Reinventing the Wheel: Modern Poems in Classical Meters

 

Lewis Putnam Turco

Photo by James Russell

  

          When I was seventeen years old I invented classical meters. That is to say, I thought I was inventing something new, but it turned out that I was reinventing what we now call “quantitative verse.” It was the ancient Greeks who actually invented it.

         Here is what I did, unwittingly. “Free verse,” that is to say, “prose,” was all the rage among poets in the 1940’s and early 1950’s, so I wrote the first stanza of a poem (see “A Life,” below) in “free verse.” At this point, it was pure prose, nothing else. However, before I wrote the second stanza I “scanned” the first to see exactly where the unaccented and accented syllables fell — one can scan any language.

Before we go any further, we need to review the Rules of Scansion in English Verse as I formulated them originally in an essay titled "Verse vs. Prose / Prosody vs. Meter," published in Meter in English, A Critical Engagement, edited by David Baker for the University of Arkansas, 1997, pp. 249-263 and subsequently included in The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, third edition, University Press of New England, 2000:

1. In every word of the English language of two or more syllables, at least one syllable will take a stress.  If one cannot at first hear the stressing, then one may consult a pronouncing dictionary.

 

2. Important single-syllable words, particularly verbs and nouns, generally take strong stresses. We will indicate strong stresses with a capital X.

 

3.  Unimportant single-syllable words in the sentence, such as articles, prepositions, and pronouns (except demonstrative pronouns like “that,” “this,” “these” and “those”) do not take strong stresses — we will indicate unstressed syllables with a small x —, though they may take secondary stresses through promotion depending on their position in the sentence or the line of verse.

 

4.  In any series of three unstressed syllables in a line of verse, one of them, generally the middle syllable, will take a secondary stress through promotion — we will indicate promoted unstressed syllables with a capital (X) inside parentheses — and will be counted as a stressed syllable.

 

5.  In any series of three stressed syllables in a line of verse, one of them, generally the middle syllable, will take a secondary stress through demotion — we will indicate demoted stressed syllables with a small (x) inside parentheses — and will be counted as an unstressed syllable.

 

6. Any syllable may be rhetorically stressed by means of italics or some other typographical ploy.

I intended to write the second stanza in exactly the same rhythms I had used in the first, line for line. Here are the first stanza’s “meters,” the pattern of sequential stressed and unstressed syllables, though there were no “meters,” actually, until I wrote the second stanza. Remember that a large X indicates a stressed syllable (the accent always falls on the vowel in the syllable as indicated in the first two lines below), a small x indicates an unstressed syllable:

 

1. Blínding! Stránge! Wármth transfórmed to chíll

      X  x         X         X          x    X        x    X

2. Withín a spínning cólorwhéel of dím and dárk.

      X  X  x    X x     X x     X   x    X   x      X

3. A terrifying mushrooming of cacophonic sound

    x  X  xXx      X     x  (x)  x   X  x   X x     X

4. Surrounds, swells — bursts upon untested senses.

      X   X          X    •    X      x  X  x   X  x    X   x

5. Vivid impressions upróot well-béing

     X x  x     X   x    x   X    (X)   Xx

6. And dissipate peace.

    X     X  x x       X

7. Thus, looming huge and uninvited,

       X     X   x     X    x    X  x  X x

8. Implacably destroying placid blackness,

    x    X x (X)  x   X  x     X  x    X     x

9. The ogre Birth arrives.

       X X   x  X    x  X

 

         Note in line four that the dash indicates a pause in the line, a caesura, in this case a compensatory caesura because it is taking the place of an unstressed syllable. The accent mark, called a “macron” (/) indicates that a syllable is stressed in the word; the “breve” (U) indicates that a syllable is unstressed. Both these marks are always placed above the vowel of the syllable in question (all syllables contain a vowel).

There are four standard verse feet in English prosody: the iamb is a verse foot of two syllables, the second of which is stressed (xX); the anapest has three syllables, the third of which is stressed  (xxX); the trochee has two syllables, the first of which is stressed  (Xx) — a reverse iamb, and the dactyl has three syllables, the first of which is stressed (Xxx) — a reverse anapest.

