Robin Helweg-Larsen's Blog, page 6

Rachel Hadas, ‘Rag Rug’

It has arrived—the long rag rug
multiply folded. On top, one alien hair.
I put my face to the folds and smell despair
palpable as salt air
in all those rooms and houses, small and smug—
enclosures I passed through on my way where?

Whoever did the weaving appears old
in my mind’s eye. I can’t make out her face,
can only conjure up the faintest trace
of an abstracted grace,
clack of the loom. Does she know they’ll be sold
these precious things, in some unheard-of place?

I perch her on a hill, precariously
beyond the reach of waves’ daily boom.
Sun blazes overhead, but her dim room
(no bigger than the loom)
is proof against the violence of the sky
From it I further spin what I once called my home:

Endless horizons fading into haze,
the mornings dawn came up so rosy clear;
snails in the garden, sheep bells everywhere,
the brightness of the air,
terraces, valleys organizing space
and time’s cessation. So this package here

I’m now unwrapping, in New York, today
(rugs like rainbows, woven with a grace
my strands of language barely can express;
dishrags of dailiness
dispersed and recombined and freshly gay)
comes to me imbued with images,

slowly and faithfully across the water,
across the world. It represents a time
I myself snipped and recombined as rhyme
as soon as I went home,
if that is where I am. These rugs recover
the sense of stepping twice into a single river.

*****

Rachel Hadas writes: “Rag Rug, written probably around 1980 or sometime in the early Eighties, describes my experience opening packages of rag rugs handwoven by a woman or women in Samos, the Greek island where I’d lived between 1971 and 1974. The rags in question were blue jeans, pajamas, tablecloths, you name it – I’d cut these into narrow strips which I sewed together and rolled into a ball, and when I had enough such balls I mailed them to my former mother-in-law in Samos; she eventually sent me the finished project, long rag rugs perhaps eighteen inches wide, colorful, washable, which eventually faded and blended as madras does. The evocative smell of the cloth; the memories of the island and my life there; the fact that poetry, like the making  of these rugs, like quilting, is a piecing together, recombining and recycling of fragments – reading the poem now brings all this back.”

Rachel Hadas’s recent books include Love and Dread, Pandemic Almanac, and Ghost Guest. Her translations include Euripides’s Iphigenia plays and a portion of Nonnus’s Tales of Dionysus. Professor Emerita at Rutgers-Newark, where she taught for many years, she now teaches at 92Y in New York City and serves as poetry editor of Classical Outlook. Her honors include a Guggenheim fellowship and an award from the American Academy-Institute of Arts and Letters.

Photo: “Colourful rag rug” by theihno is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

Nonce form: RHL, ‘Buccaneer’

These are the waters of the buccaneer–
they live large lives and lounge around with liquor,
floating on waters calm, gin-clear,
their risks outrageous and their thinking thin,
alert to bargain and to dicker
and not averse to sin–
a life erratic.

The time of storms starts… ends… another year
has gone by, always it seems quicker–
thoughts of a distant home fade, disappear–
beard covers sunken cheeks and chin
and there’s no comment, jibe or snicker,
only a rueful grin,
wry, enigmatic.

There’s no reflection or confession here,
for there’s no use for church or vicar.
Security is in the bandolier;
here, courts and coppers don’t look in,
the flame of justice can no more than flicker.
More feared is the shark’s fin:
steady, emphatic.

But years creep up–ears deafen and eyes blear–
dry stone gets harder and wet walkways slicker,
and friends go out upon a bier.
It’s hardly worthwhile trying to begin
new quests once you’ve absorbed this kicker:
‘Really, what’s there to win?’
Change becomes static.

O pirate with your dwindling sense of cheer,
while lounging on rattan and wicker!
Though others lack your lazy lack of fear,
their fine awards, like yours, are only tin.
Enjoy your days and friends; don’t bicker:
soak in life’s warmth and din.
Be undramatic.

*****

I wrote this poem two years ago, and thought it was strong enough to get me into a good new magazine for the first time. And so it turned out… after 20 rejections, the 21st accepted it. So now I’m proud to be featured on the promo page for the latest Magma.

