Poetics and Ruminations

Daily Bluesanelle 5/6/13

OR NONE

A Bobbie Burns tailgater bluesanelle.

 

Nae man can tether time or tide

For both will take him for a ride,

And very few can tame a bride.

 

She’ll take him for a ride a while,

And he’ll enjoy it for a while.

No man can tether time or tide,

 

But who would want to miss those breakers,

That early surf, those wedding breakers,

For both will take him for a ride?

 

One’s logic, maybe by deduction,

May try to frustrate reproduction --

No man can tether time or tide,

 

However. He will surely lose

The argument, perhaps his shoes

As well, for who can tame a bride?

 

The day will come when she’ll say, “No!”

And on that day that man will know

No one may tether time or tide,

And very few can tame a bride.

 

Copyright © 2013 by Lewis Turco, all rights reserved.

 

An epitaph for Robert Burns may be found here:

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.

 

 

 

Daily Bluesanelle 5/5/13

ABANDONED FACTORY

A Philip Levine tailgater bluesanelle

 

Beyond, through broken windows one can see

Barely, through broken panes, can barely see

A lot of subjects for great poetry.

 

Squint your eyes, or close your eyes completely

As you stand enraptured, rapt completely,

And through those busted windows you will see

 

Downtrodden workers…or their darkling ghosts,

The wraiths and phantoms of despairing hosts --

All of them subjects for great poetry.

 

They’re still downtrodden, everyone who labors,

Who toils for pelf, performing manual labors.

Beyond, through broken windows one can see

 

Prose odes and elegies to beaten workers

Written by academics, word-warrior workers

Who find in labor topics for poetry.

 

The mill towns of New England were a wreck,

But now it’s old Detroit that is the wreck --

Through all its broken windows one can see

A lot of Luddites reading poetry.

 

Copyright © 2013 by Lewis Turco, all rights reserved.

 

Bluesanelle of the Day 5/4/13

 

 

A GOOD GRAY PHILOSOPHY

A tailgater bluesanelle 

 

Freedom — to walk free and own no superior,

None at all, acknowledge no superior,

For everybody else is quite inferior,

 

Especially women. Women are quite beneath us

Males, although they’ll do to serve beneath us.

Freedom! To walk free and own no superior,

 

That’s as it should be and as it must be --

Every other philosophy’s a little musty,

For everybody else is quite inferior,

 

As I’ve discovered in my lusty life

As journalist and poet. All my life

Freedom has let me walk free, own no superior.

 

Although as Poet I contain multitudes,

None superior to another – democratic multitudes

Of Myself, and none of them inferior!

 

I am the Good Gray Bard, just call me Walt,

For I am democratic to a fault!

Though everybody else is quite inferior

I am free Myself, without superior.

 

Copyright © 2013 by Lewis Turco, all rights reserved.

 

An epitaph for Walt can be found here:

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.

 

Critical material, including an essay titled "The Good Gray Poet," may be found here:

Visions and Revisions of American Poetry by Lewis Putnam Turco, Fayetteville, AK: University of Arkansas Press, 1986, 178 pp., ISBN 0938626493, cloth; ISBN 0938626507, paper. Melville Cane Award of the Poetry Society of America.

 

 

Daily Bluesanelle 5/3/13

MENSA

A pompous Popean tailgater bluesanelle.

 

Superior beings, when of late they saw

With their own eyes – when of late they saw

My coupled verse, stood trembling in their awe!

 

They noted now I never missed a beat.

They realized how one could never beat

Superior me whene’er I write a saw,

 

An aphorism in iambic lines,

A new old saw all in iambic lines

As perfect as might be. Tremble in awe,

 

Ye modern mental giants! Thou need’st an ear

As well as brains. Thou need’st to have an ear,

Superior beings, when thou writest a saw.

 

Thou need’st to go, ta=DUM, ta-DUM, ta DUM

If you wish not to be described as dumb.

My coupled verse must freeze you in your awe,

 

O prosy modernists, O Whitmanites

Who cannot tell thy mornings from thy nights!

Superior beings, when of late they saw

My coupled verse, stood trembling in their awe!

 

Copyright © 2013 by Lewis Turco, all rights reserved.

 

Related material:

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.