There are several minor verse in English prosody, usually used as variations only: the acephalous (headless) iamb is a foot of one stressed syllable (X), as is the catalectic (tailless) trochee (X).  One can tell these two feet apart only from their position in a line of verse.  They occur, for instance, when the unstressed first syllable of an iamb is dropped in order to vary the rhythm of a line of verse (see line 4, above), or when the unstressed second syllable of a trochee is dropped for the same reason.

The spondee (distributed, hovering accent) is a verse foot of two syllables, both of which are accented (XX).  (The iamb, trochee, and spondee are double meters: verse feet made up of two syllables.)  The amphibrach is a rocking foot of three syllables, only the second of which is stressed (xXx); The anapest, dactyl, and amphibrach are triple meters verse feet made up of three syllables.  The double iamb is a foot of four syllables, the first two unstressed and the second two stressed (xxXX).  It equals two iambs in a line of verse.  Classical prosodists would say that the double iamb is a combination of two shorter feet, the pyrrhic or dibrach (xx) and the spondee (XX).  The pyrrhic, however, does not seem to appear elsewhere in English prosody, unless as a variation in a trochaic poem that reverses the double iamb and would substitute for two trochees and perhaps best be identified as a double trochee (XXxx)

The meters of quantitative verse are prescribed.  For instance, in the Greek form called Sapphics the Sapphic line is composed of two trochees, a dactyl, and two trochees, in that order, although certain substitutions are allowed at prescribed places.  This is a Sapphic line: Xx Xx Xxx Xx Xx.  The Sapphic stanza is made up of three such lines plus a line called an adonic, which is a dactyl and a trochee, in that order: Xxx  Xx.  It is an unrhymed (blank verse, NOT “free verse”) quatrain.

Certain prefixes of the word “meter” indicate the length of a line of verse: mono- (one), di- (two), tri- (three), tetra- (four), penta- (five), hexa- (six), hepta- (seven), octa- (eight), nona- (nine), deca- (ten), and hendeca- (eleven); thus, monometer means a line of one verse foot; tetrameter means a line of four verse feet; pentameter, five verse feet, and so on. Identify the verse foot that predominates in the line (the “running foot”) and you may get iambic dimeter verse, or anapestic hexameter verse, or trochaic trimeter verse.

There are exactly eleven syllables in each Sapphic line (because of the three-syllable dactyl), and it contains five verse feet, so it is a pentameter line.  While it is true that trochees predominate, since their positions in the line are prescribed, they are not normative (this is not a trochaic pentameter line).  Likewise, the adonic contains five syllables and two verse feet — it is dimeter, but not normative: no verse foot even predominates in the adonic line. Here, as translated into English prosody (a system of versification), are the classical verse feet, lines and couplets:

Acephalous iamb: X

(Halt!)

 

Adonic line: Xxx Xx

(sounding the silence)

 

Aeolic line: xxX xX

(if I love her, what?)

 

Amphibrach: xXx 

(whenever)

 

Anacreontic line: xxXX xX xx

(If we love wine, then what shall be…)

 

Anapest: xxX

(with despair)

 

Catalectic trochee: X

(Hark!)

 

Choriamb: XxxX

(she is my love)

 

Choriambic line: Xxx Xxx Xxx X Xx xX Xxx Xxx

(Lust for a drink’s a mistake and it must not be allowed! Capture the pair of them!)

 

Classical hexameter: Xxx Xxx Xxx Xxx Xxx XX

(Lead for this talisman. Pure, so that Saturn will live in it. Pure lead.)

 

Classical pentameter: Xxx Xxx XX xxX xxX

(Both of its faces are rubbed smooth. On its front, in a star…)

 

Cretic (amphimacer): XxX

(German bread)

 

Dactyl: Xxx

(Alamo);

 

Dactylo-epitrite: Xxx  XxxX or Xxx  XxxXX

(What if an elephant came? or What if an elephant came home?);

 

Dibrach xx

(or if);

 

Elegiac couplet: (a classical hexameter plus a classical pentameter):

Xxx Xxx Xxx Xxx Xxx XX 

Xxx Xxx XX xxX xxX

(Lead for this talisman. Pure, so that Saturn will live in it. Pure lead.

Both of its faces are rubbed smooth. On its front, in a star...);

 

Elegiamb: see archilochian, dactylo-epitrite.

