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For Claire

I have begun to dream each night of Claire,
pale childhood ghost, her image not quite clear.
We were lovers once and young, and unaware.

Ash gray eyes, short-cropped-straw-light-near-white hair,
Breathless street waif look, so au courant that year.
I have begun to dream each night of Claire,

who found me at a bleak Bruxelles affair:
You’ve not yet been? It is, you know, so near.
We were lovers once and young, and unaware,

and drove all night to Paris on a dare:
We go? I know <u>le tout Paris</u>, my dear.
I have begun to dream that each night Claire

arrives with Muscadet, les fruits de mer -
fills my anxious mouth, and wipes away my fear -
she was my lover once, and young, and yet aware

that food and wine, and softly perfumed air,
would make my awkwardness soon disappear.
I have begun to dream. Each night now Claire

and I ascend to Sacre Coeur, her bare,
skin warm beneath a street-length cloak; and here
I am her lover, yes, and young, and unaware

that one day reveries of times this rare
will have an old man blink to fight a tear.
I have begun to dream each night of Claire;
we were lovers once and young, and unaware.

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Funny, clever take on aging, a rueful preview of "memory lane"--that dreadful neighborhood we all end up in--and charming in its use of French, of dialogue with an accent, of irony, and of food! I recognize this poem, and know that the poet is not just pretending when he discusses food.

Or when he tackles any of the strict forms of poetry, either: this is extremely skillful, so fresh and imaginative it almost disguises the sadness.


~Rhina

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I remember this delightful picture of a young man's initiation into the world of sex and garlic. The repetition of the villanelle is used with wit.
Lovely stuff.
Janet

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited November 27, 2004).]

I loved this when I first read it here, and I'm sure I'm going to repeat what I said then. It is an entirely charming poem -romantic and nostalgic. The only thing that doesn't seem quite right to me is that 'childhood ghost' because this isn't a 'childhood' memory, is it? Claire was young but certainly not a child, neither was the narrator. But apart from that, lovely stuff, and an exceptional example of the villanelle form, which is not an easy one to master.
Regards, Maz

This seems to have been further refined since I last saw it (and I may not have seen the final draft at D.E.). It's a superb villanelle. The sentiment is handled with great skill as well, and one can't easily forget whose work this is.

Nothing like driving all night (to the City of Light, among other places) together to put a fix on you for life.

By the way, when I said in my reply (back then) that this was "spare" in comparison to the poet's other work, it's possible that I was (also) influenced by what I now see as the paring-down quality of the repetends. A villanelle, like a song with refrains, allows one to linger over thoughts, see their relationships with one another more, and move both backward and forward in time so as to entice it to stand still a little longer. There is less quantity and more depth when it's done well.

"'Memory lane'--that dreadful neighborhood we all end up in": ha! That's such a scintillating line, you should write a poem for it, Rhina.

Terese

[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited November 30, 2004).]

A tour de forceindeed. Felicitations!! to whomsoever,

Margaret.

Tender, lovely, sad and romantic. My one nit is the "childhood ghost" --as Maz pointed out, though this is about being young, it's not about childhood.

Très charmant!

I agree that this is a very acomplished villanelle. At the Deep End I told the author "We'll always have Paris." His response? "The Nazis wore grey, and you wore a green blazer!" Wonderful poem.

Funny and charming. Not much you could say about this kind of thing is there?

I'm not sure I'd like to have the poet to dinner though http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

Maybe for a triste or something like that, but definitely not for chicken pot pie.

Maggie, I'm intrigued by a dish I've never heard of! What's a "triste"? That's the Spanish/French/Italian word for "sad," which doesn't bode well for a recipe! As it happens, this poem is one of the only three I recognize among these 18 poems, and it would be a mistake to pass up a dinner cooked by this poet.

Uno chiste eh?

I suppose I am to be embarrassed by someone's lack of wit.

I'm not. Nor sad.

