[Glenn Wright]

Version 2

Poète Maudit

Medusa, Cain, and I all bear a mark.
My curse denies me any company.
No one may speak to me, no dog may bark.

My crime was feeling things too visibly.
Jesus in the Garden sweated blood;
I sweat my words, expressed for all to see.

Language flows from me, a constant flood,
burning my skin. I blot it onto pages
that drop from me like scales into the mud.

From deep inside, the poems come in stages—
Charon’s raft emerges from the dark—
they hold my joys, my strangest fears, my rages.

These are my monument, contain my spark.
Their ashes blow away as I embark.

——————————
Edits:
L1: Like Medusa and Cain, I bear my mark. > Medusa and Cain, like me, endured a mark. (Carl, Alexandra) > Medusa, Cain, and me—we bear a mark.> Medusa, Cain, and I, we bear a mark (Carl) > Medusa, Cain, and I all bear a mark. (Roger)
L2: My curse denies me friendly company. > My curse denies me any company.
L3: No one will speak to me, no dog will bark. > No one may speak to me, no dog may bark.
L 10: From deep inside, the poems come in stages, > From deep inside, the poems come in stages—
L 11-16 of original are deleted. (Rick)
L 11: (L 17 of original) Charon’s raft emerges from the dark. > like Charon’s raft emerging from the dark. > Charon’s raft emerges from the dark, > Charon’s raft emerges from the dark—
L 12: Some celebrate my joys, some vent my rages, > Some collect my joys; some flaunt my rages. > collecting my joys, my deepest fears, my rages. > collecting my joys, my strangest fears, my rages. > they hold my joys, my strangest fears, my rages.
L 13: They are my monument, contain my spark. > These are my monument, contain my spark.
L 18: of original is deleted (Rick)




Version 1

Poète Maudit

Like Medusa and Cain, I bear my mark.
My curse denies me friendly company.
No one will speak to me, no dog will bark.

My crime was feeling things too visibly.
Jesus in the Garden sweated blood;
I sweat my words, expressed for all to see.

Language flows from me, a constant flood,
burning my skin. I blot it onto pages
that drop from me like scales into the mud.

From deep inside, the poems come in stages;
an image, a line, and soon the sheets are filled.
Some celebrate my joys, some vent my rages,

all added to the pile of words I build.
Hedged by chaos, I tried to make some order
on every piece of paper that I spilled.

Now I approach the final, fatal border.
Charon’s raft emerges from the dark.
Here are my poems. I am the recorder.

They are my monument, contain my spark.
Their ashes blow away as I embark.

[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

Ah Villon! This is so well done Glenn. Three readings and none with a critical eye just enjoyment. You have called him forth anew for me. He was definitely one of the lost. As in all good poetry this triggers questions and thought.

Is there a literary mark for Medusa? It brings the Tardis to mind and maybe a Time Lord by nature cannot be anachronistic, it slightly jars.

I will try to be helpful on my return I too, “die of thirst beside the fountain”

Jan

[Jim Moonan]

.
How good is this? Let me count the ways… (I wish I could. There are many.) That’s all I’ve got.
.

[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

Sired by God with a harlot nurse you sent me back to Swinburne (he had him madder and badder than Byron) but I like this better.

[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

Sired by God with a harlot nurse you sent me back to Swinburne (he had him madder and badder than Byron) but I like this better.

I query the shift of pages to ashes Glenn. Maybe a barter for an obol.

Jan

[Roger Slater]

My only question was "spilled", which you use as a transitive verb. But can you spill paper?

Nice job!

[John Riley]

Well done. It speaks of and from the era. I have a complete Villon but have never read it. Maybe I will.

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Jan, Jim, Roger, and John. The “mark” of Medusa is her snaky hair, Jan. Both she and Cain were cursed and marked by a divinity—Cain for killing his brother, and Medusa for getting raped by Poseidon in Athena’s temple. (Blame the victim, right?) As far as the ashes, I’m imagining that the speaker’s poems must be left in the land of the living, and that they are doomed not to immortalize him. (You can’t take it with you—money or literary achievement.) It also might seem that “my spark” has ignited the pile of poems. The precision of my image there might need some tuning.
I was hoping to evoke Dante by using terza rima. I imagined the speaker nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, wandering through the selva oscura on his way to the Inferno, about to board Charon’s raft to be taken to the appropriate circle of hell reserved for overly demonstrative poets. I also had Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner in mind.
The “spilled,” Roger, was admittedly rhyme-driven. The direct object of “spill” is usually a liquid, but one could spill a bucket of ball bearings or one could “spill the beans” or the contents of a folder. I think a sheaf of papers dropping one-by-one into mud could reasonably be described as being spilled. A bigger problem, perhaps, is imagining how these dropped pages could be expected to form a pile since the speaker is clearly traveling. He must be picking them up, even though this is not explicitly stated. I wanted to suggest that my attempt to impose order on chaos ironically resulted in my making a bigger mess. Is more tuning needed with that image?
I’m glad you picked up the Villon reference: “où sont les nieges d’antan?”
Thanks very much for your responses.

[Carl Copeland]

Glenn, I’ll check the box by picking two nits in the first tercet:

• “Like” in L1 isn’t naturally stressed, and pentameter hasn’t yet been established, so the line is identifiable as headless only in retrospect.

• I’d expect dogs to bark at a poète maudit, rather than letting him pass in silence.

The poem is so uniformly fine, though, that I’d think thrice about changing so much as a jot or a tittle.

I don’t see the connection with Villon’s “Ballade,” but I suppose that was an aside. To the references already mentioned, I’d add “Exegi Monumentum.”

I’m impressed.

[Alexandra Baez]

The topic is an interesting one. I come to the poem innocent of any awareness of Villon references. I like the Jesus analogy, and I like the overall sense of poise in the poem.

I agree with Carl about L1.

The “flood” and “burning” references felt at odds with each other, although in theory there could be a flood of a highly caustic liquid. The bigger problem here for me is that both sound clichéd.

I wonder if you really need the last two lines. They break from the form of the rest of the poem and also feel superfluous in light of the previous tercet, the more so for perpetuating the “ark” rhyme. Ending at the last tercet would create a nice note of tension.