 

English heroic line (iambic pentameter): xX xX xX xX xX

(He loved the world a bit too much, it seems)

 

English heroic couplet (two lines of iambic pentameter verse rhyming aa): 

xX  xX xX xX xX 

xX  xX xX xX xX 

(He loved the world a bit too much, it seems,

And therefore lost his grip upon his dreams)

 

Trochee: Xx

(Darn it!)

 

Greater Ionic (double trochee): XXxx

(Her heart is a)

 

Iamb: xX

(again)

 

Ionic (double iamb): xxXX

(is it her heart?)

 

Pyrrhic – see dibrach, above.

 

Spondee: XX

(Dang blast!)

 

         Here is the whole of the poem in which as a teen-ager I thought I had invented quantitative meters:

 

A LIFE (originally titled "Life's Parade of Spirits"

 

Blinding! Strange! Warmth transformed to chill

Within a spinning colorwheel of dim and dark.

A terrifying mushrooming of cacophonic sound

Surrounds, swells — bursts upon untested senses.

Vivid impressions uproot well-being

And dissipate peace.

Thus, looming huge and uninvited,

Implacably destroying placid blackness,

The ogre Birth arrives.

 

Gently once; then with sweeping tides

That overflow the curbs of reason, flush all sense

Through ducts of passion, turning moons to lamps which fool the feet

With vague shapes, changing solids into shadows, shades

Forming impediments, come messengers

Who beat upon life’s        

Door, asking that the gate be opened

For Time’s forever golden mistress,

The fickle hussy, Love.        

 

Clouds of thick, omnipresent fog,

Maliciously released from underworldly caves

Send suffocating fingers feeling, reeling through each nerve

And choke, halt breath with molten sobs that seem

Planning on separating mind from flesh.

Here, staring and white,

Comes creeping insidiously through mists...,

Impalpable, but by no means impotent,

The king of darkness, Fear.

                 

Writhing fire! Reason is consumed,

And all that’s left is searing flame and withering heat!

An incandescent, soul-devouring holocaust of rage

Destroys mind. Roaring in an oven made of blood,

Scorching everything that it can touch,

It chars its own hearth.

Here, coughing smoke and spitting brimstone,

Inhabitant of white infernos,

Stands Evil’s minion, Hate.        

 

Twisted claws reach with palms upturned

And, in a fit of avarice, grasp everything

That they can hold; and still they stretch and clutch for even more!

Immense force! Moving men like puppets on a stage,

Pulling with a strength beyond compare...,

But leading nowhere!

Showing tantalizing threads of gold,

But made of gossamer, comes

Ambition’s cohort, Greed.

 

Abject. Dark. Buried in a marsh

From which there seems to be no path or exitway;

Within a mire of apathy and thwarted love of life;

Without Hope, Dwells a creature known to many men,

Lost in lonely voids and labyrinths

Of mind and of being;

Sunk in depths from which it can’t escape,

Abaddon’s bleak companion,

The wanderer, Despair.

 

Peaceful Sleep. Welcome night of life,

Enclosing flesh within a restful bed of gravel,

The final slumber spreads its mantle over mind and soul,

Destroys light flooding worlds of harshness we have left

Lying on the bed of consciousness.

Disturbing our dreams.

Finally, to life’s parade of images,

A long-locked door has opened

To Death the gatherer.

 

I carried out a somewhat similar, if more complicated, scheme in a slightly later poem that appeared in my 1960 First Poems where it bore the title, “Ode for the Beat Generation”; however, the original title was “Time Goes Down in Mirrors.” The idea was to surround the title in the first stanza with two rhymed lines that had the same meters: xX xXx. The second stanza would add two more rhyming lines with the opposite meter (a “mirror image” as it were): XxX xX.  And again in the third stanza; this time the meter would be normative iambic tetrameter: xXxXxXxX for both lines, and the fourth stanza would repeat the plan. Then, in the fifth stanza, while the central line remained the same, the lines above and below it would be inverted:

 

TIME GOES DOWN IN MIRRORS

 

   Sophia chatters.

Time goes down in mirrors,

   for nothing matters.

 

      Horace listens while

   Sophia chatters.

Time goes down in mirrors,

   for nothing matters;

      Hence, his worldly smile.

 

         The phonograph spins out its tune.

