[Tim Murphy]

Lariat Board

My dear friends, we are gathering here to discuss the Sphere and our development as writers within this institution. The last event I hosted featured Maryann, Wendy, and Marion, so I am giving the men equal time. I sometimes joke that when Keats reached my age he’d been dead for thirty years. But I say in deadly earnest to some of our young writers, Chris Childers, Aaron Poochigian, Danny Haar, that if the internet and the Sphere had existed when I was a boy, I would be far more advanced in the craft than I am. Here are my initial questions for the three of you.

John, I was recruited to the Sphere by Alan who said I had to read your wolves poem. We both felt the draft was a metrical disaster, but that there was a great underlying musicality and precision to the language. I then posted a disquisition on my goofy theories on meter, of which Tim Steele said "You should confine yourself to writing in rather than on meter.” Of course it was written expressly for you, and I have rarely seen a metrical mistake since. You have become an authoritative moderator, and I would like you to reflect on your experiences here.

Roger, after Alan convened the Deep End, I criticized you for my own sin, confessional navel gazing. But after I persuaded Mike Juster to return and start the Translation Board, you started putting up fabulous translations from the Spanish. Then after your baby was born, you started posting these terrific children’s poems. Please tell us about your experience at the Sphere and your evolution as a writer.

Jaime, you are kind of a mad genius around here. I suspect that you and Carol and Mike were the founding members of the Sphere. You have your collection coming out shortly, which is cause for celebration from all of us who have corrected its punctuation and laughed ourselves senseless over some of your funniest poems. What have you learned from the Sphere?

I want to encourage all Spherians to join in this discussion.

[Richard Wilbur]

Dear Mr. Schechter:
I've much enjoyed reading My Champion Bee, and I find myself in agreement with you as to what children's verse should be. I've taken to subtitling some of my efforts " For children and others." It seems to me that poems for kids should also please and amuse the adults who may read them with or to the kids. I like your moo-saying horse, and your triolets (which I can hear small voices chanting) and "Solar Lunacy," and much else; and I join you in defying the sort of children's-book editor who thinks "chrysalises" is too big a word for the young. Good wishes to you,
Richard Wilbur

[Tim Murphy]

Bob, I'll add to Dick's comments. My mother, Katherine Murphy, was leading actress at the University of Minnesota. My dad fell in love watching her play Lady Macbeth. Her career was substantially derailed by her having six kids, all of whom were reared on milk and poetry. When we were old enough, she went on to a distinguished stint in children's theatre. Her idea of a children's play was A Midsummer Night's Eve. Suffice it to say, I regard her as an authority on children's verse. I've been reading her your book. So far we've done "Shoes," "The Mess," and "The Horse Who Said Moo," and she is absolutely enchanted. She just laughs out loud. Congratulations on pleasing a lady who expects everyone to write to Lewis Carrol's standards.

I also just talked to the Chairman, who very well recalls Jim Hayes and John Beaton and sends greetings to all of us.

[This message has been edited by Tim Murphy (edited June 12, 2007).]

[Roger Slater]

Tim, I was hoping that John or Jim would jump in here ahead of me, since I hardly know what to say on the Big Question you have asked about my evolution as a writer. I'm afraid I haven't reflected enough to be all that thoughtful in my response, except to say, along with many people here (I suspect), that the internet has played a huge role, and, of course, the Sphere has been invaluable. I think first and foremost that the Sphere, by providing a community of writers, has motivated me to keep writing and thinking about writing for several years, and, if I've gotten better at writing along the way, it's not just been the high quality of the feedback I get around here from so many worthy poets who help me and make me feel inadequate at the same time, but, more basically, the sheer amount of time I have spent working at the craft thanks to the existence of the Sphere and of one or two other workshops (Gazebo in particular). I think that I need more immediate response and feedback from my writing than I could possibly get working in a non-literary environment, with few if any friends who write, sending off my poems to editors I may not hear from again for many months, and then only to get a verdict but no discussion.

Anyway, before I blather any further, I'm going to sit back and see what others have to say. I'm thrilled to have heard from Richard Wilbur on my manuscript of children's poems, of course, and grateful to Tim for making it happen for me. And Tim, I couldn't be happier that your mother likes what I'm doing. Finding that out, by the way, is another of the many benefits of posting at places like the Sphere, since reader feedback is pretty hard to come by if you merely publish an occasional poem in a magazine or journal. Though I know my poems are supposed to be for children, I'm at least as gratified to know that a literate grown-up has enjoyed them as I'd be to hear from a six year old. After all, though it's all well and good to pretend that children have wonderful taste and can't be fooled, etc., the fact is that you could stand in front of a kindergarten class and make them laugh just as hard by farting as by reciting a poem by Jack Prelutsky or Shel Silverstein. Sure, kids have to like the poems, but the real test is whether adults do as well.

