Poetics and Ruminations

The Kitchen

 

THE KITCHEN

A Prose Poem from The Inhabitant.

 

In the  kitchen the dishwasher is eating the dishes. The Inhabitant listens to the current of     digestion — porcelain being ground, silver wearing thin, the hum and bite of the     machine.

His wife does not hear it — she is humming, not listening. But the Inhabitant is aware of     movement in the cupboards, of the veriest motion — the cast-iron skillet undergoing     metamorphosis, perhaps, becoming its name: the wives' spider spinning beneath the     counter, weaving and managing, waiting for the doors to open.

Each cup has its voice, each saucer its ear, and the thin chant planes between the     shelves, touching the timbres of glass and crystal as it passes.  The gentleman     listens, is touched to the bone by this plainsong — he feels his response in the     marrow's keening.

But the women do not — neither the elder nor the child — sense the music their things     make. Their lips move, a column of air rises like steam, and there is something in a     minor key sliding along the wall, touching the face of a plastic clock, disturbing the     linen calendar beside the condiments.

It is as though, the Inhabitant reflects, the women are spinning.  It is as though, while he     waits, they weave bindings among the rooms; as though the strands of tune were     elements of a sisterhood of dishes, the ladies, the spider in the cabinet, even of the     dishwasher, done now with its grinding, which contributes a new add sound — a     continuo of satiety — to the gray motet the kitchen is singing.

 

From Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007. ISBN 978-1-932842-19-7, cloth; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, paper. Also available in a Kindle edition.

 

 

Miss Pussy's Parlor Songs, Part Five

PART FIVE

 

Palin waved to Putin from her porch,

She called to him over the Bering Sea,

"Donald will be sending you the torch

That once was held by our Miss Liberty!” 

"Da," Putin said.

 

 

CINNABON MAN

 

Oh, Cinnabon, who is gonna ice you?

Oh, Cinnabon, who is gonna ice you?

Oh, Cinnabon, who is gonna ice you, all in a day?

 

Run to the moon, "Moon, won't you ice me?"

Run to the sea, "Sea, won't you ice me?"

Run to the sun, "Sun, won't you ice me, all in a day?"

 

Trump said, "Cinnabon, moon'll be a-bleeding."

Trump said, "Cinnabon, sea'll be a-sinking."

Trump said, "Cinnabon, sun'll be a-freezing, all in a day."

 

Oh, Donald Trumpkin, won't you stop your lyin'?

Oh, Donald Trumpkin, won't you stop your lyin'?

Oh, Donald Trumpkin, won't you stop your lyin' just for a day?

 

Trump said, "No, because I am a lion."

Trump said, "No, because I am a lion."

Trump said, "No, because I am a lion roarin' every day."

 

Oh, Donald Trumpkin, where can I run to?

Oh, Donald Trumpkin, where can I run to?

Oh, Donald Trumpkin, where can I run to every single day?

 

"No use a-runnin' -- you already voted."

"No use a-runnin' -- you already voted."

"No use a-runnin' -- you already voted, all in a day."

 

 

Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, have you come back?

"I've been to Sweden to see the attack!"

Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, were terrorists there?

"Only poor Trumpkin under a chair."

 

 

It's a long way across the border,

it's a long way to go.

It's a long way across the border,

But Donald Trump says, "Blow!"

 

Farewell to all that's decent,

Back to poverty --

It's a long way across the border,

Back to what I tried to flee.

 

 

Do you have a peepee?

Nono, not the girls' room.

Do you have a pussy?

Nono, not the boys' room.

Peepee in the boys' room,

Piddle in the girls' room,

Do them both -- piddle or crap

Sitting in Donnie Trumpkin's lap.

 

 

Rumpletrumpkin says, "I'll choose

Which media may hear my news:

Not those that may be run by Jews

Like The Times that may abuse

My fake stories -- those amuse

My supporters who don't accuse

Me of holding such stupid views."

 

 

ATTORNEY GENERAL

 

Did Jeff Sessions

Talk to the Russians?

He says he didn't, but the answer is "Yes."

Shouldn't the law

Stick in his craw?

Of course, but instead he's making a mess.

