Poems on Poetry
 

Angelica recently posted a poem on poetry - a subject which many of us have toyed with (usually with so-so results, IMAO) - and Michael T. suggested a thread on poems about writing a poem. Having written any number myself - a few decent, most only of interest to other poets - I jumped at the opportunity to preen and prance. In going through my Poems on Poetry file I realized that the only ones that were decent, and got beyond my po-world, were those that combined a poem on poetry with some insights from the real world.

Here's one that was published in The Cumberland Review years and years ago.

The Perfect Sonnet

I’ve been at this forever and I think
the perfect sonnet should consist of one
long sentence which will elegantly slink
around caesuras; have a little fun
with word-play as it sets its feet upon
good meter and an intertwining rhyme,
and then, just when it seems it will run on
and on without an insight worth a dime -

sublimely superficial, laced with wit
that sidesteps the realities of life -
shall open up a bit and half admit
concern about old age, finances, wife;
so that, instead of running out of gas,
it turns around and bites you in the ass.


And here's one which actually made it into my latest book - Furusato.
Like the first, it gets beyond being just a poem about a poem.

Trochees Are The Perfect Fix

I love a line of trochees now and then
Snort them up - my ear will tell me when
I’m due again - set for that metric hit -
the off-beat rush I need to discomfit
and chop the chain of pure iambic verse
that spreads a sonorous Shakespearean curse
across my winter sonnet’s boring drone.

Trochees are the poet’s perfect fix – stone
fences that provide a periodic high
to lift a rhyme through dull New England sky
to a caesura; punctuate the hills
with jig-saw boulders, frozen silver spills
of rock, the drift of snow on wind-tossed
lake, two paths uncrossed, a touch of frost.


I kinda like those two - particularly the second. But then we get into poems that are more directly focused on writing a poem and I think the quality suffers greatly. The next two don't get beyond a workshop chuckle. The first is a sonnet about the villanelle.

She Talks in Beauty Like a Villanelle

A proper, formal Miss, of classic phrase,
Her soft, hypnotic voice can weave a spell
That leaves this anxious suitor in a daze:
She is my siren of the villanelle.
Those retold lines and oft-repeated rhymes,
Old-fashionedly romantic Gallic pace,
The ease with which she makes each point four times,
Accent her elegance, her form, her grace.

And if she seems to stutter, just as well -
No twists or turns or sonnets’ clever ways
Disturb the quiet, mesmerizing swell
Of every echolalic, encored phrase,
As I begin to see that I adore
A nagging and reiterative bore


And here's my obligatory villanelle. Again, it focuses only on the poem, so it's dull-dull-dull.

A Simple Villanelle

Not good enough to show, I tell –
repeat some lines to ease the way –
and write a simple villanelle

that circles like a carousel
to grab at every last cliché
not good enough to show. I tell

in bloated, perfumed lines that swell
with labored adjectives each day
I write. A simple villanelle

is what is needed, to dispel
the force that leads my work to say,
not good enough to show, I tell.

Therefore I'll dwell, in parallel,
on word-play to restrain the bray;
and write a simple villanelle

(okay, a bitchy bagatelle)
that renders florid prose passé,
not good enough. To show, I tell -
and right a simple villanelle.


And finally (for now) another villanelle that I think is better because it mixes poetry with the real world. (I think this one was in Umbrella, centuries ago.)

Do Not Go Gentle into Villanelle

I wish I could create a villanelle
with poet’s flourish, and a sous-chef’s care,
as sweet and subtle as a plump quenelle.

I must find piquant lines that mingle well
(the recipe demands a perfect pair)
with which I could create that villanelle

as easily as I take shrimp and shell
Them, grind them, beat in egg whites full of air
and sweetly, subtly, raise a plump quenelle.

But overlabored tercets will not swell
my dish - If I could blend their essence with the flair
I wish, I would create a villanelle

that marries words and verbs in parallel
with nutmeg, cayenne, heavy cream; prepare
it sweet and subtle as a plump quenelle,

French-kissed with fruits de mer and bechamel,
a mix to metaphorically declare:
I wish I could create a villanelle
as sweet and subtle as a plump quenelle


Basta! Let's see your stuff.

