Robin Helweg-Larsen's Blog, page 39

Non-traditional sonnet: Marcus Bales, ‘The Durable Rain’

The durable rain was conducting its drumming descent
Without any decent regard for the dawning of day
As if a dim evening was all of the morning it meant
To allow from a sun that was doing a landscape in grey.
Never begin with the weather the boffins have said.
If nature’s as stormy and dark as a novelist’s mind
The reader will sneer at the metaphor. Offer instead
A prose that’s so difficult readers are left far behind.
But back to my tale. Is it cozy inside, or does rain
Express what discursive description would talk past in vain?
Does a cry break a heart when the kettle releases its steam
Or, piping, awaken a lover up out of their dream?
What it will mean will depend on your context and age.
A poem exists in the reader and not on the page.

*****

Marcus Bales writes: “The first four lines rolled out without much trouble. I had let the dogs out after they’d woken me at what they thought was the right time but which to me was five in the a.m. It was cold and grey but not rainy at all. Who can figure how the brain works. I did worry briefly about the alliteration but finally put it off, hoping it would sound like rain on the roof. Sort of. And it seemed portentous and poetry-like, but where to go from that?

“I don’t know where I first heard that you’re not supposed to open with the weather. It sounds like one of those pieces of advice the internet kicks up from time to time purportedly by Elmore Leonard, along the lines of “You know those parts that readers skip over? Don’t write those.” Or “You got to know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em.” Advice that is absolutely both spot-on and worthless at one and the same time. If you know you don’t need any advice; if you need advice, it’s because you don’t know. It makes sense in that maddening way of all advice, but it is untakeable. However much you may agree that the reader doesn’t care what the weather is, they care what happens and who it happens to, there I still was without anyone there to have something happen to, except the damn rain.

“Sitting at breakfast reading my usual dollop of Wodehouse, I noticed that when things are going well for his characters the weather gets some generous play, and when not, not. Then I reflected that really I don’t have a large supply of written descriptions of the weather from anywhere. There’s ‘Neutral Tones’, of course, where the weather is a metaphor for the breaking relationship, and “Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.” And ‘Stopping By Woods’ where the weather is the reason for the stopping, or the first lines of ‘Journey of the Magi’. There’s Auden’s ‘In Memory of Yeats’, Housman’s cherries hung like snow, if that even works, though who Snow was and how Housman knew is a mystery. And after that it’s vague references to this or that month or season generally in Keats, Poe, Byron, or Shelley, and the inference that all of Yeats happens in the summer what with swans and people fighting the horses of the sea, and all. And finally, again, all those descriptions of the morning in the Blandings and the golf stories. After that my memory starts to flail about. This isn’t the sort of thing where research is indicated at five in the ack emma. Perhaps you remember more examples of how the weather is used in prose and poetry, but it’s too late now, isn’t it.

“I wasn’t sure how to go on. It seemed as if nearly the whole practice of poetry in English was against me, aside from the sub-genre of song with all those deep and crisp and evens, and sleigh rides that began to echo in the back of my head, along with all those singers who seem to be perpetually crying or dancing or walking in the rain. Then I thought well, why not use that? I might get three or four lines out of it, and then maybe something else would occur to me. Well, I got my four lines and arrived at the volta of the sonnet, if sonnet it turned out to be. What now?

“Turning at the question that had stopped me I trod upon that patch for a few lines, and then I had got to the couplet. Well, I really had nothing, did I, among all this meta- bit, and what I had seemed to call for some digging into the whats and whys of how literature worked. Well, of course no one knows. I worried some about having failed to provide any context for the reader to see me through, and put it aside to eat breakfast.

“After that, and a shower, and a bit of humor watching the dogs return to the scene of the five o’clock crime outside to chase a squirrel in the yard, somehow the notion of context reasserted itself, and I remembered a sort of juicy quote from a professor 50 years ago who was gassing on about how a poem isn’t the sounds or the words or the meanings as the poet meant them, but rather the unpredicatable ways that the people misread poems. I recall he had half a dozen examples right to hand, as scholars so annoyingly seem to do, but I couldn’t bring a single one to mind. Fortunately, I’m a poet, not a scholar, so I don’t have to be able to give good – or any – examples, so I decided to steal his assertion and let it go at that.