And about time too – after being brought up in a house called ‘Buccaneer Hill‘, by parents who started the ‘Buccaneer Club‘ guest house and restaurant, this poem was long overdue.

Photo: “Shiver Me Timbers!” by Neil. Moralee is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Simon MacCulloch, ‘Mouth Harp’

The doctor raised an eyebrow. He’d pronounced the sentence (death)
And expected her to die now; yet the patient still drew breath.
The woman was a smoker, and the cancer had a hold
That was strong enough to choke her. She was ninety-three years old.
Her lungs must be a sump, awash with nicotine and tar,
And with a clogged-up pump like that she wasn’t going far.

Well, any trouble breathing? Not at all, I just can’t walk!
(I see her, thick smoke wreathing, still unpausing in her talk.)
A cough, perhaps? Not really – nothing wrong that I’m aware.
The doctor starts to feel she must be using different air.
There’s nothing more to say, his grim prognosis is complete;
The science of today must now acknowledge its defeat.

Back home, I watch my mother as she settles in her chair,
Sips coffee, lights another and inhales without a care.
I pass her the harmonica, she takes it, has a blow,
And jaunty and euphonic her recital starts to flow.
The angels have their harps but death’s a word they never knew;
Down here it’s flats and sharps and death’s a song on air turned blue.

*****

Simon MacCulloch writes: “A largely true account of the somewhat surreal day on which my uncomprehending late mother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. I’m still quite proud of having rhymed “harmonica” without anyone called Veronica to help out.”

‘Mouth Harp’ was originally published in The Cannon’s Mouth 92.

Simon MacCulloch lives in London and contributes poetry to a variety of print and online publications, including Reach Poetry, View from Atlantis, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, Spectral Realms, Black Petals and others.

Photo: “Music Maker” by darkday. is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Sonnet series: Jean L. Kreiling, ‘My Brother’s Last Year’

What My Brother Says

He says I’m not myself, but in my eyes
and in my arms, he is. I hug him, feeling
that he’s lost weight, but brother-warmth defies
that deficit. Disease and “cure” both stealing
small pieces of him, he has had to quit
his role as family cook, and he can’t drive.
But he retains his reason and his wit,
so much so that it seems clear he’ll survive;
they say he won’t. He says his life’s been great,
though certainly too short. He still stands tall
and truthful: he unblinkingly looks straight
ahead, says what he sees, and leads us all.
He looks thin, but he always has been slim.
He says I’m okay, mostly. He’s still him.

What Looms

It’s always there: a cloud—no, more than that,
a monstrous weight, insistent, ugly—no,
invisible, but foul. Its habitat
is everywhere; there’s no place he can go
to break away from its unfailing grip
and find a self not poisoned by his own
insidious insight, where he can strip
his days of its unnerving undertone.
His daughter’s funny story makes him chuckle,
he briefly cares about a football game,
but you can almost see his psyche buckle
again as deathless facts and fears reclaim
their sure dominion, making him aware
again of all that looms. It’s always there.

Walking with My Brother and His Wife

They’re holding hands, as they so often do,
as we three walk a path in woods behind
their house, our sneakers swishing through
mid-fall’s crisp russet leaves. This path will wind
predictably through acres of old trees
and end at their backyard. Along the way,
we talk of plans, the weather, memories;
most of their plans are now in disarray,
like scattered leaves in autumn’s chill. They stroll
as easily as if they could predict
more than this path, own more than land, control
the odds that he’ll grow old. What fears afflict
them, they defer; they face the chill unbowed.
They’ll hold hands for as long as they’re allowed.

Therapy

I write these sonnets as if that might ease
my mind; it doesn’t, and these lines can’t do
a thing for him. Like stopgap therapies
that promise him another month, a few
neat poems only shuffle deck chairs, shaping
elaborations on the theme that dulls
his days with brain fog. He won’t be escaping;
he knows he’s sinking. As my brother mulls
his measureless calamity, I count
out syllables, choose metaphors, debate
rhyme schemes, and watch the icy water mount
in seas that he cannot long navigate.
I write as if I’d find breath in a word,
as if safe passage might yet be secured.