Hey Michael,
Over the years you've slammed "poems about writing poems" more times than I can recall. However, you have just brought an enormous smile to my face! I enjoyed all of these - but right now I'm in (physical) pain, and it's also bedtime here in the UK, so I'm outa here in a moment, but I'll be back in a couple of days.

Big thanks for making me feel better,
Jayne

Thanks for firing this one up, Michael.

Every poet I know loves to roll their eyes at the whole navel-gazing concept of "poems about poetry." But I have yet to meet a poet who can resist writing one from time to time.

Here's a short one of mine.

Keeping It Real

Bullet wound is concrete, mortality abstract;
The latter’s a cool concept, the former a hot fact.
Love is an abstraction, orgasm concrete;
Only one is salty (although either can be sweet).


And here's a longer one that appeared in Big City Lit, a response poem to an anti-slam essay that I though was pretty clueless. The author had cast himself as a champion of the Western canon, standing strong against barbarians the gates, so it gave me great pleasure to go all Alexander Pope on his ass, by which I mean make fun of him in heroic couplets.

To a Defender of Poetic Tradition

You know how people look like fools when they
Dis formal verse as fusty and passé?
When they call meter a straitjacket, rhyme
A lifeless fossil from a bygone time?
Well, that’s how foolish you look when you damn
With cognate cluelessness the sins of slam.

You say slam poets seem to prize cheap thrills
And edgy topics more than verbal skills.
You grumble that they’re all pierced, tattooed,
Unversed in subtle wordplay, “urban,” crude.
Their hip-hop histrionics on the stage,
You sneer, can’t match your deep thoughts on the page.

Thank God your coded ethnic slurs aren’t cheap,
And your disdain for skin art is so deep.
The way you pierce the surface, plumb the core,
When you anatomize what you abhor
Saves you from sounding like some shallow jerk
With his head jammed up his collected work.

Are there particular slam poems you hate?
I might agree. I wouldn’t hesitate
To say some slammers suck, if you’ll admit
Page poets, too, sometimes write dreadful shit.
There’s good work in both camps, and both include
Some poems as lousy as your attitude.

It’s generally unwise to generalize
About whole genres when you criticize.
Keep it specific; broad-brush imprecision
Makes you an easy target for derision.
Slammers, you charge, talk dirty. Which is true.
But so did Shakespeare. So do I. Fuck you.

Chris - neat, but I'd prefer it if it was pared to S1, S4 and S5. And S5 by itself is wonderful for a shorter critique, and you don't have to go through as many lines to get to the all-important "Fuck you".

An unpublished ditty I seem to have written 18 years ago:

HONEST VILLANELLE

Here's the first line. It will be recast
and used again before this poem is through.
And here's the line I need to end on last.

The challenge of a villanelle is vast.
I started poorly, reader, telling you
'Here's the first line. It will be recast,'

and even though I knew it was half-assed
I kept on writing, knowing it was true.
And then I wrote the line that would come last.

By now, dear reader, you are shocked, aghast,
and wondering if you have grounds to sue.
Here's the twelfth line. Like the first, recast,

its vapid senselessness is unsurpassed.
It's like a food you cannot taste or chew,
as is the line that's destined to come last.

We can only hope that it comes fast.
We all have better things by far to do.
Here's the first line, thoroughly recast.
And here's the line I'll end upon at last.

HOW I DID IT

When I sat down, I did not plan
... to write the poem you're reading,
but when I tried to write the one
... I wanted, on proceeding

I discovered to my sorrow
... that I would be needing
not to write it after all
... because the rhymes were leading

me to say what I had not
... in any way intended,
so all my plans for what I'd write
... were totally upended.

My friend, if you're enjoying this,
... I've no right to be proud.
It wasn't me! I simply wrote
... whatever rhyme allowed.

The wind—

p. 5
p. 7
p. 5

THIS POEM

This poem's self-referential.
... Of that there is no doubt.
This poem itself, and nothing else,
... is what this poem's about.

The way it blithely bops along,
... much like a metronome,
the way this poem proclaims this poem
... is all about this poem.

It's not about the ache of love
... or autumn leaves that fall.
This poem's a poem about itself,
... exclusively. That's all.

You may not like it. That's okay.
... You need not take it home.
It's not about your taste in poems.
... This poem's about this poem.

