[Marilyn Taylor]

This note is for Golias (Golias, do you have another name? Are you telling people what it is?)-- to thank him/her for that hilarious take on all the forms we putter with, or avoid puttering with, or discover in the putterings of others. Nice work! Made me laugh.

Marilyn

[Janet Kenny]

Marilyn,
Golias is a Wiley customer much loved by those of us who have known his work for some years, and that includes his publishing work which was always of a very high order and generously adventurous. Clemency was his nature and Clement were his ways.

As much as I dare say.
Janet

[Jim Hayes]

And well said too Janet of the publisher of the finest Ezine of all.

The Rue of Mrs Pimpernel

Oh why am I such a scarlet hue,
what if the neighbors guess?
It's fine for Lehr and his derring-do,
but I couldn't cope if my mother knew
aware that we are the only two
with him the one wearing a dress.
Oh why am I such a scarlet? Hugh-
what if the neighbors guess?

[Anna M Evans]

Heh! The last time a young man told me he'd met me in a couple of pubs recently, it was London, circa 1990, and he meant the Seven Stars and the Goat in Boots...

You can interpret statistics to say many things. Personally, I'd say mine meant your best odds of being accepted were to submit a triolet. I've had one in three out of the last four issues (and I nominated Kate's for a Pushcart.)

I certainly get to the stage with each issue of rejecting sonnets (unless they are BRILLIANT) because I think I have enough sonnets. I've rarely rejected a repeating form simply because I was overstocked with them. (Although, one reason there are no sestinas in the upcoming issue is that the last issue was the sestina special, and had three, plus a double s.)

I think that villanelles are just hard to pull off, and I'm picky.

Anna

[Quincy Lehr]

Anna--

Your statistics are interesting, and raise a point for me. There is a certain American neo-formalist magazine that seems very fond of villanelles and sonnets. I once went through a contributor's copy and counted the villanelles and sonnets--and discovered the issue in question was heavily (over 1/3) composed of the two forms. It wears down the reader after a while, especially the villanelles. (The publication in question is Iambs and Trochees.) I get sonnet fatigue from Measure, what with the Nemerov finalists, but that's less intense.

It's just that I really do like to read publications, and I do have to think that some more attention to not getting too many goddamn fixed forms into single issues could be paid by certain magazine editors. It sounds like you (Anna) have a fairly good balance and think about the balance of your e-zine.

(For the record, I've never been in an publication published in Evansville, IN, I got into Iambs and Trochees both times I submitted to them, so I'm quite sure this isn't pique speaking.)

Quincy

[Rose Kelleher]

I dunno, I could read sonnets all day. I can sit down with a whole book of sonnets - the Oxford Book of Sonnets, or Mike Stocks's new book - and the form doesn't grate the way it would with a book of villanelles (or, for that matter, two villanelles in a row). If I find myself thinking, "Oh, no, not another sonnet," I don't blame the sonnet form itself - it's more a matter of how it's used. Certain traits are grating, not necessarily in one lone sonnet, but in one after another. Rigidly regular meter, for example, or heavily end-stopped lines, or a certain predictability in the shape of the argument: first quatrain, second quatrain, here comes the "But" at the beginning of Line 9, etc. Not saying those things are bad in themselves, just that they make the reading of consecutive sonnets feel more monotonous.

I may have a higher threshold than you do for sonnet-monotony, Quincy, but I read Stock's Folly all the way through in one sitting and never once got that, "Oh, no, not another sonnet" feeling. I do get that feeling when I read certain magazines, though, or spend much time at certain workshops. In Stock's sonnets, the content is like the host you came to the party to see, and the form is like, er, the caterer who quietly makes himself useful, bringing food and refilling drinks, but whose face you remember only vaguely the next day. But then, I like sonnets - people who don't will always notice the form and think it's a flaw.

[Quincy Lehr]

Rose--

I haven't seen Stocks's book, but my pain threshold for sonnets is actually fairly high--when they're in a collection that has clearly been plotted out--which is a bit different than the experience one has reading a magazine. (Just read Waterman's "Out for the Elements"--zero form variation in 180-odd stanzas, but it works because it's a coherent whole.)

Quincy

[Mark Granier]

Dammit Quincy, now you have ME attempting these things! I've made rather free with the half rhymes. Here it is anyway.


SEANCE

Tinkering in the dark, Houdini,
they try your death’s door. Is it shut?
Shoelaces could come in handy
(tinkerings in the dark, Houdini)
or a small, regurgitated key.
Then someone punched you in the gut.
Still tinkering at the dark. Houdini,
your final death’s door, is it? Shut!

[Terese Coe]

"I think Chesterton's point is fair enough: how the hell can a poet who glimpses someone from a train know she's a woman "whom nobody loves"? There's a definite cultural arrogance there: I'm a poet and I know the right way to walk through a field - and I can prove my superior sensitivity by writing a triolet about it."
—Gregory

And it's not merely "cultural arrogance," Gregory—it's personal arrogance, in fact contempt. Cornford or the narrator assumes the woman is unloved, and why? Because she is wearing gloves and fat? How absurd! There are many reasons to be wearing gloves in a field, just as there are many reasons to wear boots in a field--not everyone is insensitive to nettles, thorns and allergies.

As I recall, the fields is England have lots of stickers of some kind. Nettles? I've forgotten what they were. In any case, both the Housman and the Chesterton are favorites.

David, you said "using the fat white woman to personify her own failings as she saw them."

1. She could only guess at the woman's "failings as she saw them." I agree with Gregory that the point of view is smugly condescending & all the more so because it's totally a shot in the dark from a whizzing train.

2. The phrase "personify her own failings as she saw them": what on earth does that mean, David? Can anyone personify their own failings as they see them? How is that done? Perhaps that is, after all, what John Lennon meant by posing for the camera sloshed with a kotex on his head. Or what Mark Chapman meant by shooting Lennon?

Terese

PS. I agree the great majority of villanelles and triolets come off as mere exercises. I'd like to see more inventiveness in form.

PS 2: I've edited to change "He" to "She." Leaving "2" as is because it's an interesting question.







[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited November 19, 2006).]

[Gregory Dowling]

This has been a great thread. In particular, I'd like to thank Gene Auprey for the link he provided above. If anybody missed it, here it is again:

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtm...ML/000260.html

It's not only a very good villanelle but there's a fascinating thread after it, in particular a very detailed commentary by Rhina Espaillat, probably the best living writer of villanelles. (And what do we have to do to get the marble frame around our postings?)

So here's another one by Rhina (her very best one has already been posted above by Rose):

MINDING

'It should never be possible to read a poem and not mind it' - J. D. Scrimgeour

Nothing sings true by being merely kind.
There's music, yes, and dance; but something more
has to be heard, be hard, to hurt the mind.

A line may smile to draw you, keep you wined
and fed with sweets like some inviting whore,
but there's a price it charges to be kind.

Pleasure comes barbed and bladed, hooked and spined:
across the palm, a sudden thread of gore
tells you there's more to learn; you learn to mind.

A poem works through what it leaves behind:
a scar that alters what you were before,
a muting of the light you thought was kind.

You know the country - how the rivers wind,
how the wind blows and where the soil is poor -
but never trust it qute: these fields are mined.

I've come, myself, hoping to be made blind,
made comfortable, by words, and limped home sore.
Nothing that sings the truth is less than kind.
Words need to hurt because you need to mind.

-----

Thanks too to Golias for posting that poem by Frances Cornford. I still have lingering doubts about the level of irony in "Fat White Woman" but I'm willing to be convinced.


[This message has been edited by Gregory Dowling (edited December 30, 2007).]