Progress

It’s not the kind of progress we would hope
for; it’s the damned disease that’s making strides.
My brother’s gaining only ways to cope
with each new deficit as it divides
him further from the life that he once led—
a life he’d thoughtfully constructed, made
of love, ideas, and work. Inside his head,
the enemy destroys the cells that weighed
the sense of printed words, and so he learns
to listen to the Post; when his synapses
don’t fire at numbers anymore, he turns
the checkbook over to his wife. The lapses
disturb but don’t defeat him; he finesses
each injury as the assault progresses.

Nothing

I visit him again, this time by train.
(The ten-hour drive gets tougher as I age,
but then, what right do I have to complain?
To grow old is a gift.) This may assuage
my sense there’s nothing I can do, although
a visit’s nearly nothing. Yes, I care;
that’s what my presence demonstrates, I know,
but it will make him strain for things now rare
or difficult: the teasing repartee,
a walk outdoors, shared meals and memories.
He reassures me that he feels okay,
though I watch him declining, by degrees.
I bring his favorite chocolates, as if sweets
could mask the bitter taste nothing defeats.

Want

Not long before the end, he made it clear:
there was so little that he wanted—just
to stay with those he loved, not disappear
into the latter part of dust to dust.
So many of us want so much: we crave
the shiny toy, the extra buck, and more
when less would do—stuff that will never save
our souls or bodies. I knew that before
my brother’s diagnosis, and today
I can’t claim to have unlearned pointless greed.
I find, though, that it’s easier to weigh
the worth of things desired, to measure need,
to understand there isn’t much I lack.
He wanted only time. I want him back.

*****

Jean L. Kreiling writes: “My brother Bill was wise and witty and loving, and deserved a far longer life; I miss him every day. He was teased and adored by his three older sisters, he made our parents proud, and he created a beautiful family of his own.  His magnificent wife and his three devoted grown children took good care of him in the year between his brain cancer diagnosis and his death, but it was a very difficult year for Bill and all who loved him.”

This tribute to him as a series of shakespearean sonnets was originally published in Pulsebeat Poetry 11.

Jean L. Kreiling is the author of four collections of poetry; her work has been awarded the Frost Farm Prize, the Rhina Espaillat Poetry Prize, the Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Prize, and three New England Poetry Club prizes, among other honors.  A Professor Emeritus of Music at Bridgewater State University, she has published articles on the intersections between music and literature in numerous academic journals.  She lives on the coast of Massachusetts.

Photo: “Holding Hands on the Hornby Separated Bike Lane” by Paul Krueger is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Stephen Gold: Bored Room

It ran up the flagpole
To not one salute.
No win-win was won,
We ate no low-hung fruit. 

The long view was taken,
We kicked every tyre.
No needles were moved 
As we sang to the choir.

There wasn’t the bandwidth
To see this one through.
Would the paradigm shift? 
We just hadn’t a clue. 

Our cutting-edge plan
To abolish cliché
From the meetings we’re forced
To endure every day

In the final analysis
Found no defender,
So we took a step back 
And right-sized the agenda. 

*****

Stephen Gold writes: “I didn’t have any deep philosophical reasons for writing it. It’s just a wry dig at corporate crapspeak and how often very bright people find it irresistible.”

Stephen Gold was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and practiced law there for almost forty years, robustly challenging the notion that practice makes perfect. He and his wife, Ruth, now live in London, close by their disbelieving children and grandchildren. His special loves (at least, the ones he’s prepared to reveal) are the limerick and the parody. He has over 700 limericks published in OEDILF.com, the project to define by limerick every word in the Oxford English Dictionary, and is a regular contributor to Light and Lighten Up Online (where this poem was first published).

“Buzzword Bingo” by Zach ‘Pie’ Inglis is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

J.D. Smith, ‘Monday in Las Vegas’

The skirts are off the tables.
A bucket’s on the floor
Until the plumber shows up.
In comped rooms, whales still snore.

An escort takes the day off
For visitation rights.
McCarran’s slots are ringing
With scores of outbound flights.

Housekeeping finds stray bits of
What happens and stays here:
Pawn tickets and a red chip,
Three shoes and one brassiere.

Booms or busts in housing
Roll through the neighborhoods,
And long-haul trucks deliver
All necessary goods.

Lit hard against the evening,
Severe and even grand,
The Luxor’s daytime profile
Recedes into the sand.

