Poetics and Ruminations

Remembering Mark Strand

Mark Strand

 

Dear Fellow Iowa Workshoppers and other friends,

           Mark Strand has died at age 80--we were exactly the same age, within less than a month. We met when we shared a Poetry on the Green reading in New Haven while he was going to school at Yale and I was attending UConn. We both got our Master's degrees from Iowa the same year, 1962, and we were both friends and students of Don Justice. We didn't like each other, though. I thought he was too chichi and recherché, a minor sprig off the branch of Robert Bly.

           The news of his death has, however, affected me emotionally, though I'm having a tough time sorting out the emotions. They aren't pleasant. Rather than gloating or feeling triumphant over his passing, I feel a little angry, as though something has been taken away from me without my permission. It's the way I feel whenever a friend dies these days. We may not have been friends, but he was a part of my life that has been truncated once more, and I resent it.

 — Lewis Turco

 

Dear Lew,

Oh Christ—another friend? Seems like I lose one or two a month. (And I’m turning 80 in a couple of months, so maybe I’ll lose more than a friend.) Anyway, take care of yourself, Lew, and stick around another ten years or so.

 — Robert Mezey

 

Lew —

Strand died yesterday. I knew him at Iowa but not well. His shyness to my young mind came across as arrogance.

Of the poets there I preferred Marv Bell. But [the Paris Review] interview done with actor Wally Shawn (his father was long time editor of New Yorker) is interesting to me because I’ve always liked early Strand but I never knew why. Shawn brings out stuff from Strand that gets me closer to being relieved of having to know why I like his verse.  For years now I’ve read a poem the way I listen to the logic in a jazz sax or trumpet player’s solo after the melody of the tune has been established. Such a solo, if done honestly by the artist, carries the same stuff of the lines of a poem. Or it CAN do that. But – maybe only for me.

John Herrmann

 

John,

         Everything you say about musicians is true, but none of it is true about Strand.

 — Lew

 

Lew,

Do you find Strand has what is known as a "tin ear"? I think his energy goes into exploring with language rather than having any concern for forms. He finds a new form in each line, it seems.

Strand's sense and sureness of voice trumps counting. There are jazz musicians who can read anything and can interpret anything and can compose. And then there are, once in 30-40-50 years a Bix Beiderbecke, a Charlie Parker, an Erroll Garner. And with Garner, one of the greatest piano jazz stylist who has ever lived, there is a n artist who never learned to read music. How did he get acceptance without having learned to read music? Don Justice probably had the good sense not to turn Strand into something he was not. Had anyone insisted on studying meter I think Strand would have returned to painting. Roethke had the best advice for how to learn to do any art: "I learn by going where there is to go." Well, I have no business discussing anything about poetry. Especially not with a formalist.

— John Herrmann

 

Lew,

I remember him from Iowa too. I tried to teach him metrics one afternoon. I like just a few of his poems and am left unmoved by most of his. But your last paragraph is so right, Lew.

— Christopher Wiseman

 

Dear Chris,

I should have realized that he couldn’t write metrical poetry, Chris, but I simply thought he couldn’t write. No wonder poetry at the Iowa Workshop has gone downhill ever since Don Justice left. But Strand was there when Don was, and they were even friends! How did Mark get through without an understanding of meter?

The Medieval Celtic Bards had to pass a test that proved they could write in the Welsh and Irish metrical forms. We ought to begin an academy that tests to find out if a poet is at least competent in writing verse. When I was teaching, I gave out printed and signed “Poetic Licences” to students who passed my course in The Nature of Poetry. They had to get a C or better in order to get a license, and they had to write fourteen exercises that massed muster.

— Lew

 

Lew,

I appreciated your candor re: your acquaintance with Mark Strand.  Also, your allusion to how some careers are made brought back certain memories I have.

There was an editor who 'discovered' me when I was 16, around 1969 -- Robert Hershon of Hanging Loose magazine.  He published some of my poems in the "Poets in High School" section. About a year later, he set up a reading for me near NYU and then promptly tried to coax me in the direction of writing somewhat like Strand, although I don't remember whether he actually named Strand. Hershon was (I think) caught up in the system of the time, and he was clearly trying to help me get into it too; I'm sure he meant no harm, in any case.  At that time I was writing free verse with implicit meter, and he seemed to be urging me to throw out the musical part of it.  I didn't go for it.  A rebellious impulse kicked in hard, and I vowed to sacrifice my 'budding career' rather than be told what to write.  Since I found no interest in the kind of poetry I wanted to write, from about 1972 to 1987 I was 'on strike,' making a conscious (though not always successful) effort not to write poetry at all -- until a sonnet about cicadas came along and the editor of a Reston, Va., newspaper (where I was working as an advertising typographer) decided to publish it.

