of frightened audiences now
Reverberate in silence, sealed in cans
Of decaying acetate piled high on some
Forgotten shelf in Hollywood—in air-
Conditioned archives housed in buildings built
To serve as modern pyramids in which
The visual remains of movie stars
Are laid to rest, entombed, embalmed, preserved,
As revered idols of the Silver Screen.
I walk beside a Cascade river called
Metolius where native Red Band trout
Are hunted with a barbless hook, each fish
A trophy, caught (if caught at all), released
To swim another day and to be caught
Again, again, again, a Groundhog Day
Where fishy life and death are time-looped for
Eternity except for now, today,
When I with pole in hand, both soaked and skunked,
Cannot, apart from outright lying, say,
“You should have seen the one that got away.”

.

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James A. Tweedie is a retired pastor living in Long Beach, Washington. He has written and published six novels, one collection of short stories, and four collections of poetry including Sidekicks, Mostly Sonnets, and Laughing Matters, all with Dunecrest Press. His poems have been published nationally and internationally in both print and online media. He was honored with being chosen as the winner of the 2021 SCP International Poetry Competition.

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18 Responses

  1. Cynthia L Erlandson

    Nice description of the poet wrapped as a mummy. And really creative comparison of Hollywood archives to “modern pyramids”! Somehow, your blank verse seems a very appropriate choice for this subject.

    Reply
    • James A. Tweedie

      Ty, Cynthia. The results of our recent SCP poll ranked blank verse at 50% approval rate which generated a spirited defense of the form in the comments. I submitted this as an example. Is it poetry at all, despite of its pentameter lines? Not that it’s comparable in quality, but Paradise Lost & co are also blank verse. Is subject matter a factor in deciding whether such verse is “Classical” or not? Any ideas from readers?

      Reply
      • Roy Eugene Peterson

        CHANGING BLANK VERSE TO RHYMING POETRY
        By Roy E. Peterson (July 5, 2025)

        I will never write a poem
        With artificial intel,
        Because I trust human emotions
        To write poems well.
        AI may write poems better now
        With its impunity,
        But that’d take away the magic
        Of creativity.

        How dare any poet claim
        They wrote an intel verse?
        It is much like plagiarism.
        I believe it is perverse.
        I have had many thoughts though
        Of converting some blank verse.
        I think poems would be much better.
        I know they can’t be worse.

        If I were to change blank verse
        Into rhyming poetry,
        I would go back 400 years
        In poem history
        To the blank verse of John Milton
        In his Paradise Lost.”
        The only thing I must consider
        Is what would be my “cost.”

        With verbal artificial intelligence,
        I would succeed.
        I only have to find the best app
        I could for my need.
        I am thinking long and hard
        About such a conversion,
        Since the reading of blank verse
        Engenders my aversion.

        I can just imagine the press
        Releases to the news;
        The pros and cons of critics
        With praise or hate-filled views.
        I could earn some good money
        And create my legacy,
        Or might be condemned
        By the “Dead” Poet society.

        Poet Note
        1. It might become a bestseller with both the conversion
        and the original running up and under each other.
        2. I have no doubt this will happen.
        3. I could be blacklisted.
        4. Disclaimer: This poem does not represent the views
        of the Society of Classical Poets, although 25% were
        against blank verse being published on the website
        and 26.7% had no preference.

      • Roy Eugene Peterson

        A consensus seems to exist in the literature I have recently read that autobiographical/biographical verse follows a formula and rely on blank verse.

      • Joseph S. Salemi

        There were exactly 60 respondents in that survey, of which about one third (20) were non-members of the SCP.

        And a mere 25% percent of that utterly insignificant sampling were “against blank verse being published.”

        You think that’s a serious polling figure?

        Blank verse is here to stay.

      • Priscilla King

        It has a formal rhythm. Isn’t it possible to think of *bad* classical poetry? (Not that this is what comes to mind as an example. I’ve seen passages translated from the Odyssey that seemed much worse.) There’s classical poetry where poetic form condenses and even mirrors a thought, and classical poetry where poetic form tempts writers to make a laborious, pompous stanza out of what would have been better as a three-word predicate.

      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Any human art can be practiced well or badly. There are excellent paintings, and godawful daubs. There are beautiful statues, and misshapen lumps of ugliness. So also there can be rhyming poetry that totally sucks, and metrical poetry that is belabored and tedious.

        We don’t judge an art by its failures. We judge it by its most prominent successes.

  2. Marguerite

    Thank you for this poem, which ties together nicely the living and the dead…and the living dead! We lived in Anchorage, AK for 3 years and I always thought it was strange and rather horrific for the fish that up the stream they would go, trying desperately to get to their destination to reproduce, and were all the time caught and released (of course some were caught and kept). I wondered, “What did they look like at the end of the journey?”

    Reply
  3. Maria

    In my humble opinion, that is I am no expert, but sometimes it helps as I had to work out exactly what blank verse actually means.
    I believe the term to be a bit of a misnomer.
    Many elements have to be present for verse to be verse and not prose. Blank verse means the absence of just one of these elements, rhyme.
    It just takes great skill to leave it out. But you have certainly been successful with this poem.

    Well I hope that makes sense. Mr Tweedie you did ask for our opinion! Now I would like to know whether I am on the right lines or not regarding blank verse!