      Horace listens while

   Sophia chatters.

Time goes down in mirrors,

   for nothing matters.

      Hence, his worldly smile:

         The pair will love each other soon.

 

            Outdoors, the shadows listen as

         The phonograph spins out its tune.

      Horace listens while

   Sophia chatters.

Time goes down in mirrors,

   for nothing matters.

      Hence, his worldly smile:

         The pair will love each other soon,

            Their movements metronomed by jazz.

 

Sophia chatters.

   Horace listens while

         The phonograph spins out its tune.

            Outdoors the shadows listen as

               Time goes down in mirrors.

            Their movements metronomed by jazz,

         The pair will love each other soon.

    Hence! his worldly smile...,

For nothing matters.

 

 

The first poem I deliberately wrote in classical meters, also published in my First Poems, was this poem, “Visitor,” in Sapphic stanzas, a verse form ascribed to the 7^th-6^th century B. C. poet Sappho who lived on the Greek island of Lesbos. I recall composing it in Storrs, Connecticut, while I was an undergraduate student at the University of Connecticut, probably about 1959.

 

VISITOR

“A guest is not a guest if he does not enter.”

 

Visitor, you've come and you've gone while I was

gone, while winds were moving through open windows,

billowing the drapes in my vacant chambers,

                  sounding the silence;

 

come and gone, whoever you were, and left no

note but quiet sliding among the shadows.

Here before my house, by the stolid doorway,

                  I remain watching,

 

listening where you must have lingered, waiting.

I stand listening for the bell's thin echo,

knowing for a certainty you were here and

                  left without echo.

 

All will turn out differently now.  Behind this

door there stands an alien future.  Words that

needed speaking have not been spoken, and the

                  time that has not been

 

spent correctly now must be handled strangely,

sold less truly, used in another manner.

Sounds have not been breasted.  The stillness thickens

                  over your footfalls.

 

Visitor, between us are tunnels sealed and

hollow; there are depths where once there were cross-

There are windows, too, gone opaque with wonder,

                  darkling with questions.

 

         The English heroic line (see the list of meters above) is not a quantitative accentual-syllabic verse form like the classical Greek meters, but a normative accentual-syllabic verse form. First, “heroic” meters are those that are used by the composers of the major epics of a nation or culture; thus, the Greek epic writers used the classical hexameter and the classical pentameter. But the English epic writers used the normative iambic pentameter line, usually unrhymed, although in the 18^th century Alexander Pope and others used the rhymed heroic couplet: two lines of rhyming iambic pentameter, much as some of the Greeks used the elegiac couplet which combined the classical hexameter and the classical pentameter.  The term “normative” means merely that there will be a normative verse foot in the line, but that other verse feet may be used as variations here and there, so long as the normative foot prevails (outnumbers any and all feet used as variations). The following poem, also from First Poems, is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter blank (unrhymed) verse, the English heroic line. There aren’t many metrical variations in the lines; however, the syntax (word order) of the sentences has been altered through a rhetorical device called hypallage:

 

A TALE OF RIVERS AND A BOY

 

Long once ago in our town was a boy

moon blue grass sparse as August's thirsty bones

who down to rivers ran to sense them flow

between all acorns grown as tall as high

to saline waters difficult to con

down dawn thin valleys down the arching land

through evenings bridging hamlets inland up

with hills along the pulsing bays

 

New moon

plus booked Septembers watched the boy turn his

new leaves now olding out to fall upon

the bent back of an autumn wild with wind

and soft with warm ideas lately fact

to find if underneath were not the core

that bore the trifling nut of everything

his lonely rivers were

 

Then when the moon

was snowy as the skeleton of worlds

entombed in catacombs of seasoned bones

the boy down slid to know the rivers' ice

to touch intrepid soles to surfaces

of fluid solid as a skin may crust

and wonder when would this bleak water heave

down patient banks

 

    The moon switched green at last

among the drops of cloudy rivers down

upon their muddy parents falling out

of springing skies and also on the boy

attentive now to tributary suns

who stood on brinks and dams with eyes to note

the rivers molt and snake away again

toward the bays where moons conceive

 

But now

there's no more in our anytown one boy

no moon blue boy for flesh has grown and gone

along the riverflow long down ago

to reassert the disbelief of minds

and find again that rivers cannot go

but round and round as moons go round and round

to chase the seasons through subsiding years

 

         It was a long time between these early poems and my next attempt at a work in quantitative meters. “A Talisman” was published in Modern Poetry Studies in 1971 while I was teaching at the State University of New York at Oswego. It followed a formula for an occult talisman, and it was written in elegiac couplets — see the table above — for a desperately ill friend and colleague:

 

A TALISMAN

for Dave McLean, too late.