 

His new recusal

Is now an accusal

But Trump's still patting his lawyer's back.

Trumpkin's attorney

Will soon take a journey --

Hopefully both will enjoy Session's sack.

 

From MISS PUSSY'S PARLOR SONGS by Claudette McFang.

Trumped-Up Anthem

 

TRUMPED-UP ANTHEM

By Pierre Bennerup

Edited by Claudette McFang, "Miss Pussy."

 

My Country Tis of Me

Greed and Mysogyny

    Of Thee I sing.

I don't pay tax, you see —

That's sheer stupidity.

From my Trump Tower I see

    Just glam and bling

 

Send Lady Liberty

To weight loss surgery,

    Make her a ten.

Send back all refugees

Except my current squeeze:

After she needs new knees

    I'll trade her in.

 

Another billion bucks?

My payroll truly sucks—

    That's how I save.

My money’s in my vault.

Who cares if you default?

I’ll never call a halt,

    Not from my grave!

Recalling Nancy Willard

 

Recalling Nancy Willard

June 26, 1936 – February 19, 2017)

 

I am deeply sad to note the death of my old friend Nancy Willard on February 19th of this year. I reviewed her first book of poems in an essay titled, ”Of Laureates and Lovers,” published in The Saturday Review, l:41, October 14, 1967. I thought that it was a fine first book, and she went on to write many more. When eventually we met, we liked each other, and we were friends until she left us this month. This is the review I wrote:

 

Nancy Willard's collection of poems, In His Country (1966), volume four of the Generation New Poets Series of Ann Arbor, is a fine first book. Ms. Willard has a mind that likes to tangle strange but relevant ideas in the skein of language, as in the first stanza of "Picture Puzzles":

 

It's because we're broken

     that we love

puzzles; pictures

     cut all askew, fifteen hundred

pieces, salvage

     of divine catastrophe.

For two dollars my mother

     buys, in good fait,

Fra Angelico's Nativity,

     incredibly cracked,

sung

     like God's defense

on a skeptic's tongue.

 

And then she unravels the strands gracefully in the dénouement. "See?" she seems to say, "This is where we were heading all the time. Everything makes sense at last."

Well, perhaps not everything, but Ms. Willard is capable of making us think so while she is performing, and that's half of art. The other half is perhaps indefinable, but one might bet she has that as well. This much is sure: Nancy Willard can build a whole poem, an unusual talent in this era of fragments and fragmented poets.

— Lewis Turco

Honkytonk Revisited

"Honkytonk Revisited" by Lewis Turco was originally published in Salmagundi, i:3, 1966; and gathered in 

Poetry: An Introduction Through Writing. Reston, VA: Reston Publishing Co., 1973. ISBN 0879096373, paper. O-P but available from ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U. S. Department of Education.

Miss Pussy's Parlor Songs, Part Four

 

MISS PUSSY'S PARLOR SONGS, PART FOUR

 

IN A MONSTROUS INAUGARTION

(Rewritten by Claudette McFang after Albert W. Ketelbey's "In a Monastery Garden"

and inspired by a Facebook typo for "inauguration".)

 

Through the murky twilight falling

Emails from afar are calling

And appalling all the weary

As attendees can attest.

 

The Washington Monument is reeling,

And Republicans are stealing

While Democrats appeal for mercy --

None are obliged, and none are blessed.

 

We rove about in a darkling land

That once seemed merely dull and bland.

I hear a voice that seems to tell me

The White House has a scary guest.

 

Joy won't come again with morning,

Not with these dark storm clouds forming

Now Donald Trump's the turtle dove

Replacing what had been our best.

 

 

Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, where have you been?

"Checking the scene at Bowling Green."

Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, what did you there?

"Looked for the Massacre -- everywhere."

Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, what did you find?

"I found that Kellyanne's out of her mind."

 

 

We have a crooked President who has a crooked smile --

He found a crooked judge, he thinks, who doesn't like his style.

He tweeted, "What a dirty rat, the countermanding louse!"

And went on fuming in his White and quite disgusting House.

 

 

A Trump came trumpeting out of his Tower

With pussies galore to show off his power.

