The Virginia Quarterly Review "The Mutable Past," a memoir collected in FANTASEERS, A BOOK OF MEMORIES by Lewis Turco of growing up in the 1950s in Meriden, Connecticut, (Scotsdale AZ: Star Cloud Press, 2005).
The Tower Journal Two short stories, "The Demon in the Tree" and "The Substitute Wife," in the spring 2009 issue of Tower Journal.
The Tower Journal A story, "The Car," and two poems, "Fathers" and "Year by Year"
The Tower Journal Memoir, “Pookah, The Greatest Cat in the History of the World,” Spring-Summer 2010.
The Michigan Quarterly Review This is the first terzanelle ever published, in "The Michigan Quarterly Review" in 1965. It has been gathered in THE COLLECTED LYRICS OF LEWIS TURCO/WESLI COURT, 1953-2004 (www.StarCloudPress.com).
The Gawain Poet An essay on the putative medieval author of "Gawain and the Green Knight" in the summer 2010 issue of Per Contra.
The Black Death Bryan Bridges' interesting article on the villanelle and the terzanelle with "The Black Death" by Wesli Court as an example of the latter.
Seniority: Six Shakespearian Tailgaters This is a part of a series called "Gnomes" others of which have appeared in TRINACRIA and on the blog POETICS AND RUMINATIONS.
Reinventing the Wheel, Modern Poems in Classical Meters An essay with illustrations of poems written in classical meters together with a "Table of Meters" and "The Rules of Scansion" in the Summer 2009 issue of Trellis Magazine
Trilogy for J. F. K.
I. The Moment Before
II. November 22, 1963
Weeping, I write this: You are dead. The dark
animal of the heart, the beast that bides
stilly in its web of flesh, has stolen
flight again out of the air. What is there
to say? That I wish we were gods? That the
mind of man were equal to his lusts? It
is not -- not yet. You were a man, but more:
you were an idea dreamt in a sweet
hour while the spider slept. We make our
web; its habitant makes greatness of its
prey. We are ourselves victim and victor.
You were and are ourselves. In killing you
we murder an emblem of what we strive
to be: not men, but Man. In mourning you,
good Man, we grieve for what we are, not what
we may become.
Sleep, John. We will try
once more. Sleep, sleep now. We will try again.
III. Ode on St. Cecilia's Day 1964
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 son.
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.
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.
November 22, 2009 in American History, Americana, Books, Commentary, Elegies, Eulogies, History, Literature, Memorials, Poems, Poetry, Politics, Reminiscences | Permalink
Tags: Elegy for John F. Kennedy