Odd and Invented Forms

Form of the Week Thirteen: Spatial Poetry

     The four levels of poetry are the typographical, having to do with the appearance of the poem on the page; the sonic – having to do with the various elements of sound; the sensory – imagery, and the ideational – theme and meaning. A prosody or “system of composition of poetry” based on the typographical level is called “spatial prosody”; synonyms would be Carmen figuratum, typewriter poem, hieroglyphic verse, concrete poetry, calligramme, and shaped stanza.

     Spatial poems are relatively popular in our own age. An extreme form of spatials is the sub-genre called “concrete poetry” which takes the poem further toward graphic art than does shaped stanza. Concrete verse is ideographic spatials. For instance, in Japanese the character for “rain” (an ideograph looks like the thing it is meant to represent; the Japanese have characters rather than the letters of an alphabet, and the characters are ideographic) might be arranged on the page so that it will look like rain falling. At the bottom of the page there might be the character for “house”; thus, the characters for rain are falling pictorially on the character for house. Concrete poetry is really more picture than poem, as in “Leo’s Casino,” a print by D. A. Levy that uses the letters of the alphabet simply as elements in a picture:

 

      A “typewriter poem” can be a picture of something made with the letters of the alphabet or words, as in “Town Square “ below:

 

     Spatials can be quite elaborate. A “sampler” was originally an exercise primarily for schoolgirls who would design a piece of embroidery that illustrated their ability to sew various stitches. It would be comprised of the alphabet, mottoes and, often, illustrations of various kinds, but the colonial American poet Edward Taylor wrote a poem that was a sampler:

 

      The opening motto of this poem is,

 

This Dove and Olive Branch to you

is both a Post and Emblem too.

     These words appear written within a crude drawing of a dove holding an olive branch with which Taylor decorated or “illuminated” this page of his manuscript. Besides being a sampler and an acrostic (the alphabet is spelled out down the left-hand margin), this extremely complicated poem is also a concrete poem, and an epistle (a “post”) addressed to Taylor’s first wife, Elizabeth Fitch, whom he married on November 5, 1674:

 

These for my Dove

Tender and only Love

Mrs. Elizabeth Fitch

At her father’s house in Norwich.

 

The design of this sampler is of a circle within a triangle that reads,

 

The ring of love my pleasant heart must be

Truly confined within the Trinity.

 

The second line doubles as the base of the triangle and as the line illustrating the letter “T”; it is therefore a refrain.

 

The circle reads,

 

Love’s ring I send

That hath no end.

 

At the center of the circle is a drawn heart.

 

Here is a modern rendering of the acrostic portion of

 

ACROSTIC LOVE POEM TO ELIZABETH FITCH

 

Aspiring Love, that scorns to hatch a wish

Beneath itself, the fullest, chiefest Bliss

Contained within Heaven’s crystal pale and shine,

Doth wish its object always; so doth mine.

Elect no more presented in desire:

For Heaven’s roof, aye, lets not a wish soar higher.

Got though too dim, none can get to sign

Hear you, (my friend), is strengthened wish of mine.

In drossy silver should, I should by this,

[J is included in the representation of I, above]

Keep dull my post, and stain my serious wish,

Lest which polluted be, or the fearful Dove

My post-out foiled, I run a ring of Love

New polished, where my centered heart doth reek

Out highest streams of Love, which here do meet.

Presented thus your heart, Love’s Ring you’ll find

Quest I unless, always best befits the mind.

Reserve mine that. Yet let our secret breast

Set Love the tune which tunes this Ring the best.

The Ring of Love my pleasant heart must be

[Truly confined within the Trinity. — refrain]

Upon your heart (I pray you) put Love’s Ring

V[=U]nerringly; Love’s Swelt(ering) heart herein

Wearing a True-love’s-knot at center’s set.

Wherewith I send to you an alphabet

Xenodict¹ whence all syllables complete

[e]Xtracted are to spell what love can speak.

Yea, see, then, what I send. Yet I design

Zion my Ring shall license with her Trine.²

 

Edward Taylor

 

¹Xeno” means strange or foreign, and “dict” (spelled “dick” in the original) means spoken; perhaps what this neologism means is “strangely spoken,” which would be an accurate description of this poem.

²The last line of this metaphysical (extended metaphor) poem may mean something like, the license of marriage, or even of poetic license, is allowed within the strictures laid down by the Trinity.

     However, spatial poems need not be so elaborate. This one, “Nymphomania” by Richard Kostelanetz, is quite straightforward:

 

     Sometimes spatial verse requires just a bit of art besides the shape of the poem, as in this poem I wrote in college after a game. It has baskets at each end of the basketball court:

 

     According to the author of “The View from Khufu’s Tongue,” there are two kinds of spatial poem, “positive” and “negative.” “Positive shaping utilizes the words and negative shaping, the spaces.” His poem is an example of negative shaping.”