Here's a translation of Orwn's haiku:

Sonnet twists and turns
Villanelle repeats itself
Haiku jumps - kerplop!


This one is so old it was originally written in charcoal on the wall of a cave.

Teach a Man to Write

Give a man a book, they say,
and he will read it through the day;
but teach him meter and some rhyme,
and see how he, in little time,
fights sleep to write, and with first light
makes coffee, then will re-recite
the sonnet that he gibble-gabbled
at all night: what once was babbled
now will form a half-defined
and vague, but metrically aligned
melange of words he’ll stir, then stuff
with metaphors, until enough
is there to fester, seethe and cook.
(Oh Christ! Just give the guy a book!)


And - just to prove you can write a poem about poetry without rhyme or meter:

From Russia With Love

I think today I'll write about
Potemkin Villages -
hell, I'm Russian,
or at least my father was born there,
and I even wear a big gold ring,
a double eagle coin
with the Tsar of All the Russias
trapped face down
kissing my finger,
so the description of these villages -
facades
propped up house-fronts
nothing behind them
erected quickly
fits right in -
and I can even use it
to write my daily
Potemkin Poem
because it gives me something,
to talk about
some starting point
and piece of reality -
good images -
the ring,
all those Potemkin housefronts,
maybe sheathed in ice
in a hard Russian winter,
while I scribble
scrabble dribble
drabble
words and pictures down a page
as quickly as I can type
and make sure to
provide
many
line breaks
so it looks like a poem
and it's amazing
how many people
regard it as a poem,
even me,
even though all I did was
quickly write
whatever came into my head
scrible scrabble, dribble, drabble,
for fifteen minutes,
and here's my latest
Potemkin Poem.

THE POEM'S PLEA

Say me, please.
Don't just read me.
Sound is food.
Won't you feed me?

Life itself
is what I give,
but first I need
your voice to live.

This one was published in Bumbershoot, but the last line is adaptable to most magazine and journal names. You have my permission not to obey the first line.


HONEST SONNET

Please don’t read this sonnet to the end.
In fact, if I were you I’d stop right now.
The sad truth is, I really don’t know how
to write a sonnet. Why should you pretend

there’s any merit to these words I penned?
Whatever praise you’d graciously allow
I feel I’m honor-bound to disavow.
(I’ve read ahead. There’s nothing to defend).

What’s that? Still here? Why can’t you take a hint?
Do you believe the last five lines will bring
a quality the first nine lines could not,

that just before it ends this poem will sing?
Come on, don’t be a fool. This poem is rot.
It’s scandalous what Bumbershoot will print!

Off the bone pile:

Sonnet Stanzas*

Within my room, I work to finish lines
that might support the stanzas of a sonnet,
and try to dovetail them as an octet.
But there are crucial problems with my rhymes
before I even smooth the fourth—such signs
of instability, beyond mere nit,
requires an innovative retrofit,
to square the verse with classical designs.

But then the lady whom I hope to woo—
not Will’s or Petrarch’s—spells my stanzas’ doom:
You’re pazzo if you think these dives’ll do!
I cannot fret, for she gives me the clue
that rhyming June and moon may cure her gloom
and canonize us in a sonnet room.

*In the Italian language, a stanza is a room. And pazzo means crazy.


Losing the Art of Love

There was a time when poets sang of love
without embarrassment, when versifiers
happy at their trade were gracious liars
in measured sonnets. They’d imitate a dove,
an owl, perhaps a dawn-drawn bird above,
who sighting human beauty soon desires
to mate his heavenly might with earthly fires
of passion: begets a paradox of love.

But tapping keys that text or tweet romantic
notes is so archaic, old-school, stilted
that songs of love, once tender or ecstatic,
are elegies about the lost or jilted.
Raving in rhyme about a love that’s new?
Postmodern ironies evaded you.

Nonce Sonnet? He's on It!

My muse and I design a sonnet,
Italian-ish; its resonance,
we plan, will generate nonce sense
from carefully cobbled rhymes on it.
Bonnet nicely echoes on it:
we like a sky blue one’s adornments
of little blooms with flower scents,
but some readers ask, What’s on it?

But then my muse, curses on it,
growls, whines, barks and coughs
up sonics. Mentally in circus tents,
insane, we juggle lines for laughs
on the tightrope of this so-so net,
and wavering howl our nonsense.


