Poetics and Ruminations

Form of the Week 19 – The Elegy

 

         On Thursday, October 11^th, 2012, I got back into the classroom for the first time in a long while. The week before I had dropped in on Dr. Bennet Shaber, Chair of the SUNY College at Oswego Department of English and Creative Writing, to drop off a couple of books for the Department’s display of faculty publications: Wesli Court’s Epitaphs for the Poets and my Dialects of the Tribe: Postmodern American Poets and Poetry, both published in the same year. I was mildly surprised to see that Bennet seemed to be more interested in the former volume than in the book of literary criticism.

“I’m teaching the elegy this semester,” he told me. “It’s a seminar. How about coming to class next week and talking to my students?” he asked. “They’re smart and interested. These aren’t exactly ‘elegies,’ he observed, ‘but close.’”

I happily agreed, so I went home and prepared some materials. I asked Bennet to send me a list of the major elegies he had covered so far this year, and he sent me this list by email:

“Spencer's Astrophel, Nashe's A Litany in Time of Plague, Milton's Lycidas, Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Shelley's Adonais are the major poems so far.  We've also read some more modern/contemporary poems by Dennis O'Driscoll, Richard Garcia, Tess Gallagher, and Sharon Olds.  Next Tuesday they have a paper due, so I'll spend the class showing them some paintings that touch on pastoral elegy (Poussin's two Arcadian Shepherd paintings principally).  Then Thursday is YOU!  I've been using Sandra Gilbert's Inventions of Farewell to supply most of the modern poetry.  I can have them bring it to class if you know the volume and want to read some of those as well as your own poetry.”

I wrote back, “Attached you will find the titles and pages that I will read your class.” This is the attachment: 

ELEGIES

From The Book of Forms, A Handbook of Poetics, Fourth Edition:

Occasional Poetry, pp. 266-269;

Elegiac Distich, Elegy, and “Elegy for John,: pp. 201-203

  

From Fearful Pleasures, The Collected Poems of Lewis Turco:

 

“In a White Direction,” p. 41

 “Lines for Mr. Stevenson,” p. 48

 “Trilogy for J. F. K.,” pp. 51-54

 “The Pilot,” pp. 179-180

 “Cancer,” pp. 401-402

 “The Recurring Dream,” pp. 403-404 

From The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court:

“Elegy Composed in a Watermelon Patch,” pp. 181-183 

From The Book of Forms, Fourth Edition:

Sestina, pp. 334-344

 “The Obsession,” pp. 341-342

Interestingly, at least to me, is the coincidence that another book just out, Garnet Poems: An Anthology of Connecticut Poetry Since 1776, edited by Dennis Barone, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2012, contains, among an unusual but thoughtful selection of four of my poems, two elegies, “The Recurring Dream,” and the third part of “Trilogy for J. F. K.,” listed above, a Pindaric ode on the first anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, titled, “Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day 1964”:

ODE ON ST. CECILIA’S DAY 1964

by Lewis Turco

 

1.  Of the Past

 

Some music, then, for this day.  Let it be

Suitable to the mood of fallen snow,

The veil of a virgin saint.  Quietly

Let it come now, out of the silence; now

While the birds inexplicably forsake

The elm, the oak, the seed in the lilac....

Instead, drumrolls muffled in an old year,

An echo of trumpets in the streets.  Clear

But muted, there is a ragged tattoo

Of hooves, image of a sable horse, wild-

Eyed, resisting the rein, skittish among

The twin rows of witness citizens who,

Their voices frozen, give up to the cold

Air of the marble city an old song.

 

2.  Of the Present

 

But it’s another year, Cecilia’s day

Again, another part of the land.  So,

Let the phantoms of those dead days lie

Under these new burdens of snow.  Allow

That chorus of stricken men to dim like

Shadows into blackening film, the dark

Merging with the riderless horse.  Feature

By feature, let the scene fade into near

Distance, into perspective, then shadow.

This is music for St. Cecilia.  Yield

To her the lyric due her.  Let us sing

For her patronage — her martyrdom grew

Out of a summer heart: she is our shield

Against the winter.  She is always young.

 

3.  Of the Moment

 

Here beyond the window the campus lies.

The students pass in mufflers and coats, eyes

Almost hidden against the wind.  The sound

Of radio music settles around

The furniture, into the carpeting.

Choral voices: a requiem.  Distant

And urgent, the November church bells ring.

Outdoors a dog rags something.  An instant

Pause in his play — he has caught a squirrel

Which tosses and tosses in the gray air.

The mongrel, in the midst of his quarrel

With life, is assaulted by three girls.  There,

At the base of a tree, the limp ruff falls

From insensate jaws, starts to inch up walls

Of oak bark toward some invisible

Sanctuary.  The dog begins to howl.

The girls watch the squirrel into the limbs.

Cecilia’s radio is done with hymns.

 

Here is an elegy written in the form of a ballade; listen to the author read it:

 

LATE ELEGY FOR AN OLD SUICIDE

In memory of Thomas Chatterton 1752-1770

"There's nothing that agrees worse

Than a proud mind and a beggar's purse."

 

Descendant of Redcliffe's deacons, a Bristol boy,

                St. Mary's ghosts were native to his blood.

He haunted Canyng's tomb.  His only joy

                Was in his own invention: "Rowley" stood

                More clearly in his sight than real life could,

                       Of greater substance than apprentice wages.

                He made the priest his mask, put on his hood....

                       Tom's suicide aches still across the ages.

 

He built a myth, turned Bristol into Troy

                And Camelot combined.  The Sacred Wood

Grew at the gate, and time became his toy.

                He brought the rill of local lore to flood

                And made St. Mary's cross the Holy Rood —

                       All for Rowley's sake.  Upon those pages

                He worked till Rowley's lyrics stood enthewed.

                       Tom's suicide aches still across the ages.