He could sing nothing but, "Hey, look at me!

I am the greatest...ass you'll ever see!"

 

 

The Trump administration thinks that they're entrepreneurs,

But that's not true, of course, because they're strictly amateurs

Excepting when they turn themselves into self-saboteurs.

One wonders how this Cabinet's incompetence endures.

 

 

Little Don Trump

Sat in a hump

Eating his humble pie.

"California is out

Of control, and I'll pout,"

He said, "till I spit in their eye."j

 

 

"It's common sense!" Says Donald Trump

In phrases clipped and terse,

But he'd not recognize common sense

With two Pence in his purse.

 

 

"pOTUS" has a little pee,

His thoughts are in the drainer.

He means it when he does something

And says, "It's a no-brainer."

 

 

Trump, Trump, Trump, the gang is munching,

Cheer up, comrades they are dumb,

And beneath the starry flag they will soon eat crow again

In the freedom of our own beloved home.

 

 

COMPOSED IN THE SHOWER

 

What can we say about Flynn?

It's hard to know where to begin.

   He was man of the hour

   Before Trump was in power,

But now he is out and not in.

 

 

KELLYANNE'S PITCH

 

As Donald Trump's majorette minion,

It is my most humble opinion

Attacking his daughter's nice clothes

Is punching the President's nose.

So don't drop her line at the mall --

They haven't at Moscow's street stall

Because it's just fine. You should buy it --

I'm sure you'll agree if you try it.

 

From MISS PUSSY'S PARLOR SONGS by Claudette McFang.

 

Gwendolyn Brooks

 

From Dialects of the Tribe: Postmodern American Poets and Poetry, by Lewis Putnam Turco, Nacogdoches, TX: Stephen F. Austin State University Press, www.tamupress.com, 2012, 336 pp., ISBN 978-1-936205-30-1, paperback. Available from all booksellers.

 

          For many years, despite her early involvement with the NAACP, Brooks wrote a formal poetry; during the 1960s, however, influenced by the militancy of her old friend Langston Hughes and by the aggressive posture of the young Blacks, such as Amiri Baraka, she found she could no longer afford to appear as though she remained on the sidelines.  She therefore began to write a more militant kind of poem.  In the lead essay of A Life Distilled edited by Gary Smith and herself, Maria K. Mootry, in her essay titled "'Down the Whirlwind of Good Rage': An Introduction to Gwendolyn Brooks," said that "at the nexus of Brooks's art lies a fundamental commitment to both the modernist aesthetics of art and the common ideal of social justice." (1)

         Brooks was born in 1917 in Topeka, Kansas, and educated at Wilson Junior College in Chicago, from which she was graduated in 1936.  She married three years later and became the mother of two.  During the Depression she worked as publicist for the NAACP Youth Council in Chicago, and subsequently she taught at various institutions of higher education in and around that city including Northeastern Illinois State College, Columbia College, and Elmhurst College.

         "Nowhere is this dual commitment more apparent," Mootry continued, "than in the multiplicity of voices in her works.  If the reader finds echoes of T.S. Eliot and Countee Cullen in her poetry, there are also equally strong folk vernacular voices punctuating her forty-year literary career.  Her three early works, A Street in Bronzeville (1945), Annie Allen (1949), and The Bean Eaters (1960), present a wide range of poetic forms, including blues poems, ballads, experimental free verse, quatrains, Petrarchan sonnets and Chaucerian stanzas.  Her subsequent publications, In the Mecca (1968), Riot (1969), Family Pictures (1971), Beckonings (1975), and To Disembark (1981), are written primarily in free verse and show her increasing concern with social issues, yet the variety of speakers continues."

         Brooks' Selected Poems was published in 1963.  In the "Foreword" to New Negro Poets U.S.A., edited by Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks wrote, "At the present time, poets who happen also to be Negroes are twice-tried.  They have to write poetry, and they have to remember that they are Negroes.  Often they wish that they could solve the Negro question once and for all, and go on from such success to the composition of textured sonnets or buoyant villanelles without the transience of a raindrop, or the gold-stuff of the sun.  They are likely to find significances in those subjects not instantly obvious to their fairer fellows.