A Play Pen

A poet’s pen at play
shapes sound as if it's clay:
It measures sonic spaces
modulating paces,

turns senses into tropes,
when styling losses, hopes,
blessings, caustic curses,
puzzles, comic verses.

Its light and serious fun
at times inscribes a pun,
pens icons of our breath
in scripts defying death.

Arse Poetica

Epics chart a culture’s mind
in sprawls of history and wit—
their redolence rides passing winds.

The lyrics are much smaller songs
leaking just a little wind
perfuming feelings as they’re sung.

Dramatic verse can be perverse,
digest the major characters’ wind,
their offal odors at times a curse.

An Arse Poetica is art
releasing powerful rank aromas
as contrails of a horse's fart.

Symbol of a poem’s source:
It's Pegasus, of course of course.

These make an appearance in My Miscellaneous Muse and elsewhere.

PORRIDGE PROBLEM

When Mother Goose sat down one day
to write about some porridge,
she found at once, to her dismay,
it's hard to rhyme with porridge!
Since oatmeal doesn't grow on trees
there's not much use for forage,
and pots and jars are rather dull
(so much for porridge storage).
Since even Mother Goose could not
explain what's meant by borage,
she'd have to find another way
to versify her porridge.

[this one was written as a companion piece to "Pease Porridge Hot"]

-----

ARSE POETICA

A poem should be a series
of incomprehensibilities,

paradoxical images
that baffle the senses,

signposts for the clever elite
who know more than you.

A poem is made of wordless words
and silent sounds,

imparting meaning
through its meaninglessness.

A poem should not dictate, but be,
he dictated.

-----

LUPO's got first dibs on posting another one of mine, but I'll add it to the collection once able to do so :)

Here's one I just wrote this minute to post here:

Lament

In olden times
a poem that rhymes
was, for the course, just par.

No eyebrows raised,
no folks amazed
at all the rhymes there are.

But then came Walt
whose full assault
on rhyme soon drew a crowd,

and now they say,
"We'll let you play,
but rhyme is not allowed."

I translated a poem about poetry written by Baltasar de Alcázar several centuries ago. You can read all 100 lines in The Alabama Literary Review (scroll to page 100 or so), but here's the beginning:


About Rhymes

....I'd like to tell my tale of woe,
oh Juana, but my curse is,
what I mean to say, I fear,
my verse sometimes reverses.
....For if I try to say what seems
important, half the time
I end up saying something else
because I'm forced to rhyme.
....Example: I would like to write
a verse to make it plain
Inez is good and lovely, but
the rhyme then adds insane.
....And so I end up calling her
insane because it went
with plain to make a rhyme although
that isn't what I meant.
....And if I praise the subtle wit
with which she's known to speak,
before I turn around, my rhyme
proclaims her nose a beak.
....And thus in substance I allege
her nose, that's so sublime,
is hooked, although I have no cause
except the cause of rhyme.

Notes of an Old New Critic

Can it truly be a poem if
It isn’t in a formal shape
It isn’t in a well-known meter
It isn’t cleverly ironic?

It isn’t what’s ambiguous
It isn’t with organic rhymes
It isn’t opposed to paraphrase
It isn't paradoxical?

It isn’t easily read or taught
It's read as if a history text
It's a poet’s biography
It’s biased Lib or GOP?

It's a Frenchman's deconstruction
It's by an AI robot written
It isn’t a solo Verbal Icon
It isn’t a very Well-Wrought Urn?


For most of you out there, way way way younger than I am, the last two lines refer to manuals of close-reading approaches that English grad students and instructors slept with in the 1950s and 60s. From a weakening memory:

W.K. Wimsatt, The Verbal Icon
Cleanth Brooks, The Well-Wrought Urn

This was written for Carol Taylor, who ran the Sphere in the Mesozoic era (and popped up suddenly a few weeks ago, then disappeared again) and didn't like my habit (back then) of ending sonnets with an Alexandrine.

Alexandrine Ragtime

Come on along, come on and hear, you’ll want to cheer
the Alexandrine Ragtime Band. We top the stand,
we’ll take command, we are the grandest in the land!

If you’re keen on mean sestinas, set to ragtime,
and you like your Coke with brandy, Alexandrine –
beat your feet to rhythm? Hexameter each line?