 

At last he went to London to employ

                Himself and Rowley in the common good;

He managed but to starve himself, annoy

                Great Walpole, tender Johnson.  When his food

                And pence ran out at seventeen, he rued

                       The day that he'd been born.  London's sages

                Looked the other way, cried "Hoax!" and "Fraud!"

                       Tom's suicide aches still across the ages.

 

Envoy:

                Yet what he wrote was true, the lines imbued

                       With haunting skill.  Death was his early wages.

                God rest his bones, however misconstrued.

                       Tom's suicide aches still across the ages.

    

From The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court 1953-2004, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004, 460 pp., ISBN 1-932842-00-4, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 1-932842-01-2, trade paperback,

Suggested Writing Assignment:

Write an elegy in a form or meter of your choosing.

The Late, Late Show

        It's too late for our planet. Earth is already polluted past repair: Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima, spent atomic fuel rods stored everywhere and unable to be destroyed; three gigantic eddies of trash in the oceans; India and others pouring rivers of raw sewage into the waters we drink; factories everywhere filling the skies with poison that we breathe. If we had any sense, we would find another planet to inhabit and destroy right now. Those who say "global warming" doesn't exist should be left behind to cope for themselves.

 

THE LATE, LATE SHOW

By Lewis Turco

 

                       It is now ten minutes after midnight,

                December 5th, 1965.  In honor

                             of the attack by the Japanese

                                    on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on

December 7th, 1941, all channels

 

                       are running movies about war.  On one

                channel, the come-on is newsreel footage of the

                             bombing inserted into a film

                                    made by the Japanese.  Channel

9 has topped that: also Japanese, the movie is

 

                       science-fiction: the Third World War is just

                beginning.  I'll take a gangster film — Channel 3:

                             it sounds incredible, but the third

                                    world war is already over

over here.  This one is American.  Let me check

 

                       the T. V. Guide: "'Five.' (1951).

                The only five survivors of atomic war

                             revive man's ancient hostilities

                                    and prejudices."  The whole thing

is starting again.  So I have turned to writing this

 

                       poem as I watch.  I have survived one

                Armageddon; I shall build a microcosm.

                             I am writing very carefully:

                                    the woman is pregnant, and the

Negro is building a house.  I want my facts to be

 

                       accurate, in case this is the last thing

                to be left.  The sounds do not matter, only the

                             sense.  If you are reading this, I hope

                                    that it will not upset you, sir,

whoever you are.  It may be that my typewriter

 

                       was hocked, passed peacefully from dark shelf to

                dark shelf in ancient shops until it was sold for

                             scrap.  Grant us this: that was possible.

                                    But if you should find this lying

rolled in my machine, the letters of our alphabet

 

                       scrambled in the dust, grant us this much more:

we foresaw the end too clearly for it to matter.

 

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 from Amazon.

 

The Development of the Haiku

 

This following poem illustrates a number of the Japanese forms:

 

PARADIGM

 

         Why does the brook run?

The banks of the stream are green.   — MONDO

  

         Why does the stream run?

The banks of the brook bloom

with roe and cup-moss, with rue.               — KATAUTA

  

         The trees are filled with

cups.  Grain in the fields, straw men

         talking with the wind.

 

Have you come far, water-

         borne, wind-born?  Here are

hounds-tongue and mistletoe oak.            — CHOKA

 

         When the spears bend as

you walk through vervain or broom,

         call out to the brook —

it will swell in your veins as

you move through broom or vervain. — WAKA (5-7-5, 7-7)

 

         Have you spoken aloud?  Here,

where the swallows' crewel-work

         sews the sky with mist?

 

You must cut the filament.

You must be the lone spider.                       — TANKA (5-7-5, 7-7)

 

 

         The bole is simple:

Twig and root like twin webs in

         air and earth like fire.                         — HAIKU (5-7-5)

 

-- Lewis Turco

From Seasons of the Blood: Poems on the Tarot in The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court 1953-2004, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004, 460 pp., ISBN 1-932842-00-4, jacketed cloth; ISBN 1-932842-01-2, trade paperback. Also available from Amazon.com in a Kindle edition; and in 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, paperback.

 

 

Folding Mirror

 

The entry on the “folding mirror” form from 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, paperback, reads,

Marc Latham, inventor of the form, says that the FOLDING MIRROR verse form calls for two halves of a poem to mirror each other in structure and subject either side of a folding middle line.  The number of words in each corresponding line (outer and outer etc) should be the same if possible.  The folding middle line can be used to divide or connect the two halves.” 

HOURGLASS OF TIME

is birth a blank page? or a weighty tome
crammed full of ingrained wisdom
and lesson plans to draw on
as we climb the hill
of learning and
striving until
on the peak
we turn:
a change of
view sliding
down with ease
the relentless decline
grains of truth spill between
our hands until the sands run out
and the tome of life swells with more pages

Claire Knight

 

 ‘THALATTA, THALATTA’

(THE SEA! THE SEA!)

Waves roll in at my window.
The sun sets:
Silence.
The sea is my mirror:
My face is the ocean.
Twilight descends:
Great gulls are swooping.
The storm is brewing:

Turn, Tide, Turn

The storm is abating:
Small terns are soaring.
Daylight approaches:
The ocean is my face.
My mirror is the sea:
Silence.
The dawn breaks:
Waves roll out from my window.

Caroline Gill

 

242 Mirror Poems and Reflections [Kindle Edition]

http://www.amazon.com/242-Mirror-Poems-Reflections-ebook/dp/B0094QWNOW

is Dr. Marc Latham's second poetry collection, after the first one was published by Chipmunka in 2009. The first collection contained poems written by Marc from his youth to the cre-ation of the Folding Mirror form, while this book focuses on the FM form recognised by Lewis Turco in his definitive The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Including Odd and Invented Forms. 

Caroline Gill, an award-winning poet whose 'Thalatta, Thalatta' Folding Mirror poem was used as an example in 'The Book of Forms' provides an introductory explanation of the Folding Mirror form at the start of this book.