So maybe I could have been famous in my 20s!  It wouldn't have been me, though.  And there's no knowing who, or what, I would be by now.

Still, I, too, found it very interesting to get such a glimpse of how (at least some) writing careers can be made.  Thank you for reminding me of that.

Claudia Gary

 

Lew,

         Mark Strand's death is no great loss to me and I find it completely absurd for the  NY TIMES obituary to compare him to Wallace Stevens and Philip Levine. You should not lose any sleep over the departure of Strand. Better you should go down to your cozy basement, have a scotch, and read a real poet, Chaucer, or Dante, or Yeats.

— B. B.

 

       It's odd for me because I was friends with one of his daughters whom he didn't claim as his until maybe she was 20? Or at least a late teen. I'm wondering how she's doing today, but I don't know if I should contact her.

— Shaindell Beefrs

 

Sorry, Lew.

       I think more and more about how this constant loss will feel. Your resentment makes sense, but I hope it doesn't linger.

— George Guida

 

Lew,

        He was my advisor during one of my stints at Bread Loaf. I couldn't tell you what we talked about, what advice he gave, but I do remember he seemed aloof, distant to me. Nice enough guy though and like you, at my age, I find the loss of anybody from my life's experiences very unsettling these days. Merwin was also there and he is now gone as well. Miller Williams was also there. He's still with us. God bless them all.

— George Edward Buggs

 

 

Lew,

       I liked Reasons for Moving in grad school, mainly because my teacher, Miller Williams, had introduced us all to Nicanor Parra. I liked the minimalist style of the poems and the way that they made a weird sort of sense that I'd not encountered in American poetry. Often they were allegories like "The Tunnel," a favorite that I've anthologized and still like quite a bit. But I could never find as much to like in subsequent books, which seemed to me murky reflections on the "self," the kind of thing that a lot of poets got obsessed with in the 70s-80s. I reviewed one of them in the late 80s-early 90s, and it sounded to me like Ashbery without the self-deflating irony and humor—in other words, without much of anything to like. Maybe one of these days I'll take another look at some of the later work, if only out of a sense of duty. Still, I understand Lew's sense of loss at the death of a contemporary. You somehow feel that you should have made more effort to know the person behind the poetry.

       I remember an elder poet who had been something of a mentor to Strand going violently off on him for his careerism and proselytizing at various thrones of power. I will reveal the elder poet's name to you only, Lew. To me (c. 1974) it was an instructive lesson on how poetic reputations are made, one that I've tried hard (perhaps to my own loss) not to follow.

— R. S. Gwynn

 

Lew,

       I never met Strand but admire much of his work, but I would not have linked him with Robert Bly. Can you say more about that--and your reasons for making the link? And, given that you knew him well, what was with his vendetta against William Stafford?

— Jim Heynen

 

 

Jim,

       Bly was a "deep image surrealist." That's what Strand was, too, except that he was also a minimalist whereas Bly would go on at great length. As to his vendetta against Bill Stafford -- I know nothing about it. Can't imagine why anyone would dislike Bill, who was one of the most popular poets in America while he lived. What I faulted Stafford for was the fact (and it was a fact) that he had no idea when or if he had written a good poem or a bad one. An editor would have to put his books together for him.

— Lewis Turco

 

Lew,

       The air always seemed to hiss out of his poems at the end. I think of him as a surreal romantic nihilist.

— Norman Ball

 

Lew,

 

Mark Strand never lived up to his early reputation.

— Thomas Kerrigan

 

 

I can relate, Lewis.

       One of my first essays to get widespread attention was one where I was highly critical of one of Strand's lectures. It's been almost 20 years, and that essay is still floating around, and while I stand behind everything I wrote, it now feels like an unfinished conversation, like I'm waiting for a reply I'll never get. And the not getting the reply IS the reply, but still.