[Tim Murphy]

Roger, I know what I think of your evolution as a writer, and I have shared it with you privately. Suffice it to say that when I got here you were dismal in two senses, matter and craft. You now write nothing that is not excellent. I just got off the phone with Rhina who is so enamored of the Spanish translations. I read her the Horse Who Says Moo, and she reacted just as my mom did. Would you please post that poem, and then, if you can use SEARCH, which defeats me, post the little translation and Wilbur's comment from 2003. Thanks, yr lariat

[Roger Slater]

THE HORSE WHO SAID MOO

There once was a horse who refused to say neigh.
Ask him a question, he'd answer with moo.
He didn't give milk, and he loved to eat hay.
But starting when he was a pony, he knew,

the first time he heard a cow speak to a cow,
that neighing and whinnying just wouldn't do.
"Let dogs say woof woof and let cats say meow,"
he told himself then, "but this horse will say moo."

Did his parents get angry? They sure did, and how!
"We both say neigh, why can't you say neigh, too?
Haven't you noticed that you're not a cow?"
"Of course," he said, not with a neigh but a moo,

"but mooing alone does not make me a cow.
Watch me! I still love to gallop and trot.
I even enjoy being hitched to a plough!
But do I enjoy saying neigh? I do not."

His parents relented. "Fine, then, say moo.
Meow if you want to. Oink, roar or bray.
If it makes you happy, say cock a doodle doo.
Just be a proud horse and you need not say neigh."

[Tim Murphy]

I think there is profundity in this poem of Bob's, what Dick Wilbur is asking for from writers for children. Read it again, and change every neigh to nay, and you will see what I am saying.

[John Beaton]

Hi, Tim. Thank you for including me on this thread. It's an honour to have Richard looking in on it.

Sorry for the tardy entrance, but I've been very pressed for time this week.

I'll start with a description of my first experience on Eratosphere.

At the time (2000) I had been interested in poetry, having memorised quite a lot over the years, including some Burns which I recited at Burns Suppers. (A Scottish accent in Canada will lead to that.)

I had also been writing some. To the extent that people on a few internet boards I had begun to check out found them pleasing, they did so as much for sound and rhythm as for meaning. Although I knew little of technique, I was naturally drawn to metrical poetry.

I had also written some humorous poems about a fellow called "Big Ian" and his dog "Porridgeface" and was performing them at various Celtic gatherings. I didn't really want to become known as a serious poet, so I entered the Board with the pseudonym "Porridgeface", which quickly became "Porridge" or "Po" and provided an identity shield behind which I was a little more carefree about what I wrote than I am today.

My first post was a poem called "Poacher". (You and I connected on "Wolves" a little time after I had started posting here.) I couldn't tell an iamb from a trochee, but I thought it was alright. Little did I know! Alan minced no words.

One of his comments was that it was old-fashioned, so I fired back a contemporary rewrite, which was mischievous. We had a robust but sporting exchange on that and we seemed to like each other well enough right from the start.

However, I could see that his comments, although terse, were dead-on. I had never had such hard-hitting but accurate critique. It showed me how to improve my writing immediately. I loved it.

I quickly got a Norton anthology and learned some rudiments of meter from the introduction (which is a very good beginners' primer).

I figured out how to make "Poacher" better, then Carol weighed in with further help. Before I knew it, my poem had changed totally and I had developed a strong respect for the people on this Board.

"Poacher" started out with no metrical control and with lots of careless language. Here's pretty much how it ended up, my first poem on Eratosphere, better I thought than any serious poem I had crafted in the past. I was hooked!

Poacher

What manner of man pretends to possess
spacethe bens and the glens and the bays?
He may harness the wind, he may tether the clouds,
he may outlive his turrets and rise from his shrouds
spaceand walk on the froth of the flood,
but this river was ever my forefathers’ river—
it thirst-tamed the hand-plough and tempered the scythe-blade,
but this river was ever my birthright and blood,
spacebut this river will never be his.

Mured in his castle, portcullis and stone,
spacehe lords off the backs of the poor,
while we’re bleak in the smoke, hollow-bellied and cold,
while we’re bleak in the black house, beds rotted with mould,
spaceour bairns with no shoes for their feet,
but the salmon are running, bright silver they’re running,
to their redds, their rites, and their red leaves of autumn,
but the salmon are running, white torrents of sleet,
spacebut the salmon are running this moon.

So I smuggle myself through the caves of the night,
spacehis keepers I’ll slip or I’ll brave.
And out on the shingle, and flouting his gospel,
and out by the salmon-whorled glide of the Grouse Pool,
spaceI wade with my net through the drift;
and I fish like a selkie, a sleek silky selkie,
by flank-flash and slime-smell and arch ancient instinct,
and I fish like a selkie, sly, stealthy, and swift,
spaceand I fish like a selkie this night.

I feel the first stab of dawn’s fire-spear array,
spacea glance; keepers’ spyglasses’ glint.
I’m stalked from the high ground, I’m stalked in the sunshine,
I’m stalked by his stalkers, men bred to their line,
spaceand I raise my fist like a stone;
then I plunge in this river, my beloved river,
with my sackful of salmon and trust to her surgings,
then I plunge in this river no reiver may own,
spacethen I plunge in my river this day.