 

Lead for this talisman. Pure, so that Saturn will live in it. Pure lead.

         Both of its faces are rubbed smooth. On its front, in a star

pentagram, cut with a diamond burin a scythe so that Nabam,

         standing defending his great tau shall be laid under earth,

old as he is — by Oriphiel, angel of Saturday. Our Lord,

         nailed to a T, is the capstone of this coin made of lead,

though he will never appear in his person, but only as backdrop.

         Grave on the opposite face this, in a hexagon star:

REMPHA, surrounding the head of a bull. Without witnesses carve your

         talisman. Wear it in good health. It will keep you from death,

frighten the devil of cancer, leukemia — rot of the white bone.

         Marrow will redden then. Wear this! It will save you and me.

Bear it — your talisman; wear it, my brother. Or carry this poem,

         Dies Saturni, to life’s end. It is all I can do.

 

         My third poem in classical measures, like the first, was written in Sapphic stanzas; however, I added something to the form, a rhetorical device called prolepsis which expands upon a general statement, particularizing it and giving further information regarding it. As this poem progresses the same basic statement is repeated and expanded upon while the meters of the stanza itself remain true to the form:

 

SAPPHIC STANZAS IN FALLING MEASURES

 

Now the frost is falling in all our gardens.

Fall has rimed itself with the call of autumn.

Now that frost, in crystals and webs, is falling

        Out of the dawn in

 

All our gardens, summer has fallen out of

Rime in crystals, webs, and the dawn in voices

Calling on the westerly winds of changing

        Weathers and climates.

 

Now the frost — in tentative webs and crystals

Falling from the dawning to all our gardens

Vined and gourded — has rimed itself with autumn

        Calls of the fliers

 

Gliding on the westerlies.  Changing weathers

Send our northern sojourners on their searches

After other climates, for now that autumn

        Falls in a rime of

 

Crystal webs on all of our summer gardens

Vined and gourded, riming itself with sounding

Calls of fliers gliding upon the western

        Winds in these changing

 

Weathers, dawns will shatter in all our climates:

South, the flocks of sojourners fall and settle

Out of early light in a hoarfrost made of

        Springtime and summer.

 

         Toward the end of January 2003 I began deliberately and systematically to write poems in the classical meters. I remarked to my wife at the time that I thought something was about to happen, but I had no idea what. Nevertheless, the first poem I wrote was the second stanza or antistrophe of the following ode, which is a poem that celebrates an event. There are several types of ode, three more or less strict forms, the first of which is the Pindaric ode, derived from the choral ode of the classical tragedy. The choral ode is constructed of three parts, the first of which is the strophe.  The second movement, called the antistrophe, is identical in structure to the first.  The third and last movement of the poem is called the stand or epode. Its form is strict, like the first two movements, but entirely different from their structure.

         The content of the strophe is an argument in favor of a viewpointwhich is spoken by a chorus on one side of the stage.  To consider the opposite view, the chorus travels to the other side of the stage to deliver the antistrophe, through which it voices its concerns, or there is a second chorus on the opposite side of the stage that does the same.  In the epode, the chorus moves to center stage to deliver its conclusion upon the matter under consideration. Basically, the Pindaric ode is a choral ode without the play.

         Although this poem following has a strophe, an antistrophe, and an epode, all of which are in strict meters, it is not a Pindaric ode because the first two parts are not identical. It would have to be called a nonce ode: a poem marking an event written strictly for the occasion in its own invented form. The second section of the poem, also written before the event itself, is the epode. The strophe was the last portion composed:

 

COLUMBIAN ODE

 

Strophe: Choriambics

 

When Columbia broke up in the skies over the western states

February the first, 2003, everyone watched the tape

Loop repeatedly. We sat in the web spun by the spider once

More, as often we’d done since the defunct century flushed itself

Down historical tubes: maybe we knew nothing would come to pass

After all in our dim consciousness. What happens when we expect

Something, usually? Not much. It’s the bad joke of the Laughing God

Who will wait while the Earth spins in the dark spaces between his toes

Till the moment we least look for any tragedy. Then he hits

Hard. We think that we’ve grown — harder than nails, shields that

surround our souls!

