What strikes me about this poem is the last line, “His open mouth a zero.”  The prophet journeys back to deliver a message but freezes upon seeing his open mouth in the well–

I have realized that life’s epiphanies and perhaps even prophecies are more intimate and powerful if never spoken…they tend to bind the person to G-d.  We all have them–little moments where we gain insight into our lives–moments that rush our bloodstreams with the passion to announce our findings to the world.  We prepare to announce and share—oftentimes we realize that the gift is better kept private and shown through a change in our behavior and attitude toward life and the people in our lives–rather than an announcement from an open and void mouth.

Before Addressing the People

Before addressing the people

The prophet on return from the desert

Bends over the well

To quench his thirst

But freezes

When he sees his reflection–

His open mouth a zero

–by Ronalds Briedis (Latvia)

Translated from the Latvian by Margita Gailitis and J.C. Todd

If you would like to be featured as a guest writer on Poet Verse, please submit your work after visiting the Submissions page.

Thanks,

Carolina Maine

It is a definite possibility that more of  William Jay Smith’s poetry will be featured on Poet Verse.  His style is exciting and I love the intricate yet unusual images he weaves into his works.  I chose this poem since I will be moving out further west–again.  I once lived in Las Vegas and hated the evenings because, unlike southern evenings, the air remained dry.  Evenings out west lack the dewy wetness of a southern evening.  In the south, evenings are a reward for braving the sweltering heat.  Out west–the landscape as well as the air is intolerant of human life, or rather, the life of amphibious humans.

Enjoy:

A HOT STAGNANT EVENING

Apres-diner torride et stagnante

     One’s feet are baking, one can feel the arteries throbbing in one’s ankles, under one’s chin, in the heart, the wrists;one raises up hands that are already swollen and wet, the least little meal weighs one down, one must undo one’s necktie, one breathes so deeply that the cigarette stuck to the corner of one’s mouth is consumed in twelve puffs, one’s skin is wringing wet…How unhappy I would be if I had breasts and were a nurse!  Or if I were one of those military musicians laced tight in a uniform, and had to blow into a trombone in some bandstand.  Ah, to be a fly on the wet tile floor of some provincial kitchen!  Or rather a passive sponge, a branch of coral encrusted at the bottom of the sea, watching the parade of submarine nature, or a blue cornflower on a piece of deft china perched above a pile of stoles, in the cool, dark back room of an antique shop on the banks of the Sequana!  Or a flower in the chintz of the bare prim parlor of an old maid in Quimper. . . or a heron. . .

–William Jay Smith

My favorite passage is highlighted.

I have decided to let the email requests I have received help me with my decision to begin accepting submissions to Poet Verse.

If you would like your poem to be featured on Poet Verse, please note the conditions and follow the directions below:

• Previously published material will not be considered
• A brief BIO should accompany submission
• All submissions must be in the body of an email-no attachments
• Submissions must be submitted by Sunday at midnight to be considered for the following week
• Poems will be published on Fridays by Midnight Mountain Standard Time
• Two Poems per week will be chosen
• Please do not send the same poem more than once for consideration unless asked to by Editor, Carolina Maine
• Poet Verse will reject dark, Gothic, pagan,violent, hostile, and all forms of negative poetry immediately so please do not send it.
• Poet Verse is interested in poets from all over the world who focus on the human condition (may depict struggle but show triumph of human spirit over adversity) and the beauty of life.  Religious poetry will be considered from all faiths unless it is exclusive–no death to infidels or idolaters or anything in that realm.
• Other areas of interest are family, work, nature, camping, thoughts about the world, philosophy, science, hiking, and love (no gushy romantic stuff though).
• Poet Verse does not pay for poetry.  Your work and short bio will be featured and you may list the site as a place of publication and link back to it.
• Poet Verse needs to be contacted before the work may be published by another entity and will update the post to show that the poem will be featured in a future publication; Poet Verse will not remove the poem once published.
• Poet Verse reserves the right to not publish any of the submitted poems during a specific period and reserves the right to choose a poem submitted at an earlier date .

I look forward to sampling your work and please feel free to contact me for additional information:

carolinamaine<at>gmail<dot>com

THIS IS A TIME SENSITVE POST AND WILL BE REMOVED IN 48 HOURS.  THANKS:)

I wrote this a while ago, but I was too shy to share it.  I know you have wanted some of my poetry online–so here it is. 

I hope it is satisfactory:) Blush:)

“My Aging Body” by Carolina Maine Copyright 2009 Unauthorized use of this poem is prohibited.

–Carolina Maine

I will be moving soon, but I plan to post frequently.

So-keep checking.

And thanks for all the encouraging messages to keep blogging!

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY WEEKEND!!

Fin de journee en province

Passed the end of a day in the provinces.

A gray sort of town, carefully paved, peaceful.

The hotel window looks onto the main square.  I watched

a stupid moon rise over there, lighting up this town especially

as though to assure me that this town really existed,

in its insignificance.

      A lamplighter carrying a baby in his arms followed by a dog who seemed to be used to everything, and who sniffed at the pavements as though they were very old friends.

      The lamp did not want to light.

       Immediately, two, five, six people came along and discussed it; the lamp lights, the people see that it is lit and go away slowly.  Only one remains.  He looks at the lamp for a moment and then he goes away.

      Oh!  to live in one of these mollusc beds!

      To die!….to die.

      And the moon is the same here as in Paris, as over the Mississippi, as in Bombay.

Translated from French by Margaret Crosland

Christian Friendship in the Fourth Century by Carolinne White. 

A History of Christian-Latin Poetry From the Beginnings to the Close of the Middle Ages by F.J.E. Raby

Grace is Where I Live The Landscape of Faith and Writing by John Leax

Sacred Doorways A Beginner’s Guide to Icons by Linette Martin

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

One Hundered Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Anchor Anthology of French Poetry From Nerval to Valery in English Translation Edited by Angel Flores

I have begun reading nearly all of these books and love them so far!

At the window ledge concealing

The ancient sandalwood gold-flaking

Of her viol dimly twinkling

Long ago with flute or mandore,

 

Stands the pallid Saint displaying

The ancient missal page unfolding

At the Magnificat outpouring

Long ago for vesper and compline:

 

At that monstrance glazing lightly

Brushed now by a harp the Angel

Fashioned in his evening flight

Just for the delicate finger

 

Tip which, lacking the ancient missal

Or ancient sandalwood, she poises

On the instrumental plumage,

Musician of silences

Translated from the French by Hubert Creekmore

I have, in the past, highlighed poems on other blogs that I have found to be outstanding.  “Holden” by Bryan Borland.  Check it out when you have the opportunity.

I slept through all the carnival, delirious.

I couldn’t bear the drums, pipes, burning puppets.

Today, the carnival’s over,

postmodernism begins.

I fiddle with the radio.  This archetypal

scan of the wavelength can be performed

ad infinitum.  Inside me

I have a little God, I tend

 

this scrap,

scab.

Translated from the Polish by Elzbieta Wojcik-Leese

First, I would like to thank Tova Gardner, a fellow poet whom I met at Vermont Studio, for sharing her new literary journal link with me.  Tova is a talented poet, and I was going to write an introduction for her, but hers is so much better:

Tova Gardner is a young Israeli poet. She has twice received Artist Grants from Vermont Studio Center where she studied with poet Kevin Young and will study with poet and Poetry Editor of Lilith Magazine, Marge Piercy. Her poems have appeared in Global Tapestry, Obsessed With Pipework, Dislocate Literary Journal, California Quarterly and Poeticamagazine. She is currently working on her first collection of poems.

If you have work in the areas of fiction, poetry, visual art, and fact, please send your submissions to the Arava Review.

