december Magazine: The Revival Issue

The “Revival Issue” of december ( http://decembermag.org/ ), a famous Chicago periodical having many connections with the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop during its classical heyday, has just been published by Gianna Jacobson, Editor, in December 2013 with new works by many of its original contributors and works by totally new ones.

One of the poems it contains is “The Cathedral” by Lewis Turco, a sestina written with repeated headwords rather than line-ending teleutons:

  

THE CATHEDRAL

 

Carven images bedeck its eaves;

Cloven hooves of fauns must scrabble where

Craven blackbirds arch their wings and call

Coven members to their burning duties.

Corvine discourses are hushed within the

Cavern of the nave. Do knaves fill this

 

Cavern once again? Are these figures

Carven at, or on the altar? Are they

Corvine in their nature? How long have they

Cloven faith from service to formulate a

Coven of figures clothed in cerements?

Craven from the beginning, have they preyed

 

Cravenly on the choir serving this

Cavern of piety? Was their warlocks'

Coven formed expressly for this purpose?

Carven in the doctrine of three males

Cloven from Adam's rib: Father, Son, and

Corvine Holy Spirit, never from the

 

Curving  womb? Was doctrine ever so

Craven, so fearful of the feminine? Can

Cloven hooves be heard scuttling among this

Cavern's aisles, before these seven stations 

Carven with the symbols of the rood?

Covens have been purported to exist from

 

Coventry to  Navarre, all of them

Corvine in their kind...wings hover over

Carven gargoyles in the umber eaves.

Craven shadows linger in this empty

Cavern, in the apse and in the choir.

Cloven vows lie riven at the altar,

 

Cloven vows that echo in this final

Coven of the Holy Ghost, in this

Cavern of the lost where in the vault

Corvine hosts prey upon the children,

Craven blackbirds raven far beneath

Carven gargoyles sitting in the eaves.

 

Cloven vows fall beneath this corvine

Coven dedicated to the craven

Cavern-dwellers, caryatids carven.

 

By Lewis Turco. All rights reserved 2013.

_____

COMMENTS

"The Cathedral" is quite marvelous. I loved the adjustment to the sestina, which enlivens a form I was never a damn fool about, and all the other wordplay in the poem. I'm quite envious of the quantity and especially the quality of what you're writing these days. As Pound said in a not entirely dissimilar context, "Complimenti, you bitch."   Michael Palma

Love the poem, dazzled by the assonance/consonance of the head words. You are the 3-dimensional chess player of poetry!

Clarinda Harriss

 

I can't think of anyone else Capable of such Curious, Clever Cobbling of Calculated Convergences! Your Capacity to Contrive Complex, Canny Compositions is beyond Comprehension!

Rhina Espaillat

 

That’s quite a sestina, Lew. I like the way the headwords caw. It’s a tour de force – again!

Ruth F. Harrison

 

...my own copy of December arrived yesterday & I was able to read "The Cathedral" -- A very impressive piece of work! Gail White

 

“The Cathedral” sestina is indeed intriguing and extremely well-worked. I just smiled at the word play and it cheered me greatly at a time when I've just learned I've lost an old friend from throat cancer. Life of quiet desperation when you get old, innit?

Christopher Wiseman

 

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