This book contains 121 Folding Mirror poems created in three years by Marc Latham as he tried to make sense of the universe and life's place in it. They are supported by 121 reflections relevant to the poems’ themes.

Marc Latham was born in St. Helier, Jersey during 1965. He grew up in Wales, and became a big heavy rock and metal fan in his youth. Along with Kerouac's 'On The Road' and other counter-culture books, rock music lyrics were a big influence on Marc's desire to write. He hitched from home aged 21, and travelled on a shoestring to all the populated continents between 1987-94. Marc kept a diary along the way, and it was on-the-road thoughts fuelled by rock lyrics that developed into his first poems. After completing his big journeys, a desire for new challenges led Marc to the University of Leeds, starting in 1995. He graduated with a PhD in 2005. The stimulus and stresses of university life and the rave-dance culture of that time provided further inspiration for Marc's poetry. Marc opted to become a freelance writer after graduating from university, and he is still working out of Leeds and the greenygrey.co.uk website.

Marc had his first collection of poetry published by Chipmunka in 2009. It contained over ninety poems from his youth through to his first Folding Mirror (FM) poems. There are now over 200 FM poems on the fmpoetry.wordpress.com website that Marc administrates. This '242' book contains the FM poems created since Marc's first collection was published, together with old and new thoughts and poems. Marc has also had several poems published by independent poetry publications, a Saturn FM poem featured in a musical composition, and the Folding Mirror form was included in Lewis Turco’s definitive 'The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Including Odd and Invented Forms'.

Global Pollution

This poem, about global pollution, was written in the 1950s, long before the term “global warming” was in common usage:

 

THOUGHTS FROM THE BOSTON POST ROAD

 

                           By Lewis Turco

 

Today ten thousand vehicles have passed

              In cursing columns down the nearby Post

Road, left that sparrow on the billboard gassed

              Whose muddled instincts panic to the west

              Beyond the screws and monkey-wrenches tossed

       From mobile windows.  But the west is east,

       And east is south, and south is north at least.

 

The land is shot for sparrows, shot for men.

              But for machines it's Paradise on Wheels!

The lubricated sky remembers when

              Its clouds were H2O, not high grade oils;

              And everywhere the graded turf recalls

       When it grew grasses rather than these goddam

       Vines of white concrete and black macadam.

 

If that poor sparrow ever manages

              To climb above our gamma-powered smogs,

Let him look down upon these acreages

              And see if apple trees are bearing cogs,

              Of if some tractor isn't laying eggs,

       Its mate a diesel truck that proudly roars

       To herald a new age of dinosaurs.

 

We've done a grand job building road and rail.

              There's nowhere some good engine cannot roll

(With some good man behind the driver's wheel),

              And I would not be worrying at all

       Except, this afternoon, out in the hall,

       I overheard my vacuum cleaner say,

       "They built Der Furor just the other day."

 

From The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court 1953-2004, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004, 460 pp., ISBN 1-932842-00-4, jacketed cloth;ISBN 1-932842-01-2, trade paperback. Also available from Amazon.com in a Kindle edition.

The Second Coming

Brick House Books Year-End Sale

 

 

 

 

Wesli Court’s Epitaphs for the Poets, by Lewis Turco, 2012, is available at 30% off until the December 31, 2014, in the BrickHouse Books Year-End Sale, https://brickhousebooks.wordpress.com/2014/12/03/tis-the-season/. His most recent book is The Familiar Stranger, poems, published by StarCloudPress.com, 2014, paperback. Installments from his epic, The Hero Enkidu, which will be published next year by Bordighera Press, are in Per Contra (http://www.percontra.net/issues/30/poetry/canto-i/)and in Radius (www.Radiuslit.org).

 

Form of the Week 17: The Descort

 

THE DESCORT By Tad Richards

At the encouragement of Lewis Turco, for the fourth edition of his Book of Forms, I tried my hand at writing a descort — a form characterized by its infidelity to any one form. Each stanza is written in a recognizable form, but a different one. Lew said that he had never actually seen one, so my entry didn't have much competition.

A little research into the form: there is actually a Wikipedia entry on it, in which the invention of the descort is credited to Garin d'Apchier, whose exact dates are lost to history, but he did write the first descort, and I would share it with you, but it, too, is lost.

Gautier de Dargies, for whom we do have approximate dates, ca. 1170 — ca. 1240 (he lived to be approximately 70, a ripe old age in those days), is said to have written three descorts.

Dargies has his own Facebook page, which I am the only person, as of this writing, to like.

Here's one by Raimbaut de Vaqueiras (1180-1207). It's written in a variant of the form — each stanza is in the same verse form, but in a different language. And it's quite beautiful. English translations are interspersed between the verses.

 

Eras quan vey verdeyar

Pratz e vergiers e boscatges,

Vuelh un descort comensar

D'amor, per qu'ieu vauc aratges;

Q'una dona.m sol amar,

Mas camjatz l'es sos coratges,

Per qu'ieu fauc dezacordar

Los motz e.ls sos e.ls lenguatges.

 

[Now that I see becoming verdant

lawns and bowers and woods,

I want to begin a contrast

about love, on whose account I am distraught;

for a lady used to love me,

but her mind has changed

and therefore I sow enmity

among the words, the sounds and the languages.]

 

Io son quel que ben non aio

Ni jamai non l'averò,

Ni per april ni per maio,

Si per ma donna non l'o;

Certo que en so lengaio

Sa gran beutà dir non sò,

çhu fresca qe flor de glaio,

Per qe no m'en partirò.

 

[I am the one who have no good

nor ever shall I have it,

either in April or in May,

unless I have it through my lady.

True, in her own language

I cannot describe her great beauty,

fresher than gladiolus' flower,

the reason of my persistence.]