Sorry, I haven’t blogged in a while.  I am adjusting to being employed and being a mother at the same time.  I look forward to posting more often.  Here is the email I received about the PBS’ Poetry Everywhere special:

As someone who blogs about poetry and may write poetry yourself, I thought this special feature may be of interest to you and your readers.  I hope that you will pass this information along. 

 

I am writing to let you know that PBS Engage is featuring Poetry Everywhere’s Executive Producer Brigid Sullivan, as part of the ongoing PBS Engage series called “Five Good Questions.” The series features a PBS celebrity or insider and asks visitors to send in questions to be answered the following week.  The blog series has been very successful and we are thrilled to have Ms. Sullivan as our feature this week.

 

 

This is a chance for you to ask any questions you may have about PBS’s Poetry Everywhere site, WGBH, or whatever else is on your mind.  We’ll pick five questions for Brigit to answer and post her responses next week on the Engage blog.

 

Please visit the link and post your comments and questions here: http://www.pbs.org/engage/blog/ask-%E2%80%9Cpoetry-everywhere%E2%80%9D-executive-producer-brigid-sullivan-your-questions

 

You can also visit PBS Engage at www.pbs.org/engage and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pbsengage

 

Thank you!

  

Amy R. Baroch

Sr. Project Manager

PBS Engage

P. 703.739.5452

Twitter: amyPBS

www.pbs.org/engage

I have always written Confession types of poems so I am trying to do things that are more narrative.  I’m not sure that I am doing very well at it.  I mainly read about events and try to imagine that I am there and experiencing those events when I am writing.

I didn’t really get a response from the last poem I posted and it really was odd since I normally get comments on my work.  I am guessing that it was a flop and you are all too nice to tell me.

That is okay.  Everyone has a flop at some point.

Now–for the  personal  “stuff”:

I went to eat with my family at  Cracker Barrel–my favorite place to go now that I am a displaced southerner.  I saw a man at the table right next to ours who looked like he could be the twin of a man I once knew and loved dearly.  It was unsettling-the resemblance–even down to his profile and nose. His hair was even cut in the same way.

I had the urge to walk up to him and apologize for staring at him–I wanted to tell him that he looked like someone I once knew.  But I didn’t.

Ever so often, I see someone who looks like one of my late grandparents or someone I have loved dearly in my life. I always want to tell the person how much they look like my loved one, but I never do.

I don’t know…..I just thought I would share.

It is a reflective night.

Enjoy your writing!

I love this poem. It is by a poet named Semezdin Mehmedinovic from Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

War

and nothing is going on–

I go into town to beg for cigarettes

I’ve always known your scent

but you’ve never been closer–

sometimes when it’s cold in the morning you

put my underwear on by mistake

in ten years we haven’t been together as much

as we have these five months–

now you’ve got my sweater on all day

your joy

at the packets of humanitarian aid

makes me happy and sad at the same time

and I ask myself:  where on earth do

you find us coffee every night?

There isn’t a single pane of glass left in our windows

and there’s just no way to get rid

of the lagging flies

translated from the Bosnian by Ammiel Alcalay.

John Olivares Espinoza is a friend of mine, and he sent me his new book, The Date Fruit Elegies.  Today, I read “Left Eye Losing Sight”, and I truly admired his writing gifts and talents.  It inspired me to get back online.  I have been offline due to illness.

I love this poem, and I hope that you enoy it as much as I do:

As the sight in my left eye

Worsens each year,

The other gets sharper.

My right eye

Tells the other,

Do not fret

I’ll watch over you

Like a little brother

***

When I shut my right eye

The world loses all detail:

People become traces

Of themselves, souls of what

Once fitted flesh;

Ghosts whose

World I have entered

Without earning my death

***

I had an uncle

Who had gone

Completely blind

By the time he was fifty.

The first and only

Time I met him

I was eleven

And asked,

What do you see

When you’re blind?

Nothing, he answered back

Do you see black?

He said, Not even that.

***

My grandfather slept with a revolver

                                      Under his pillow.

Once, he unloaded it,

                Held the rounds like a set of teeth.

He handed the pistol to my young brother

And he inspected

                   Each curve

As if it were a woman’s sleeping body

Before my brother handed me the gun

The barrel glared right at me–

I stared into its one black eye

And flinched.

***
Shut one eye as you read

Or hear this.

What do you see out of the sealed eye?

Now imagine it in both eyes.

Now do you understand my uncle?

–John Olivares Espinoza Pages 40-41 from The Date Fruit Elegies

-Formulated about 1912 by Ezra Pound

-American and English poets

-Aim=clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images

-Succinct verse of dry clarity and hard outline

-Exact visual image made a total poetic statement

-Imagism sought analogy with sculpture unlike French Symbolism Movement (affinity with music)

-1914 Pound moved to Vorticism

-From Imagist Manifesto:

-the use of language of common speech-no decorative words

-free verse epxresses individuality-a new cadence means a new idea

-absolute freedom in subject choice

-to present an image

-poetry should render particulars exactly and not deal in vague generalities

-oppose the cosmic poet who shirks the real difficulties of his art

-produce poetry that is hard and clear-never blurred or indefinite

-concentration=essence of  poetry

Imagist Poets

Ezra Pound

Amy Lowell

Hilda Doolittle

Richard Aldington

F.S. Flint

Inspired by the critical views of T.E. Hulme who revolted against the careless thinking and Romantic optimism he saw prevailing.

Period that describes the events in Queen Victoria’s reign (1837-1901)

-increased use of sonnet form-influenced modern poets

-Poets in the Victorian Period were influenced by the Romantic Poets

-The Victorian Period saw the emergence of many important female poets.

-Victorian poetry provided the link between the Romantic and the Modern Poets

Victorian Poets:

Matthew Arnold

Charlotte Bronte

Emily Bronte

Elizabeth Browning

Robert Browning

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Rudyard Kipling

Christina Rossetti

Dante Gabriella Rossetti

Alfred Tennyson

Oscar Wilde

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ekphrastic poetry is created when a poet interprets a work of visual art and then creates a narrative in verse form that represents his or her reaction to that painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic tradition.

The rain brings me back

the dispersed pieces

of my friends, it presses down

flights too high, it slows down escapes and closes

on the side of the windows, finally,

time.

translated from the Italian by Judith Baumel

You can learn more about the book at:
http://john-olivares-espinoza.com/blog/
The order form can be found at:
http://john-olivares-espinoza.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/datefruitflyer2.pdf

The Cage

In the waking night
The forests have stopped growing
The shells are listening
The shadows in the pools turn grey
The pearls dissolve in the shadow
And I return to you

Your face is marked upon the clockface
My hands are beneath your hair
And if the time you mark sets free the birds
And if they fly away towards the forest
The hour will no longer be ours

Ours in the ornate birdcage
The brimming cup of water
The preface to the book
And all the clocks are ticking
All the dark rooms are moving
All the air’s nerves are bare

Once flown
The feathered hour will not return
And I shall have gone away.

by David Gascoyne

I tried to convert my PDF notes on Surrealist Poetry to Word, but it was rife with errors and symbols.

Hope you don’t mind the PDF version.  Also listed in the notes are Surrealist-inspired and Surrealist Poets.

surrealism2

Resident Reading 2

John Olivares Espinoza put photos up on his blog of the last night of poetry readings by residents at Vermont Studio Center while we were there.

I am going to block quote this directly from his blog and provide a link to the photos below:

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

Here are some shots of our second resident readers.

Photo 1: Beaudeline from Haiti

Photo 2: Steve Godwin

Photo 3: Phillip Osgood

Photo 4: Carolina Maine

Today is Tuesday which means the fresh batch of VSC residents will be reading tonight. Good luck to them!

To see photos click this link:  John Olivares Twenty-five Cent Stories Blog

Poetry

Poetry is useless, it serves only

to behead a king

or seduce a young woman.

