Ahoy, all Sphereans knowledgeable about form
 

I can't figure out what form this is written in. Can anybody tell me?

I found it in "The Best of the Best American Poetry", Editor, Harold Bloom, Series Editor, David Lehman. It was first printed in Antaeus, a journal I greatly admired in my youth, now defunct, (both magazine and youth) and was later collected in "The Sunset Maker".

It may well be a variation on a form. Donald Justice often did that, took a form and changed it a little. But I can't figure out the basic form either.


Nostalgia of the Lakefronts

--Donald Justice

Cities burn behind us; the lake glitters.
A tall loudspeaker is announcing prizes;
Another, by the lake, the times of cruises.
Childhood, once vast with terrors and surprises,
Is fading to a landscape deep with distance—
And always the sad piano in the distance,

Faintly in the distance, a ghostly tinkling
(O indecipherable blurred harmonies)
Or some far horn repeating over water
Its high lost note, cut loose from all harmonies.
At such times, wakeful, a child will dream the world,
And this is the world we turn to from the world.

Or the two worlds come together and are one
On dark sweet afternoons of storm and of rain,
And stereopticons brought out and dusted,
Stacks of old Geographics, or through the rain,
A mad wet dash to the local movie palace
And the shriek, perhaps of Kane's white cockatoo.
(Would this have been summer, 1942?)

By June the city seems to grow neurotic.
But lakes are good all summer for reflection,
And ours is famed among painters for its blues,
Yet not entirely sad, upon reflection.
Why sad at all? Is their wish not unique—
To anthropomorphize the inanimate
With a love that masquerades as pure technique?

O art and the child are innocent together!
But landscapes grow abstract, like aging parents;
Soon now the war will shutter the grand hotels;
And we, when we come back, must come as parents.
There are no lanterns now strung between pines—
Only, like history, the stark bare northern pines.

And after a time the lakefront disappears
Into the stubborn verses of its exiles
Or a few gifted sketches of old piers.
It rains perhaps on the other side of the heart;
Then we remember, whether we would or no.
—Nostalgia comes with the smell of rain, you know.

Janice, if you haven't already seen it, there is nice recent discussion of the Justice poem up at a reading blog on the net (just search or google: yourownsmallcraft). They refer to it as a sestina variant. Ellen Bryant Voigt may have discussed the poem/identified the form in The Art of Syntax.

Janice, I don't think it is a variant on a sestina, despite the six stanzas of six lines. I notice that the lines are eleven syllables long, so it may be an experiment with hendecasyllabics, but without necessarily obeying the classical metrical constraints. It also seems to experiment with using identity rhymes, usually but not always in lines 2, 4, 5, and 6.

Susan

Dean: Also my "best guess" was a sestina variant, but it seemed too great a leap. I'll certainly go check out that site you mentioned. (What a coincidence!) And I do have (and warmly recommend) "The Art of Syntax" so I'll look there as well.

Susan: I wasn't smart enough to think of hendecasyllabics (which I'm not sure I understand completely, despite knowing several lovely poems which are so categorized. Notably Annie Finch's "Lucid Waking".)

I was/am also perplexed about the identity rhymes because they are not used consistently.

And use of "anthroopmorphize" and possibly even "stereopticons" would in these spherical halls doubtless call forth at least a few resounding cries of "off with his head".

**

Let me say at once that I am a huge fan of Donald Justice. But I was also surprised at the two "O" in this poem. I am probably exposing my ignorance (not the first time) but I am looking for the reasons this is included in the Best of the Best, which is no mean feat considering the number of poems that fell by the wayside before a Best of the Best could be compiled.

It’s probably important to bear in mind that Bloom was grinding an ax with a chip on his shoulder while sticking his thumb in Adrienne Rich’s eye when he edited that Best of the Best anthology. He was picking his favorites from a decade of Best American Poetry collections, and he had an agenda. He didn’t include anything from the 1996 anthology that Rich had edited, and everything he did include may have been chosen partly because of what kind of poetry it wasn’t, not just on the basis of what it was. (Just for the record, I think it’s a good poem. And I think of it as being written in a nonce form, though I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that other people are more knowledgeable than I about its formal antecedents.)

Another thing that perplexes me is that the final two lines of S1 & 2 establish a pattern that runs into the next stanza: "with distance, in the distance / Faintly in the distance" and "dream the world, from the world / Or the two worlds"

Then it is partially abandoned "cockatoo, forty-two / By June" Then even that is given up in the next stanza, but returns in part when we reach the penultimate stanza "between pines, bare northern pines / and after a time."

Chris, I thought poets and editors always behaved like the nicest of the nice.

(I got interrupted and haven't checked out the tips from Dean yet.)

Maybe it says in there somewhere Janice -- I just looked briefly at the Justice blog article and may not have read everything on that poem (it seemed like there were a number writers mentioned and a considerable amount of time involved discussing form). In just looking at the poem here again and the patterns, I see that S3 and 4 have seven lines. ?

Interesting story about the Best of BAP, Chris.

Janice et al.

I have the impression D Justice used forms to write poems, as opposed to writing poems that followed forms. Sacrosanct is perhaps not a word he would apply to any conventional form.