“And there it is. A complete mishmash of false starts, interrupted middles, and squishy endings. Enjoy!”

Not much is known about Marcus Bales except that he lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio, and that his work has not been published in Poetry or The New Yorker. However his ‘51 Poems‘ is available from Amazon. He has been published in several of the Potcake Chapbooks (‘Form in Formless Times’).

Photo: “Rainy Day” by SammCox is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Light verse: RHL, ‘Question the Universe’

Odin wrote runey verse
Rumi wrote Sunni verse
Edward Lear? Loony verse.
Question the universe
with your buffoony verse.

*****

Sometimes you jot down a little light piece inspired more by wordplay than anything else, and the more you look at it the more it resonates. This is one such. The characters are diverse, coming from pre-literate Scandinavia, Renaissance-inspiring Islam, and Victorian England – they touch the roots of my cultural identity. They are from the past, but their searches are timeless, fully modern, quintessentially human. And I fully subscribe to the idea that we should question everything, and that the Fool‘s tools of succinct and enigmatic wordplay may be as good an approach as any in trying to formulate – let alone answer – all questions, physical and existential.

It further resonates for me in being published (which I find important); in being published just now in Light (which is a wonderfully reassuring place to be); in having been improved in response to Light’s editorial comments (meaning, yes, I am proud that sometimes I am open to criticism and it’s useful); and in being my 400th poem published (by one of my conflicting counts).

Nothing is definite, not the historical reality of historical and semi-historical figures, not the permanence of printed words, not the definition of a poem, not the count of things hard to define, not the nature of physical reality. So though we have to make prosaic choices based on appearances and best guesses, that should be balanced by questioning everything. Preferably in verse.

TL;DR: Even short poems can be unpacked.

Illustration: DALL-E by RHL, ‘Rumi, Odin and Edward Lear are writing poetry to question the universe’

Light verse: Edmund Conti, ‘Man O’ War’

The men of war
in the man o’ war
(and the many more)
who rode the ship’s bottom
where the admirals put ’em
would often think
this has to stink
If we ever sink
we’re sunk.

At least
that’s what
I think
they thunk.

*****

Edmund Conti writes: “I guess I was thinking if there is a Man O’ War, then there have to be Men O’ War. And where would they be put to be kept out of the way until called on. One idea led to another, one simple rhyme led to more, and voila!”

Edmund Conti has recent poems published in Light, Lighten-Up Online, The Lyric, The Asses of Parnassus, newversenews, Verse-Virtual and Open Arts Forum. His book of poems, Just So You Know, released by Kelsay Books
https://www.amazon.com/Just-You-Know-Edmund-Conti/dp/1947465899/
was followed by That Shakespeherian Rag, also from Kelsay
https://kelsaybooks.com/products/that-shakespeherian-rag

Photo: “The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805” by lluisribesmateᥩ is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Evocative fragment: W.H. Auden, ‘On the Circuit’

Another morning comes: I see,
Dwindling below me on the plane,
The roofs of one more audience
I will not see again.

God bless the lot of them, although
I don’t remember which was which:
God bless the U.S.A., so large,
So friendly, and so rich.

*****

Auden emigrated from the UK to the US in 1939, and lived as an Anglo-American academic who lectured all over the country. A left-wing poet, his ‘On the Circuit’ shows his amusement at living well in the United States. His wry reflections are built on a simple ABCB rhyme scheme in iambic tetrameter, with the last line of each stanza shortened to a trimeter for the stanza’s punchline. I’ve quoted the last two of 16 stanzas.