 

     These next two poems are products of the 1960s; the first was written for President John F. Kennedy, and the second emerged from the “ban the bomb” movement; both are examples of positive shaping:

 

All poems are copyrighted and rights are reserved. 

 Suggested writing assignment: 

Write a spatial poem of some type on an original theme.

 

 The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Including Odd and Invented Forms, Revised and Expanded Edition by Lewis Putnam Turco, Hanover, NH: University Press of New England (www.UPNE.com) , 2012 • 384 pp. 3 illus. 5 x 7 1/2" Reference & Bibliography / Poetry 978-1-61168-035-5.

 

Twelve Moons: A Poem Series Written in Triversens

           I wrote my series "Twelve Moons" many years ago; none of them were ever published in periodicals, but the set appeared in my poetry collection American Still Lifes in 1981 and it is available in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007. However, I used one of them, "Flower Moon," on my blog in May 2012 and Lidia Chiarelli, who heads the international movement, Immagine & Poesia of Turin, Italy, and on Facebook, that pairs poets and artists, saw it and sent it to Adel Gorgy, a photographer who paired my poem with one of his art photos. I thanked Lidia and sent her all "Twelve Moons" because I thought she'd be interested, and she was. She immediately made them available to her artists, and over the next couple of days an Indian painter, Lalit Jain, chose two to pair with two of her paintings, and Gorgy chose another. Two images by my printmaker partner, George O'Connell were added later. On May 31st Lidia Chiarelli wrote,

 

Caro Luigi.

 

I can hardly believe it, but your beautiful poems have got new responses from artist Adel Gorgy:

 

"In January of this year I started a portfolio titled “Personal Moons” which is in progress and my portfolios usually take long times before I show them. At least that was true until I read Lewis Turco’s moon poems. I have selected 2 poems for two of my Personal Moons. Turco’s poems are very special. They have that unique Zen quality that brings “Suchness” to a moment of completion in which nothing could be added or reduced.

"The moment, as temporal, evanescent and most of all forgettable, through the eloquent words of Lewis Turco becomes memorable, alive and permanent. Finding or creating an image that echoes what the other sees is not possible, so I have chosen 2 images that I like to believe evoked in me what he probably felt then. At least I know that reading “Hot Moon” which I paired with my photograph “Red Moon Rises” and “Traveler’s Moon” for which I am sending “The Moon Dreams” moved me the same way that the equally ephemeral moments of “Red Moon Rises” and “The Moon Dreams” did.  I am so delighted that you sent me the poems and hope that you and Lewis Turco like the work." -- Adel Gorgy

 

Dear Lewis [Lidia continued], I think that — thanks to your excellent poems — our artistic literary Movement has reached a very high level!

Grazie ancora per la tua collaborazione, a presto

Lidia

 

          All of the poems in “Twelve Moons” are written in the stanza form invented by William Carlos Williams that I call “triversen stanza” in The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Including Odd and Invented Forms, Revised and Expanded Edition; most of them are specifically in the eighteen-line (six-stanza) poem form that I call the “triversen” proper. Here is the entirety of the set together with the four images:

 

TWELVE MOONS

 

COLD MOON

 

The lake drifts in the starfall,

         the father lake that will not freeze

                  but hardens at its edges.

 

The earth has turned to stone

         beneath the stones

                  upon the cold moon's shores.

 

Wind builds forts of ice

         crystal by crystal,

                  and the pike go deep.

 

The grasses move in the air,

         some with dark plumes

                  on stalks of shadow,

 

and where the trees begin

         darkness lies at the root

                  hiding the trail.

 

 

SNOW MOON

 

Wind calls over the lake;

         snow rises to the voice of air

                  falling and falling.

 

The deer circle and fold

         among the oaks of the forest,

                  their eyes shining in the moon.

 

There is nothing but sifting

         among the maples

                  and the sharp echo of a branch breaking.

 

The otchock is in its lair

         sleeping and listening in its sleep

                  to hear if a shadow should fall above

 

or if a footfall should drift

         into its dream of roots

                  fading into the wood —

 

but the men are in their villages

         dreaming themselves awake

                  hearing the wind cry and the snow fall.

 

 

WORM MOON

 

The sky is a curtain of slate

         falling to the horizon,

                  but behind it there is the sun.

 

The river flows north again

         into the gray lake

                  splitting its skin of ice.

 

In the forest deer

         scrape velvet from their horns —

                  blood on the bark.

