Alternative final quatrian:

-- where should I put this trash?
They don't fit anywhere.
It seems I spent my cash
and bought myself despair.

Fug,

I'm not sure that this is a suitable ending either. Despair seems abit over the top.

How about something like:

Unpacking while taking stock
Of all these foreign beauties,
I regret being in hock
Over their import duties.

Good luck,
Glenn

Very nice solution, Glenn. Except, the first line runs better for me like this: "Unpacking, I take stock". I think your suggestion is a suitably light ending (yes, despair is a bit strong here). -- Geertjan

Thought about it some more. Here it is again, with a new title and a -- hopefully others think so too -- more pleasing ending:

Homeward Bound

Bullfight capes from Madrid,
Egyptian busts of stone,
a plastic Indian squid,
two flasks of Scots cologne,
French letters, Belgian beer,
chipped Russian iconettes,
a fresh-hewn stone-age spear,
dried Polish cigarettes,
fine carvings, Chinese ferns,
small clogs from Amsterdam,
Czech candles, Grecian urns,
a model German tram...
Computing what I spent
on all these foreign beauties,
I fail to circumvent
their heavy import duties.

Discovering Thom Gunn A Month Too Late

25 June 2004. Berkeley.


I only read the dead.
I love how close they stay
to current joy and dread.

I only read the dead
till Night Sweats came to bed;
I cried across the Bay.

I only read the dead.
I love how close they stay.



[This message has been edited by Clay Stockton (edited June 27, 2004).]

A recent note from Terese led me to have a look at this thread, and I'm afraid I must correct Tim's correction of Terese. "My Mother" is metrical, strictly speaking--it is in syllabics, 7-syllable lines (though I took the liberty of adding or dropping a syllable occasionally when it seemed necessary). Syllabics is usually an honorary meter in English.
The only time I really hear it is in the short lines, seven only rarely, usually five. (Elizabeth Daryush has some very beautiful lyrics in rhymed 5-syllabe lines.) Mostly it's a controlled way of writing free verse.
And another small correction: i use both initial capitals and lower case for both free verse and metrical.
Since Tim mentioned the difficulty of a villanelle in trimeter, I thought I'd copy out this short one, which I realized after I finished it must have been influenced by Robinson's great villanelle, "The House on the Hill"


NO MORE


Once they have closed the door,
That is the final day
And time will be no more.

Forget "the other shore"—
No earth, no sea, no way
Once they have closed the door,

No after, no before,
Nothing for clocks to say,
For time will be no more—

Vain the discarded core,
Useless the feet of clay
Once they have closed the door.

For soldier, queen and whore,
All persons of the play,
Time will be no more.

No time now to restore
This burden, this cliché.
Soon they will close the door
And time will be no more.


(Sorry it copied out so unreadable, but I couldn't move the line to the left margin and I couldn't delete it. I hate
computers.)

(Amazing--it came out right in being transferred to the thread. I love computers.)




[This message has been edited by robert mezey (edited July 09, 2004).]

What an amazing poem, RM. I'm glad to see it here.

Thanks for the correction of the correction, Robert.

As for "No More," it's simply brilliant. At once quiet and exciting, classical and colloquial. Among your many finest.

Terese



[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited February 09, 2005).]

Dear Bob

Inasmuch I also took it that “My Mother” was not trimeter but non-metrical verse, I, like Terese, am grateful for the correction.

This little episode shows the power of context in metrics.

This thread was, or so I assumed, about accentual or accentual-syllabic trimeter. In such a context, a poem (such as "My Mother") that on the page looked like accentual or accentual-syllabic trimeter might indeed seem to be such, though any reading-aloud – or reading-in-the-head – surely shows it not to be.

In its context in your book, however, alongside other non-metrical poems where you seem to use the convention of printing metrical verse (i.e. accentual or accentual-syllabic verse) with initial capitals and non-metrical verse without, its nature as syllabics is doubly disguised, and at a cursory view it may well appear to be non-metrical. (I have not checked your text in detail to be certain how consistently you use this convention.)

I say doubly disguised because I happen to think that, though syllabic verse is undoubtedly metrical, its metricality is inaudible. (As I have mentioned before, I recall hearing Auden read his syllabics with a tiny but distinct pause at the end of each line, regardless of syntax, as if to mark for the ear what might otherwise well be missed.)

I very much agree with you when you say that syllabic verse is “Mostly…a controlled way of writing free verse”. That word “controlled” is important, for it suggests the way syllabics can provide for the poet a framework which will encourage him or her to challenge easy word-choices and casual syntax. In other words, it provides, though in an apparently looser way, what accentual or accentual-syllabic metres provide, a marked-out playing field for the game of verse. In my experience it is not at all easy to write effective syllabics.

An interesting set of misunderstandings!

Kind regards

Clive

I just realized that this poem was trimeter, I'd never thought about it. Is it good trimeter? Tim? It doesn't sound as "trimetric" as most of these do; why is that?

Poem in the Broken Seasons

The piney watchers watch.
A ripple takes the pond,
wakes waters that lie still
deeper than eye can reach,
as deep as light can sift.
A tree breaks from its leaves.
Nothing that lives, but grieves...

In silence, June retreats:
heat of summer in air,
heat of air on all
the watchers in the trees.
The pond is still once more.
In passage of the year
I shall learn how to please...

The essence of the pond
is air: is to float free,
circling entranced
amidst the broken leaves.
I feel a ripple rise
in my slow body now,
and yet I have not moved

silent through the trees
or stillness of the air,
except to touch the pond.
What place is there to turn?
What hope of breaking free
from circle of the year,
except it turns with me?

The dreaming pond, the air,
trees, watchers even, all
are body of changing love,
encircled in the year.
My voice, my heart, are mute.
The deaf ear hears, but love,
love cries for ways to speak...

Muted in kind, the trees
whisper, remark their days
in passages of quiet and of voice.
Body discovers pond.
Ripple is all.
The season is love. Bright air
sings through the watching trees...

(robt)