*****

J.D. Smith writes: “What happens behind the scenes—backstage, in the restaurant kitchen, under the metaphorical hood, what have you—has long fascinated me. Most of the time we don’t get to see the mechanics, the furious underwater paddling of the duck.
“In my experience, nowhere is the gap between the making and the made more pronounced than in Las Vegas. In the previous century a town of about five thousand people has grown to a metropolitan area of a million or so and well beyond its ecological carrying capacity, now accommodating a major airport with slot machines at the gates. Entertainment of all kinds depends on relatively low-paid labor, and pawn shops can be found off the Strip but conveniently close to it.   
“The city’s artifice if not hubris arguably culminates in the Luxor Hotel, which my friend the writer and editor Henry Perez has called “the world’s largest piece of kitsch.” I would also call it an embodied non sequitur. A glass pyramid with a massive Sphinx, it imitates the most famous structures of a civilization based on floodplain agriculture, generally not a viable option in Nevada. The Luxor is part of a small break in the desert, and my money is on the latter.”

This poem was collected in The Killing Tree.

J.D. Smith’s seventh collection of poetry, The Place That Is Coming to Us, will be published in September by Broadstone Books. His first fiction collection, Transit, is available from Unsolicited Press. Further information and occasional updates are available at www.jdsmithwriter.com.

Photo: “Why I hate Las Vegas” by mayhem is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Villanelle variation: James B. Nicola, ‘My MFA’

I thought I’d go and get my MFA
since college never taught me how to write.
It’s not that I had anything to say;
 
I needed somehow, though, to spend the day
and, existentially I guess, the night
as well. So I went for an MFA
 
in Creative Writing. I did OK,
creatively. My grammar was a fright,
and there was nothing that I had to say,
 
but you got extra points for this. The way
you said squat was what mattered. Outasite, 
I thought, which, when I got my MFA,
 
I didn’t know was not a word. But stay,
they’d said, you can’t create if you’re uptight.
There is no wrong or right. And who’s to say
 
that parts of speech, or lie in lieu of lay,
or topic sentences, are not a blight
on Creativity? What could I say?
I’d paid a lot to get my MFA.

*****

James B. Nicola writes: “Purists take note. ‘My MFA‘ is not quite a villanelle, since the repeated lines vary so much. I suppose Elizabeth Bishop started the ball rolling with ‘(Write it!)’ in the last line of her now-famous villanelle (or is it?) ‘One Art.’ Like her, I am originally from Worcester, Massachusetts; perhaps that explains our consaguinity.”

James B. Nicola’s poetry has appeared internationally in Acumen, erbacce, Cannon’s  Mouth, Recusant, Snakeskin, The South, Orbis, and Poetry Wales (UK);  Innisfree and  Interpreter’s House (Ireland); Poetry Salzburg (Austria), mgversion2>datura (France);  Gradiva (Italy); EgoPHobia (Romania); the Istanbul Review (Turkey); Sand and The Transnational (Germany), in the latter of which his work appears in German translation;  Harvests of the New Millennium (India); Kathmandu Tribune (Nepal); and Samjoko (Korea). His eight full-length collections (2014-2023) include most recently Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists, and Natural Tendencies. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice magazine award.

‘My MFA’ was originally published in the current Lighten Up Online

Photo: “creative-writing-ideas Atlanta GA” by agilemktg1 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

RHL, ‘On a Modern “Poem”’

The thoughts are fresh, the images are good;
the style is clean, the tone both wise and terse;
the whole thing would be memorable, it would…
if only it had been expressed in verse.

*****

I’m always embarrassed if I have an idea for a poem, and I fail to find an expression of it in rhyme as well as rhythm. That’s because, of the hundreds of poems or pieces of poems in my head, all but a tiny handful are remembered because they are expressed in verse. You can remember the gist of an idea on the strength of the idea; but if you want to remember its exact expression, word for word, it’s far easier if it’s in verse. For this purpose, blank verse is better than prose; but rhymed verse is superior.

You may have lots of partial memories of Winnie the Pooh from childhood – the Hundred Acre Wood, Eeyore’s moans and groans – but actual word-for-word memory is likely to attach to the few snippets of verse in the book, such as:
Isn’t it funny
How a bear likes honey.
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
I wonder why he does?

