[Jim Hayes]

Thanks Michael, Martin


Young Lochinvar
after Walter Scottt

O young Lochinvar is come out of the west
in old jockey shorts and a warm woolly vest.
(He thought to wear now’t but his mother knew best)

He rode all alone to find him a bride
with a flower that he pinned to his hair with a slide.
((He was keeping in touch with his feminine side)

Up to the cabin he rode at full tilt,
with a whopping scean dhu he held hard by the hilt.
(A dirk that was barely concealed by his kilt)

There, inside the door he saw his bete noir,
Fungus McGrump wi’ a massive claymore.
(A dastard in love and a blackguard in war)

And who should he spot but Bonnie Wee Neel,
and her aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters as weel.
(She was goin’ to wed Fungus)—“No’ likely, by Heel”

Swore young Lochinvar in impeccable Lallans,
as he grabbed Bonnie Neel from the hands of her valiants
(They’d had a few drams and were slightly off balance)

They stay’d not for brake, and they stopp’d not for stone,
they swam the Eske river where ford there was none.
(When Bonnie Wee Neel got wet through to the bone)

There was mounting ‘mong rakes of the Netherboy clan,
Farquhars,* Fartquhars, McGrovels, they rode and they ran.
(Tho’ Fungus McGrump took his loss like a man)

They still race unchaste on Cannobie Lee
and brides are still lost, and some carelessly.
(But none were as lost as the baul’ Bonnie Wee)

*Farquhar is an old Scottish name pronounced ‘Farker’ while Fartquehar is an unknown sept the pronunciation of which is best left to the readers imagination tho’ bearing in mind the guide provided.

Good to hear from you Bob

[RCL]

Exultation is the Going

Exultation is the going
Of clots inside of me -
Past the organs -
Past the navel -
Into a sluggish Sea -

Those never regular or fluid,
The Constipated, understand
There’s divine intoxication
When their loads explode and land.

after Emily Dickinson
Franklin, 143

[RCL]

When I Died

After Emily Dickinson (591)

I heard a Flybot when I died
That loudly Buzzed around the room -
It glittered Blue up in the air
just like the Flies in my Pop’s barn -

There were no saddened eyes to dry -
Not even mine - as buzzed the Flybot -
Its mission was to do me in
Right here - upon this prison cot -

I hadn’t Shit to sign away -
Or Innards ready for transplants -
But I heard that Flybot buzz
And then I coughed out final pants -

Buzzing - the Flybot poked around
The loose and softer flesh of me -
And after injecting its Nanobomb
Nothing of me was left to see -

[John Isbell]

On Never Looking into Chapman’s Homer


Here is another thing I’ve never done
in my fifty-two years. I’ve traveled some
in realms of gold – as John Keats did – and seen
at least one kingdom. And by that, I mean
Great Britain. I have seen the Most Serene
Republic, where the starlings cut the clean
blue air above the campanile. One
might say I’ve been to Europe, but the sum
of all I’ve seen is not equivalent
to Keats’s thrill of recognition, bent
above his books like Herschel at his glass
to read Homer in English. Not one cent
of mine has gone on Chapman, not a brass
farthing. I’ve spent more time eating grass.
 

[Ann Drysdale]

When I have Fears.

When Keats had fears that he might “cease to be”
before he’d written all his mind could hold,
he recognised that his infirmity
might rob him of the chance of growing old.
The lucky youngster never lived to see
coevals gradually lose their grip
on memory, on personality
and the last precious dregs of scholarship.
He never got to watch the tragedy
of shared affairs no longer making sense
between good friends, nor feel the absentee
tottering into total nescience,
so he could not have understood that what
I’m most afraid of is that I might not.

[John Isbell]

Very nice, Ann! I like the relentless rhyme on -ee.

Ralph, I see you've returned to Emily! I visited her home in Amherst, where my sister told me Dickinson used to lower gingerbread from her window to the local children. I liked that.

Cheers,
John

[RCL]

Notes of an Old New Critic

Can it truly be a poem if
It isn’t in a formal shape
It isn’t in a well-known meter
It isn’t cleverly ironic?

It isn’t what’s ambiguous
It isn’t with organic rhymes
It isn’t opposed to paraphrase
It isn't paradoxical?

It isn’t easily read or taught
It's read as if a history text
It's a poet’s biography
It’s biased Lib or GOP?

It's a Frenchman's deconstruction
It's by an AI robot written
It isn’t a solo Verbal Icon
It isn’t a very Well-Wrought Urn?

[RCL]

Some Don’t Fret about a Little Room

After William Wordsworth*

Some don’t fret about a little room:
Not introverts in cells with few chattels
Not students in their small and cramping carrels
Not teachers in an over-crowded classroom
Not honeybees within a lily’s bloom
Not singles networking in no-tell motels
Not nuns within their convent's narrow cells.
The truth? A self-made prison is no doom:
At times, I write within a sonnet’s boundary
And it insists its fourteen lines be bound
By their stout iambs marching metered sound
That frees me from the boundless verse that’s free
Since rhyming stanzas exclude anarchy,
Provide small comfort here, as I’ve just found.

*
“Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Rooms”

[Ann Drysdale]

Nuns, Skating

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room
Because their spirits can escape beyond
The place that holds them in respectful gloom
To seek the Lord beside the frozen pond.
There He will make their laughter into bells
And turn their breath to incense. He will show
Shadows of magi on the distant hills
And flights of angels shining in the snow.
He will make rushes sing and grasses dance
To the intrusive music of their chatter,
Whispering in their ears that, just this once,
They too can walk as He did, on the water.
Oh, may the year to come be full of these
Small serendipitous epiphanies.

[Carl Copeland]

Beautiful, Ann. You know, in 1980s Leningrad I visited a Russian Orthodox Church whose sanctuary had been turned into a skating rink. The skaters weren’t nuns, however. I’m sure it’s a functioning church again now.