Poetics and Ruminations

Image by Tomie dePaola

 

A MARVELLOUS TAILGATER BLUESANELLE

For Jean at 9:58 p.m. Good Friday 2013

 

By Lewis Turco

 

Had we but world enough and time,

(A lot of world, a bit more time),

I'd likely waste it on a rhyme

 

Because I'd write a verse for you

Instead of making love to you.

Had we but world enough and time

 

I'd spread my foolscap on my desk,

Pull out my quill pen at that desk

And start to mull over a rhyme.

 

I'd leave you sitting on the bed,

Your negligee spread on the bed,

Had we but world enough and time −

 

But we do not, for time has passed

And almost all my verse is past −

I likely wasted it on rhyme.

 

Perhaps I should have been averse

To scribbling yet another verse

While we had world enough and time...,

But no. I'd  waste them on a rhyme.

 

NOTE: Jean Turco, née Houdlette, grew up with Tomie as her only childhood playmate (no other children in the neighborhood) in Meriden, Connecticut. She appears in several of Tomie's "chapter books." Jean, Tomie, and Lewis were classmates in Meriden High School; Tomie was art editor of the yearbook, The Annual 1952 of which Lewis was co-editor. They have remained friends for a lifetime.

Image copyright © 2013 by Tomie dePaola;

Poem copyright © 2013 by Lewis Turco;

All rights reserved. 

Villanelles

An anthology

 of vintage villanelles, contemporary villanelles, villanelles about villanelles, and variations on the villanelle — such as the terzanelle — by a wide-ranging selection of historical and contemporary poets edited by Annie Finch and Marie-Elizabeth Mali, to be published in Everyman’s Pocket Series early in 2012.

Listen to Wesli Court (a.k.a. Lewis Turco, inventor iof this form in 1965) read his contribution to this anthology, “Terzanelle in Thunderweather” Download Thunderweather.

This poem and other villanelles are also available in these books:

 

 

The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court, 1953-2004, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004. ISBN 1932842004, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 1932842012, quality paperback, $26.95, 460 pages, © 2004, all rights reserved. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM.

 

 

 

The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics by Lewis Turco, Third edition, www.UPNE.com, 2000. ISBN 1584650222, trade paperback, $24.95, 337 pages. “The Poet’s Bible," A companion volume to The Book of Dialogue and The Book of Literary Terms. ORDER FROM AMAZON.