What a joke! We are knocked flat on our broad backs and discover once

More how vulnerable Man is to Fate’s blows. We are fragile still.

 

Antistrophe: Alcaics

 

No song is sung or elegy spoken as

Great sorrow settles over a tragedy,

     Falls into chasms opened into

         Misery. How shall we find our mourning’s

 

True voice in keening, hopeless despair, or in

Wounds newly suffered ¾ coins to be squandered on

    Grief governed not by thought but feelings?

         Time is required for grief to ripen

 

Into melody, into sorrow’s music. 

 

Epode: Hendecasyllabics

 

Into melody, into sorrow’s music

There will quietly steal another lyric

After all of the requiems have ended,

After most of the mourners have departed.

It will be but a bar or two of heartbeat

Just at first, but a murmur in the bloodstream

Building finally to a constant drumming

Running through the aortas to the fingers,

To the toe-tips and belly. It will be like

Springtime touching the edges of a frozen

Mountain rivulet which, in its descending

Over gradients of downland, brings renewal

To the valleys below. The world begins to

Stir again and the eyes begin to open

Onto vapors arising over waters

Lying under the glimmering of daylight.

 

The scansion of hendecasyllabics is laid out in the table of meters above. It is a line of verse that begins with an trochee, then there is a dactyl, then three more trochees — the dactyl is always the second foot in classical poems. However, why shouldn’t the dactyl travel? That is the idea behind these progressive hendecasyllabics. The dactyl begins in its wonted place, but then it begins to travel up the line, into the third foot, then the fourth, then the fifth, then into the first foot and back to its starting spot, and so on to the end of the poem:

 

A ROW OF HEDGES REVISITED

 

Looking out of the high school classroom window

I could see a row of declining hedges

That extended past the frame of the window

Into who knew what that lay awaiting us.

That is a decent image! I remember

Thinking, one I can drape my senior essay

Over with a minimal effort. So I

Did. I wrote “A Row of Hedges,” submitted

It and waited. One can loiter overly

Long. It has been a lifetime. Looking down that

Ancient hedgerow from this new vantage, one can

Almost see the place where it has its ending.

There is mist behind me. Shadowy figures

Flicker in and out of focus. Have I been

Dreaming of metaphors and similes for

Living all of these years? And am I sitting

Still in adolescent bemusement, waiting

For the hedge to wither, for the daydream to

Die in a fall beyond the darkened window?

 

         And back to Sapphics for a third time, this time in response to a contest by the Academy of American Poets in which three elements of a sentence sentence from Eliot, “April is the cruellest month” (“April,” “cruellest” and “month”) must be used at least once in the poem:

 

SAPPHICS FOR APRIL

 

“April is the cruellest month,” the poet

says. But then what’s March, or the other ten, one

wonders? Every month is a moon of mourning,

    generally speaking.

 

Born in May, I dread it when April’s over.

Here’s another birthday I try finessing.

Then comes June beginning the days of summer ¾

         maybe it doesn’t.

 

Graduation into the world of working:

fear and trembling for many, but for others

it is time to enter the Golden Years of

         useless retirement.

 

Ah! July! The twittering birdies sing you

songs of desuetudinous boredom, or you’re

captive in your cubicle while the sun shines

         elsewhere for others.

 

August and July ¾ they are sure to taunt you

with vacations over before they’ve started;

then September tells you to settle into

         fall for the long haul.

 

Here’s October, skeletons in one’s closet

open doors and warn you that here comes weather

stalking through November’s perfidious notions.

         Indian summer

 

plunges into winter and bleak December.

Holidays depress us and make us wish for

anything besides these unending carols

         dunning our eardrums

 

in between advertisements. Here comes snowfall ¾

melancholy buries us in the thermal

January nightmare. And when we look for

         respite from whiteness,

 

February blows us the kiss of madness:

March debouches into the muddy season.

After this “the cruellest month” continues

         Nature’s mandala.