 

Perhaps it serves also,

if water is death

to part the water with a dream

And if time grants us its unique matter,

it serves possible as a blade,

because a clean cut is better

when we open memory’s skin.

With broken glass

desire

leaves ragged wounds.

 

You are poetry

a clean cut,

a part in the water

-if water is teh reason for existence-,

the woman who submits to seduction

in order to behead a king.

Luis Garcia Montero Translated from Spanish by Katie King.

Miller, Wayne & Prufer, Kevin.  2008.  New European Poets.  Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, P. 13.

I haven’t been blogging that much because I have been writing research papers and preparing for the end of this semester.

Since I only have a final examination remaining–I have picked up a few books to read over the holidays.

They are:

The Center Cannot Hold:  My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R. Saks (I think the title was too long to make the entire title a link.)

&

How To Write The Story Of Your Life by Frank P. Thomas (memoir guide)

My daughter says she hates homework. She has excellent grades and seems to like school so I would have never guessed her to feel this way.  I gave her a book of poetry, A Child’s Anthology of Poetry edited by Elizabeth Hauge Sword.

My daughter’s favorite poem is on page 221, “Homework! Oh, Homework!” by Jack Prelutsky.

I scanned a copy below. I just learned that I can save PDF to JPEG (wow!).

Saves time typing.

I COULD NOT GET THE JPEG IMAGE SMALL ENOUGH TO POST SO I WILL HAVE TO POST IN PDF. 

Click on the link below to read the poem:

Homework! Oh, Homework! by Jack Prelutsky

Short notes of only 1 page.

I have found that it is easier to scan my notebook than to take time typing my notes out into blog posts.

The file is in PDF.

Confessional Movement in Poetry Notes by Carolina Maine

This poem is in PDF format, and this post will stay fully active until tomorrow, Tuesday, morning.

Preview has been removed.

Thanks for reading!

I am reading

How to Read Novels Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster.

I actually bought EM Forster’s book Aspects of the Novel along with Foster’s book, but I decided to take it back since I really didn’t have much time to enjoy Forster’s winding language. 

If you want a book that is solid, to the point, and provides good examples then you should definitely pick up a copy of How to Read Novels Like a Professor. 

If you want to write a novel that is highly literary then choose Forster’s Aspect of the Novel.

I made some notes about Modernist Poetry.  I am starting to write in print in my notebook so that the scanned result is of better quality.  This PDF is in cursive, but I think it is still legible.  My cursive handwriting is generally pretty bad.

Please click the link below-file is in Adobe PDF.

ModernistPoetryandPoets

Some of my friends do not have copies of the group photo so I am providing it on my blog.  I can’t scan to anything but Adobe because my scanner is old.

The photograph was taken by Howard Romero.

vermontgroupphoto

I had a great time at Vermont Studio Center (VSC).  I met  poet, Kevin Young, during a craft talk.  He is a nice person and down-to-earth.  His new book is titled Dear Darkness.  I bought a copy while I was in Vermont, but I gave it to a friend who was collecting all of his books.  Otherwise, I would share a poem or two from his latest collection.

While at VSC I had a desk in a writing studio.  The experience taught me that I need to make a place in my home-a place just for writing.  Yesterday, I went out and purchased some tables and a chair to make up my writing space.  I also bought my children a large table for their art.  Our downstairs area has been turned into a family studio.  It was a great idea.  I’m settling in today-answering emails about my trip and posting to my blog.

I am sad that my poetry has been copied from this site and put on objectionable sites.  I even clean up poems (by other poets) that I have posted on my blog from other such sites.  I think it is a responsible thing to do as a blog owner.  I post poems on here by other writers that are enjoyable and educational.  If my poems were on such a site, I would not mind, but next to Viagra ads–that just steams me.

I do think Poet Verse can be an enjoyable blog still.  I will keep sharing poems that are good examples of poetry, and I will post my notes about the various poetic movements.

Thanks for reading!

Canto I.
Rash Author, ’tis a vain presumptuous Crime
To undertake the Sacred Art of Rhyme ;
If at thy Birth the Stars that rul’d thy Sence
Shone not with a Poetic Influence :
In thy strait Genius thou wilt still be bound,
Find Phoebus deaf, and Pegasus unsound.
You then, that burn with the desire to try
The dangerous Course of charming Poetry ;
Forbear in fruitless Verse to lose your time,
Or take for Genius the desire of Rhyme :
Fear the allurements of a specious Bait,
And well consider your own Force and Weight.
Nature abounds in Wits of every kind,
And for each Author can a Talent find :
One may in Verse describe an Amorous Flame,
Another sharpen a short Epigram :

Excerpt from The Art of Poetry by Nicolas Boileau Despreaux 1636-1711

Please read Honey I Get It.  I Really Do. on Maps From A Good Kingdom’s Blog.

It is wonderful!

I haven’t felt like writing poetry lately.  I have been so worried about the economy, the next election, and our international status. 

Then, today, when I thought nothing could be worse–I read about the 168 people who were killed during a stampede at a Hindu temple in India.  One of the quotes depicted a child who lost his/her mother:

One child sat on the ground next to the body of a woman, rubbing her forehead and crying ‘mother, mother.’

I am deeply saddened for those people and their families.  I will keep them in my prayers.

Lately, I have been so emotional.  The news is so full of doom and gloom–children being abused and dying, economic systems crashing, bombings, stampedes, and other world powers are in a position that could hurt the United States now that we are vulnerable.

I’m scared I won’t be able to make more than $8 an hour (I have a lot of student loan debt, and I stayed home while my children were young-no recent work history).  I’m sure our rent will go up. 

Life can make you feel so helpless–helpless to help yourself and others.

I was thinking it was so cruel that all 168 of those people had to die–for no reason at all.

Here is the article if you want to read it:  India Stampede

Confession

by Norman Dubie

for Hank

The General’s men sit at the door. Her eyes
Are fat with belladonna. She’s naked
Except for the small painted turtles
That are drinking a flammable cloud
Of rum and milk from her navel.

The ships out in the harbor
Are loosely allied
Like casks floating in bilge.
The occasional light on a ship
Winks. In the empty room of the manuscript
Someone is grooming you
For the long entrance into the dark city.

They’ll hang the General.
Then with torches they’ll search for his children.
Men and women
Are seen jumping from the burning hotel.
Journalists, in no hurry,
Elect to take the elevator. They walk
Out of the building, stepping over corpses. . .
You are listening to loud bells.

The corpses get up and follow the journalists.
It’s unfair that while rehearsing
For death they actually succumbed to it.
But no one sobs.
Shirts and dresses billowing as they fall.
Something inhuman in you watched it all.
And whatever it is that watches,
It has kept you from loneliness like a mob.

Norman Dubie, “Confession” from The Mercy Seat: Collected & New Poems 1967-2001 (Copper Canyon Press, 2001). www.coppercanyonpress.org

I’m a huge Kwame Dawes fan.  Check out my LiveHopeLove and Kwame Dawes links in my blogroll.

For you fans out there:

All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre as of olives
where she stands,
and the white hands.

All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.

Greece sees, unmoved,
God's daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only if she were laid,
white ash amid funereal cypresses.
--Hilda Doolittle

I  have covered various poetry forms/structures on this blog such as:

Open Verse Forms

Poetry Meter

The Stanza Poetry Form

Blank Verse

Ballads

Sonnets

Pantoum

Sestina

Villanelle

 

Thanks for reading Poet Verse!

 

 

Villanelle

Every day our bodies separate,
exploded torn and dazed.
Not understanding what we celebrate

we grope through languages and hesitate
and touch each other, speechless and amazed;
and every day our bodies separate

us further from our planned, deliberate
ironic lives. I am afraid, disphased,
not understanding what we celebrate

when our fused limbs and lips communicate
the unlettered power we have raised.
Every day our bodies’ separate

routines are harder to perpetuate.
In wordless darkness we learn wordless praise,
not understanding what we celebrate;

wake to ourselves, exhausted, in the late
not understanding how we celebrate
our bodies. Every day we separate.

