Parallel Poetry Demonstration

So occasionally a line arrives in my head, only to be followed quickly by another line formed almost exactly on the same lines (usually because I somehow temporarily forget the first and recreate it inexactly). Sometimes I like only one, sometimes neither, sometimes both. But I thought it might be interesting to create poems off of the two that just occurred to me, commenting as I go and showing (possibly) how slight initial differences in rhythm or diction can lead to different poems, as well as how I write a sonnet.

First Lines:
My poetry is parenthetical

My poems are all parenthetical

These are clearly almost the same line. The differences lie in rhythm - the first flows faster because there are fewer words that hit the stresses more firmly, while the second has that "all" that wants stress it can't have - and diction, where "poetry" implies the generality and "poems...all" emphasizes the discrete products.

Second Lines:
My poetry is parenthetical;
It hides inside the corners of my life

My poems are all parenthetical;
They hide inside the corners of my life

So we again have a singular/plural distinction: one is giving us a sense of immanence, with poetry hiding everywhere, the other of secrecy, with individual poems waiting to be discovered, or hoping not to be.

Now we speed up.

Octave:
My poetry is parenthetical;
It hides inside the corners of my life.
If I were settled, with a loving wife
And children, I think it is possible
I would not write it. My rhetorical
Flourishes exist to mirror strife
And flicker on the edges of a knife,
Not in a happy home, which is too full

My poems are all parenthetical;
They hide inside the corners of my life.
If I were settled with a loving wife
And children, I think it is possible
I would not write them. I would be too full
Of other thoughts, for happiness is rife
With great distractions, and it lacks the strife
That opens space for poems. As I mull

So first: yes, I pronounce all the A rhymes the same way. I was as surprised as you.

Now we really see the difference between the poems. While I will concede I could force either octave onto either opening, I feel these differences flowed naturally from the differences in the openings. "Poetry," which had a faster flow and a sense of immanent, immaterial poetry, slides easily into general thoughts about not writing "it" and about the "rhetorical/flourishes" that make up my poetry. It wants to talk generally, and talk about how I write, the characteristics of my "poetry." And it does so with only one sentence break, smoothly. "Poems" is jerkier, with an additional sentence break, and it takes a different tack. It is not as interested in broad poetic strokes, but in the "space for poems" and being "too full." Poems hiding in the corners need space; poetry can exist at the same time as whatever might fill those corners. "Poems" is interested in the mind and how it juggles multiple inputs; "Poetry" in the situations that produce different effects.

Beginning Sestet:
My poetry is parenthetical;
It hides inside the corners of my life.
If I were settled, with a loving wife
And children, I think it is possible
I might not write it. My rhetorical
Flourishes exist to mirror strife
And flicker on the edges of a knife
Not in a happy home, which is too full
Of other thoughts that dampen that raw sense
Which touches poetry. If all is light,
Where are the shadows which inspire song?

My poems are all parenthetical;
They hide inside the corners of my life.
If I were settled, with a loving wife
And children, I think it is possible
I could not write them. I would be too full
Of other thoughts, for happiness is rife
With great distractions, and it lacks the strife
That opens space for poems. As I mull
That possibility, I ask myself
If that could make me happy. Could I be
Satisfied with life too full to write?

Obviously the differences have widened, partly because the end rhyme needed for "Poems" threw it in a new direction, partly because "Poetry" had not actually caught up to "Poems" and it's thoughts about "other thoughts." Each is going for a three-rhyme sestet, but the themes have clarified their differences: one is about situations, and the other space, even as both are obsessed with when the narrator would not write a poem.

Finish:
My poetry is parenthetical;
It hides inside the corners of my life.
If I were settled, with a loving wife
And children, I think it is possible
I would not write it. My rhetorical
Flourishes exist to mirror strife
And flicker on the edges of a knife
Not in a happy home, which is too full
Of other thoughts that dampen that raw sense
That touches poetry. If all is light,
Where are the shadows that inspire song?
But if I were to penetrate the fence
Surrounding happiness, I fear it might
Make both the joy and poetry go wrong.

My poems are all parenthetical;
They hide inside the corners of my life.
If I were settled, with a loving wife
And children, I think it is possible
I would not write them. I would be too full
Of other thoughts, for happiness is rife
With great distractions, and it lacks the strife
Which opens space for poems. As I mull
That possibility, I ask myself
If that could make me happy. Could I be
Satisfied with life too full to write?
If all my poems pile on the shelf,
Or even lie unwritten? Such a sight,
I think, would scare the joyfulness from me.

And we're done. "Poems" ends frightened of the lack of space; "Poetry," worried that everything, not just the poetry might fail. Neither optimistic, but not nearly the same. The rhymes in "Poetry," which was always more direct, run CDECDE, where "Poems," always more jerky, is CDECED. Even the endings, each in fear or worry, differ according to how the beginnings did: one concerned with space, joy being "from me," and the other situations as a whole, with both "joy" and "poetry" being utterly spoiled. I think these changes flow logically from the initial small differences, and I think they are each a good reflection of the initial mindset of their first lines.