Speaking as a foreigner who lived in the US for 25 years, teaching business seminars across the continent to corporate audiences, I confirm the resonance of Auden’s general attitude. Parenthetically I note that despite his approval of the US as a place to live and work, it’s not where he chose to vacation each year, or where he bought a house, or where he ended his days.

Photo: “From yesterday: @southwestair #flight 2500 #DAL-#SAT with #downtown #dallas behind the #winglet. I’m doing the opposite route later today heading back to #KC for the night before another trip. #latergram #swapic #city #texas #plane #airplane #instaplane #” by JL Johnson // User47.com is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Short poem: RHL, ‘Friendship, Not Passion’

I had a friendship, more than passionate love, for you;
we could have been so good, easy, together.
But there’s that issue of your strong religious thoughts,
whereas I let my thoughts change with the weather.

I… well, and who’s the I you think that you address?
I ramble, googly-eyed, my arms elastic.
There are so many sweet but sadly firm believers.
I’m – more than atheist – iconoclastic.

*****

If you’re used to iambic pentameter the meter of this poem feels just a little off, with its lines of alternating 12 and 11 syllables, i.e. alternating hexameters and feminine-ending pentameters… not quite comfortable. Which is perfectly in keeping with the relationship described. And I don’t remember precisely which long-ago not-quite-girlfriend I had in mind when I wrote it; I’ve been attracted to more than one charming female, wonderfully calm and sane except for some unfortunate religious orientation or other.

I’m reminded of the 19th century Punch cartoon of the two guests at a dinner party:
She: “And what is your religion, sir?”
He: “Madam, all men of sense are of the same religion.”
She: “And which religion is that, pray tell?”
He: “Madam, men of sense never say.”

Which is all very well for friendship, but hardly a solid basis for a deeper relationship. You’re better off if you hold out for someone philosophically compatible, unless you (and they) really don’t care. In which case, you’re philosophically compatible!

‘Friendship, Not Passion’ was originally published in Lighten Up Online, edited by Jerome Betts.

Illustration: “Friendship” by h.koppdelaney is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

Joe Crocker, ‘What Sunflowers See’

They lift and fix their heavy insect eyes
upon the East, from where the sun will send
the bees to stroke and lick and fertilize.
 
They wait, where once they craned their necks to see
his passing arc. They wait, amazed. Surprise
has painted yellow lashes, perfectly
 
coronal round a crowded, dark eclipse.
Its buzzing beauty pixelates and stares.
An alien array of cells unzips.
 
A thousand thousand sisters nurse the same
regret. His warmth is gone. And left behind
to hang their heads, disconsolate, they blame
themselves. Their tears drop hard and black and blind

*****

Joe Crocker writes: “The French call them Tournesols because, when they are growing, the follow the sun. But when the flowerhead is fully formed, they all face East so they warm up quickly and are more attractive to the bees. The poem came about because I’ve been seeing them more frequently in our local supermarkets and my wife grew some this year. Seeing them close up, I was reminded of the reaction a friend from many years ago used to have. She liked them but kept her distance because she was spooked by their dense busy centres. So the insect eye was the starting metaphor and then the poem led me on. Big, beautiful, disturbing, and in the end, sad.”

Joe Crocker is no relation of the Sheffield-born rock singer. But he does live in Yorkshire and gets by (with a little help from his friends). He is a bit old now to be starting out in poetry but was infected by the muse during Covid lockdown a couple of years ago and has had a few things published, mainly in Snakeskin magazine (where this poem first appeared) and other online venues. He doesn’t have a website but if you Google him, you’ll learn a lot more about a certain Sheffield-born rock singer.

Photo: accompanied the poem in Snakeskin.

Gail White, ‘In Answer to Your Questions’

Your Uncle Harry doesn’t know himself
where he left his will. You’ve tried his desk? The dresser?
the farthest reaches of the kitchen shelf?
The dead are under a great deal of stress,

and they forget. As for your other question–
whether you’ll find true love–Venus and Mars
are conjoined over Pisces, which suggests an
absolute negative on singles bars.