–Marilyn Hacker

“Tourist” by Paul Engle.  I LOVE this poem, but…

You’ll have to read it on Poetry Foundation’s website because it is reprinted with permission from the Estate of Paul Engle.

I like the poem, but why did he have to use the word, Kleenex, in such a nice piece of work?

The last line was so good–but then he used Kleenex….

I would have done things differently-that’s for sure.

Wow, I must be in a mood today:)

I’m not a big fan of Kay Ryan’s , but this poem is a good narrative. 

You can read her poem “Turtle” here. 

For a quasi-interview article and more poetry, visit the San Francisco Chronicle

I respect her for saying this:

‘Poetry should leave you feeling freer and not more burdened,’ she said. ‘I like to think of all good poetry as providing more oxygen in the atmosphere. Poems just make it easier to breathe.’–Kay Ryan 

Air and Angels by John Donne

TWICE or thrice had I loved thee,
    Before I knew thy face or name ;
    So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp’d be.
    Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing did I see.
    But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
    More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too ;
    And therefore what thou wert, and who,
        I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
    And so more steadily to have gone,
    With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love’s pinnace overfraught ;
    Thy every hair for love to work upon
Is much too much ; some fitter must be sought ;
    For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scattering bright, can love inhere ;
    Then as an angel face and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
    So thy love may be my love’s sphere ;
        Just such disparity
As is ‘twixt air’s and angels’ purity,
‘Twixt women’s love, and men’s, will ever be.

–John Donne (My favorite poet)

I love her poem!  It is powerful so I decided to highlight it for today.  Click this link to read Bomi’s poem Massacre.

turned out pretty decent.  I was unfamiliar with the subject of the poem, but it ended up being fine since I did a little research to help me along.  I am working on a collection to submit for the Walt Whitman Award.

If I can finish the collection by November, I might enter it this year.  If not, I will try for next year.  Part of me wants to go ahead and get it done.

Good luck with your writing and thanks for reading.

THANKS FOR READING POET VERSE!!

 

I have covered various poetry forms/topics on this blog such as:

Open Verse Forms

Poetry Meter

The Stanza Poetry Form

Blank Verse

Ballads

Sonnets

Pantoum

Sestina

Villanelle

 

Thanks for reading Poet Verse!

 

 

A Holy Tabernacle in the Heart (from Life of the Future World)

However,
     the breath
which is
     from the second one
is a
     holy
     tabernacle
in the heart.
One ascends
     with the Unique Name
     to the sky
     to depict with Unifications
     the relationship
between everything that
     is difficult
     in this
     science of pronunciation.
It alone is
     life in the Name.
It is remembered and sealed
     in the Book of Life
to make the individual live
     with passion
     which enlightens
constantly, when
     every thought,
     every soul
is concentrated on it.

–Rabbi Abraham Abulafia

I would like to highlight a very powerful poem that I read tonight on Maggie May’s blog.  She is listed in my links as Magpie.  I have very much enjoyed her work.  She is also a very nice person to correspond with.

This poem was hard to read at first, but it told such a powerful story that it made a huge impact on me.

I hope you enjoy it too:  Regret to Inform

a poem for my collection.  I suppose I will have more time to work on it now that I have more time on my hands.  I’m not posting any poems for my new collection on here, but I can’t wait to submit the finished product for the Walt Whitman Award–it gives me something to look forward to.

Good luck with your writing, and thanks for reading Poet Verse.

At the round earth’s imagined corners blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go,
All whom the flood did, and fire shall, overthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance, hath slain, and you whose eyes
Shall behold God, and never taste death’s woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For, if above all these my sins abound,
‘Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace,
When we are there. Here on this lowly ground
Teach me how to repent; for that’s as good
As if Thou’dst sealed my pardon, with Thy blood.
–John Donne

Love
We cannot live, except thus mutually We alternate, aware or unaware, The reflex act of life: and when we bear Our virtue onward most impulsively, Most full of invocation, and to be Most instantly compellant, certes, there We live most life, whoever breathes most air And counts his dying years by sun and sea. But when a soul, by choice and conscience, doth Throw out her full force on another soul, The conscience and the concentration both make mere life, Love. For Life in perfect whole And aim consummated, is Love in sooth, As nature's magnet-heat rounds pole with pole.
–Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I’ve been scanning this site for typos today.  I noticed I keep spelling ac words with acc like acchieve instead of achieve.  I blame this on hearing Italian in my brain accendere!!

Darn studying other languages…darn them all!

Just teasing.

It is affecting my spelling though–and I have to say–in somewhat of a negative way.

I wrote a Petrarchan Sonnet today.  I wouldn’t say that it is glamourous or a beautiful attempt.  I think it had too much of a message to be lyrical.  I’m not sure if it is a success or not.

On other topics:

I had orientation for my new part-time job today.  It went well.  It will give me something to do.

Today, I did my French lesson, ran loads of errands, went to orientation, and wrote a Petrarchan sonnet. 

I’m not sure what to do next.  I feel semi-vegetative at the moment–unable to decide–brain is tired.

I suppose I will do some more family chores, read some more, write some more, and go to bed late–my idea of a plan.

Until next time–

**By the way, you can look up sonnet structure by searching for it in my blog’s search field.

I have always enjoyed political poetry.  This is an open form poem:

For twelve days,

I drilled through Moscow ice

to reach paradise,

that white tablecloth, set with a plate

that’s cracking bit by bit

like the glassy air, like me.

I know I’ll fly apart soon,

the pieces of me so light they float.

The Russians burned their crops,

rather than feed our army.

Now they strike against each other like dry rocks

and set us on fire with a hunger

nothing can feed.

Someone calls me and I look up.

It’s Hitler.

I imagine eating his terrible, luminous eyes.

Brother, he says.

I stand up, tie the rags tighter around my feet.

I hear my footsteps running after me,

but I am already gone.

–By AI

(Prose Poem)

The Colonel

What you have heard is true.  I was in his house.  His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar.  His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night.  There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him.  The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house.  On the television was a cop show.  It was in English.  Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man’s legs or cut his hands to lace.  On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores.  We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid.  The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread.  I was asked how I enjoyed the country.  There was a brief commercial in Spanish.  His wife took everything away.  There was some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern.  The parrot said hello on the terrace.  The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table.  My friend said to me with this eyes:  say nothing.  The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home.  He spilled many human ears on the table.  They were like dried peach halves.  There is no other way to say this.  He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass.  It came alive there.  I am tired of fooling around he said.  As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck themselves.  He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air.  Something for your poetry, no?  he said.  Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice.  Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.

Carolyn Forche

**EXCELLENT IMAGERY WITH THIS POEM.  NOTICE HOW EACH LINE ADVANCES WHAT SHE IS TRYING TO CONVEY.

Why? Because today was the perfect day to be called a HAG….

The Language of the Brag

I have wanted excellence in the knife-throw
I have wanted to use my exceptionally strong and accurate arms
and my straight posture and quick electric muscles
to achieve something at the center of a crowd,
the blade piercing the bark deep,
the haft slowly and heavily vibrating like the cock.

I have wanted some eipc use for my excellent body,
some heroism, some American achievement
beyond the ordinary for my extraordinary self,
magnetic and tensile, I have stood by the sandlot
and watched the boys play.

I have wanted courage, I have thought about fire
and the crossing of waterfalls, I have dragged around

my belly big with cowardice and safety,
my stool black with iron pills,
my huge breasts oozing mucus,
my legs swelling, my hands swelling,
my face swelling and darkening, my hair
falling out, my inner sex
stabbed again and again with terrible pain like a knife.
I have lain down.