Living in phonetics ville has left me out of the spelling competitions. But it has given me much more to think about than the usual love found/love lost kinds of things.

Nothing wrong with that though and this poet must be one helluva lover http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif not to mention, somewhat of a show off.

And, nothing wrong with that either in the proper setting http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

Your own, yes.

Your insinuating that Ms. Espaillat lacks wit has got to be the single most ironic thing I've ever witnessed on this board.

It's one thing to be amusingly outspoken about your taste in poetry, or to poke a little fun at [name deleted], but now you're just being inexplicably rude, and to one of the most unfailingly nice people here. What the hell is your problem?




[This message has been edited by Rose Kelleher (edited December 06, 2004).]

It's a villanelle-like poem, but not a villanelle.
Villanelles are 19 lines, and this is 25.

Most reference guides (okay, two out of the three I looked at) indicate that a villanelle can be any length, provided that an odd number of tercets are used, so that both refrain lines appear equally.

[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited December 06, 2004).]

Are we going to out ourselves now and start responding?
Janet

No,no. I'm staying in the poetry closet. It's dangerous out there....
Regards, Maz

Just call it a stretch villanelle. Actually, I have seen Marilyn Hacker do them seven and even nine stanzas long, and I have done a curtal villanelle of five stanzas. The form is so easily recognizable that people will know which one you are playing with, no matter how many stanzas you decide to include. With form, it is only important that people know where you have set the net, not which net you decide to play with.

Susan

There are many things to admire about this one, including how it varies the refrain smoothly and unobtrusively, allowing the poem to extend beyond the usual 19 lines (an artistic decision which in itself enacts the poem's nightly obsession with Claire) while still remaining musical.

May I just add how I admire this particular Hopkinsesque line, with its sprung rhythm and 10 strong monosyllables, how it embodies the poet's emotional reminiscence--through the stresses and that mouthful-of-a-precise adjective used to describe the hair.

Yes, I admire this wistful poem enormously, and believe I have commented on it before.
By some quirk of the memory, I had it down as W--C--Esq, rather than M--C--Esq.
Best regards,
David

Yes, Maz, it is dangerous to disagree here at the Able Muse. You can say that as many times as you like and I'll agree with you http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

I mean absolutely no ill will towards this poet or to our gracious Lariat who definitely is much more experienced than most of us here in terms of digressing on why a poem works or not. I wish I knew what she did, not just about poetry but about the life of a well known poet. http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif One that I enjoy reading now that I know her name. I am often out of the loop over here in the Middle East, noting that for eleven years I lived in a police state that forbid most modern works of poesy. I doubt though that Rhina's would have been banned, it is just that there aren't very good book buyers in the bookstalls of Riyad.

Now:


The Justification for "there's not much one can say about this type of thing" or, why I wouldn't want to http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif :

This poem feels pretty stuffy. Unfortunately. For the poet who intends no harm (quite obvious in that tearful ending, which also some might venture to say, is a maudlin ending). Yikes I don't like to be the bearer of un-glad tidings. There is so much the poet leaves to me as the reader to "approach" and apparently this has escaped your notice (Rhina) and his/hers. Again, yikes.

I could continue outside the boundaries of this painting as I often do when looking at paintings and imagine what is OUTSIDE of this poem...dangerous. But that is what a critic should do as a service to future poets and likely students of poetry because that is what happens when people bring their own histories into poems i.e. they apply their biases.

When I venture there I might pose myself a question (really I'm posing it to the poet but nevermind) and ask, "Did she leave you because of your stuffiness or your tendency to get really maudlin?" I'd like to believe she died of some dreaded disease. I don't know the age of the poet nor the sex and that is a good thing! Because then I would be horribly, horribly biased. It could have been written by a very talented sixteen year old female crack addict that is also a lesbian. But we know it is not. It is so well done that it appears to be written by this, a man at an advanced age while he is remembering the good old days in le tout Paris. Nice place Paree. (I especially liked the bones in the Natural History Museum, the bones of the Siamese Twins (specifically) that are fused at the heart, I luv u but u r killing me (captioned by a funny teenager in my brood)).

