[Maryann Corbett]

I hoped to post a short kickoff this morning, but didn't have time before work. So as a substitute until I get home, here's a link to a much earlier thread in celebration of short poems. The cutoff for that earlier thread wasn't quite as short, but many of the poems included in it do fall under our eleven-line limit. Enjoy, add poems if you wish, and I'll say more later this evening.

Best short poems

[Roger Slater]

I thought the deadline was Feb 15? Was it moved up without my noticing? I'd still like to submit a little something if possible.

[Maryann Corbett]

No, Roger, you're correct: the deadline is February 15. This is just a preliminary discussion, a bit of a warmup, throwing around ideas about what short poems can do.

And you're right to be confused. I was supposed to start that discussion on Mastery, not on DG! Apologies for being so distracted. I'll move the thread up there.

[wendy v]

That link is a great mini-anthology, Maryann. Coulette on Ginsberg made me laugh out loud. Does anyone know if the book Mezey mentioned ever got published ?
I couldn't find it online.

I can suddenly think of dozens of marvelous 12-line poems, so my own 11 line rule has already
come back to bite me ..

Actually, I hope it challenges us to come up with some lesser known poems.

I'll start with one by Wallace Stevens, which is on my mind having read the Brit/Yank/ Culture Discussion over on General Talk.

A Mythology Reflects its Region

A mythology reflects its region. Here
In Connecticut, we never lived in a time
When mythology was possible -- but if we had --
That raises the question of the image's truth.
The image must be of the nature of its creator.
It is the nature of its creator increased,
Heightened. It is he, anew, in a freshened youth
And it is he in the substance of his region,
Wood of his forests and stones out of his fields,
Or from under his mountain.

[Maryann Corbett]

Wendy, you've upped the ante considerably with the Stevens. After that, the examples in what I'm about to post may seem a little too simple! But this is what I wrote last night, so here goes:

What can you do with eleven lines?

That's the title our judge has suggested for this thread, in which we will warm up for our grand event for March on the Distinguished Guest board: the Short Poems Bakeoff, judged by Wendy Videlock.

I propose to kick off this topic by musing on just a few things one can accomplish by keeping the poem small—or despite keeping it small. By being brief myself, I hope I'm leaving lots of room for people to riff on what I've started, or go off in some wild new direction, or do whatever the spirit moves them to do.

In eleven lines or less, there are any number of things you can't do. You can't write a villanelle, or a sonnet, or a rondeau, so a number of the fixed forms are ruled out. You can't expound; you can't play a great many variations on an idea.

Nevertheless, in eleven lines or fewer, you can write something that has one or more of the following excellent characteristics. I'll throw in a couple of famous examples of each. I'm hoping others will introduce me to new examples, and I'm also hoping they'll add categories to mine.

Here are a few of the most basic things that eleven lines allow a poet to do.

—Tell a whole story in outline, conveyed with just a few details

xxxxxJade-Staircase Grievance

xxxxxNight long on the jade staircase, white
xxxxxdew appears, soaks through gauze stockings.

xxxxxShe lets down crystalline blinds, gazes out
xxxxxthrough jewel lacework at the autumn moon.
xxxxxLi Bai, trans. David Hinton

xxxxxMentor

xxxxx For Robert Francis

xxxxxHad I known, only known
xxxxxwhen I lived so near,
xxxxxI'd have gone, gladly gone
xxxxxforegoing my fear
xxxxxof the wholly grown
xxxxxand the nearly great.
xxxxxBut I learned alone,
xxxxxso I learned too late

xxxxxTimothy Murphy

—Create something memorable for its sounds Everyone who has learned a nursery rhyme knows the staying power of the short metrical and rhymed form.

xxxxxA Dust of Snow

xxxxxThe way a crow
xxxxxShook down on me
xxxxxA dust of snow
xxxxxFrom a hemlock tree

xxxxxHas given my heart
xxxxxA change of mood
xxxxxAnd saved some part
xxxxxOf a day I had rued.

xxxxxRobert Frost

—Present a single vivid image. You will all be able to predict these examples, but don't be put off by that. They've been anthologized a gazillion times because they work, and because they stick in the mind.

xxxxxIn a Station of the Metro

xxxxxThe apparition of these faces in the crowd ;
xxxxxPetals on a wet, black bough.

xxxxxEzra Pound

xxxxxFog

xxxxxThe fog comes
xxxxxon little cat feet.

xxxxxIt sits looking
xxxxxover harbor and city
xxxxxon silent haunches
xxxxxand then moves on.

xxxxxCarl Sandburg

—Utter a zinger, or its special subtype, the zinger insult

xxxxxHere lies my wife; here let her lie.
xxxxxNow she's at rest. And so am I.