 

Belle douce dame chiere,

A vos mi doin e m'otroi;

Je n'avrai mes joi' entiere

Si je n'ai vos e vos moi.

Mot estes male guerriere

Si je muer per bone foi;

Mes ja per nulle maniere

No.m partrai de vostre loi.

 

[Fair, sweet dear lady,

to you I give and give up myself;

I shan't have my whole joy

unless I have you and you me.

You are a most treacherous enemy,

if I die through my good faith;

but still, there is no way

I shall part from your dominion.]

 

Dauna, io mi rent a bos,

Coar sotz la mes bon' e bera

Q'anc fos, e gaillard' e pros,

Ab que no.m hossetz tan hera.

Mout abetz beras haisos

E color hresc' e noera.

Boste son, e si.bs agos

No.m destrengora hiera.

 

[Lady, I surrender to you

as you're the best and truest

that ever was, and sprightly and valiant,

if only you weren't so cruel to me.

Most fair are your features

and fresh and lively your hue.

I am yours, and if I had you,

nothing would be lacking to me.]

 

Mas tan temo vostro preito,

Todo.n son escarmentado.

Por vos ei pen' e maltreito

E meo corpo lazerado:

La noit, can jatz en meu leito,

So mochas vetz resperado;

E car nonca m'aprofeito

Falid' ei en mon cuidado.

 

[But so much I fear your anger

that I am in complete despair;

for you I have toil and torture

and my body is racked:

at night, when I lay in bed,

I am awoken many a time;

and since I gain no good for myself,

I have failed in my intent.]

 

Belhs Cavaliers, tant es car

Lo vostr' onratz senhoratges

Que cada jorno m'esglaio.

Oi me lasso que farò

Si sele que j'ai plus chiere

Me tue, ne sai por quoi?

Ma dauna, he que dey bos

Ni peu cap santa Quitera,

Mon corasso m'avetz treito

E mot gen favlan furtado.

 

[Fair Knight, so precious is

your honoured thrall

that every day I despair.

Alas, what shall I do

if she whom I call my dearest

kills me, I know not why?

My lady, by my faith in you

and by the head of Saint Quiteria,

you have taken away my heart,

and stolen it by most sweet talk.]

 

English translation follows each stanza.  The original is in Provençal, Italian, French, Gascon and Galician respectively. In the envoi, the five languages are mixed together.

I did find one contemporary descort, in Drunken Boat. it's pretty good, and for some reason is unsigned.

 

— Tad Richards

 

This following poem may be considered to be a descort constructed from the Japanese forms:

 

PARADIGM

 

         Why does the brook run?

The banks of the stream are green.   — MONDO

 

         Why does the stream run?

The banks of the brook blossom

with roe and cup-moss, with rue.               — KATAUTA

 

         The trees are filled with

cups.  Grain in the fields, straw men

         talking with the wind.

 

Have you come far, water-

         borne, wind-born?  Here are

hounds-tongue and mistletoe oak.            — CHOKA

 

         When the spears bend as

you walk through vervain or broom,

         call out to the brook —

it will swell in your veins as

you move through broom or vervain. — WAKA (5-7-5, 7-7)

  

         Have you spoken aloud?  Here,

where the swallows' crewel-work

         sews the sky with mist?

You must cut the filament.

You must be the lone spider.                       — TANKA (5-7-5, 7-7)

 

         The bole is simple:

Twig and root like twin webs in

         air and earth like fire.                         — haiku (5-7-5)

 

 — Lewis Turco

 

 

NOTE: I tried to access Drunken Boat but was unable to do so. Therefore, Tad Richards’ poem, “Descort: Dupree Variations,” is the only published English language example of the form, to the best of my knowledge. It may be found on pp. 185-187 of my The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Including Odd and Invented Forms, Revised and Expanded Edition, 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, paperback.

Carousel Mall

 

CAROUSEL MALL

A Story by Lewis Turco

         Henry had never liked shopping malls.  He'd never gone to them except with his wife before she'd died, and then only to wander around or sit on a bench holding her packages while she shopped happily, hurrying from store to store for most of a day.  Henry had humored her, but he had fretted nevertheless, disgusted with himself for wasting the time.  So he was surprised at himself when he discovered that he wanted to see the new Carousel Mall in Syracuse.

         Not that he'd be wasting anything by going these days.  Margaret had been gone two years, and he'd been retired from teaching for six months.  He had always assumed he'd have things to do after he'd stopped going in to school, but he guessed that he'd also assumed Maggie would be around to do them with.  "And the kids!" he said aloud as he shrugged into his jacket.  "Forget it.  Tom'll call twice a year, maybe, if I'm lucky."  They had their own families to raise now, Liz in Montgomery and Tom all the way out in Seattle.  So he got in the car and drove the forty miles from Norville to Syracuse.  As he approached the mall on Route 81 he once again noticed how big it was, for he had been watching it going up for months.  It was a single four-story glass tower surrounded by wings that were themselves surrounded by vast parking lots.  There was parking underneath the mall itself as well, and that's where Henry decided to park.  He got out of the car and memorized the color of his lot, its symbol, and its number because he realized at once that unless he did he could wander all day among the vast expanse filled with automobiles and never stumble across his own vehicle.

         He went into the mall near Filene's Basement and took an escalator up — the glass elevators were in constant use and always filled.  The first thing that happened to him nearly put him off.  He went into the men's room that shared a foyer with the ladies' room and, while he stood at the urinal, heard giggling behind him, a man's voice and a woman's, both of them young.  He turned his head and saw no one, but the door of one of the stalls was closed, and he looked down to see feet under the door, pants down around the ankles.  She was in there with him, no doubt straddling him.  Henry got mad and thought about calling a security person.

         "Christ, these kids these days," he said.  It was one of the reasons he'd taken early retirement.  The schools had turned into a zoo, the wild animals roaming the halls and the keepers caged in the classrooms and offices.  And besides, Maggie's being gone had seemed to take all the ambition out of him.  It was drudgery and nothing else since the day she'd died.