I'm also a fan of kid's poems and read all of Shel Silverstein''s works to my children at bed-time when they were little. They loved these poems and were inspired to make up plenty of their own. So it's a delight to see Roger creating more.

Jim has yet to appear, but he's been one of my great sources of entertainment and camaraderie here over the years.

John

[Tim Murphy]

JONNO! WOW! I have never seen this, not in the whole of my sorry long life. As I am to prairie, so you are to rivers. I well recall your being Porridgeface. The reason we're doing this celebration is the four of us have been friends since the dawn of Creation, and I think we've been immensely helpful to one another. Do me a favor. Search the archive and put up the Steelhead poem, and the Chairman's comments. I believe it was 2003. I shall reflect with you on my recollections of the composition of that poem. After Jaime weighs in, I am also going to reflect on the composition of my nine part poem, Hunter's Log, where the entire community hewed wood and carried water.

[John Beaton]

Hi, Tim, here's the poem. I kept a copy of Richard's feedback, but I had a hard-drive failure and lost some data. At present, I can't quickly retrieve it.

Wild Immanuel

The pool is basalt black; a charcoal stump
hunkers where I’ll fish at morning’s glow.
I wait till scouting hints of sunrise jump
the trees, till dawn un-blankets dozing snow,
then cast beside the root; lead pocks the gloom
and bellies peeling line around the flanks
of brawling whorls that bound the pewter flume.
I wade around the trees on flooded banks.

The pencil-weight strikes bottom, starts to trip:
tic tic. I visualize a contour map:
the riverbed—retrieve, recast, whirr, splip—
in line-tap Braille, and soon I find the lap
in which he’ll lie. Below the stump a hollow,
then a rock. Yes, he’ll be holding there
balanced on the thalweg, which I follow—
chute, compression wave, and stone-split flare.

Adjust the length of lead. Weight bounce, a knock,
then, scraping down the stone, tic, stop, and strike;
a sense of colossal weight, a moving rock,
followed by slackness. Loss. A thornlike spike
of dorsal fin above a coursing hump—
deep, almost invisible, its arc
sweeps the tailout, slaloms to the stump,
and lets the dawning swallow it like dark.

I watch the patch of water where it sank
then let it float away, with wistfulness;
next day I tramp the meadows to that bank,
where January mist and darkness coalesce.
Today I will be ready when he takes,
alert, prepared to strike him trigger-fast.
Crevasses yawn above the trees—dawn breaks;
this time I know precisely where to cast.

Tic tic, tic tic, tic stop—I’ve struck already
and now we’re locked together; slow pulsations
presage his charge but still he’s holding steady;
my instincts wait on his deliberations…
This fish is evolution’s masterpiece;
his caudal wrist is thick, his tail is large
to match the Little Qualicum’s caprice—
its great, precipitate, flash-flood discharge.

Two hundred times its summer volume—he
can navigate the rapids in that flood,
evading trundling boulders and debris
of trees that spear down through the murk. His blood
begins to surge and urges him to mate,
to pass on traits distinguishable from other
rivers’ tribes, to run the winter spate,
he and the torrent steeling one another.

And now he runs, leaves me like Hemingway’s
Old Man of the Sea, a throwback Ahab, lost
in crazed resolve. He leaps there in the haze,
spectral, as though flash-frozen by the frost,
then splashes down and disappears inside
his territory of rushing, ice-black water;
he’s primed to seek asylum, bolt and hide;
in his world, losing struggles end in slaughter.

He’s lost if line guides ice or if he shoots
the glide—a certainty if he otterboards
downstream; the stump’s a labyrinth of roots;
upstream the banks are flooded like the fords—
the odds are on his side. I do not dare
to let him choose the dueling ground. I pull
the line; he pulls the strings, goes everywhere—
the windings on my reel reveal the spool.

I let him beat upriver then exert
pressure against him, sideways and downstream
and feel him give; he turns, tries to assert
his course. I have his measure now; abeam,
I let the river sap him, clamber out
beside a grassy cleft lapped by the spate
and, leveraging each thrash, I haul his snout
towards it, slacken off; he lies in state.

I grasp his tail—he offers no resistance—
then kick-pile alder leaves and lay him there,
an altar to our transient coexistence;
red crescents flicker—urgent gill plates flare.
A steelhead buck, raw speed and adrenalin,
quicksilver curves awash over ochre and cream,
eye wilder than his unclipped adipose fin,
at twenty pounds, he’s a trophy hunter’s dream.

But not for me. In truth I am relieved;
such saviors of the wild gene pool are blessed
with mandatory release. He is reprieved.
I float him, breathing, till he kicks to wrest
himself from my supporting sling of hands
through icy water. His back is long and green
as he propels himself to hinterlands
of winter-runs in the river’s cold ravine.

And in some cloud of flittering gravel he
released the milt of millennial design
alongside hatchery does; then recently
the run did not return—a broken line.
But still I walk the meadowland and see
his first and second comings in the mist—
his sacred fin, his leap, him swimming free,
that final wave of tail and caudal wrist.

John