— Victor Infante

 

Form of the Week 16: The The Recombinant Poem

Robert Mezey

 

Over the weekend of September 22-23 2012 Robert Mezey wrote me as follows:

"Dear Lew,           "Here’s an invented form, and certainly odd, that I’ve never seen or heard of before. An old student of mine has taken my sonnet "Hardy" and written another poem using exactly the same words. I don’t know whether she has given it a name—I seem to recall her saying something about “recombinant” (as in DNA?) Anyway, her poem surprised me; it seemed much better than I thought it would be. You might be interested in it for your collection."           Mezey's original poem is as follows: Hardy

Thrown away at birth, he was recovered,

Plucked from the swaddling-shroud, and chafed and slapped,

The crone implacable.  At last he shivered,

Drew the first breath, and howled, and lay there, trapped

In a world from which there is but one escape

And that forestalled now almost ninety years.

In such a scene as he himself might shape,

The maker of a thousand songs appears.

 

From this it follows, all the ironies

Life plays on one whose fate it is to follow

The way of things, the suffering one sees,

The many cups of bitterness he must swallow

Before he is permitted to be gone

Where he was headed in that early dawn.

 

Robert Mezey, From Collected Poems: 1952-1999, University of Arkansas

Press, © 2000.  Reprinted by permission of the author.

And here is the second poem:

 

ANOTHER HARDY
 


 

Slapped from the dawn,

chafed and trapped in it,


he howled


at a thousand things


in that implacable world,


and lay there on the swaddling,


recovered from birth.


This one was permitted to be!


He, the one whose maker


plucked and drew away the early shroud.


The first breath was shivered


to where all life is headed,


but before that escape,


he must shape songs


of the ironies of fate,


swallow the bitterness,


such as it is, thrown


in many cups.

 
And at last he is gone.


The crone forestalled


almost ninety years


appears and plays a scene


of suffering from which


he sees a way one might follow.


Now he follows himself there.



by Callie Cardamon

 

SUGGESTED EXERCISE:

Pick any poem by another poet. Write your own poem using exactly the same words contained in the poem you chose.

The Inhabitant

 

THE INHABITANT

for Lewis Turco

  

who is the Inhabitant, we wonder ...

 

is he the living remembering the dead,

reanimating their corpses in his cranium’s mausoleum?

 

or is he the dead shambling among the living

like an affectionate but discombobulated zombie?

 

or is he an extraterrestrial like heinlein’s Stranger —

a christlike seeker of knowledge and truth,

as yet unable to grok earth-life?

 

or is he a prophet sent to remind us what we know—

that we can never understand: Dishes, Kitchens,

Ourselves?

 

—  Michael Burch, http://www.thehypertexts.com/main.htm

Form of the Week 15: The Riddle

 

 

RIDDLE ME THIS

          The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun “riddle” as “a question or statement phrased so as to require ingenuity in ascertaining its answer or meaning.” Winston Churchill during the Second World War used the word and two of its synonyms when he said, “Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” which perhaps might itself define the Zen “unanswerable question,” or koan, the most famous of which is, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

          As Yoel Hoffman noted in Japanese Death Poems (Rutland and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1986), "Zen literature eventually came to serve as a means to enlightenment in Zen monasteries.  Several times a week, every monk would meet alone with the master.  The latter would tell an anecdote or present a koan, a sort of problem or riddle from Zen literature.  The monk's response would not necessarily be verbal, and it is often difficult to see the connection between the answer and the anecdote."  

 

       PENTACLES[i][ii]

 

       The heart is a coin

of fire.  How shall we spend it?

       How is the sun spent?

 

¾ Lewis Turco (from Seasons of the Blood)

 

A famous ancient riddle is one that Oedipus is said to have solved:

 

THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX

 

What moves upon four legs at dawn,

Walks upon two later on;

Then, as the sun dips to the sea, 

Hobbles along on only three?

 

¾  Wesli Court

 

          The answer is “Mankind” which crawls on all fours in the {metaphorical) morning, walks on two legs at noon, and on three legs (two legs and a walking stick) in the evening. Some accounts have a second riddle as well:

 

THE TWO SISTERS

 

There is a sister of this earth

Who gives her twin the gift of birth;

The second sister, when she is born,

Bears her twin the following morn.

 

¾  Wesli Court

The “sisters” are “Night and Day.”