My little gripe above was originally published in Light earlier this year.

Photo: “Al declaims” by jovike is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Julia Griffin: Translation: ‘C.P. Cavafy’s Waiting For The Barbarians’

Why are we here in the agora, say?

We’ve got the Barbarians coming today.

Why are the senators resting their jaws?
Why don’t they legislate?  What about laws?

We’ve got the Barbarians coming today.
Nobody knows how it’s going to play;
If any legislate, it will be they.

Why is our Emperor out of his bed,
Sitting in state at the gate there instead,
Wearing a gorgeous great crown on his head?

We’ve got the Barbarians coming today.
They must be met in an elegant way:
Greeting their chieftain, the Emperor’s goal
Is to award him an exquisite scroll,
Giving him titles to make his eyes roll.

Why do our consuls and praetors appear
Dressed to the nines in their purplest gear?
Why are there amethysts all up their arms,
Emeralds everywhere, greener than palms?
What are those fabulous sceptres they hold,
Fancily fashioned in silver and gold?

We’ve got the Barbarians coming today.
This sort of thing’s their idea of cachet.

Why are our orators keeping us waiting,
Not, as per usual, loudly orating?

We’ve got the Barbarians coming today.
Oratory bores them.  They like a display.

Why does it suddenly seem such a mess?
Why the confusion, the seriousness?
Why is there emptiness now in the square?
Why the pervasively secretive air?

Not one of them came, and the day is now done.
People are saying the war has been won;
Hence there are no more Barbarians.  None.

No more Barbarians – what shall we do?
I’ve not come up with an answer yet.  
                                                         You?

*****

Julia Griffin writes: “I’ve always loved Cavafy’s ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ and had the thought that it would go well into rhyme.  This somehow necessitated changing the ending a little…” Her translation appears in the current Lighten Up Online.

See also the Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_the_Barbarians_(poem)

Julia Griffin lives in south-east Georgia/ south-east England. She has published in Light, LUPO, Mezzo Cammin, and some other places, though Poetry and The New Yorker indicate that they would rather publish Marcus Bales than her. Much more of her poetry can be found through this link in Light.

Photo: “Barbarian looking but a real cool dude (8197985443)” by Frank Kovalchek from Anchorage, Alaska, USA is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Helena (“Nell”) Nelson, ‘Separation’

i

Mrs Philpott goes to bed alone.
The clock in the hall ticks on.
Philpott turns to cut glass, then stone.

All the things we do to be loved,
all of them pointless.
The clock ticks on.

Nothing but moonlight dawns.
The distance from downstairs
to upstairs yawns.

Philpott sags and snoozes alone
in the wishing chair,
in the wishing air.

All the things we do to be loved –
in the night they slip far away.
It will never be day.

The clock ticks on
as well it may.

ii

She wakes first. He has not slept
in the chair all night.

At first light
he has crept

into the bed on the other side.
He will not (cannot) say it, but

everything about him is sorry –
only half of him is under the duvet

and his eyes aren’t really shut.
She pulls the covers over them both and he falls

into a sleep as deep and sound
as a lost child who has wandered far out of sight

(while his mother calls and calls and calls)
and is finally found.

*****

This poem is one of over 80 in Helena Nelson’s ‘Pearls – the Complete Mr & Mrs Philpott Poems’. Starting with poems of the end of their first marriages, it tracks their decades-long second marriage through (as the blurb says) “dreams, anxieties and needs – even sudden spurts of happiness – despite the rainy holidays, arguments and illness. The ordinariness of their love is magical and miraculous. Because ordinary love is a kind of miracle.”

People talk about “novels in verse” but those often don’t capture the poetry of verse. This is definitely a novel in poetry, and the most rereadable novel I’ve come across in a long time.

Helena Nelson writes: “happy that you like Pearls. I made it as well as I could, but it largely came unasked for. I don’t think I have anything to say about it.”

Helena Nelson runs HappenStance Press (now winding down) and also writes poems. Her most recent collection is Pearls (The Complete Mr and Mrs Philpott Poems). She reviews widely and is Consulting Editor for The Friday Poem.