 

The squnck leads her kits

         along the shore,

                  tails cocked;

 

they follow the trail,

         then switch into the wood

                  and the patches of old snow.

 

A robin listens for worms,

         hears instead footsteps in the earth

                  and rises into the bare, bursting limbs.

 

 

SEED MOON

In the night there was a crescent

         thin as a breath

                  floating in the sky.

 

Now the sun has quickened;

         it sprays the green meadows

                  with drops of light.

 

Birds pierce the trees

         along the lake where grass

                  thrusts through the bluff.

 

In the houses of the village

         there is the scent of savors —

                  the women move and the men rise.

 

Soon the earth will fill with voices,

         the sounds of loam turning;

                  the sun will stretch to fill the sky,

 

and in the woodland the deer

         will sample the air,

                  lift their heads to listen.

 

 

FLOWER MOON

 

The sun blossoms in the sky,

         and the woodsflowers blossom.

                  Herbs bloom in the gardens.

 

All day light falls

         until shadows fall

                  with the failing west.

 

Then a yellow flare

         fires the clouds over the lake,

                  sets the waves afire.

 

Upon the shore the boats lie

         among the voices of children

                  skipping stones over the water;

 

the moon skims

         into the east

                  washing silver into the wood,

 

shadow into the stone —

         and, beyond, the pike flash

                  under the lip of shadow.

 

 

HOT MOON

 

The maize is shin high

         behind the fences

                  of the village by the lake,

 

and in the blue haze

         above the mouth of the river

                  seagulls call in the sun,

 

climb and fall

         where waters meet waters

                  and fish lie over ledge.

 

 

BUCK MOON

 

The buck on the hill

         looks up over the high grass.

                  A cicada sings of heat.

 

A man stands at the treeline

         where earth slopes under the wood.

                  Nothing moves.

 

A grouse breaks cover

         calling and calling.

                  In the grass a breath stirs,

 

a high cloud shadows it,

         moving northeast over the lake.

                  Crickets chirr in the stalks.

 

The antlers of the buck

         spread like an oak

                  over the brow of the hill,

 

and when he is gone

         the man begins to climb

                  under the cloud and the bright song.

 

 

STURGEON MOON

 

As the boat rounds the river bend

         the great body of the fish

                  breaks water like an arrow,

 

falls back into the spume.

         The prow of the boat

                  slices through and past.

 

Maples and cedars

         follow the bank.

                  A musquash climbs into the brush,

 

its coat shining.

         A turtle dives like a rock

                  from a rock.

 

Below the rapids there is the lake

         spread to the horizon

                  like a pond of blue light.

 

 

MAIZE MOON

 

The wind moves in the maize

         under a moon the shade of dust,

                  shaking and rustling.

 

The corn's tassles

         are the colors of night;

                  the cricket's song is the song of night,

 

of roots in dry earth

         and frost in the offing.

                  The deer are restless in the wood,

 

waking to listen.

         An owl calls

                  and a squirrel stirs,

 

dreaming of hiding.

         Out of the dark air

                  a chestnut prepares to fall

 

from shadow to shadow,

         leaf to leaf,

                  and the lake waits, biding.

 

 

TRAVELERS' MOON

The man's breath

         is a plume of steam

                  too thin to see from the village

 

lying under the hill

         beside the lake

                  among its straw gardens.

 

Evening is falling

         out of the horns

                  of a bone moon

 

risen above the forest

         among the starpoints

                  like beads of frost.

 

The trail is clear

         even by frostlight or bonelight,

                  and the air is clear,

 

sharp as a blade,

         hard as a staff —

                  as the path of the moon on the water.

 

 

BEAVER MOON

 

The sun through the clouds,

         high and thin,

                  looks like a moon.

 

Beneath it the forest spreads

         from the lake to the south horizon,

                  hard earth showing through the branches.

 

A brook with ice at its ledges

         flows barely through the trees

                  toward a gray river.

 

A pond swells

         behind a dam,

                  water racing over the logs

 

where a man appears

         walking quickly,

                  then stops to listen.

 

Somewhere there is a sharp crack

         that ripples over the water,

                  through the air and silence.

 

 

HUNTING MOON

 

Snow nearly hard as hail

         rustles through the bare branches

                  and settles among the leaves

 

at the roots of the forest.

         In its den of earth

                  a bear dreams of berries,

 

of  fish gleaming in the shallows.

         A herd of deer

                  shifts edgily in a clearing,

 

the young bucks shivering.

         From a distance

                  a jay cries

 

across the gray air.

         They are in the wood,

                  the band of men,

 

downwind and quiet.

         The wind begins to rise.

                  The snow starts to flake and drift.

 

All images and poems are copyrighted by their creators and may NOT be used or reproduced in any way without their written permission.