I have lain down and sweated and shaken
and passed blood and feces and water and slowly alone in the center of a circle I have passed the new person out
and they have lifted the new person free of the act
and wiped the new person free of that
language of blood like praise all over the body.

I have done what you wanted to do, Walt Whitman,
Allen Ginsburg, I have done this thing,
I and other women this exceptional
act with exceptional heroic body,
this giving birth, this glistening verb,
and I am putting my proud AMERICAN boast
right here with the others.

–Sharon Olds

I have always shied away from reading poems that look like paragraphs.  Perhaps it was my own snobbery–my own defintion of what a poem should look like.  Ditching my normal averting glance, I decided to read such a poem called ” The Colonel” by Carolyn Forche.  I loved it!

I have decided to experiment today with my open form to include a paragraph type of poem.

I am running late on time today as I have chores to catch up to so I will post “The Colonel” tomorrow morning when I have the time to type it.

Lesson for the day:

Turn down your own tendencies to dislike something and try reading something new.

Thanks for reading Poet Verse!

The Last Iraq by Fadhil al-Azzawi
Translated by Salaam Yousif

Every night I place this creature on my table
And pull its ears,
Till tears of joy come to its eyes.
Another cold winter, penetrated by airplanes
And soldiers sitting on the edge of a hillock,
Waiting for history
To rise up from the darkness of the marshes
With a gun in its hand,
To shoot angels
Training for the revolution.
Every night I put my hand on this country,
It slips away from my fingers,
Like a soldier running from the front.

[1987]

***Fadhi al-Azzawi was born in Iraq’s northern city of Kirkuk. He was imprisoned in Baghdad. He lives now in Germany.

Iraqi Poems

Don’t fear death by Aleksandr Blok

 Aleksander Blok is a Russian poet

Don’t fear death in earthly travels.
Don’t fear enemies or friends.
Just listen to the words of prayers,
To pass the facets of the dreads.

Your death will come to you, and never
You shall be, else, a slave of life,
Just waiting for a dawn’s favor,
From nights of poverty and strife.

She’ll build with you a common law,
One will of the Eternal Reign.
And you are not condemned to slow
And everlasting deadly pain.

 

While at Barnes and Nobles, I read some of Jeffers’ works.  I was most impressed with The Women at Point Sur (1925-26) Post Mortem Pelicans, but this is all I could find that would satiate my hunger for more of his poetry: Carmel Point
The extraordinary patience of things! This beautiful place defaced with a crop of surburban houses- How beautiful when we first beheld it, Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs; No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing, Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads- Now the spoiler has come: does it care? Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide That swells and in time will ebb, and all Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty Lives in the very grain of the granite, Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.-As for us: We must uncenter our minds from ourselves; We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident As the rock and ocean that we were made from. --Robinson Jeffers

My pantoum turned out better than I thought it would.  With all the commotion going on last night regarding my blog, I was thinking it would be a disastrous effort.  I was pleasantly surprised.  If you haven’t given the Pantoum form a try then you should definitely check it out.  If you enter Pantoum into the search button on my page, you should be able to find the instructions on how to write one.

Good luck and good writing!

When I consider how my light is spent,

   Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,

   And that one talent which is death to hide

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

   My true account, lest He returning chide;

   "Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"

I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need

   Either man's work or His own gifts. Who best

   Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state

Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,

   And post o'er land and ocean without rest;

   They also serve who only stand and wait."
--By John Milton

Earlier on my blog, I had written that my first sestina was a disaster.  I really didn’t organize myself well so I figure that was part of the problem.

Well, today, I wrote a smashing sestina.

I wish I could share it, but it is part of a collection I am working on.

Good luck to anyone out there writing!!!

Thanks for reading.

–Carolina Maine

The Heart is the Capital of the Mind

The Mind is a single State–

The Heart and the Mind together make

A single Continent-

One-is the Population-

Numerous enough-

This ecstatic Nation

Seek-it is Yourself.

–Emily Dickinson

At Pleasure Bay

Robert Pinsky is a former, Poet Laureate of the U.S.

In the willows along the river at Pleasure Bay
A catbird singing, never the same phrase twice.
Here under the pines a little off the road
In 1927 the Chief of Police
And Mrs. W. killed themselves together,
Sitting in a roadster. Ancient unshaken pilings
And underwater chunks of still-mortared brick
In shapes like bits of puzzle strew the bottom
Where the landing was for Price’s Hotel and Theater.
And here’s where boats blew two blasts for the keeper
To shunt the iron swing-bridge. He leaned on the gears
Like a skipper in the hut that housed the works
And the bridge moaned and turned on its middle pier
To let them through. In the middle of the summer
Two or three cars might wait for the iron trusswork
Winching aside, with maybe a child to notice
A name on the stern in black-and-gold on white,
Sandpiper, Patsy Ann, Do Not Disturb,
The Idler. If a boat was running whiskey,
The bridge clanged shut behind it as it passed
And opened up again for the Coast Guard cutter
Slowly as a sundial, and always jammed halfway.
The roadbed whole, but opened like a switch,
The river pulling and coursing between the piers.
Never the same phrase twice, the catbird filling
The humid August evening near the inlet
With borrowed music that he melds and changes.
Dragonflies and sandflies, frogs in the rushes, two bodies
Not moving in the open car among the pines,
A sliver of story. The tenor at Price’s Hotel,
In clown costume, unfurls the sorrow gathered
In ruffles at his throat and cuffs, high quavers
That hold like splashes of light on the dark water,
The aria’s closing phrases, changed and fading.
And after a gap of quiet, cheers and applause
Audible in the houses across the river,
Some in the audience weeping as if they had melted
Inside the music. Never the same. In Berlin
The daughter of an English lord, in love
With Adolf Hitler, whom she has met. She is taking
Possession of the apartment of a couple,
Elderly well-off Jews. They survive the war
To settle here in the Bay, the old lady
Teaches piano, but the whole world swivels
And gapes at their feet as the girl and a high-up Nazi
Examine the furniture, the glass, the pictures,
The elegant story that was theirs and now
Is part of hers. A few months later the English
Enter the war and she shoots herself in a park,
An addled, upper-class girl, her life that passes
Into the lives of others or into a place.
The taking of lives–the Chief and Mrs. W.
Took theirs to stay together, as local ghosts.
Last flurries of kisses, the revolver’s barrel,
Shivers of a story that a child might hear
And half remember, voices in the rushes,
A singing in the willows. From across the river,
Faint quavers of music, the same phrase twice and again,
Ranging and building. Over the high new bridge
The flashing of traffic homeward from the racetrack,
With one boat chugging under the arches, outward
Unnoticed through Pleasure Bay to the open sea.
Here’s where the people stood to watch the theater
Burn on the water. All that night the fireboats
Kept playing their spouts of water into the blaze.
In the morning, smoking pilasters and beams.
Black smell of char for weeks, the ruin already
Soaking back into the river. After you die
You hover near the ceiling above your body
And watch the mourners awhile. A few days more
You float above the heads of the ones you knew
And watch them through a twilight. As it grows darker
You wander off and find your way to the river
And wade across. On the other side, night air,
Willows, the smell of the river, and a mass
Of sleeping bodies all along the bank,
A kind of singing from among the rushes
Calling you further forward in the dark.
You lie down and embrace one body, the limbs
Heavy with sleep reach eagerly up around you
And you make love until your soul brims up
And burns free out of you and shifts and spills
Down over into that other body, and you
Forget the life you had and begin again
On the same crossing–maybe as a child who passes
Through the same place. But never the same way twice.
Here in the daylight, the catbird in the willows,
The new café, with a terrace and a landing,
Frogs in the cattails where the swing-bridge was–
Here’s where you might have slipped across the water
When you were only a presence, at Pleasure Bay.