          "The Mystery" is attributed to Amergin (ca. 6th century), reputedly the eldest Irish bard, if one excludes St. Patrick, who has been credited with poems as well as other sorts of writing. "The Mystery" exhibits parallel construction, for each line is an independent clause beginning with either "I am the" or "Who." Grammatic parallelism, whether used in verse or in prose composition, is the oldest prosody in the world, antedating accentual verse by many centuries, but used as often today (erroneously called “free verse” by many) as in ancient Chaldea. The problem with this riddle is that no one knows its answer:

 

THE MYSTERY

 

I am the breeze breathed at sea,

I am the wave woven of ocean,

I am the soft sound of spume,

I am the bull of the seven battles,

I am the cormorant upon the cliff,

I am the spear of the sun striking,

I am the rose of the fairest rose.

I am the wild bull of war,

I am the salmon stroking the flood,

I am the mere upon the moor,

I am the rune of rare lore,

I am the tooth of the long lance,

I am He who fired the head.

 

Who emblazons the mountain-meeting?

Who heralds the moon's marches?

Who leads the sun to its lair?

I am the Word, I am the Eye.

 

¾ Amergin (v. Wesli Court)

 

"A Riddle" is also an ancient Irish bardic poem, in this case totally anonymous:

 

A RIDDLE

 

Riddle me this —

Knew the Flood's kiss,

Has a snake's hiss,

This great creature,

 

Fleshless, boneless,

Senseless, bloodless,

Headless, footless,

Older nor younger

 

Than he started,

Never daunted,

Not live nor dead,

Ever useful —

 

God in Heaven,

What origin?

Great wonders Thine

Who made this bull. 

 

In woods, in leas,

Ageless, griefless,

Ever hurtless,

Of equal age

 

With the Eras,

Older than hours

From Time's ewers;

Broad as the gauge

 

Of all the Earth.

He had no birth,

Nor has he girth

On land or sea.

 

Trust him to hum —

He will lie dumb

And will not come

If it need be.

 

Bull of the air

Beyond compare,

None may ensnare

Him in his den

 

On the sea-cliff.

He'll roar, he'll cough,

Mannerless oaf —

Savage again

 

Crossing the land

Roaring and grand,

Then hushed and bland,

Fey as a boy,

 

then with a shout

Lashing about

Earth in a rout.

Wickedness, joy,

 

Hidden, yet seen

In his careen,

Heard in his whine

First here, then there,

 

Hurling, twirling,

Ever breaking,

Never paying

Bull of the air.

 

Blameless as sky,

He is wet, dry,

Often comes by.

Old Man-fashioned,

 

Like everything

From beginning

Unto ending —

He is the wind.

 

— Anonymous Welsh author (v. Wesli Court)

These literary jokes are from the anonymous Old English, and they appear here in Anglo-Saxon prosody, as in the original versions:

 

THREE RIDDLES

I.

The world's wonder, I liven wenches,

A boon to townsfolk, a bane to none,

Though haply I prick her who picks me.

Well-planted, I stand in a bed

With my rogue root.  Rarely, mayhap,

Some carline, careless and daring,

Rasps my red tip, wrenches my head,

Lays me to larder.  I teach her lore,

This curly-hair who clasps me thus,

And after our meeting moisten her eye.

 

II.

Fire-fretted, I flirt with wind;

Limbs light-fraught, I'm lapped in flame;

Storm-crambled, I strive to fly:

A grove of leaves, a glowing flinder.

Hand to hand, I ring the hall —

Lords and ladies love to toast me.

When I heighten and all the folk

Bow before me, then their blessings

Shall soar beneath my befriending gleaming.

 

III.

Swung at thigh, a wizard thing!

Below his belt, beneath the folds

Of robes I dangle with my single eye.

Stiff and stout, I swivel about.

Aiming the head of his well-hung tool,

My holder hoists his hem knee-high:

He wants to fill a famous hole

That I fit well at length and more —

What will be filled has been filled before

 

— Anonymous Anglo-Saxon authors (v. Wesli Court)

 

The answers are, in order, I) an onion; II) a wooden torch; III) a key.]

This is an anonymous Old English dirge in Anglo-Saxon prosody, as in the original.  The stichs (lines) are split at the caesurae (pauses) into hemistichs (half-lines) and stepped.

 

THE CURSE OF DEATH

 

An abode was built ye

                                    Ere you were born;

For ye a mold minted

                                    Ere your mother made ye.

Its height is not scaled

                                    Nor depth delved,

It is never locked,

                                    Be it ever so long,

Until I fetch ye

                                    Where you be fettered —

Fettered and measured

                                    For sod and mould.