         But he didn't call anyone.  He just went out to the mall and sat on one of the benches to look around.  He was on the second floor, and there were potted trees growing up to his level from the first floor.  While he was looking at the branches a bird flew into them and alit.  "Why not?" Henry said aloud.  A passing couple cast him an odd glance.  "It's warm in here, there's plenty to eat, if they like pizza crusts."  He nodded his head.  "Not a bad place to live.  I wonder how they got in."

         But perhaps, he thought, "they" are only the one, for that's all he'd seen.  In that case, it would be a splendid solitary existence in an Eden for birds.  "Solitary splendor," Henry said aloud.  He looked down one way along the vast hallway, then turned and looked down the other.  "Wouldn't Maggie have loved this?"  Shop after shop after shop.  "And I wouldn't have minded waiting so much, either."

         He just sat for a long time.  He soon noticed that, amazingly for a new place, the Carousel Mall had its own personality, and it was very pleasant, like a mood, that settled over him and began to sink in, through the pores, perhaps.  He sat for so long he was astonished to realize that it was noon already and he was feeling hungry.  He got up and went to the food service area for a sandwich.

         While he was there he heard the music and saw the carousel for which the mall had been named.  Kids were getting rides and parents were standing around a low railing watching, or riding themselves, holding babies on the wooden horses that rose and fell along their silver poles as they circled.

         Henry spent the rest of the day wandering around, exploring the mall at leisure, discovering the specialty shops, especially the museum shop that sold museum reproductions, the nature shop, and the People's Pottery that featured the most beautiful hand-crafted objects he had ever seen.  "It should be called 'Rich People's Pottery,'" he said to himself.

         He ate again, and then it got to be closing time, so Henry went and found his car and drove home.  As he unlocked the front door and went in he heard the phone ringing, and he got to it just in time.  "I was about to hang up," his daughter Liz said.  "I was starting to get frantic."  There was an annoyed and, simultaneously, a relieved edge to her voice.  "Where have you been?  I've been trying to reach you all evening."

         Henry said, "Hi, Liz.  Oh, I've been down to the new Carousel Mall that just opened.  Spent the day there.  It's great.  How are the kids?"

         "The kids are fine, and so is Hosmer.  He's off on a business trip and Jessica and Melinda are in bed.  Since when do you like malls?  I remember mother used to practically have to blast you out of your chair to get you to go with her."

         "True, true," Henry said, "but this place is different.  Besides, I just wanted to check it out.  It's like a city all by itself.  You'd be amazed.  There are even birds that live in it."

         "Birds?  Wild birds?"

         Henry laughed again.  "I don't know how wild, but they're free.  I saw one today, and the place just opened up."  They chatted for a while longer, and then Liz said, "I'll call again next week," and rang off.

         The following morning Henry went out to putter around in his garden, but it wasn't large enough to keep him occupied for long.  He pulled the weeds, waved to some of his neighbors as they came out of their houses to mow the lawn or get the paper or get the kids off to school and go to work.  He decided to mow his own lawn, though it didn't appear to need it yet.  By the time he was finished it wasn't even ten a.m.  He went back into the house, got a magazine and sat on the front porch riffling through its pages for a while, but he finally threw it down and sighed.  "What the hell," he said.  He got up, locked the house, and headed for the car.

         He decided to explore the big department stores, which he hadn't done the first time.  "Much too much to do in one day," he said.  But after he had wandered around in Kaufmann's for a while he just went out and sat on a bench again.  At one point while his mind was wandering he was yanked back to reality by the figure of a woman moving among the crowds.  For a moment he forgot that Maggie was dead, for it looked just like her from the rear.  Then he realized that it couldn't be she and came back down from the excitement he had momentarily felt — excitement or anticipation, or an adrenalin rush, hefigured.  He felt depressed for a while, but then he got up and went to watch the carousel.

         A week after Liz had called, when he got home the phone was ringing again, but it stopped just as he opened the door.  Henry figured it must have been his daughter, so he phoned her and when she answered he said, "Hi, it's dad.  Did you just call?"

         "Where were you?" she asked.

         "Oh, I was over at the mall again."

         "Again?  I can't believe it."  He could imagine her frowning and her big brown eyes wide open at the same time.  "What's going on?"

         "Not a whole lot," he said.  "I get bored around the house."

         "Why don't you get involved in some of the senior citizens activities in Norville?"

         "Senior citizen!" he snorted.  "I'm not even sixty-five yet."

         Liz paused on the other end.  "Dad?" she said.  "How old do you think seniors have to be?"  He thought about it but didn't say anything.  "All you have to be is retired," she told him.

         He cleared his throat.  "Listen," she said, "if you're going to be out, why not buy an answering machine?"

         "Nobody calls but you."

         "How do you know?  You're never around."

         Henry thought about that and said, "Maybe you're right."  It would give him an excuse for going to the Carousel Mall next day.  "Since when do I need an excuse?" he muttered.

         "What?" Liz asked.

         "Nothing.  I'll look and see what I can find."  And they hung up.

         Henry spent a good part of the day looking in Radio Shack and Lechmere, and he picked out a medium-priced machine.  When he strolled out to the parking lot that evening he caught a glimpse of that woman again, that woman or another one that looked like Maggie.  This time he wasn't surprised, but he followed her with his eyes until she got into her car and drove away.

         He found that he was getting calls he'd been missing without the machine.  There were a lot of hang-ups, which he figured were aborted sales pitches, but now and again someone else would call — one of his former colleagues at the high school, the minister of the church he and Maggie — mainly Maggie — had attended for many years.  He returned some of the calls and got invited to dinner once or twice, or to a church or municipal function of one kind or another.