         “The raindrop may seem to them to represent racial tears — and those might seem, indeed, other than transient.  The golden sun might remind them that they are burning." (13)

         One of Brooks' simplest and most-anthologized poems exemplifies both her innovative approach to traditional verse forms and her social commitment:

WE REAL COOL

The Pool Players.

Seven at the Golden Shovel

"We real cool. We

Left school. We

Lurk late. We

Strike straight. We

 Sing sin.  We

Thin gin.  We

Jazz June.  We

Die soon."

         First, on the typographical level, it is clear that this is a poem written in couplet stanzas.  The second immediately noticeable point is that it is a parallel series, for each line except the last ends with the word "we."  Next, the eye is caught by the fact that immediately preceding the last word of each line, except the final one, there is a period — the series is made up of short independent clauses, a set of assertions.

         When we read the poem, though, we wonder at first, perhaps, why we ends the lines; it ought to appear at the head of each line, for it is the subject of the parallel clauses: "We real cool.  We left school.  We lurk late.  We strike straight.  We sing sin.  We thin gin.  We jazz June.  We die soon."  But when we read it in its "correct" parallel arrangement we realize why Brooks wrote it otherwise: it is not syncopated.  Read normally," another thing happens to its rhythms:  Some of the strong stresses are demoted.  Written as Brooks has written them, each line except the first and last consists of three strong stresses.  The prosody is accentual verse.  Line one has four beats, the last has two.

         The rhymes of the poem from lines two through seven thus appear medially — they run right down the center of the poem. All the verbs — the strongest words — from line two on, are pushed to first place; they are drum beats.  The rhyming words are also drum beats sprung by their sounds, and each is followed by a full stop, a rest.  Then another drum stroke, we: ¢ ¢ [] ¢, and the line is enjambed into the next stress.  The poem is jazz; it is a dirge played in the streets, like those of the black bands that march in slow time through New Orleans alleys to the graveyard.  The dirge begins slowly with four beats, and it ends abruptly with two.  The entire little poem is an exercise in linguistic counterpoint.

         The level of diction of the poem is idiomatic, the tropes mainly rhetorical — it is heavy with macho braggadocio.  And it ends with the assertion of a truth that brings the reader up short with a jolt.  The major genre of the poem is, plainly, the lyric, but it is also almost equally a didactic poem with a clear social message.

         Brooks' second book, Annie Allen, received the Pulitzer Prize in 1950.  "Then, as now," Bernard W. Bell wrote in the introduction to his anthology Modern and Contemporary Afro-American Poetry, "Miss Brooks' race consciousness was low-keyed, yet keenly felt in every line.  And her lyrics pulsate with the joys and sorrows of life. (9-10)

         "Stylistically, Annie Allen is a masterpiece.  Tracing the path of a black child's movement from innocence to experience, Miss Brooks skillfully employs adaptations of many of the major metrical patterns and stanzaic forms in the English tradition, from couplets and blank verse to sonnet sequences and free verse. In this and subsequent volumes, she maintains a remarkable balance between being a poet's poet and a poet of the people."

         Writing in Women Poets of the World, edited by Joanna Bankier and Deirdre Lashgari,  Barbara Christian, in her essay titled "Cultural Influences: African American" said, "Gwendolyn Brooks wrote much of her poetry during the 1940s and 1950s when Blacks were striving to achieve integration into the American social structure.  By the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement gave way to the Black Power movement.  Brooks' later work, published in the late 1960s and early 1970s, reflects that shift.  The dominant literary movement of that period, Cultural Nationalism, focused on the development of Black selfhood and nationhood.  There was a renewed interest in African and Afro-American history and culture.  Poets saw themselves as revolutionaries in the service of their people” (337-8). Gwendolyn Brooks died in 2007 as one of America’s most highly respected literary figures.

 

R.I.P. GWENDOLYN BROOKS

June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000

 

When she was young Miss Gwendolyn Brooks

Lost and found herself in books.