Totally demented? You will like us big time:
we are the bestest poets what wrote a dithyramb –
your honeyed hams – the Alexandrine Ragtime Band!!


And this was one aimed at the legendary Alan Sullivan, who ran the Deep End when the Deep End was deep, and had a defeatist attitude about Triolets - particularly mine.

Critical Mass

“I don’t like triolets,” the critic states,
“I find them quite impossible to write
with grace.” Some may agree with his dictates –
I don’t! With poise and wit, the critic states
his point: my triolet accentuates
and twists his meaning, adds an insight
he won’t like. “Triolets,” the critic states,
“I find them quite impossible to write”


And Then He Wrote

Wheezerly, geezerly
Cantor the poet, he
hit on a dry spell and
couldn't write shit.

Finally, he sleazily,
double-dactylically,
twiddled and twaddled and
broke out of it.


Dear Poet: (Form Letter)

Thank you for your [brief description]
which we have read at [journal's name].
We recognize the erudition,
but must inform you, all the same,

that, though an elegant submission,
just now, we [show no one's to blame].
But please do purchase a subscription -
[imply acceptance then, and fame].

Manifesto

I’m sick of songs of victimhood—
stuff that I don’t want to write.
My work will preach that life is good.
I’m sick of songs of victimhood.
My muse, though, hasn’t understood,
and only sends depressing shite
I’m sick of—songs of victimhood.
Stuff that. I don’t want to write.

Nice one Julie! It reminded me of this oldie from Ghost Trees, a riposte to Frost's "Acquainted with the Night."


Night Light

This is a poem saying Life is good.
Although I am acquainted with the night,
it isn’t wailing grief or slinging mud.
This is a poem saying Life is good,
a song of peace and joy, not painful plight.
And yes—the darkest poems embrace the light.
This is a poem saying Life is good,
although I am acquainted with the night.


I then recalled this pastiche from My Miscellaneous Muse.


Acquainted with the Light

I have been one acquainted with the light.
I have walked out in sun—and back in sun.
I have outwalked the darkest city night.

I have looked down the sunniest city lane.
I have passed utopians, dreamy and sweet,
And raised my eyes to see no one in pain.

I have strutted, jumped and danced on echoing feet
When on my sunlit path a constant cry
Rose from dark caves beneath the city street

That meant for me to pause and praise the sky;
And closer still there was a hopeful sight:
Proud chanticleer, his ruby comb held high,

Proclaimed in song this day would bring delight.
I have been one acquainted with the light.


(I have an ever-growing suspicion that Frost's original is a parody of the overly indulgent ego in poems.)

Triolets, huh.

Confessions of a Triolet

I'm an easy triolet,
but it kind of makes me sad
when I overhear folks say
I'm an easy triolet.
Sure I like to tease and play
with two twists to make a bad
and uneasy triolet,
but it kind of makes me sad.

And slightly slant, the final draft of one of my earliest posts here, and published in Ghost Trees:

Learning a Trade

At ten years old, I learned the art
of stripping down a well-worn chair
awaiting its recovery
at Joseph’s Furniture Repair.

I loved to tear off tufts and yards
of braid and fabric, yank out mesh
and tacks, and bare the chairs to bones,
frames my father would refresh.

In my search for hidden treasures,
I’d peel away a Naugahyde,
brocade or satin, rip out springs
and webbing, finding deep inside

old glasses, watches, pencils, coins,
photos, jewels, and wedding bands—
dry remnants of their owners’ lives,
recovered stories in my hands.

First appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly

EPIC POEM

I thought that I would write a poem
... that's filled with great import,
and what you're reading now, I thought,
... would be the epic sort
that fills at least a book or two,
... yet something came to thwart
my best intentions. That is why
... this epic poem's so short.

How Many Poets Does It Take to Screw in a Light Bulb?

Eschew the headlong thrust, but choose the screw,
That subtle swerve that Archimedes knew.
Let there be light by means of deft rotation
And delicately twisted penetration.



Five Feet

Iamb and spondee are trochees
(An anomaly some find amusing),
And anapest scans as a dactyl –
Poetry is perverse and confusing.

Dactyl falls short of dactylic
Eminence, since it lacks the essential
Third syllable. Thus only trochee
Manages to be self-referential.