Robert Pinsky

All of the information below can be found on pages 159-60 in The Making of a Poem by Strand and Boland.

Buy the book on Amazon, The Making of a Poem

This book would make a great investment as it is one you can refer back to for years to come.

I:  Types of Meter

1.  Meter is the Greek word for ‘measure.’

2.  There are three meters most commonly used by poets in the English language– they are accentual, syllabic, and accentual-syllabic.

3.  In accentual meter the stresses are counted and the syllables are variable.

4.  In syllabic meter the syllables are counted but the stresses are varied.

5.  In accentual-syllabic meter both accents and syllables are measured and counted.

6.  In English, one tradition established its dominance:  the accentual-syllabic meter.

II:  The Character of Different Types of Meter

1.  Accentual meter is often called ’stress’ meter or ’strong stress meter.’  Its origins lie far back in English poetry.

2.  Accentual meter is common in the ballad and the nursery rhyme.  It is heavily stressed and clearly heard when the poem is read.

3.  Syllabic meters, on the other hand, are not easily heard.  Because they count syllables, their force is most easily seen on the page:  Syllabics are essentially a visual contract with the reader.

4.  In accentual-syllabic meters–the combination of these–both syllables and accents are measured and counted and are often referred to as ‘feet.’

5.  These ‘feet’ are patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables.  The variations, pauses, musical effects, and dissonances within the accentual-syllabic line are where much of the force and power of meter occurs.

III:  Definitions Of The Most Common ‘FEET’ In Accentual-Syllabic Meter

1.  A poetic foot is a measured unit of meter, made up of stressed and unstressed syllables.

2.  The iamb is the most common foot.  It is a short stress followed by a long one.  And example is about.

3.  A trochee is a less commonly used foot.  It is a long stress followed by a short one.  An example is That is.  Or dropsy.

4.  A dactyl is a long stress followed by two shore ones.  An example is happily.

5.  An anapest is two short stressed followed by a long one.  An example is in a tree.

6.  A spondee is two long stresses.  An example is humdrum.

Ibrahim Bastug is a Turkish Poet.

 

FROM SQUARES OF THE THREAD

XVII

take away this dead body growing cold in my hands

clean up the plastic flowers from the shop windows

bring me a handful of sand

which does not want to become glass

 

XVIII

every night your voice is a never-ending elegy

every morning your face is an ever longer wedding ceremony

 

XIX

a leather briefcase in your hand • something left over from your years of government work • your other hand is empty • what is that thing stolen from the dissolute hours of the night? they are your pockets

 

Translated by Kemal Silay

 

An example of a stanzaic poem:

I asked the heaven of stars

    What should I give my love–

It answered me with silence,

      Silence above.

 

I asked the darkened sea

     Down where the fishes go–

It answered me in silence,

       Silence below.

 

Oh, I could give him weeping,

       Or I could give him song–

But how can I give silence

         My whole life long?

–Sara Teasdale

1.  “Any unit of recurring meter and rhyme–or variants of them–used in an established pattern of repitition and separation in a single poem.”

2.  Can be made up of lines of the same length- called an isometric stanza.

3.  Can be made up of lines of varying lenghts- called a heterometric stanza.

4.  Can be a loose grouping of lines and paragraphs of verse–quasi-stanzaic.

5.  “The effect of the stanza is gained by the combination of accumulating sense, from stanza to stanza, combined with repeated sound through the repetition of lineation and rhyming.”

Strand and Boland, The Making of a Poem, page 136

1.  Rhyming pair of lines

2. The meter can be iambic pentameter or iambic tetrameter.

3. ”The pentameter couplet has ten syllables with alternating stresses.”

4. Rhyme sceme is aabbcc…

5.  “The heroic couplet, so-called, denoted that it was a form in which a high subject matter could be written.  This was the form often used for translation of epic poetry from the classical Latin and Greek.”

6.  “It works by adapting the old Chaucerian line and allowing a strong pause or caesura in middle of the line.”

7.  “The caesura usually comes after the fifth or sixth syllable.  Its sharp rhymes and regular beat made it widely used in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries for epigrammatic and satirical poetry.”

Strand and Boland The Making of a Poem Page 121

A beautiful Sonnet:

Many in aftertimes will say of you

     “He lov’d her”–while of me what will they say?

      Not that I lov’d you more than just in play,

For fashion’s sake as idle women do.

Even let them prate;  who know not what we knew

     Of love and parting in exceeding pain,

      Of parting hopeless here to meet again,

Hopeless on earth, and heaven is out of view,

But my heart of love laid bare to you,

      My love that you can make not void nor vain,

Love that foregoes you but to claim anew

      Beyond this passage of the gate of death,

I charge you at the Judgment make it plain

       My love of you was life and not a breath.

–Christina Rossetti

or do you also enjoy re-reading your favorite poems?  Many of the poems on this site are enjoyed by me, and I love to re-read them in the morning.  I think having them all at my fingertips (on my blog) has made it even easier to savor their meaning in my life.

This blog was a great idea in more ways than one.

Thanks for reading.

I was at a bookstore on Sunday–Barnes and Nobles to be exact.  There is a small poetry section in the back of the store with four chairs situated right in font of it.  No one was reading poetry.  No one-not in the four chairs that were in front of the poetry section–nor in other areas of the store.  I tend to walk around as I become over-stimulated in bookstores–I feel like I have to read everything. 

As I read through the poetry books–I realized why no one was reading.  Relevance.  Unless you just enjoy the art of poetry or are in a class and studying poetry–you are not likely to buy a poetry book.  This made me sad.  Of course, poets do bring it on themselves when they write needlessly to fill space.  I like poems that get to the point and paint a vivid picture while doing it.  I don’t like to be distracted by needless fillers like irrelevant horses in the field–no matter how artistic or poetic that is supposed to be.

People are busy.  Poets–give a reader what he or she wants:  A vivid experience that is profound–

Novels are nice–but poetry is not a novel–

Poems that ramble on for pages lose a person’s interest–

Good luck writing!

**This isn’t to say that a long and well-written poem is not enjoyable.

An example of a Blank Verse poem:

Rain

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain

On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me

Remembering again that I shall die

And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks

For washing me cleaner than I have been

Since I was born into this solitude.

Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:

But here I pray that none whom once I loved

Is dying tonight or lying still awake

Solitary, listening to the rain,

Either in pain or thus in sympathy

Helpless among the living and the dead,

Like a cold water among broken reeds,

Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,

Like me who have no love which this wild rain

Has not dissolved except the love of death,

If love it be towards what is perfect and

Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

–Edward Thomas

1.  Iambic line with ten stresses and five beats.

2.  Unrhymed

3.  Traditionally associated with dramatic speech and epic poetry

4.  “The lack of rhyme makes enjambment more possible and often more effective.”

5.  “It is often identified as the poetic form closest to human speech.”

** Enjambment means to carry on sense from one line to another.

Strand and Boland Page 101 The Making of a Poem

Since it is Sunday and I covered Ballads this week:

The Cherry-tree Carol

Joseph was an old man,

   An old man was he,

When he wedded Mary

   In the land of Galilee

 

Joseph and Mary walked

   Through an orchard good,

Where was cherries and berries

So red as any blood.

 

Joseph and Mary walked

   Through an orchard green,

Where was berries and cherries

   As thick as might be seen.

 

O then bespoke Mary

   So meek and so mild:

‘Pluck me one cherry, Joseph,

    For I am with child.’

 

O then bespoke Joseph

   With words most unkind:

‘Let him pluck thee a cherry

    That brouht thee with child.’

 

O then bespoke the Babe

    Within his Mother’s womb:

‘Bow down then the tallest tree

    For my Mother to have some.’