         He decided to give it a try, but he didn't seem to enjoy himself much.  Mostly he just sat, as he did at the mall, but here there was pressure on him to talk to people, or even to participate physically in whatever it was people were doing.  He was asked to be a waiter at the Kiwanis Club breakfasts that were held once a week, but even that was too much for him to handle.  He had to be pleasant as he served the plates and poured the coffee, and he didn't much feel like being pleasant.

         Some of his customers knew him, of course, and they would begin with, "How are things, Henry?" or some such opening, and he'd say, "Fine, fine.  Been keeping busy.  You?"

         "Not so bad.  You know my wife, Claire, don't you?"

         Henry would smile and say, "Sure.  Hello, Claire."  He'd refill her coffee cup for her.  And if she didn't know she might ask, "How's Maggie?" and Henry would have to shake his head or say, "She passed away a while back" while her husband sat uncomfortably looking at the napkin he was smoothing in his lap.  All in all, Henry felt the Carousel Mall was a safer spot to spend his time.

         Still, he was at home the next time Liz called.  "What've you been up to, dad?"  He told her about the breakfasts and his dinners out, and she said, "That's more like it.  Did you buy an answering machine?"

         "Yes," he said.  "That's how I found out about some of these things."

         "There!  See?  Didn't I tell you?"  He could imagine her grinning smugly at the other end of the line.  But the next day he was back at the mall.

         The third time he saw the woman he followed her.  She walked right by him as he was sitting outside The Banana Republic watching the kids and their parents go in and out.  She even looked something like Maggie from the front — mainly brown hair, a little on the stocky side, wearing a dark blue dress with a pin.  Her face was largely unwrinkled because of its fullness, but she wasn't really chubby-cheeked.  Henry felt a bit sheepish as he got up and ambled along behind her, but she was moving at a steady clip and he soon found he had fallen behind.  He had to speed up to keep her in sight.  He was sure she never knew he was there, even though he trailed her for a couple of hours.

         Henry found that she didn't come to the mall every day as he did, only once a week, but that day was Friday, and she always parked in the same place or as near to it as she could get.  It was the same place he had seen her get into her car.  He didn't know why he was doing this, but as time went by he got more and more intrigued with her.  He had noticed she wore a diamond and a wedding band, but that wasn't enough.  He took down her license number and went to the DMV.

         "This car parks on private land," he told the clerk.  "Can you give me the name and address of the person so I can write to him?"

         It was public record, so he got what he asked for.  It was registered to Mrs., not Mr., Michael Lloyd, and she lived on Ridge Street in Mattydale.  The next week Henry sat and thought about what he would do next.

         Maybe he should just say hello to her some Friday and strike up a conversation.  He could get lunch and sit down at the table next to hers, or perhaps just introduce himself.  But he wanted to have more information about her before he did that.  Was her husband still living?  Was she divorced?

         While he was discussing these things in his mind he felt some body tapping the foot he had crossed over his left leg.  He looked up to see a security guard looking down at him.

         "Don't you have a home, sir?" the guard said to him.

         Henry was amazed.  "Of course I have a home!" he replied. "What's it to you?"

         "We've noticed that you spend most of your days here," the guard replied, putting his hands behind him.  His walkie-talkie crackled.  "We were concerned that you might need some assistance."  Henry noticed that he talked like a school counselor.  I guess they're trained for this, he thought.

         Henry uncrossed his legs.  "Do I look like I'm a bum?" he asked.  The guard didn't reply, so Henry passed his gaze down the length of himself and was surprised to notice how scruffily he was in fact dressed, for he was wearing an old pair of cords and a flannel shirt, scuffed loafers and, he was startled to notice, mismatched socks.  He stroked his chin and felt a stubble.  "Good lord!" he said.  "I guess I do."  It was a good thing he hadn't tried to approach Mrs. Lloyd looking like this.

         The next day Henry was decently dressed in a pair of blue, neatly creased polyester slacks, a white shirt with a pin stripe, and a silk tie with alternating red, blue, and green stripes.  His black oxfords were polished, and his navy blue socks matched.  He was cleanly shaven, and his somewhat sparse brown and silver hair had  been newly barbered.  He hadn't realized how he had let himself go. It was not a coincidence that the day was Friday.

         Henry stationed himself near the entrance she was to use when she arrived, and his timing was so good that he had to wait hardly five minutes before she showed up wearing an orange skirt and a matching jacket over her green blouse.  Her hair was almost perfectly brown, just like Maggie's, with only a few flecks of gray here and there.  She wore it swept back, too.  Her face was on the plump side, but she couldn't be called overweight, Henry felt.  As she passed by him she glanced into his face with a small frown.  Henry hesitated, then fell in behind her at a safe distance.

         When she went into a store Henry stopped outside and began looking at the things in the window, keeping an eye out, he thought, for her if she came out of the door, but his mind must have wandered because, when he looked up and scanned the interior of the shop he couldn't see her.  Then he felt someone tapping him on the shoulder.

         He turned and said, "You again!"  It was the security guard who had spoken to him the day before. Mrs. Lloyd was standing behind and to the right.

         "Would you come with me please, sir?  We'd like to speak with you in the office."

         Henry began to blush.  "Oh," he said, "I'm not a bum.  I've got decent clothes on today."  He felt his face was crimson and he glanced at Mrs. Lloyd and then flitted his eyes away from her hostile stare.

         "This isn't about clothes, sir.  This lady would like to know why you've been following her, and so would the management."

         Henry was stunned.  He felt his heart begin to pound loudly against his chest wall.  The blood in his ears sounded like a waterfall.  The guard reached out and took his arm and the three of them walked to the security office where Henry sat down in front of a desk where a heavy man in shirtsleeves was shuffling papers.  Mrs. Lloyd sat down behind Henry where he couldn't see her, and the guard stationed himself by the door.

         After a few moments of silence the heavy man looked up at Henry and squinted at him over his half-specs.  "May we see some identification, please?" he said.