As well, the form chosen to express the case emphasizes the maudlin ending..villanelles or villanelle-like...they are pretty but they seem to be hazardous to the content of some poems. I actually like them a whole bunch although I've heard some people around here say they absolutely hate them so I must be wrong, certainly, in that opinion.

I could also venture into the political aspect of all poetry. The gender specifics, the elitisms, nature of oppression and the whatnots but that would truly destroy an otherwise "charming" poem, one that you (Rhina) have selected as one of the truly best ones. Okay. I hope you feel justified in that and I'm relatively sure that you will have company in defending the aspect of "not looking too deep into this piece". I'm in the other camp unfortunately and will likely stand all by my little self and say, nope...no chicken pot pie for him/her!

But maybe a hug/kiss/triste sandwich for a poet who is feeling genuinely heart broken (I sure hope this little poem is true because it is a lovely love poem and I LIKE fairy tales to escape the bitter realities we face nowdays!)

The diagnosis:

This has entertainment value. Not much more. Maybe a little ironical shadenfraude (the maybe-he-deserved-it kind of thing) IF and ONLY IF the poet intended us to take it apart in such a picky manner. But that of course, we'll probably never know.

Kind of like how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop.

All my thanks to Rhina for allowing us to digress and for sharing her knowledge and experience here.



[This message has been edited by Maggie Porter (edited December 06, 2004).]

Thanks to all whocommented on the poem, and apologies for not responding individually. I'm in a bad situation this week as far as personal time is converned.

I did want to indicate, however, that those who felt the poem was over-romanticized in parts, somewhat overdone, have a legitimate point. I will repeat below the comments I made when the poem was posted here in October:

Some general notes. This was a deliberate attempt to go somewhat over the top - to be more romantic and lyrical than my usual writing - and to come up with a different "voice". As part of this, I traded metrical correctness for emotion and rhythm when a line felt right to me; and I went to the closely related rhymes to enhance the dream-like feeling, as Terese noted.

Confession: the poem is incomplete. This villanelle is a part - maybe 30% in terms of lines - of a much longer and more ambitious piece that I have been playing with for several years and am still unable to slap into shape. The concept is a somewhat melodramatic villanelle that goes just to the edge of sappiness; interspersed with much looser het-met stanzas of varying lengths and random rhyme. The het-met stanzas are indented and italicized, and essentially comment on the love poem with a different, and probably more honest, eye. Because of this structure, much of the tension and "back story" of the villanelle depends on the anti-villanelle that should accompany it, and consequently Roger and Susan had a valid point in their responses when they looked for a richer poem.

To make the thing work, the underlying villanelle has to be at least semi-decent, even if overcooked. The longer poem depends on the villanelle. What I get from your comments is that the villanelle can stand some work and improvement, but seems good enough to carry the concept. It has been encouraging, and I hope provides me with the initiative to make the rest of it work.

and this - ...the approach I'm working with, for whatever perverse reason, is the interweaving of another poem by another voice, which is intended to reveal, layer by layer, that most of the talk about Claire is bravado, that she actually spent most of the weekend with an old boyfriend (she had only recently relocated to Belgium from Paris), and that the narrator's love affair and escape from "artlessness" was with Paris, not Claire. (Of course, there's no guarantee that's true either - a poet is free to tell you what he wishes - which is the third level I'm trying to bring into the monster.)

The real Claire was named Maud...but "bawd" and "fraud" and "awed" do little to romanticize a poem, so I stole "Claire" from a girl in the Antwerp office, who was reputed to be an easy rhyme.

It seems my bravado was more believable than I thought. I hope to complete the longer poem soon - you guys have ceretainly encouraged me - and post it on the Sphere, and see if it works.

Thanks - Michael