 

Then bowed down the highest tree

    Unto his Mother’s hand;

Then she cried ‘See, Joseph,

    I have cherries at command.’

 

O then bespake Joseph

   ‘I have done Mary wrong;

But cheer up, my dearest,

    And be not cast down.’

 

Then Mary plucked a cherry

     As red as the blood,

Then Mary went home

With her heavy load.

 

Then Mary took her Babe

   And sat him on her knee

Saying, ‘My dear Son, tell me

    What this world will be.’

 

‘O I shall be as dead, Mother,

    As the stones in the wall;

O the stones in the streets, Mother,

     Shall mourn for me all.

 

Upon Easter-day, Mother,

   My uprising shall be;

O the sun and the moon, Mother,

    Shall both rise with me.’

Abraham Lincoln has always been my favorite President of the U.S. 

Walt Whitman wrote a long poem “Memories of President Lincoln”, but I especially like the part shared below:

10

O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I

   loved?

And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has

         has gone?

And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?

Sea-winds blown from east and west,

Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea,

     till there on the prairies meeting,

These and with these and the breath of my chant,

I’ll perfume the grave of him I love.

–Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

A City’s Death By Fire by Derek Walcott

After that hot gospeller has levelled all but the churched sky,
I wrote the tale by tallow of a city’s death by fire;
Under a candle’s eye, that smoked in tears, I
Wanted to tell, in more than wax, of faiths that were snapped like wire.
All day I walked abroad among the rubbled tales,
Shocked at each wall that stood on the street like a liar;
Loud was the bird-rocked sky, and all the clouds were bales
Torn open by looting, and white, in spite of the fire.
By the smoking sea, where Christ walked, I asked, why
Should a man wax tears, when his wooden world fails?
In town, leaves were paper, but the hills were a flock of faiths;
To a boy who walked all day, each leaf was a green breath
Rebuilding a love I thought was dead as nails,
Blessing the death and the baptism by fire.

Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting,

Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose

  them,

And yet they expose me more than all my other poems.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

I dream’d in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of

     the whole of the rest of the earth,

I dream’d that was the new city of Friends,

Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led

       the rest,

It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,

And in all their looks and words.

–Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Translated into two versions from Chinese:

While I watch the moon go down, a crow caws through the frost;

Under the shadows of maple-trees a fisherman moves with his torch;

And I hear, from beyond Suzhou, from the temple on Cold Mountain,

Ringing for me, here in my boat, the midnight bell.

—- Version 2—-

Moon sets, crows cry and frost fills all the sky;

By maples and boat lights, I sleepless lie.

Outside Suzhou Hanshan Temple is in sight;

Its ringing bells reach my boat at midnight.

–Zhang Ji

The day that I am having reminded me of this Villanelle:

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day.  Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

the art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names and where it was you meant

to travel.  None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch.  And look!  my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones.  And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture of love)

I shan’t have lied.  It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

–Elizabeth Bishop

1.  Short Narrative.  It is usually arranged in 4 line stanzas with a meter that is disinctive.

2.  “The usual ballad meter is a first and third line with four stresses–iambic tetrameter–and then a second and fourth line with three stresses–iambic trimeter.”

3.  The rhyme scheme is abaab or abcb

4.  ” The subject matter is distinctive; almost always communal stories of lost love, supernatural happenings, or recent events.”

5.  “The ballad maker  uses popular and local speech and dialogue often and vividly to convey the story.  This is especially a feature of early ballads.”

Strand and Boland page 73 The Making of  a Poem

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listens for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet know its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

The atom bellies like a cauliflower,

Expands, expands, shoots up again, expands

Into ecclesiastical curves and towers

We pray to with our cupped and empty hands.

This is the old Hebraic-featured fear

We nursed before humility began,

Our crown-on-crown or phallic parody

Begat by man on the original sea

The sea’s delivered.  Galvanized and smooth

She kills a tired ship left in her lap

–Transfiguration–with a half-breath

Settling like an animal in sleep.

So godhead takes the difficult form of love.

Where is the little myth we used to have?

–Jane Cooper

This poem is somewhat hopeless at the end, but I think we have all felt a little hopeless at times when we think of man’s created weapons of mass destruction.

We all know the next line, but have any of us really paid attention to some of the other lines in the poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning?

My favorite lines are the last rather than the first:

“…-I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears of all my life!–and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.”

I feel that way about my husband and my family.  I can only love them imperfectly, according to my human condition, but once I die–if God chooses–then I hope to love them perfectly in heaven.

The sonnet is below:

How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they trun from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints–I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!–and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

1. Poem of 14 lines that is usually iambic

2. There are two kinds of sonnets:  Petrarchan  and Shakespearean

3.  “The Petrarchan sonnet is Italian in origin, has an octave of eight lines and a sestet of six.  They rhyme scheme of the octave is ababcdcd of the stestet cdecde.”

4.  “The Shakespearean sonnet was developed in England and has far more than just surface differences from the Petrarchan.”

5. ”The rhyme scheme of the Shakespearean sonnet is ababcdcdefefgg.  There is no octave/sestet structure to it.  The final couplet is a defining feature.”

Strand and Boland Page 55

The answer is No in my case.  I have been busy and have put the pantoum poem on the backburner.

I took a few days off to research chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons instead.  I have always been afraid of such weapons, but now–I guess I’m accepting the fact that they exist and that the U.S. and other countries are at least trying to reduce their old stockpiles of chemical weapons. I thought about blogging on the topic; however, I realized that it is slow news and really–my poetry blog is doing well and it, unlike a blog on weapons, is relaxing.

So–pretty soon I will feel like writing again.  I get into moods–the read it all in a few days mood and the write it all in a few days mood.  I suppose balance would be nice but some things about a person never balance nicely..and I think this trait in me is one of those.

Good luck to anyone out there writing–

He touched me, so I live to know

That such a day, permitted so,

I groped upon his breast.

It was a boundless place to me,

And silenced, as the awful sea

Puts minor streams to rest.

 

And now, I’m different from before,

As if I breathed superior air,

Or brushed a royal gown;

My feet, too, that had wandered so,

My gpsy face transfigured now

To tenderer renown.

–Emily Dickinson

Evening Prayer for the Sabbath

 

In this moment of silent communion with Thee,

O Lord, a still small silent voice speaks in the depth
of my spirit.

It speaks to me of the things I must do to attain
holy kinship with Thee and to grow
in the likeness of Thee.

I must do my allotted task with unflagging faithfulness
even though the eye of no taskmaster is on me.

I must be gentle in the face of ingratitude
or when slander distorts my noblest motives.

I must come to the end of each day with a feeling
that I have used its gifts gratefully
and faced its trials bravely.

O Lord, help me to be ever more like Thee,
holy for Thou art holy,

Loving for Thou art love.

Speak to me, then, Lord, as I seek Thee again and again
in the stillness of meditation, until Thy bidding
shall at last become for me a hallowed discipline,
a familiar way of life.

 

 

- Jewish Liturgy

 

I love this prayer because slander can ruin your heart; it can make you hate–and hate is not of G-d.  When someone slanders you–you must bear the trial patiently–it is the way to grow in a Christ-led life..

 

 

I tried writing a sestina, but it was a disaster so I have decided to give the Pantoum a try.  I will post my poem on here when it is done.

Keep writing–thanks for reading!

Pantoum of the Great Depression

Our lives avoided tragedy
Simply by going on and on,
Without end and with little apparent meaning.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.

Simply by going on and on
We managed. No need for the heroic.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.
I don’t remember all the particulars.

We managed. No need for the heroic.
There were the usual celebrations, the usual sorrows.
I don’t remember all the particulars.
Across the fence, the neighbors were our chorus.