Nor be your house

                                    High-timbered, nay —

It be unhigh and low;

                                    When you be therein

Heel-ways are low,

                                    Side-ways unhigh.

The roof is raised

                                    Full nigh your breast:

Thus you in fell mould

                                    Shall dwell full cold,

In dim and dark,

                                    Your weal turned doleful.

That door is doorless

                                    And dark it is within —

There you be fastled,

                                    And Death keeps the keys;

Loathly is that earth-house,

                                    Grim to dwell in,

Yet there shall you dwell

                                    And worms deal with ye,

Thus you be laid

                                    And lorn of your friends,

For you have no friend

                                    Who will fare with ye,

None who will look to

                                    Your house-liking

Nor ever undo

                                    The latch of that door

And ask after ye,                                                

                                    For soon you be loathly

And ugsome to see.

 

— Anonymous Anglo-Saxon author (v. Wesli Court)

 

The “abode,” needless to say, is the coffin.

 

In the Spanish pregunta one poet grills another poet with a requesta (question), the second replies with a respuesta (response). An evasive trick beloved especially of politicians is to answer a question with a question:

 

PUNTA PREGUNTA

 

What is it a woman lacks?

What is it that she attacks?

 

What is it a woman loves?

When is it she wears no gloves?

 

What is it for which she begs?

What is it that has no legs?

 

Why does she so love to dance?

What is it for which she pants?

 

 

Would a woman sell her soul?

Are there markets pole to pole?

 

Does a woman have a choice?

None at all that she can voice.

 

Why does she not have her say?

She must heed her DNA.

 

-        — Lewis Turco

 

 

RESPUESTA APUESTA

 

What is each man's most ancient need?

What does the helpless captive feed?

 

What grows when hungry, shrinks when sated?

What loves the task for which it's fated?

 

What is it men can never do?

What process knits a third from two?

 

Where does a man most long to be?

Where was he first, and not yet free?

 

What keeps a man, at last, alone?

What does he buy that he can't own?

 

Do men profess what they believe?

Not since Adam turned on Eve.

 

When do men hunch over their beer?

When there's no more they want to hear.

 

— Hanir Pilastela

 

Here is a riddle that contains multiple puns:

 

 

QUADRUPUNDLE

 

A feline, legs shorter on a side;

A rancher whose hands all like to ride;

A roll of his herd out on the range;

A chemical not subject to change

Through a reaction -- these are the gist

Of the ONE word I want:

 

           -- Lewis Turco

 

          Daniel Hoffman took this little verse and made a true poem of it by expanding it and discussing the personalities involved in the situation, as he imagined them:

 

A TRIP TO ST. IVES

 

As I was going to St. Ives, 
I met a man with seven wives, 
Every wife had seven sacks, 
Every sack had seven cats, 
Every cat had seven kits - 
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives, 
How many were going to St. Ives?

 

— Anonymous

 

Hoffman’s poem is a work consisting of nine quatrains, all of them typographically like the first:

 

AS I WAS GOING TO ST. IVES

 

As I was going to Saint Ives

In stormy, windy, sunny weather,

I met a man with seven wives

(The herons stand on the swift water).

         One might be tempted to jump to the conclusion that this is an accentual-syllabic poem, but one would be wrong, for scansion shows that there is no recurring normative foot in the first or fourth lines, although the second and third appear to be iambic tetrameter (four iambic feet: È¢ | È¢| È¢| È¢ ).  The fourth line starts out the same way; however, it breaks down in the second half of the line into what look like an anapest and a trochee (ÈÈ¢| ¢È).  Likewise, a syllable count yields lines of 8-9-8-9 syllables, but this regularity breaks down in the third stanza.  Inasmuch as there is an overt cadence running through the poem, one concludes that this is an accentual poem.  Specifically, Hoffman's "As I Was Going to Saint Ives" is written in podic prosody.

         Hoffman has invented a nonce stanza that contains double refrains — lines two and four are incrementally repeated throughout the poem; in fact, line two merely keeps the end-word "weather" as the object of a prepositional phrase containing different modifiers in each stanza.  Line four is a statement describing herons in various terms each time it recurs, and it is set off by parentheses.  Lines one and three are rising true-rhymes, but two and four are falling consonances  (weather-water).  The rhyme scheme, then, is aB¹aB², cB¹cB², and so forth, the refrains consonating (the capital letters indicate refrains; the superscript numbers indicate that, though the refrains rhyme, they are different lines).