xxxxxJohn Dryden

This seems like an appropriate place to mention the HyperTexts pages on epigrams:

http://www.thehypertexts.com/Epigram...and_Poetry.htm

—Present something gnomic, or cryptic, or otherwise intriguing by its incompleteness


xxxxxBookworm

xxxxxA moth ate a word! To me that seemed
xxxxxA strange thing to happen, when I heard that wonder, —
xxxxxA worm that would swallow the speech of a man,
xxxxxSayings of strength steal in the dark,
xxxxxThoughts of the mighty; yet the thieving sprite
xxxxxWas none the wiser for the words he had eaten!

xxxxxOld English riddle; translator unnamed.


xxxxxWestern Wind

xxxxxWestron wind, when will thou blow?
xxxxxThe small rain down can rain.
xxxxxChrist, if my love were in my arms,
xxxxxAnd I in my bed again.

xxxxxMiddle English lyric

—Stay within the requirements of a number of fixed forms. Here's just one, the ovillejo

xxxxxOstinato

xxxxxEvidence says I lie
xxxxxBut I--
xxxxxThough all the world concur--
xxxxxPrefer
xxxxxOne voice, and one alone:
xxxxxMy own.
xxxxxThe experts cluck and groan,
xxxxx"No, no! It's round, not flat!"
xxxxxTheir data second that.
xxxxxBut I prefer my own.

xxxxxRhina Espaillat


There! With luck, the original short poems thread and these additions should get us going.

[Orwn Acra]

As much as I like the Stevens poem, I think that it could have possibly been longer. I think the short poem works best when there's a point to it being so short; as if the poem's brevity says as much as the poem's words.

Piet Hein was great at capturing the profound inside his grooks:

Hamlet Anno Domini

Co-existence
or no existence.

Nothing Is Indispensable

The universe may
be as great as they say.
But it wouldn't be missed
if it didn't exist.

What Love Is Like

Love is like
a pineapple,
sweet and
undefinable.

Commutative Law

No cow's like a horse
and no horse like a cow.
That's one similarity
anyhow.

His poems are like math haikus.

[Maryann Corbett]

Bill Coyle is another poet skilled at accomplishing things by means of a poem's brevity.

Regret

xxxHow to explain?
The wind sighs in the trees
leafing through memories
xxxof last night's rain.

And his "Aubade"--although it's twelve lines and doesn't quite make our limit--was described by the NYTimes book reviewer as a "hole in one" because it's a single sentence, with no punctuation, its line breaks doing everything that commas might otherwise do. The all-in-one-sentence delivery is another thing that only be done with the shortest of poems.

[Petra Norr]

Thanks for a very good essay, Maryann. Your categories help us look at some old familiar poems in new ways and in so doing understand better what makes them work.
I’ve come up with a couple of poems that fall into a loose kind of category. The first poem is a huge favorite of mine, by WH Davies. It’s in my Rattlebag anthology, but since I was too lazy to write it out ‘by hand’ I went to the Web to fetch it. While doing that I found mention of a paper in which someone compared Davies’ poem to one by Emily Dickinson. I couldn’t read the paper but I’m snitching the idea of pairing the poems together. Both have personifications of nature, with a dark touch that mirrors the grimmer sides of life/death.


The Villain
WH Davies

While joy gave clouds the light of stars,
..That beamed where’er they looked;
And calves and lambs had tottering knees,
..Excited, while they sucked;
While every bird enjoyed his song,
Without one thought of harm or wrong –
I turned my head and saw the wind,
..Not far from where I stood,
Dragging the corn by her golden hair,
..Into a dark and lonely wood.


No. 1624
Emily Dickinson

Apparently with no surprise
To any happy Flower
The Frost beheads it at its play –
In accidental power –
The blonde Assassin passes on –
The Sun proceeds unmoved
To measure off another Day
For an Approving God.
.

[FOsen]

Soon, someone is going to ask everyone on GT to name their 10 favorite poems from the last 10 years - Bill Coyle's "Aubade" has to be on the list.

When I first read "Aubade," it reminded me of Wallace Stevens's "Tea" - now I think it outshines "Tea," but here is the Stevens poem.

Tea

when the elephant's-ear in the park
shrivelled in frost,
and the leaves on the paths
ran like rats,
your lamp-light fell
on shining pillows,
of sea-shades and sky-shades,
like umbrellas in Java.

[Bruce McBirney]

Here's another old thread with some even shorter poems:

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=488

Somehow, in that old thread, we missed one of the shortest...and most controversial (because it was included in an NEA-funded anthology that drew political fire in Congress):


lighght

--Aram Saroyan