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      I don’t think “blank verse” is a misnomer. It simply means that the end of the verse, where some readers might expect a rhyme, is left “blank,” in the sense that the line ends with a word that has no phonic echo with the final word in a previous or subsequent line.

      I can’t understand what you mean when you say that “it takes great skill to leave out” the rhymes. Not doing something doesn’t take any special skill at all. It just means that there’s something you don’t have to think or worry about.

      The advantage of blank verse is that it allows the poet much greater freedom in diction choice when composing. This is an important advantage when a poet is writing something of great length, or of such importance than he must use very precise and clear language.

      Excellent metrical poets are skilled in both blank verse and in rhyming verse, and they use each procedure in those specific places where the procedure is suitable.

      Poets in English have been using blank verse for nearly 500 years. Even a famous modernist poet (Wallace Stevens) used pentameter blank verse as the dominant meter in his masterpiece “Sunday Morning.” It is a profoundly serious meditation on doubt and religious belief, and it would have been ridiculous for him to have attempted it in rhyme.

      I really don’t understand why blank verse, which has half a millennium of tradition behind it, is being singled out for attack here.

      About Tweedie’s poem — the first sixteen lines of it are ONE SINGLE SENTENCE, composed in a dazzling spectacle of enjambment. That is one helluva display of skill.

      Reply
      • Maria Panayi

        I am no way shape or form attacking blank verse or against it. Of course it takes great skill to be a poet and whether or not you think blank verse is easier or more difficult is a matter of opinion. I might find blank verse more difficult you might find it easier. I have acknowledged in my post that it takes great skill and that is why I admire Mr Tweedie’s poem.
        As I said , experts find the term blank verse easy to understand. That is all. Did not say I do not like it or not admire it or that I am against it. Can’t see how you have inferred that from my post.
        The only thing I regret is not praising Mr Tweedie’s poem enough.

      • Joseph S. Salemi

        It’s not you, Ms. Panayi. I know that you did not attack blank verse. I was thinking of others.

        It’s simply that I sense there is a kind of general dislike and distrust of blank verse among some persons here at the SCP. I think some of these persons are taking the words “Rhyming, Rhythmic, and Rapturous” too literally. Many great poems in English do not rhyme, and many other great poems are not filled with “rapture,” whatever that means.

        I am sorry for any misunderstanding.

  4. Maria

    That is okay. Thank you but you do not need to apologise. I like debate almost as much as you! It is actually interesting that you think blank verse easier as I had not looked at it that way before as I find meter difficult.
    Perhaps the word misnomer is a bit strong. But blank means void or empty to me and I think that is why I think it a contradiction, ie blank verse.
    Does that make better sense?

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Well, I suppose one could take “blank verse” as a misleading phrase, if you emphasize that “blank” could mean void or empty. But the usage has become traditional by now, and therefore has the patina of time on it. Other words and phrases carry misleading references, as when we speak of “Welsh rabbit” even though it has no rabbit in it, or when we say the sun “rises” even when we know that it doesn’t move. We sometimes refer to native American tribes as “Indians,” even though they are not connected in any way with India.

      As a traditionalist, I prefer any older way of saying something, because the older inherited way is usually more elegant or more expressive. But it is also because I am a contrarian, and like to work and speak in ways that go against what conformists are doing.

      There is an Israeli poet named Esther Cameron who, when she writes a letter or an e-mail, usually says what she has to say in pure blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter). She does this so well and so consistently that it has become second-nature to her. Also, I find that many of the sentences that we utter in daily speech (without our being conscious of it) often come out as pure iambic pentameter. Consider:

      “I cannot find the ladle for the soup.”
      “I hope ten bucks will cover what this costs.”
      “Where’s the damned mail? It’s almost five o’clock!”
      “Your sister Lucy called to set the date.”
      “The store was out of milk, so I got cream.”

      For this reason I think iambic pentameter rhythms are natural to our language, and that is why they have such a prominent place in our traditional canon of poetry. I even find that many good free-verse poets unconsciously slip into iambic pentameter at times.

      Reply
      • Maria Panayi

        Thank you for the explanation. Especially explaining iambic pentameter and its historical and linguistic significance. You must be tired of stating the obvious! But the beauty of SCP is that it is a site where one can learn and improve.
        Perhaps I am not the only one that needs the lesson and clarity.The examples you give as being iambic pentameter are fascinating. I think I will spend some more time studying it. Stressed and unstressed syllables are my downfall. The Israeli poet you mention sounds like an inspiration. Thank you again for taking the time , I am really grateful.
        Thank you also to Mr Tweedie for his inspiring poem that led to the opportunity to discuss this.

  5. James A. Tweedie

    Maria, Thank you for both your comment and your compliment. Speaking or writing in iambic pentameter is a habitual skill that I can turn on or off almost at will. I once read somewhere that couriers in the Elizabethan era were known to converse in it.

    I also appreciate Salemi’s reference to Esther Cameron. She is the co-editor of the Deronda Review, an online site worth exploring and one where I have been an occasional contributor—one of those blessed sites that welcomes formal poetry, whether rhythmic, rhyming, rapturous or blank!

    Reply
      • Maria

        Thank you, I have found the Deronda Review and had a quick look. There is a lot to browse so I will be going back to it. It looks to be full of great content.

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