         Other sonic devices used in the first stanza and throughout the poem are assonance (I-Ives), alliteration (windy-weather, stormy-sunny, and met-man); consonantal and vocalic echo (the n in "Saint," "windy," "sunny"; the short e in "weather," "met," "seven," and "heron").  There is repetition, especially of the words "stand" (refrains of stanzas 1, 2, 5, 6, 8) and "still" (refrains of stanzas 2, 3, 4, 9); the two words occur in a tandem relationship in stanza two ("stand still").

          By the time stanza one has been analyzed on the typographical and sonic levels, it is apparent that Hoffman has written an imitation Scots ballad in the stanza form called long hymnal stanza, which he has modified with refrains.  On the sensory level something else is immediately apparent as well: a major trope is allusion.  Both the title and the first line are an allusion to the famous nursery-rhyme riddle, the answer to which is one — only the man was going to Saint Ives; all the rest were presumably going in the opposite direction.  Another trope is the herons, an ancient symbol of morning and of regeneration, whose image is doubled reflectively in the water when it is still.  There is subdued metaphor (the man and his wife are herons), and many descriptions.  Stanza one is a prologue or an introduction.  Following stanzas discuss each of the seven wives:

 

One drinks her beer out of his can

In stormy, windy, and bright weather,

And who laughs more, she or her man?

(The herons stand still on the water.)

 

Clearly, this wife is a pal, a companion, but the next is the lover, the romantic partner:

 

One knows the room his candle lit,

In stormy, lightning, cloudburst weather,

That glows again at the thought of it

(Two herons still the swift water.)

 

The next wife is the nag, the harridan:

 

His jealous, wild-tongued, Wednesday's wife —

In dreepy, wintry, wind-lashed weather

What's better than that ranting strife?

(Two herons still the roaring water.)

 

          From this stanza we know that wife number three is "Wednesday's wife"; therefore, we infer that stanza two is Monday's wife, stanza three, Tuesday's, and so on.  Thursday's wife, number four in stanza five, is the soulmate:

 

There's one whose mind's so like his mind

In streaming wind or balmy weather,

All joy, all wisdom seem one kind.

(The herons stand in the swift water.)

 

Friday's wife is the woman of mystery, the feminine enigma:

 

And one whose secret mazes he

In moon-swept, in torrential weather

Ransacks, and cannot find the key

(Two herons stand in the white water.)

 

Stanza eight is a transformational stanza,

 

And when to Saint Ives then I came

In fairest, rainiest, windiest weather,

They called his shadow by my name,

(The herons stand in the quick water.),

in which the traveler to Saint Ives becomes the man with seven wives.  Now the answer to the riddle is "one plus seven wives,"  so there are, assumedly, eight people who arrive in the town.  However, in the climactic last stanza, Sunday's wife, the seventh woman, is "the one":

And the one whose love moves all he's done,

In windy, warm, and wintry weather,

What can he leave but speaks thereon?

(Two herons still the swift water.)  (Hoffman, 56)

 

         She is the one wife who is all the other wives; she is the only woman the man loves, and she is his companion, lover, nag, soul-mate, mystery woman, and lust-object all wrapped up in one person.  The last line tells the reader how many arrive in Saint Ives, at the end of the journey.

         On the ideational level, then, the subject of the poem is "wives," or perhaps merely "wife."  The schemas used are constructional (as in the parallel structures of the first lines of each stanza, in which "one,"-"one"-"none" parallels are drawn, except in stanza four, which gives us the clue to the days-of-the-week sequence), and repetitional.  The whole poem is an inclusive structure relying heavily on prolepsis.

          The viewpoint of the poem is narrative; specifically, author-oriented, third-person, single-angle (following only one character, as it turns out), with subjective access (we know she thinks what he thinks).  This is true until the penultimate stanza, when the narrator becomes the protagonist as well, and the viewpoint is seen to be character-oriented also.  Poetic syntax is objective, and the level of diction is poetic: it is colloquial with an archaic overlay, a modern rendition of the language of balladry.  The style must be seen, then, as high rather than mean, it is soliterary, though it is not at all inaccessible.  The themeof the poem might be rendered as, "A man's wife is all women to him."