         Henry started, then reached for his wallet in his hip pocket. He took out his driver's license and passed it over the desk blotter.  The heavy man took it, stared at Henry's picture there, then at Henry.  "Thank you, Mr. Murchison," he said, writing down the particulars on a yellow pad and passing the license back.  "Now, what's this all about?"  He smiled over Henry's shoulder.

         "This man has been following me for weeks," Mrs. Lloyd said.  "Every time I come shopping he's there behind me.  I want him to stop it."  Her voice, which was nice and husky as Maggie's had been, had a little tremble in it.

         Henry turned around to look at her.  "But you don't understand," he said.  "You look like my wife — or the way she used to look before she died.  I just like to look at you, that's all.  I don't mean any harm."

         "Your wife?" Mrs. Lloyd said.

         "Sure," Henry said.  "Look."  He got his wallet out again, rummaged through it, and pulled out a photograph.  He gave it to Mrs. Lloyd who took it.

         After a while she said, "My, we do look alike, don't we?  What is your wife's name?"

         "Maggie," Henry said taking the picture and passing it to the security man.  "That is, it was.  She's been gone about a year now.  The first time I saw you, I thought for a second it was Maggie."

         The coldness in Mrs. Lloyd's eyes was gone, replaced by a certain neutrality.  "I see," she said.  "Well, but it's still got to stop," she told him.  "It frightens me to see you behind me all the time."  She reached into her handbag, took out a tissue, and dabbed under her chin with it.  Henry noticed that there was a film of perspiration on her face, despite the air conditioning in the office.

         "I didn't know you noticed me," Henry said.

         "All right," the heavy man said and Henry turned fully around again to face him.  "And the management also wants it to stop.  Joe here tells me you're always hanging around."  He glanced at the guard who nodded.  "You were spotted even before Mrs. Lloyd complained.  We don't want homeless people hanging around."

         "But I'm not homeless!" Henry said.  "I have a house in Norville."

         "Then you should start spending some time there."

         Henry was chagrined and angry at the same time.  "Are you kicking me out of the mall?"

         "No, Mr. Murchison."  He took off his specs, leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and passed a hand over them.  "Not at this time.  But I am suggesting to you," leaning forward again, "that it would be just as well if you spent less time around here."

         The session was over.  The guard opened the door for Mrs. Lloyd who breezed through it.  Henry followed her to the lobby and then hesitated before he turned away toward the parking area.

         When he got home he was surprised to notice how abandoned his house really looked.  The yard was overgrown with tall grass, weeds had taken over the borders, there were old leaves among the bedraggled looking peonies. But Henry didn't feel much like doing anything about it right then.

         He went in and turned a rocker around so that he could look out of the front window facing west.  The sunshine shone in on his lap.  In the kitchen the refrigerator kicked in and began to hum through the silence.  Across the street his young neighbor came out of the breezeway door to look for her four-year-old who was right there on the walk sitting on his tricycle.  Henry sat for a while and then reached up and twisted the rod to close his Venetian blinds.

         When his daughter called the following week he was at home to answer the phone, and she sounded relieved to hear his unrecorded voice.

 

From The Museum of Ordinary People and Other Stories by Lewis Turco, Scottsdale, AZ: StarCloudPress.com, 2008, 196 pp., ISBN 978-1-932842-1-66, trade paperback. Available from all bookdealers.

 

 

Remembering Mark Strand

Mark Strand

 

Dear Fellow Iowa Workshoppers and other friends,

           Mark Strand has died at age 80--we were exactly the same age, within less than a month. We met when we shared a Poetry on the Green reading in New Haven while he was going to school at Yale and I was attending UConn. We both got our Master's degrees from Iowa the same year, 1962, and we were both friends and students of Don Justice. We didn't like each other, though. I thought he was too chichi and recherché, a minor sprig off the branch of Robert Bly.

           The news of his death has, however, affected me emotionally, though I'm having a tough time sorting out the emotions. They aren't pleasant. Rather than gloating or feeling triumphant over his passing, I feel a little angry, as though something has been taken away from me without my permission. It's the way I feel whenever a friend dies these days. We may not have been friends, but he was a part of my life that has been truncated once more, and I resent it.

 — Lewis Turco

 

Dear Lew,

Oh Christ—another friend? Seems like I lose one or two a month. (And I’m turning 80 in a couple of months, so maybe I’ll lose more than a friend.) Anyway, take care of yourself, Lew, and stick around another ten years or so.

 — Robert Mezey

 

Lew —

Strand died yesterday. I knew him at Iowa but not well. His shyness to my young mind came across as arrogance.

Of the poets there I preferred Marv Bell. But [the Paris Review] interview done with actor Wally Shawn (his father was long time editor of New Yorker) is interesting to me because I’ve always liked early Strand but I never knew why. Shawn brings out stuff from Strand that gets me closer to being relieved of having to know why I like his verse.  For years now I’ve read a poem the way I listen to the logic in a jazz sax or trumpet player’s solo after the melody of the tune has been established. Such a solo, if done honestly by the artist, carries the same stuff of the lines of a poem. Or it CAN do that. But – maybe only for me.

John Herrmann

 

John,

         Everything you say about musicians is true, but none of it is true about Strand.

 — Lew

 

Lew,

Do you find Strand has what is known as a "tin ear"? I think his energy goes into exploring with language rather than having any concern for forms. He finds a new form in each line, it seems.

Strand's sense and sureness of voice trumps counting. There are jazz musicians who can read anything and can interpret anything and can compose. And then there are, once in 30-40-50 years a Bix Beiderbecke, a Charlie Parker, an Erroll Garner. And with Garner, one of the greatest piano jazz stylist who has ever lived, there is a n artist who never learned to read music. How did he get acceptance without having learned to read music? Don Justice probably had the good sense not to turn Strand into something he was not. Had anyone insisted on studying meter I think Strand would have returned to painting. Roethke had the best advice for how to learn to do any art: "I learn by going where there is to go." Well, I have no business discussing anything about poetry. Especially not with a formalist.