It’s a good year for travel, cooking classes,
learning the waltz and the electric slide.
Go where the people are. Going to Mass is
recommended if you’ve never tried.

In late July, beware of traffic fines.
That’s it. You’ve only paid for fourteen lines.

*****

Gail White writes: “This is a favorite of mine. I was trying to think like a medium. (I don’t believe in fortune-telling really, but I was once told to beware of traffic fines, and I got one.) Also, I think I really stuck the landing on this one.”

Gail White is the resident poet and cat lady of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. Her books ASPERITY STREET and CATECHISM are available on Amazon. She is a contributing editor to Light Poetry Magazine. “Tourist in India” won the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award for 2013. Her poems have appeared in the Potcake Chapbooks ‘Tourists and Cannibals’, ‘Rogues and Roses’, ‘Families and Other Fiascoes’, ‘Strip Down’ and ‘Lost Love’. ‘In Answer to Your Questions’ is collected in ‘Asperity Street‘. Her new light verse chapbook, ‘Paper Cuts‘, is now available on Amazon.

Photo: “Fortuneteller” by eric.minbiole is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Using form: biform poem: Daniel Galef, ‘A Poke of Gold to the Lady That’s Known as Lou’

I saw the sigh in your pretty eye
    When you dreamed that I’d be yours,
But those who steal me fast reveal
    My shine is the start of wars.

First I passed through the purse of a miner who nursed
    A chill. He seemed to be
Just a helping of hurt in a flannelette shirt
    From Plumtree, Tennessee.

It’s the goal of gold to be bought and sold
    And melted and poured in a mould.
From the day they scratched me out of that patch
    Of dirt, I’ve been near as cold.

Now again I change hands, and again the sands
    Run out, and men lie dead.
Good chances, I’d rate, that the heftier weight
    Is a couple of rounds of lead.

I’ve been sought by those men—half a dozen or ten—
    Who flash gold in pokes and pounds,
Who begged you for dances and killed for your glances—
    It’s not as nice as it sounds.

I saw the sigh in your pretty eye when you dreamed
That I’d be yours, but those who steal me fast
Reveal in my shine is the start of wars. First I passed
Through the purse of a miner who nursed a chill. He seemed
To be just a helping of hurt in a flannelette shirt
From Plumtree, Tennessee. It’s the goal of gold
To be bought and sold and melted and poured in a mould.
From the day they scratched me out of that patch of dirt,
I’ve been near as cold. Now again I change hands, and again
The sands run out, and men lie dead. Good chances,
I’d rate, that the heftier weight is a couple of rounds
Of lead. I’ve been sought by those men—half a dozen or ten—
Who flash gold in pokes and pounds, who begged you for dances
And killed for your glances—It’s not as nice as it sounds.

*****

Daniel Galef writes: “Last month Robin posted ‘Casey to His Bat,’ a poem which scans as both a sonnet and as fourteeners in ballad meter. The intro mentioned that I’d written a few more of this type of poem after ‘Casey,’ one of which was titled ‘A Poke of Gold to the Lady That’s Known as Lou.’
As much as I loved the challenge of writing the Casey sonnet, I felt the form had to be justified somehow by the subject, and so, just as ‘Casey’ followed Ernest Thayer* in its alternate scheme of iambic heptameter couplets, each of the subsequent convertible sonnets, part of my Imaginary Sonnets series of persona poems, is also a response to or parody of a specific existing poem in a different meter which the sonnet doubles.
The second convertible sonnet, ‘A Poke of Gold to the Lady That’s Known as Lou’, is a riff on the famous narrative poems of Robert Service ‘The Shooting of Dan McGrew’ and ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee’ in his 1907 collection Songs of a Sourdough. (Like Thayer, Service is sometimes scorned as a jingle-writer partly because of his popularity and his populism, writing in the vernacular voice of Yukon prospectors.) Both of these narrative poems are written in a much looser anapestic ballad meter with more inversions and extra syllables than sonnets normally allow. While ‘McGrew’ has the basic ballad rhyme scheme, scanning as heptameter couplets like ‘Casey,’ ‘McGee’ has a much denser scheme, adding on top of these end-rhymes a pattern of dimeter internal rhyme. I loved the much greater challenge of compounding this rhyme scheme with that of a Petrarchan sonnet, but, due to the anapests, the finished product feels less like a sonnet than ‘Casey ‘did.
This poem appeared in Snakeskin Poetry in 2017, and, although it is not included in my book Imaginary Sonnets published this year, you will find, in the poems there, these same immortal threads: gold (p. 41), murder (p. 71), poetic parody (p. 72), and Canada (p. 19). danielgalef.com/book/
*Thayer’s poem, possibly the last American poem to have massive popular appeal to the extent that it was commonly memorized for fun and performed on the vaudeville stage, was published in 1888, the same year as the florid Victorian sonneteer Eugene Lee-Hamilton published Imaginary Sonnets, which inspired my book.”