Ode to My Rhyming Dictionary

Some rhymes are words you don’t hear every day:
This book alerts me that I’d be a curple,
A horse’s hindquarters, were I to say
That no word in the language rhymes with purple;

It sets me straight by showing me that month,
The name we give an interval of time
Of which a day’s about one thirty-oneth,
Can beat the rap of lacking any rhyme;

It gifts me with a golden rhyme for silver,
That precious color of bright drops of dew
Or moonlight glistening on a newborn chilver
Nursed by her likewise silvered mother ewe;

It takes me by the hand and guides me higher,
As to the very summit of the Blorenge,
Bids me survey Welsh landscape and acquire
That rhymester’s Holy Grail, a match for orange.

And then there's Emily's (somewhat) slant critique of Whitman's "Song of Myself":

Emily to Walt

O vatic Walt, you loom so large—
A One-Man multitude—
An Ark—an overflowing Barge
Of Infinitude!

O Walt of whitecaps, Waves of Words—
My Quaint small vessels, tightly
Measured, sail in minor worlds,
But yours—through cyclones—Mighty.

O Skipper Walt! You sing of bathers—
Lovers and beloved—
Frolicking near sandy shores,
All welcomed—none refused.

O Walt, who shouts the Yes of Being
From your Mainmast’s top—
I can’t contain my Querying
Of your—Barbaric—Yawp!

First appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly; later in Ghost Trees

My favorite poem on this subject is an immortal quatrain by
X.J. KENNEDY:

Ars Poetica

The goose that laid the golden eggs
died looking up its crotch
to find out how its sphincter worked.
Would you lay well? Don't watch.

MEASURED THINKING

In prosody a single fact'll
puzzle more than all the rest:
although an anapest's a dactyl,
a dactyl's not an anapest.

But if trochees are trochaic,
an arrangement quite idyllic,
shouldn't spondees be spondaic,
shouldn't dacytls be dactylic?

I'm not trying to be hokey,
but I've always wondered who
named a spondee with a trochee
then a dactyl with one, too?

It's a chaos as majestic
as a cloudbank or a fractyl:
though no dactyl's anapestic
every anapest's a dactyl.

This one is very old – a one-day draft from one of many poem-a-day challenges I've partaken in.

On writing a ghazal

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever manage to write a ghazal.
Oh I have tried, but what I write is never quite a ghazal.

Perhaps it’s because a part of me thinks
there’s something not quite right about the ghazal

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn't want to criticise –
far be it from me to slight the ghazal,

but it’s just that - how can I put this? – most poems
seem to have a just a little more bite than a ghazal,

And I think it's fair to say that very few forms
put up quite so little fight as a ghazal,

and this repetition thing – I mean, there’s a danger
of just going on all night with a ghazal.

But enough, I’m at risk of sounding like
I’m being impolite about the ghazal.

And let’s focus on the positives here, at least
it looks like this one actually might be a ghazal.

Fingers crossed, I may finally
have done everything right with a ghazal.

And I’m not the sort of person who’d
mess things up just out of spite.

Thanks for starting this very entertaining thread after one of my throw away suggestions Michael C. This is a way better idea than Barbie debate.

Some of the poems on here are not even remotely dreadful and they're more than worthy of their publication credits.

I've got something that's so bad I think it might take a few days for me to pluck up the courage to post it. It's a cringeworthy poem with a cringeworthy title (Anal Cunt) that compares writing to love making and reproduction.

In the meantime, this poem might not immediately strike you as being about poetry writing but it's actually not far off my creative process. I have to be mentally ill to even contemplate writing poetry and then I just get the iguana to write for me (no illicit substances are involved).

A Pet-Induced Psychosis

I once owned a gifted iguana
who could sing "On a Plain" by Nirvana.
He would toot on a flute
and write poems to boot,
in the days when we puffed marijuana.

From the sequence My Sister's Shadow:


My sister gives the clothing she’s outgrown
to me, two years her junior. I accept
her charity resignedly. I own
her boots (still caked with shit in which she stepped),
white blouses for 4-H (with pepper-stains
from sheep who sneezed on her at point-blank range),
her high school gym clothes (bearing the remains
of silkscreened mascots laundered into mange).

