Jack Foley
This week Jack Foley sent me a poem written in a form he has used before that he calls, “writing between the lines.” “The idea of the form,” he wrote, “is the interplay between the two poems--each going on separately but constantly being interrupted by the other. I like Dan's poem -- from a book of his I've always treasured, A Little Geste”:
CHARM
for the return to health of Daniel G. Hoffman
Do I speak truth
Goddess,
Then let this breath deny
Lover of the hunt
As much of death
And of animals,
As any man can. I
Protect this man
My burnt tongue’s gift bequeath
Whose mortal breath
To you in whom my speech
Gives praise
Or song moves most:
To all you love,
Act, enact the myth
Rex Nemorensis:
Of man the maker: Reach
Protect his tongue
In every syllable
His eyes
Of your life, in each
His nimble fingers
Motion of your soul
Let his sword
As though these dreams my ghost
Stay steady
Long since made were real;
As dreams;
Such magnificence you touch
Let his speech
Shall your self become
Attain inevitability;
At the portal of your feast
Let his words stay
I sing, though dust be dumb:
In the shaken cranium
Praise the immortal host,
Of all who hear.
Mortal encomium.
—Daniel G. Hoffman (from A Little Geste, 1959) / Jack Foley
I replied, “Jack, I wrote this back in the early 'seventies or late 'sixties; you can find it on page 345 of the current edition of The Book of Forms where the form is called "shadowbox":
A WELL AS DEEP AS THE WORLD
"For Conrad Aiken and Ezra Pound,"
"It is not now as it was then,"
it is broken and far off,
"but it is like a sea on ebb,"
like the sound of someone being tortured
"and only pools here and there"
at the end of a long corridor
"left among the rocks."
Lewis Turco, from Innerspring Quarterly, I:2, Fall 1971.
This is the entry on the 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:
Kelly Cherry writes of the SHADOWBOX, “It seems to me that Fred Chappell has invented an amazing new form: the embedded, or nested, or inlaid poem. Sometimes a sestet is embedded within an octave; sometimes the last word of the first half of a line becomes the first word of the second half of the line.” Fred Chappell adds, “Kelly Cherry’s descriptions…are accurate, though she leaves out a couple: There are also dialogue poems, in which the speakers’ lines form separate whole poems that interlock with each other to produce the integral poem; poems in which the syllables of another language are disposed in order throughout an English-language poem that glosses the original. My examples are made from Medieval Latin hymns.”
SEARCHLIGHT
The hamlet sleeps under November stars.
Only the page of numerate thought toils through
The darkness, shines on the table where, askew
And calm, the scholar’s lamp burns bright and sears
The silence, sending through the slot, the bars
And angles of his window square, a true
Clean ray, a shaft of patient light, its purview
Lonely and remote as the glow of Mars.
Fred Chappell
And there is another interleaved form laid out in The Book of Forms:
The DAGWOOD, invented by Herb Coursen, is two separate poems that when interleaved (first line of first, first line of second, second line of first, second line of second, and so on) become a third poem. “Winter Dreams” is an example. The form can, of course, be extended to incorporate several separate poems:
WINTER DREAMS
The day holds itself still at noon,
under the motionless circle of gulls.
The sky is simply there, background for
ice capping the granite that
tumbles chunks down the long bay.
The bottom row of the wood pile
freezes to the field, crunches in frost.
Down the full sky toward February,
Gemini will baffle the night,
from which light cannot escape.
The day is balanced, not quite ready.
The waters of the bay flatten out,
gray, holding ice floes, silent.
The unmoving spine of the trees
will tremble again before spring,
melting down the ocean’s mouth,
wants the thawing tide of May winds.
Canis Major chases Lepus the Hare.
The Northern Cross will rise again,
over the black opening
into a new universe. The day is poised
for its tugging into spring.
The day holds itself still at noon.
The waters of the bay flatten out,
under the motionless circle of gulls,
gray, holding ice floes, silent.
The sky is simply there, background
for the unmoving spine of the trees,
ice capping granite that
will tremble again before spring
tumbles chunks down the long bay,
melting down the ocean’s mouth.
The bottom row of the wood pile
wants the thawing ride of May winds,
freezes to the field, crunches in frost.
Canis Major chases Lepus the Hare
down the full sky toward February.
The northern cross will rise again.
Gemini will baffle the night,
above the black opening
from which light cannot escape
into a new universe. The day is poised.
The day is balanced, not quite ready
for its tugging into spring.
Herb Coursen
This example is a three-layer Dagwood:
THE FOX HUNT
Winslow Homer 1893
Wind-driven waves crash on rocks, and
spray rises over each cascade.
On the snow-covered shore
in the wind
in storm-wasted light
a few red berries tremble on twigs
over snowdrifts like stilled waves.
The fox looks out to sea.
The fox, he high steps. Slow.
What does he hear,
his black ears pricked up,
the russet fox,
his white-tipped brush
of no use now?
Crows fly up from the sea to
the hungry shore,
wings like feathered night.
They hover over,
making ready,
a gather,
a murder of crows.
The fox looks out to sea.
Wind-driven waves crash on rocks, and
crows fly up from the sea to
the fox. He high steps. Slow
spray rises over each cascade,
the hungry shore.
What does he hear
on the snow-covered shore—
wings like feathered night?
(His black ears pricked up
in the wind.)
They hover over
the russet fox
in storm-wasted light
making ready
his white-tipped brush.
A few red berries tremble on twigs,
a gather
of no use now,
over snowdrifts like stilled waves:
a murder of crows.
Miriam Kotzin
Yet another interlined form from The Book of Forms is the hypallogo, which was used here as “Form of the Week 22 – The Hypallogo,” q.v.
Suggested writing exercise:
Write an interleaved poem of some sort.
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.
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!
March 02, 2017 in American History, Americana, Commentary, Correspondence, Criticism, Current Affairs, Humor & Satire, Poems, Poetry, Politics, Satire | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Donald Trump, satire, Trumped-Up-Anthem, verse.