*****

Daniel Galef’s first book, Imaginary Sonnets, is a collection of persona poems all from the point of view of different historical figures and objects, including Nossis the Epizephyrian, Christopher Smart’s cat, and a breakfast taco. Besides poetry, he has written plays that won the McGill University Drama Festival, flash fiction selected for the Best Small Fictions anthology, and last year he placed second in the New Yorker cartoon caption contest, which doesn’t really mean anything but he’s been telling everyone anyway.

Sonnet: RHL, ‘Halloween’

I sing the changing seasons of the year
And, as leaves fall, I celebrate my death.
Each inhalation may be my last breath;
Each year I lose another near and dear.
So many people live life in Death’s fear,
The very word Dead’s a shibboleth –
Paint on false youth like old Elizabeth –
Yet half the planet’s Spring, while it’s Fall here.

Eternal life is ever to be felt,
For death, rebirth, are always intertwined
In pious hopes, in science still unseen.
The pagan in me – Viking, Druid, Celt –
All celebrate when Life’s return’s divined.
It’s Halloween, so I will dress in green.

*****

This sonnet with its Petrarchan rhyme scheme (ABBA ABBA CDE CDE) was originally published in The Lyric a couple of years ago. “Founded in 1921, The Lyric is the oldest magazine in North America in continuous publication devoted to traditional poetry.”

“Green pumpkin carved into witch face jack-o-lantern” by Chris Devers is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Using form: Edmund Conti, ‘A Clutch of Clerihews’

Barack Obama
Doesn’t do drama.
The play’s not the thing
Wherein he’ll catch the conscience of Larry King.

Hillary Clinton
Likes to have a mint on
Her hotel pillow
Whether she’s in Islamabad or Amarillo.

Joe Biden
Can never decide on
Which words to use to ready us for the long haul.
So he uses them all.

Sean Hannity
Doesn’t think sanity
Should be one of the necessary talents
For reporting the news with fairness and balance.

Sarah Palin
Drives another nail in
Her chances for success
when she answers a question with anything but ‘No’ or ‘Yes’.

*****

Edmund Conti writes: “The problem with Clerihews is that when you start you can’t stop writing them. I don’t think Edmund Clerihew Bentley had any strict rules for them, except finding the fitting rhyme for the principal’s name. I was fortunate at that time to find five notable persons with easy rhymable names. Anyway, we Edmunds have to stick together.”

Edmund Conti has recent poems published in Light, Lighten-Up Online, The Lyric, The Asses of Parnassus, newversenews, Verse-Virtual and Open Arts Forum. His book of poems, Just So You Know, released by Kelsay Books
https://www.amazon.com/Just-You-Know-Edmund-Conti/dp/1947465899/
was followed by That Shakespeherian Rag, also from Kelsay
https://kelsaybooks.com/products/that-shakespeherian-rag

Photo detail of: “Holder, Napolitano, Baker, Biden, Obama, Clinton, Jones, Rice” by scriptingnews is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.