My sister’s threadbare hand-me-downs include
her schools (which teem with people she’s impressed).
Although the straitlaced sonnet was eschewed
as “too constricting,” scorned as “overdressed,”
and mothballed as “antique” ere I was born,
at least it’s something Tammy’s never worn.


The whole sequence is self-congratulation for what a brave and noble and unique thing I thought I was doing by becoming a sonnet-writing nerd, instead of another math-and-science nerd like Tammy, as everyone expected. Imagine my disappointment when I found out formalism wasn't quite as dead as my high school teachers had led me to believe.

Shit happens. Everybody gets their share;
the sorry stuff doesn’t discriminate –
it hits the fan and then it’s everywhere.
Nobody ducks until it’s far too late.
A canny lass can never have too many
plans for confronting an emergency.
A sonnet is as good a way as any.
It did for Shagsberg; it’ll do for me.
So sock it to me, Sunshine. I can take it.
I’ll dredge the sludge for something new to say.
I’ll squeeze the mental Plasticine and make it
sing itself. Waste not, want not. That’s the way
Creative Writers learn to deal with it.
This is the way a poet handles shit.

Superfluous Words

The world does not need one more villanelle,
yet teachers still assign the exercise.
Sooner or later someone does it well.

More verses than the damned can read in hell
are written daily, so it's no surprise
the world does not need one more villanelle,

but does it need the countless things we sell
in stores, the million things we advertise?
Sooner or later something is done well.

The lovers meet, the monk prays in his cell,
the married have their kids whose scratchy cries
the world does not need. One more villanelle

or less, what does it matter? Truth to tell,
we all make things for others to despise.
Sooner or later someone does it well.

What if we fail in trying to excel?
We'll all fill coffins of a standard size.
The world does not need one more villanelle,
but still, from time to time, one does it well.

The first poem I ever published was a villanelle, when I was a freshman in college. It would be many years before I learned what an iamb is, as I was about to be overwhelmed by instructors who thought meter had been outlawed a century ago, but I think it scans:



THE LOVE OF MY LIFE ASKS ME FOR A VILLANELLE

You ask me for a villanelle: How’s this?
It’s not too good, but still, it fits the form.
It’s like, if I were missing lips, I’d kiss

Somehow, someway. How could a man resist?
If I could barely rain, I’d play the storm.
You ask me for a villanelle: How’s this?

I’m running out of rhymes. I’m growing pissed.
I wrack my brain but I’m not even warm.
Still, even if I lacked the lips, I’d kiss.

My God, this writing poems is hard business.
So very few real good at it are born.
You ask me for a villanelle: How’s this?

I’ll try real hard, my love, if you insist,
But I can’t help but write the same old corn.
It’s like, if I were missing lips, I’d kiss.

It’s somewhat foggy, but, you catch the gist?
I try for you. You are my guiding norm.
You asked me for a villanelle: How’s this?
It’s like I’m missing lips and still I kiss.

Roger, this is a blast and fits so well with the monster I awoke! Thanks for sharing--I now have a much clearer frame of reference in which to operate.

A deep spelunking of my archives found these efforts from my late teens or early twenties, I think.

LOVE AT THE POETRY SLAM

Love is the only subject for poetry, she proclaimed!
Love is what we write on!

If love is the only subject it certainly explains
the reason poets fight on.

So we sit in a room and write about love,
wracking our brains to do it:

Is love a flower, a song, or a dove—
or gum, after we chew it?

Love is the only subject for us!
Our pens are true and bold!

Love can be written without too much fuss,
for true love can never get old.

--------

UNFOCUSED SONNET

The passing moments take me by surprise:
Each second comes and suddenly is gone,
Then comes and goes the next, and time flows on,
And every minute flees before my eyes.

Here in this passing we are too soon spent.
Each passing hour touches eternity,
And never will return again—but we
Become subsumed in how to pay the rent.

The sonnet form is harder than you think!
When halfway through without a conclusion
The poet's thoughts all turn to confusion
(Though she may take some solace in pink ink).

The last couplet is the grand finale:
In theory, it's a hot tamale!