I think it's fascinating how the form plays with its near-symmetries. All those identity rhymes locked in place...but then some of them disappear...and then they come back, sort of (no/know!). The stanzas have a simple 6-line pattern...which swells unobtrusively to 7, about the time you stop counting...then ducks back into 6 before the end.

In a poem about reflection, projection, illusion, it's as if the form itself were enacting a shimmering mirrored surface--symmetries that are broken just slightly, just enough to create a sense of instability.

Janice, I am baffled by your reference to 'stereopticons' (I know what they are - I have one in the attic)in relation to Sphereans. Could you elaborate?

Jerome, I know what they are and I wish I had one in my attic. What I said was (I hope) that when unusual or longish words appear in a workshop poem, the advice is often given to ditch them. Added in. I keep wondering why he chose that word and not "laterna magica, or "magic lantern", but the reason may very well be that those words were too obvious for what he wants the poem to do. Or that may have been the common word for it in the era he speaks of. (Like "gramophone" or "the wireless"). I'm not saying the word is wrong. Justice was a superior craftsman as far as I am concerned and as David insightful comment points up.

Chris, I haven't looked at the dates of all the selected poems, but I'm surprised to hear the story. Adrienne Rich does has an excerpt from her Forward--as do several others--I think I'll go read Bloom's forward and find out what he had for inclusion criteria.

Dean, I couldn't find anything about the poem in "The Art of..." but it wasn't time wasted to go look. It is an excellent book and I'm keeping it close to hand for a while rather than put it back on the shelf.

I think David has answered my question. An insightful commentary.

Thanks for all the responses to this question.

Now I have read the Forward by Harold Bloom and he states in no uncertain terms that he has not chosen from the 1996 Anthology. Sadly, that is one of the BAPs I do not own, but it does make me want to get a copy. The reasons he gives are similar to the reasons that flourished during the public debate on the recent Rita Dove anthology.

Janice, my mistake. I'd only come across 'stereopticon' before back in the 60s in Adrienne Cecile Rich's The Evil Eye in Readings of History.

Last night we sat with the stereopticon
Laughing at genre views of 1906 . . .

I assumed it was the American English for the hand-held stereoscope with a sliding frame to hold double images on card, which is the thing in my attic inherited from grandparents,

Doesn't really affect Rich's poem, but I now see a stereopticon was a stereoscopic projector or 'magic lantern, as you say. Sorry about the confusion.

Actually, Jerome, I think the word works in its context no matter which image the mind conjures up.

This poem certainly grows on one.

I am puzzled though about the omission and can't but think that Bloom is making a larger statement by skipping Adrienne Rich's collection. It fits his crusade or agenda or whatever one choses to call it. And it likely created a great deal of publicity.

There is a list of the poems in that 1996 collection and some of my personal favorite poets (Sherman Alexie (who I am going to write a paper on soon), Alberto Alvaro Ríos, Margaret Atwood, Jane Kenyon, Ai) and their 1996 BAP poems are excluded.

I agree that the poems I recognize aren't in the the high diction poetry tradition of say, Wilbur, Hecht, Hollander et al, (who are also dear to my heart) but they represent is contemporary "best" poetry, by which I mean they move the reader (me) intellectually and/or emotionally or both, they are memorable--once read one remembers them. I would chose any of them as poetry over the one- act play by Thomas M. Disch "The Cardinal Detoxes: A Play in One Act", which was chosen by Bloom as "best poetry". No offense to Thomas M. Disch as I would love to see that 14-page play performed on stage.

I recognized some old favorites in the 1996:

"b o d y"

James Merrill,

Look closely at the letters. Can you see,
entering (stage right), then floating full,
then heading off—so soon—
how like a little kohl-rimmed moon
o plots her course from b to d

—as y, unanswered, knocks at the stage door?
Looked at too long, words fail,
phase out. Ask, now that body shines
no longer, by what light you learn these lines
and what the b and d stood for

***

Morning in the Burned House

by Margaret Atwood
In the burned house I am eating breakfast.
You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast,
yet here I am.

The spoon which was melted scrapes against
the bowl which was melted also.
No one else is around.

Where have they gone to, brother and sister,
mother and father? Off along the shore,
perhaps. Their clothes are still on the hangers,

their dishes piled beside the sink,
which is beside the woodstove
with its grate and sooty kettle,

every detail clear,
tin cup and rippled mirror.
The day is bright and songless,

the lake is blue, the forest watchful.
In the east a bank of cloud
rises up silently like dark bread.

I can see the swirls in the oilcloth,
I can see the flaws in the glass,
those flares where the sun hits them.

I can't see my own arms and legs
or know if this is a trap or blessing,
finding myself back here, where everything

in this house has long been over,
kettle and mirror, spoon and bowl,
including my own body,

including the body I had then,
including the body I have now
as I sit at this morning table, alone and happy,

bare child's feet on the scorched floorboards
(I can almost see)
in my burning clothes, the thin green shorts

and grubby yellow T-shirt
holding my cindery, non-existent,
radiant flesh. Incandescent.

I see that the 25th Anniversary Best of BAP edited by Robert Pinsky remedies this to some extent.

So I suppose I'll have to try to scrape up the dough for Pinksy's and Rich's anthologies.

Thanks again, everyone who helped me think about this poem and its place in a greater context.