[ginger]

Thanks, Rhina. I will definately take your advice. I always listen hardest to people who are accomplishing the kinds of things I'd like to accomplish. Reading the sonnets posted here, and a few other poem on Caleb Murdock's site, I was tremendously impressed. What struck me particulary was the way you've taken the sonnet form and really made it your own. The voice is very fresh and very modern as is your subject matter. In your case, form seems to enhance rather than confine your content. The only way I'll ever be satisfied with a closed form poem of my own is if I learn to do the same thing.

Thanks for being here. My college is not offering a poetry workshop this semester and poets like you, who volunteer your time here, are an invaluable resource for learning poets like me.

Ginger

[A. E. Stallings]

Dear Rhina,

I wonder if you might also post another of my favorites here, "Where Childhood Lives," from <u>Landscapes with Women</u>. I think Nadia would like it particularly. The ending makes the hairs on my arm stand up.

[Carol Taylor]

Rhina, you give excellent advice about the difference between exercises and poems. A poem will tell you when it wants to be written, although sometimes the way it tells you so is by taking over an exercise. I guess that gives some justification to the school of thought that says "set aside some time each day and just write." But all I seem to be able to write on demand is light verse. Serious poems are a long time incubating, though they hatch fairly quickly when they are ready. I find serious ideas too hard to come by to waste them on exercises.

Your villanelle is delicate and deep and touching. I don't know what ghose is and can't find it in the dictionary, please help.

Carol

[robert mezey]

Alicia, you are absolutely right on. That Hardy triolet
is hands down the best (and a marvelous example of a form
perfectly suited to its subject: the swiftness of the
triolet could not be more expressive than it is here).
I think the second and third best triolets in English
are also by Hardy, a pair of them---the only poem I
regret omitting from my edition of his poems:

THE COQUETTE, AND AFTER

BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POST I

For long the cruel wish I knew
That your free heart should ache for me
While mine should bear no ache for you;
For long---the cruel wish!---I knew
How men can feel, and craved to view
My triumph---fated not to be
For long!...The cruel wish I knew
That your free heart should ache for me!

II

At last one pays the penalty---
The woman---women always do.
My farce, I found, was tragedy
At last! ---One pays the penalty
With interest when one, fancy-free,
Learns love, learns shame...Of sinners two
At last one pays the penalty---
The woman---women always do!

[Rhina P. Espaillat]

What wonderful triolets by Hardy! Perfect examples of how the right form doesn't hamper or interfere with the expression of meaning, but on the contrary, fuses with meaning until the two can't be separated. I had never seen the first of these before; thanks for posting them.

Carol, forgive my typo: that should have been "ghost," not "ghose."

Alicia, here goes the "home town" poem you requested, and I hope you enjoy it, Nadia. The home town I'm thinking of is La Vega, in the heartland of our native country:

WHERE CHILDHOOD LIVES

In my home town the nights are warm
and flies are watchful at the net,
as if Remember posted guards
along the borders of Forget.

And all night long in slow exchange
a dialogue of plunk and plink
from leaky roof to rusty basin
echoes what the raindrops think.

Along the wall where lizards hunt
mosquitoes urge their long complaint
and pious photographs commingle
the dead, the living and the saint.

One rooster, two, then five or six
from hill to valley rout the night
and maids sigh up from creaky springs
to morning prayer and kitchen light.

Along my narrow shuttered streets
trot little donkeys gray as dust,
stopping to nuzzle here and there
at orange peel and cracker crust.

And morning takes the river road
down to the bank where childhood lives,
where stones and water know my name
and stroke me with diminutives.

[A. E. Stallings]

Dear Rhina,

I've taken the liberty of correcting the typo in your post. Hope that is OK.

[Tim Murphy]

Lovely poem. Diminutives--would that be Rhinita? or Espaillita?

[NADIA]

Well, I have to say that this has turned into the most pleasant thread I've seen in Eratosphere.

Rhina, thanks for posting your lovely poems. I've truly enjoyed them. I am from the capital but have visited El Cibao plenty of times. Your poem is charming and its nostalgia touched me. Thank you.

Professor Mezey, thank you for the Hardy triolets.

Thank you all for the opportunity to learn from the best.

-Nadia

[Rhina P. Espaillat]

Yes, Tim, the diminutive for me would be "Rhinita," which is what all my relatives call me. It beats me what Hispanic relatives--if you had any! would call you, as "Timito" sounds all wrong. No, it has to be faced: English is simply diminutive-deprived, as "Timmy" doesn't cut it either.

But to get back to forms: since there seems to be an interest in those, in the triolet and especially in the sonnet, I'd like to issue an invitation. Why doesn't each visitor to the site post a poem of his own in which he feels he's used an established form to some advantage? And that includes variants: for instance, the Mason sonnet, a form with some wonderful features. I'd love to see those.

[Tim Murphy]

Diminutives: Alan and I were riding in a fishing boat beneath an island cliff on the Sea of Cortez, and the fisherman excitedly cried "aguillitos!" We peered up, and there peering down at us from their brushy aerie, were two baby ospreys. Yes, our language is diminutive-deprived.