 

Wesli Court’s Epitaphs for the Poets, by Lewis Turco, Baltimore, MD: BrickHouse Books, (www.BrickHouseBooks.com) 2012, paperback, ISBN: 978-1-938144-01-1.

 

The Golden Shovel

 

OMEN

 

The Golden Shovel Anthology

New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooka edited by Peter Kahn, Ravi Shankar, and Patricia Smith with a Foreword by Terrance Hayes, Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2017.

 

OMEN

 

By Lewis Turco

 

They were not fools: our parents always knew

The mores, ways and words of all the white

Folk that surrounded us. Even their speech

Was not beyond us – it was not the how

That we found useless, but we were never to

Become our “betters,” we could never make

Our skin turn white. We would always sing a

Song that’s black and blue; we’d always look

The way we look. We had to learn an an-

Them of our own and follow our own omen.

Related articles

Poetics and Ruminations: An Appreciation of A. D. Hope

Seasons of the Blood: American Poems in Japanese Forms

Miss Pussy's Parlor Songs, Part Three

MISS PUSSY'S PARLOR SONGS

PART THREE



Monday's President was white,
So was Tuesday's, nice and light.
Wednesday's Pres. was white as snow,
Thursday's, though, was sort of slow.
Friday's President seemed numb,
Saturday's was pale and dumb.
Sunday's, though, was sort of dark,
Intelligent, right on the mark --
But Funday's Chieftain loved to lie,
He made us snarkle fit to die.


I saw a plane a-flying,
A-flying in the air;
And oh, it was all laden
With people from Qatar.

Arabs were in the cabin,
Muslims in the seats
Planning to become illegal
Voters and election cheats.

The four and twenty marshals
That stood between the decks
Wore badges on their bosoms
And chains about their necks.

The captain was a moron
With a monkey on his back;
And when the plane began to land,
The captain cried, "Quack, Quack!"


Crock-o'doodle-doo,
What's a Trump to do
When he has a parrot
But wants a cockatoo?

Crock-o'doodle-doo,
What's a Trump to do
When he has some pussy
But wants a cockatoo?

Crock-o'doodle-doo,
What's a Trump to do
When he's eaten chicken
But wants some cockatoo?


Diddle, diddle, dumpling, Donald Trump
Went to the bathroom to take a dump,
Managed to make much more than a paw full,
Stunk up the White House something awful.


Tell me, hooded wise old man,
As the Magus of the Klan,
Did you vote for Donald Trump?

I did vote for Donald Trump --
He's a lot like Forrest Gump.

 

UPON SEEING THE PREZ HUG LOUISE GORSUCH

Star Trump, star chump,
No star I'd like to hump,
I wish you may,  I wish you might
Grab a pussy that's quite uptight.


Another Scalia? There is nonesuch,
No court would hope to see one,
But there's a fellow called Gorsuch
Who's going to try to be one.


Old King Trump was a grumpy old lump,
And a grumpy old lump was he.
He sat on his rump and made Forrest Gump
Some sort of Secretary.


If all the seas were one sea,
What a great sea that would be!
If all the trees were one tree,
What a great tree that would be!
If all the axes were one axe,
What a great axe that would be!
If all the men were Donald Trump,
What a great ass he would be!
And if the great ass took the great axe,
And cut down the great tree,
And let it fall into the great sea,
What a great splash that would be!


TRUMPING THE NATIONAL PRAYER BREAKFAST

Pray, oh! Pray for The Apprentice
And Arnold Schwarzenegger
Whose ratings have fallen through the floor
And he's become a beggar.

He took my job, and look at him,
He governed California,
But he cannot be President
For he was not born heah.

This double darkling of the screen
Needs to have our prayers,
So on your knees, good gentlefolk,
And kiss my orange hairs.

Hickory, dickory, dock,
Donald exposed his cock,
But pussy was closed
And Donald got hosed,
Hickory, dickory dock.


I had a little pussy,
Her name was Lady Gay,
I rented her to Donald 
To pet her and to play.
He poked her, he pumped her,
He rode her through the mire.
I would not rent her out again
For all of Donald's hire.

MISS PUSSYCAT'S PARLOR SONGS, PART TWO: INAUGURATION SPECIAL

 

 

 PART TWO

 

Meow, meow, meow,

Whose puss art thou?