— John Herrmann

 

Lew,

I remember him from Iowa too. I tried to teach him metrics one afternoon. I like just a few of his poems and am left unmoved by most of his. But your last paragraph is so right, Lew.

— Christopher Wiseman

 

Dear Chris,

I should have realized that he couldn’t write metrical poetry, Chris, but I simply thought he couldn’t write. No wonder poetry at the Iowa Workshop has gone downhill ever since Don Justice left. But Strand was there when Don was, and they were even friends! How did Mark get through without an understanding of meter?

The Medieval Celtic Bards had to pass a test that proved they could write in the Welsh and Irish metrical forms. We ought to begin an academy that tests to find out if a poet is at least competent in writing verse. When I was teaching, I gave out printed and signed “Poetic Licences” to students who passed my course in The Nature of Poetry. They had to get a C or better in order to get a license, and they had to write fourteen exercises that massed muster.

— Lew

 

Lew,

I appreciated your candor re: your acquaintance with Mark Strand.  Also, your allusion to how some careers are made brought back certain memories I have.

There was an editor who 'discovered' me when I was 16, around 1969 -- Robert Hershon of Hanging Loose magazine.  He published some of my poems in the "Poets in High School" section. About a year later, he set up a reading for me near NYU and then promptly tried to coax me in the direction of writing somewhat like Strand, although I don't remember whether he actually named Strand. Hershon was (I think) caught up in the system of the time, and he was clearly trying to help me get into it too; I'm sure he meant no harm, in any case.  At that time I was writing free verse with implicit meter, and he seemed to be urging me to throw out the musical part of it.  I didn't go for it.  A rebellious impulse kicked in hard, and I vowed to sacrifice my 'budding career' rather than be told what to write.  Since I found no interest in the kind of poetry I wanted to write, from about 1972 to 1987 I was 'on strike,' making a conscious (though not always successful) effort not to write poetry at all -- until a sonnet about cicadas came along and the editor of a Reston, Va., newspaper (where I was working as an advertising typographer) decided to publish it.

So maybe I could have been famous in my 20s!  It wouldn't have been me, though.  And there's no knowing who, or what, I would be by now.

Still, I, too, found it very interesting to get such a glimpse of how (at least some) writing careers can be made.  Thank you for reminding me of that.

Claudia Gary

 

Lew,

         Mark Strand's death is no great loss to me and I find it completely absurd for the  NY TIMES obituary to compare him to Wallace Stevens and Philip Levine. You should not lose any sleep over the departure of Strand. Better you should go down to your cozy basement, have a scotch, and read a real poet, Chaucer, or Dante, or Yeats.

— B. B.

 

       It's odd for me because I was friends with one of his daughters whom he didn't claim as his until maybe she was 20? Or at least a late teen. I'm wondering how she's doing today, but I don't know if I should contact her.

— Shaindell Beefrs

 

Sorry, Lew.

       I think more and more about how this constant loss will feel. Your resentment makes sense, but I hope it doesn't linger.

— George Guida

 

Lew,

        He was my advisor during one of my stints at Bread Loaf. I couldn't tell you what we talked about, what advice he gave, but I do remember he seemed aloof, distant to me. Nice enough guy though and like you, at my age, I find the loss of anybody from my life's experiences very unsettling these days. Merwin was also there and he is now gone as well. Miller Williams was also there. He's still with us. God bless them all.

— George Edward Buggs

 

 

Lew,

       I liked Reasons for Moving in grad school, mainly because my teacher, Miller Williams, had introduced us all to Nicanor Parra. I liked the minimalist style of the poems and the way that they made a weird sort of sense that I'd not encountered in American poetry. Often they were allegories like "The Tunnel," a favorite that I've anthologized and still like quite a bit. But I could never find as much to like in subsequent books, which seemed to me murky reflections on the "self," the kind of thing that a lot of poets got obsessed with in the 70s-80s. I reviewed one of them in the late 80s-early 90s, and it sounded to me like Ashbery without the self-deflating irony and humor—in other words, without much of anything to like. Maybe one of these days I'll take another look at some of the later work, if only out of a sense of duty. Still, I understand Lew's sense of loss at the death of a contemporary. You somehow feel that you should have made more effort to know the person behind the poetry.

       I remember an elder poet who had been something of a mentor to Strand going violently off on him for his careerism and proselytizing at various thrones of power. I will reveal the elder poet's name to you only, Lew. To me (c. 1974) it was an instructive lesson on how poetic reputations are made, one that I've tried hard (perhaps to my own loss) not to follow.

— R. S. Gwynn

 

Lew,

       I never met Strand but admire much of his work, but I would not have linked him with Robert Bly. Can you say more about that--and your reasons for making the link? And, given that you knew him well, what was with his vendetta against William Stafford?

— Jim Heynen

 

 

Jim,

       Bly was a "deep image surrealist." That's what Strand was, too, except that he was also a minimalist whereas Bly would go on at great length. As to his vendetta against Bill Stafford -- I know nothing about it. Can't imagine why anyone would dislike Bill, who was one of the most popular poets in America while he lived. What I faulted Stafford for was the fact (and it was a fact) that he had no idea when or if he had written a good poem or a bad one. An editor would have to put his books together for him.

— Lewis Turco

 

Lew,

       The air always seemed to hiss out of his poems at the end. I think of him as a surreal romantic nihilist.

— Norman Ball

 

Lew,

 

Mark Strand never lived up to his early reputation.

— Thomas Kerrigan

 

 

I can relate, Lewis.

       One of my first essays to get widespread attention was one where I was highly critical of one of Strand's lectures. It's been almost 20 years, and that essay is still floating around, and while I stand behind everything I wrote, it now feels like an unfinished conversation, like I'm waiting for a reply I'll never get. And the not getting the reply IS the reply, but still.

— Victor Infante