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Friday, April 16, 2010

NaPoWriMo #16: A Song

(All NaPoWriMo poems have now been removed for possible editing and submissions. Contact me if you would like to read them.)
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And yes, the rhyme breaks down a bit in the last stanza, plus there is a Jean missing so I need to add another stanza.
The prompt at readwritepoem was to look at poems that had not quite made it, find a line that called to us and to hum it - turn it into a stanza of a song, and add two more stanzas. But of course this poem really needed more than three stanzas.

The four Jeans are real, they are my great aunt and her three cousins. Traditional Scottish naming patterns means that four Jeans is not excessive. My great uncle David was one of six cousins named David - all the eldest sons named for their paternal grandfather. (Correction - the son of his aunt was the second son. The eldest son was named for the paternal grandfather, and second son for the maternal grandfather. With daughters, the order switched so that the eldest was named for her maternal grandmother and second for the paternal grandmother). Great Uncle David could have been one of ten cousins named David, except that his mother's sister had only daughters, and three of her brothers died before reaching adulthood. But that was just the cousins on his mother's side - he had another two cousins named David on his father's side. My own grandfather John had several cousins named John, and there were also quite a few Thomases, but not as many as the Davids.

In looking over my poems, I found the line "there were four cousins each named Jean" and it seemed made for this prompt.

3 comments:

skankinmoon said...

Nice twist that 2 Jeans are in 1 stanza. The history/genealogy of the poem is great to see.
Thank you for your poem.

Marisa said...

I like this peek into into your family history.

Anonymous said...

Definitely has the feel of an old British folk ballad, I say keep running with it. :)