Not Donny Trump's puss,

Not ever and not now.

 

 

Trump is but a braggart baboon

Who tootles a bad jazz bassoon.

       The end of this story: 

       He'll go on to glory

Playing jazz in a hot air balloon.

 

If Donald could write poultry too

(In a Poulter's measure or two),

       Then he might invent 

       Rhymes with a scent

Quite nasty, as I like to do.

 

 

Twitter, twitter, twitter,

Trump needs a pussy sitter --

Twitter. twitter, tweet,

He thinks that would be sweet.

 

Flitter, flitter, prance,

Oh! How he loves a dance,

Flitter, flitter, flap,

If pussy's on his lap.

 

 

Humpty Trumpty sat on his wall.

Humpty Trumpty had a great fall.

All Congress' whores and all congressmen

Couldn't put Humpty together again

Although they tried with main and with might,

And every one of them was white.

 

 

Bye, Donny Trumpkin,

Daddy's gone a-huntin'

To get a little snake skin

To wrap the Donny Trumpkin in.

 

 

Cock-a-doodle-doo!

Poor Trumpkin has no clue:

He's lost his flabby fiddlestick

And can't tell what to do.

 

Cock-a-doodle-doo!

Niagara Falls are blue,

A lot like his Viagra pills,

Which serve him tried and true.

 

Cock-a-doodle-doo!

What is poor Don to do?

To find his sorry fiddlestick

He'll need Cialis too.

 

Cock-a-doodle-doo!

His dame has donned her shoe,

And he has found his fiddlestick,

Sing doodle-doodle-doo!

 

Cock-a-doodle-doo!

His dame will dance with you

While Donald fiddles with his stick

And makes it stand anew!

 

 

Remember old King Nero

Who worshipped Great God Zero?

Trump worships Zeros too -- 

He's collected quite a few.

He and his pussy minions

Like millions, but love billions

And are heading for sextillions.

 

 

If he could have, Dryden (1631-1700)

Would have gone into Haydn (1732-1809),

But Trump

Prefers the dump.

 

 

I love lots of pussy,

It makes me feel warm.

If I buy them diamonds

They'll do me no harm;

I'll just pat their tails,

Make sure they're not gay

Or cross-dressing males,

And then we can play.

They'll dance in my lap,

I'll feed them some food --

Good pecker, not pap --

Be maybe less rude.

I'll pat my sweet pussies,

And then they will purr,

Each showing thanks

For my kindness to her;

I'll not bite their knobs,

Nor tread on their paws

Lest I should provoke them

To use their sharp claws;

I'm sure that my pussies

Will not be displeased --

I will over-sex them

If they're not diseased.

 

 

Grump grump Donald Trump,

How I wonder why you pump

In the cellar with your sump

That sounds a lot like Forrest Gump.

 

 

Rub-a-dub-dub

Three Trumps in a tub,

And who do you think they be?

The Trumpet, the Strumpet, the lass who can hump it --

Waterboard them, all three!

 

 

Donny Douchekit's gone to sea, 

Silver buckles at his knee.

He'll come back and pee on me,

Pretty Donny Douchekit.

 

 

Hickory, dockery, dick,

Donnybrook tripped on his prick --

     He fell on his fly,

     And put out his eye --

Now, how did he pull off that trick?

 

 

KING TRUMPKIN'S WALL

 

Little King Trumpkin will build a fine wall,

The Mexican people will pay for it all.

The pales will be made of nothing but words,

The crossbars and slats, of batshit and turds.

 

"No, senor, no -- you pay for your fence

All by yourself, you spend your own Pence

Or pesos or euros...it's all your expense

And none of our own -- that's mucho nonsense.

People go over, go through, go around,

The cartels build highways deep underground.

The Great Wall of China was built to keep out

The nomads and Mongols -- you see them around

In Bejing and Hong Kong; they can be found

Everywhere these days, just like Hispanics

Who give Kinglet Trumpkin his asthma and panics.

So, no, senor, no -- you pay for your wall.

We Mexicans will not repay you at all."