[Alexandra Baez]

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.

[Michael Cantor]

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!

[RCL]

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.

[Roger Slater]

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.

[Gail White]

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.

[Chris O'Carroll]

The French repeating forms have never been my strong suit, so I'm pushing my luck with this curtal villanelle.


Villanelle-ish

To cut a villanelle a few lines short
Would be a literary felony
No poet in his right mind could support.

The world would greet with a derisive snort
Any such bobtailed pseudo-poetry.
Don’t cut your villanelles a few lines short.

To start a villanelle, then to abort
The mission, leaving off a line or three,
Is something no sane poet could support.

Just two rhymes, 19 lines – this form might thwart
Some versifiers’ ingenuity,
But that is no excuse to cut it short.

Lines 1 and 3 as they recur can sport
Small changes to avoid monotony,
But no bard who’s not bonkers could support

A change like this that cuts the whole poem short.

[Maryann Corbett]

Okay, I give in. The temptation is too great. This thing was published in The Brazen Head (and I'm trying to assemble a MS. of funny stuff that it'll go in).

Upon the Problem of the Envoi in the Contemporary Ballade

“The envoi of a ballade is typically addressed to a prince.”
—LitCharts web page, “Ballade”

Though slant and half will often squeak you by,
it’s tricky to persuade the thing to rhyme.
With three bare possibilities, you fry
your brains and end up scrambled half the time.
And then you face the awkward pantomime,
the pose, the grand traditional to-do:
But now that tabloids roll them all in slime,
what prince out there’s worth dedicating to?

The little European kings? Just try
admiring rigid stick figures who mime
in medalled chests and pricey pageantry
what’s lost now to equality’s long climb.
The Saudis, credibly accused of crime
too horrible for thought, a lurid brew
of evils? The idea’s too icky. I’m
perplexed: Whom could one dedicate this to?

Maybe a different sort of royalty
would solve it (yes, we’re turning on a dime).
Some country king of braid and gold lamé
like Elvis, fat and sequinned, past his prime?
Some prelate seated on the cherubim?
Some Koch or Musk or Bezos? Sacré bleu.
Some laureled poet with a Guggenheim?
Where is a prince to dedicate this to?

Forget it, sovereigns all-too-unsublime—
anointed, crowned, and human through and through.
I think I’m done with working overtime
to find a prince to dedicate this to.