          Fusionally, thegenre of the poem is that of the lyric narrative with a strong didactic element.  The levels Hoffman emphasizes are the sonicand the sensory — there is nothing original in theideational level; treatment is everything here.  All levels support the theme.  It is a fine poem, but perhaps because it is intended to be a riddle, some readers find it to be obscure at first, especially those who led deprived childhoods and never heard the original nursery rhyme.

In the English language tradition many riddles are the basis for nursery rhymes, and nursery rhymes, usually written anonymously and therefore examples of folklore, date from the early Renaissance in the British Isles and are usually written in podic prosody. The answers to the following traditional riddles will be found at the end of the series:

 

HUMPTY DUMPTY

 

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, 
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the king's horses and all the king's men 
Cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again.

 

—     Anonymous

 

THE VAULT

 

In marble walls as white as milk

Lined with a skin as soft as silk

Within a fountain crystal clear

A golden apple doth appear.

No doors there are to this stronghold,

 

Yet Thieves break in to steal the gold.

 

—     Anonymous

  

OLD MOTHER TWITCHETT

 

Old Mother Twitchett had one eye

And a tail that she let fly;

Every time she jumped a gap

A bit of her tail was caught in a trap.

 

— Anonymous

  

DADDY LONGLEGS

 

Long legs, crooked thighs,

Little head and no eyes –

What am I?

 

— Anonymous

 

A GIRL

 

There was a girl in our town,

Silk an’ satin was her gown,

Silk an’ satin, gold an’ velvet,

Guess her name, for thrice I’ve telled it.

 

— Anonymous

 

OLD SMOKY

 

Make three fourths of a cross

And a circle complete,

And let two semicircles

On a perpendicular meet;

Next add a triangle

That stands on two feet;

Next, two semicircles

And a circle complete.

 

— Anonymous

  

BUCKY

 

As soft as silk,

As white as milk,

As bitter as gall,

A thick brown wall,

And a green coat covers all.

 

— Anonymous

 

LITTLE NANCY

 

Little Nancy Endicott

In a while petticoat

And a red nose –

The longer she stands,

The shorter she grows.

 

— Anonymous

 

UPROOTED

 

Dies in heat,

Lives in chill,

Grows with its root

Running uphill.

 

— Anonymous

 

ARRESTED

 

Formed long ago, yet made today,

Employed while others sleep;

What few would like to give away

Nor any wish to keep.

 

— Anonymous

 

TEASE

 

Thomas O’Tattamus took two T’s

To tie two tups to two tall trees.

To frighten the terrible Thomas  O’Tattamus,

Tell me how many T’s are in these!

 

— Anonymous

 

 

A RING

 

Flour of England, fruit of Spain

Met together in a shower of rain;

Put in a bag tied round with a string –

If you’ll tell me this riddle I’ll give you a ring.

 

— Anonymous

 

MY LITTLE NUT TREE

 

I had a little nut tree,

Nothing would it bear

But a silver nutmeg

And a golden pear.

The King of Spain’s daughter

Came to marry me,

All for the sake of

My little nut tree.

 

Her dress was made of crimson,

Jet black was her hair,

She asked me for my nut tree

And my golden pear.

I said, “So fair a princess

Never did I see;

I’ll give you all the fruit

From my little nut tree.

 

— Anonymous

 

ANSWERS:

The first riddle is not overtly a question, but “Humpty Dumpty,” as we all know, or ought to know, is an egg, as is “The Vault.”

“Old Mother Twitchett” is a needle and thread.

“Daddy Longlegs” Is a pair of tongs.

The lass in “A Girl” is named Ann.

The answer to “Old Smoky” is purportedly tobacco, although I personally have a hard time visualizing it.

“Bucky” is a horse chestnut.

“Little Nancy” is a candle.

“Uprooted” is an icicle.

“Arrested” is a bed.

The answer to “Tease” is the numeral 2.

“A Ring”: is a plum pudding.

Finally, the princess in “My Little Nut Tree” is Catharine of Aragon who became the first wife of Henry VIII of England. Knowing that, it takes little imagination to understand what the nut tree is.

Many years ago I was studying William Baring-Gould’s The Annotated Mother Goose, and I ran across the quatrain that I used as an epigraph in the following puzzle poem:

 

THE CAT, THE MAID, AND THE GENTLEMAN

Hevera, devera, dick —

Eight, nine, ten —

That's how they count their sheep,

These Westmorelandmen.

 

A maid and a cat lived in a sty,

       (The Devil you know dwells down below),

A gentleman came and caught la eye.