There were the usual celebrations, the usual sorrows
Thank god no one said anything in verse.
The neighbors were our only chorus,
And if we suffered we kept quiet about it.

At no time did anyone say anything in verse.
It was the ordinary pities and fears consumed us,
And if we suffered we kept quiet about it.
No audience would ever know our story.

It was the ordinary pities and fears consumed us.
We gathered on porches; the moon rose; we were poor.
What audience would ever know our story?
Beyond our windows shone the actual world.

We gathered on porches; the moon rose; we were poor.
And time went by, drawn by slow horses.
Somewhere beyond our windows shone the world.
The Great Depression had entered our souls like fog.

And time went by, drawn by slow horses.
We did not ourselves know what the end was.
The Great Depression had entered our souls like fog.
We had our flaws, perhaps a few private virtues.

But we did not ourselves know what the end was.
People like us simply go on.
We have our flaws, perhaps a few private virtues,
But it is by blind chance only that we escape tragedy.

And there is no plot in that; it is devoid of poetry.

–Donald Justice

Pantoums are poems that have:

1. Stanzas that are 4 lines long

2. An unspecified length–but the pantoum must begin and end with the same line

3. “The second and fourth lines of the first quatrain become the first and third lines of the next, and so on with succeeding quatrains.”

4.  Rhyme patter of each quatrain is abab

5. Final quatrain changes the abab pattern

6.  “In the final quatrain the unrepeated first and thrid lines are used in reverse as second and fourth lines.”

Strand and Boland Page 43

He is not Hari, He is not the Lord Siva.
He is the Ultimate Cause,
In the Beyond of the Beyond,
Transcending Blackness, Redness, and Whiteness,
Immoveable.
Try to understand:
He is not big, He is not small.
He is Infinite Distance,
Immovable,
Transcending even
Supreme Quiessence.

 

By Sivavakkiyar

The Sun Rising

“The Sun Rising” is my favorite poem.  A lot of people think it is just about lovers and the sun–but it is not.  At first, the Sun is given formal standing and recognition.  As Donne becomes more confident, he demotes the Sun to sun. 

Donne was actually a very spiritual man. Human love and understanding–and prefering it to God is what the poems stands for.  Donne sends the sun away–as if he could do so.  Human arrogance is what it denotes.

The last line-his bed is the centre of the universe and his walls are the sphere.  Those represent pleasure and the world respectively.  Basically, Donne is telling God that  pleasure and the world are his and his lover’s–isn’t that what each of us does each time we do not recognize God as the center in our lives?

Donne is my favorite poet in many ways; it is mainly because he tempts human arrogance for luminary  responses.

Enjoy:

 

 

Busy old fool, unruly Sun,      Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?      Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide      Late school-boys and sour prentices,   Go tell court-huntsmen, that the king will ride,   Call country ants to harvest offices; Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.     Thy beams, so reverend, and strong      Why shouldst thou think? I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink, But that I would not lose her sight so long;      If her eyes have not blinded thine,      Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,   Whether both th’ Indias of spice and mine   Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me. Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday, And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.      She’s all states, and all princes, I,      Nothing else is. Princes do but play us; compared to this, All honour’s mimic; all wealth alchemy.      Thou sun art half as happy as we,      In that the world’s contracted thus;   Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be   To warm the world, that’s done in warming us. Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere; This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere.

A Coffin-is a small Domain,

Yet able to contain

A citizen of Paradise

In it’s diminished Plane-

 

A Grave-is a restricted Breadth-

Yet ampler than the Sun-

And all the Seas He populates-

And lands He looks “opon”

 

To Him who on it’s small Repose

Bestows a single Friend-

Circumference without Relief-

Or estimate-or End-

Emily Dickinson

My first sestina was awkward, but maybe I will get better with practice.  It feels awkward to write in free verse for so long and then force myself into other poetry forms; however, I think the experience is helping me to develop as a writer.  I was comfortable and now I am not–that means I need to work on some things.

Good luck writing, and good luck with your sestinas

 

                    SESTINA: ALTAFORTE

 

LOQUITUR: En Bertans de Born.  Dante Alighieri put this man in hell

for that he was a stirrer up of strife.  Eccovi! Judge ye! Have I dug

him up again?  The scene is at his castle, Altaforte.  “Papiols” is his

jongleur.  “The Leopard,” the device of Richard Coeur de Lion.

 

I

 

Damn it all! all this our South stinks peace.

You whoreson dog, Papiols, come!  Let’s to music!

I have no life save when the swords clash.

But ah! when I see the standards gold, vair, purple, opposing

And the broad fields beneath them turn crimson,

Then howl I my heart nigh mad with rejoicing.

 

II

 

In hot summer I have great rejoicing

When the tempests kill the earth’s foul peace,

And the lightning from black heav’n flash crimson,

And the fierce thunders roar me their music

And the winds shriek through the clouds mad, opposing,

And through all the riven skies God’s swords clash.

 

III

 

Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash!

And the shrill neighs of destriers in battle rejoicing,

Spiked breast to spiked breat opposing!

Better one hour’s stour than a year’s peace

With fat boards, bawds, wine and frail music!

Bah! there’s no wine like the blood’s crimson!

 

IV

 

And I love to see the sun rise blood-crimson.

And I watch his spears through the dark clash

And it fills all my heart with rejoicing

And pries wide my mouth with fast music

When I see him so scorn and defy peace,

His long might ‘gainst all darkness opposing.

 

V

 

The man who fears war and squats opposing

My words for stour, hath no blood of crimson

But is fit only to rot in womanish peace

Far from where worth’s won and the swords clash

For the death of such sluts I go rejoicing;

Yea, I fill all the air with my music.

 

VI

 

Papiols, Papiols, to the music!

There’s no sound like to swords swords opposing,

No cry like the battle’s rejoicing

When our elbows and swords drip the crimson

And our charges ‘gainst “The Leopard’s” rush clash.

May God damn for ever all who cry “Peace!”

 

VII

 

And let the music of the swords make them crimson!

Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash!

Hell blot black for always the thought “Peace!”

 

 

                                                             Ezra Pound

 

 

 

I haven’t written a sestina yet.  I have thought about it, but I just haven’t gotten to it.  In the meantime, I will post some of my old poems. 

Writing with a definite form is something I really have to get used to.

I write as a hobby–as an expression of being alive-and I really hope that never changes about me.

The Sestina is a poem of 39 lines. 

6 Stanzas with 6 lines each that is followed by an “envoi” of 3 lines

All are unrhymed

All stanzas contain the same 6 end words that are in a set pattern–change in order

“Each stanza must follow on the last by taking a reversed pairing of the previous lines.”

“The first line of the second stanza must pair its end-words with the last line of the first.  The second line of the second stanza must do this with the first line of the first and so on.”

The last 3 lines of the poem must “…gather up and deploy the six end-words.

Strand and Boland Page 21

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Strand and Boland Page 12

Strand and Boland page 5

1. Poem with 19 lines

2. 5 Stanzas Each has 3 lines; the last stanza has 4 lines

3. The first line of Stanza 1 is repeated as the last Line 3 of Stanzas 2 and 4

4. The third line of Stanza 1 is repeated as the last line of Stanzas 3 and 5

5. Refrain lines of 3 and 4 are the last two lines of the poem

6. Rhyme scheme is aba. Rhymes are repeated according to the refrains.

Most of the form posts on this blog will be from this book:

The Making of a Poem
A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms
By Mark Strand and Eavan Boland
WW. Norton & Company
New York
2000

I purchased it at B&N for 17.95 paperback.

This is a new blog, but I plan to have plenty of things up in the next few days.

I have always been a free verse writer; however, I decided to challenge myself and try to write in different forms.

I will have form information on this site so that students can also learn about poetry as well.

Thank you for visiting poetverse.

Carolina Maine