Okay, wow, when I came here yesterday I must have clicked directly on the most recent post, Roger's latest, and been shot straight to his last post. I'd missed the immense wealth of entertaining and talent-bursting stuff that had accrued since Michael C. was sport enough to start this thread on Michael T's nudge (on my recent thread). (You should have told me, Michael C., or someone! Some of us [maybe just me?] are too busy on the weekdays to even stay properly fed, much less go meandering around the far reaches of the Sphere! And btw, my name is Alexandra, not Angelica. You can call me Lexa, if that helps. ;))

There's way too much here for me now to comment properly on any of it. Let me just say that I find all of these, each in its own way, clever, interesting, and rib-tickling, even the ones that don't touch into other areas or seek for broader meaning. What's amazing to me is how many of these poems overlap each other in their approaches and/or the specifics that they address. "Ideas are universally, not individually, rooted," it's been said, and I believe it. In light of my own villanelle-on-villanelle thread, I especially appreciate the examples of self-referential villanelles, which I'd been told were legion--it was news to me.

Striking a very different note than the above examples, here's this from my "romantic period":


On Writing Poetry Late at Night


Time, did you suppose you might sedate
my passion into hush, now that the hour
has stretched its way from early into late?
Your hands are light—too light to wield such power!

My dreaming joy is like a tropic flower
that neither day nor night can subjugate;
it scorns to close in eveningtime or cower
when wildbeasts howl and rainstorms saturate
the shrouded ground with floods of streaming gray.

I seek my fill in day and nighttime’s deep;
light-fed, I find in darkness, too, a ray
to slake me: something rustled from its sleep—
sucked up from sun, and strong enough to stay.

This was - obviously - written a very long time ago, in my pre wise-ass year.

The Process

The way I write is
I get a long and graceful table
and an old fashioned pen

or a slender Japanese brush
and hack and hack and chop
with the dull wood sword

that disgraced ronins use for seppuku
until my guts spill on the table
then dip in the pen

and get something down on paper.

Sometimes these wounds
stay fresh for years.


This one is more about living a poem than writing it.

Slow Rondeau

A slow rondeau is an erotic way
for dancers to portray the interplay
of couples who, with lover’s vertigo,
surround each other in the ebb and flow
of dreams that intersect a white bouquet.

In time, he winces when he hears her bray,
and she’s convinced she’s wed a popinjay –
the metaphor’s no longer apropos:
a slow rondeau

becomes a tight and vicious rondelet
of iterating phrases that betray
the dancers and the dream – but even so,
though lovers seem to stumble they still know
when urge remains to honor and obey
a slow rondeau.


This one goes bad - like the eggs it describes - by line four or sooner. But it does qualify as a PAP.

King of the Sestina

Awake all night with a sick sestina
I know by dawn there is nothing meaner
than six bad lines entwined in unrhymed scrawl.
A half a dozen eggs flung at a wall
to form an omelet makes as much sense
as incubating this perversely dense
monstrosity, which, within an hour,
must blossom as a six-leaf flower.

I’ll persevere, because I play the game
to win - this poet’s in it for the fame -
and to assure acclaim I’ll delegate
a clever envoy, meant to orchestrate
my reign as King of the Sestina and cheer
the end game. Bishop topples King! Oh dear!

And, as for Muses:

Don’t Need Her Help

After Michael Drayton, Idea 61

You hate my art! You tear it all apart.
Go away, we’re through, just let me be.
You’ve always been a challenge to my heart,
a sneaky and snide nemesis for me.
Buzz off and stay away, sing to crows.
Do ignore me if we meet again.
And please! No sorry reconciling pose,
for I would never bother to explain
how your fecklessness has soured the breath
I use to form in verse what might reprise
the love conceits you say are “done-to-death,”
countering your reckless and specious lies.
Carnal Cupid knows we’re finally over
and helps this Muse-free sonneteer recover.

DOPEY

I'm just a dopey little poem.
Who thought me up, and why?
I do not have a truth to tell.
I do not have a lie.
I am the wind that bends no tree.
I am the passer-by.
I live when I am said out loud,
and when I'm not, I die.

I'm just a mouth with careless lips
that hum a jaunty tune.
The snoring ghost of midnight,
the squinting ghost of noon.
I am the shadow of the clock
beneath a shining moon.
I'm just a dopey little poem.
You found me out too soon.

A quatrain by Barbara Loots:

ON LEAFING THROUGH A POETRY ANTHOLOGY

For immortality,
one poem will do.
Which one it is
will not be up to you.