 

Every month’s the cruellest of the dozen,

one way or another. The wheel goes spinning

down the universe till at last we’re flung off

         into the silence.

 

         This next song occurred as a result of my working on this series of poems. I needed an example of a line written as a choriamb. The second line, an adonic line, happened immediately.

 

SONG FOR A GRANDDAUGHTER

 

Jessie’s my love,

Jessie’s my darling.

Jessie can fly

Just like a starling

 

Over the lawn,

Springtime and summer,

Over the snow

All through the winter,

 

And in the fall

Jessie can whistle

Over the leaves --

She is a thistle

 

Stuck to the wind,

Striking up laughter,

Playing my heart

Just like a zither.

 

Jessie can soar

Just like a starling

Jessie’s my love,

Jessie’s my darling.

 

         Perhaps I was working up to writing an Anacreontic poem, a celebration of wine, women and song, when I next wrote this set of verses in rhyming amphibrachs:

 

LOVE’S DREAM

in amphibrachs

 

Whenever I see her I love her to pieces,

My love when she’s missing morosely increases.

She’s mine, yes she’s mine if she knows it or doesn’t,

She’s nobody else’s though elsewhere or present.

The moon may cease orbiting Earth on occasion,

The world may become but a kernel or raisin

Gone spinning about on its wobbling axis,

And Death may perhaps be less solid than taxes,

It matters no whit, not a tittle or tottle,

As long as I love her and cradle my bottle.

 

         And here is the poem in Anacreontics, after the 6^th century B.C. poet from Teos, Anacreon. In modern times, Anacreontics is just a loose poem form, but there is a classical line form as well, which here alternates with choriambic lines:

 

CHORIAMBIC ANACREONTICS

 

If we love wine, then what shall be

Done with women? with all those who are left high on the pedestal?

May we love them as well? Or must

Sights be lowered to knee height or perhaps less -- to the sisterhood

Of the streets? No! Surrendering

Love for drink’s a mistake not to be brooked! Capture the pair of them!

She will love wine as well as a

Man does women and good wine! We may both revel in love and wine

Till the dawn breaks the window and

Daylight drowns all our sweet dreams of debauch, laurels us all with rue.

 

         And that is a brief history of how I reinvented the wheel.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A version of this article originally appeared on-line in Trellis Magazine, Summer 2009, www.trellismagazine.com/files/Reinventing_the_Wheel.pdf.

 “A Life” was first published in two parts as "Life's Parade of Spirits" in the poetry column “Pennons of Pegasus” edited by Lydia B. Atkinson in the Morning Record of Meriden, CT, on 16 Apr 1952 and 19 May 1954. It was later expanded and turned into “Livevil: A Mask” which appeared in The Sketches of Lewis Turco and Livevil: A Mask, Cleveland, OH: American Weave Press, 1962, winner of the American Weave Chapbook Award.

 “A Tale of Rivers and a Boy,” “Time goes down in Mirrors” (as “Ode for the Beat Generation”), and “Visitor” were first collected in First Poems by Lewis Turco, Francestown, NH: Golden Quill Press, 1960, a selection of The Book Club for Poetry, and then in The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court, 1953-2004, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004. ISBN 1932842004, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 1932842012, quality paperback, $26.95, 460 pages, © 2004, all rights reserved. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM.

 

 “A Talisman” appeared first in Poetry: An Introduction through Writing, Reston: Reston Publishing, 1973, then in The New Book of Forms, A Handbook of Poetics Hanover: University Press of New England, 1986, and in The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics by Lewis Turco, Third edition, www.UPNE.com, 2000. ISBN 1584650222, trade paperback, $24.95, 337 pages. “The Poet’s Bible," A companion volume to The Book of Dialogue and The Book of Literary Terms. ORDER FROM AMAZON.

 

 “Sapphic Stanzas in Falling Measures” appeared in The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Third edition, op. cit., and in The Collected Lyrics, op. cit.

  “Columbian Ode” was gathered for the first time in The Gathering of the Elders and Other Poems by Wesli Court, www.StarCloudPress.com, September First, 2010, ISBN 978-1-932842, trade paperback, $14.95, 115 pages.

 

 “A Row of Hedges Revisited” was gathered in The Collected Lyrics, op. cit.