He stopped and stared and wondered why

The maid and the cat lived in the sty,

       Hevera devera fo la fo.

 

The cat and the maid were eating eggs,

       (The Devil of course dines down below)

And dancing about on barrels and kegs.

The gentleman asked if it hurt fo legs

To be dancing about while eating eggs,

       Hevera devera fo la fo.

 

The maid and the cat were smirched with dirt,

       (The Devil wears ashes down below).

"No," la replied, "it does not hurt

My legs if I keep my prancing curt

And cover myself with lots of dirt,"

       Hevera devera fo la fo.

 

"La, marry me," the gentleman said,

       ("The Devil will marry us down below.")

"I'd be most pleased if we were wed

At midnight, be we quick or dead.

I'll marry thee merrily, sir," la said,

       Hevera devera fo la fo.

 

They were betrothed eight days all told,

       (The Devil was waiting down below),

La and the gentleman so bold.

The deveral sun set dark and cold,

And they were wed as the church bell tolled

       Hevera! devera! fo! la! fo!

 

The cat (not maid) and the gentleman were

       Wed by the Devil down below.

Listen and you may hear fo purr

(Not la, for who could care for her?)

The couple are gay, or at least they were,

       Hevera devera fo la fo.

Here are some other of my original riddles; as in the series of traditional riddle poems, the answers will be found at the end:

RED

 

I get redder blow by blow

When the wind is furious

Or a neighbor thinks I grow

A little bit too curious.

What am I?

 

NAMESAKE

 

My name may have a larger field

Than I myself when I am healed,

And you will never see me primp,

For it might make my soul go limp

And send a woman to harass

If I should measure it in glass.

What am I?

  

CORNERED

 

There is no female in its lot

To affix approval

To containers on the spot

Or see to the removal

 

Of its contents which remain,

For the nonce at least,

Protected from the wind and rain

And from the barking  beast.

What is it?

 

FALSE IRE

 

People may poo-poo my name,

For half of it is fake.

They make me froth, nevertheless,

Like spindrift on a lake.

What am I?

As in “Humpty Dumpty,” no overt question is posed in “The Cat, the Maid, and the Gentleman”; the puzzle is in the terms “fo” and “la” — the reader must figure out who they are. The answer is simpler than it looks: “fo” means “the former,” and “la” means, “the latter.”

The answer to “Red” is a nose.

“Namesake” is a foot.

A mailbox will be found “Cornered” on the street, sometimes.

The answer to “False Ire” is shampoo.

 

Suggested Writing Assignment

Write a riddle in rhyme and meter.

 

NOTE 1: 

“Pentacles” is from the series Seasons of the Blood by Lewis Turco, to be found in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007.

NOTE 2: All those poems contained in this essay that are designated as versions written by Wesli Court, and the essay itself, are copyrighted © 2012 by Lewis Turco, all rights reserved, and may not be reproduced by any means anywhere without written permission of the author. Except for “The Riddle of the Sphinx” and “The Two Sisters,” all poems and versions by Wesli Court are available in The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court 1953-2004, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004, 460 pp., ISBN 1-932842-00-4, jacketed cloth; ISBN 1-932842-01-2, trade paperback. All other poems are copyrighted by their authors and all rights are reserved by them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amathophobia: The Fear of Dust

 

CELEBRATING

The Bordighera Poetry Prize and

25 Years of Bordighera Press

Friday, November 14, 2014, 6PM

The John D. Calandra Italian American Institute

25 West 43rd Street, 17th Floor

New York, NY 10036

RSVP 212-642-2094

 

Lew, Daniela Gioseffi read a terrific poem from your Book of Fears tonight at the Bordighera party. I wish I could remember the title, but I laughed more than a couple of times. And nodded. And sat there satisfied. Thanks, George Guida.

 

AMATHOPHOBIA: The Fear of Dust

 

If she closes her eyes, before she can drop

off the edge of silence into sleep

she imagines the dust beneath her bed

clumping itself, sending out strands of hair

to gather more dust, become a ball of fuzz,

 

and then begin to search for other balls of dust

with which to copulate and reproduce.

If it is a daylight nap she tries to steal,

her eyes spring open to see the noontide sun

slipping through the blinds in laddered beams

 

down which the motes of dust climb one by one —

she feels them landing on her chest, her face,

she feels them searching underneath her bed

to be caught in strands of hair, become a ball

of fuzz.  She sneezes.  She coughs.  She begins to wheeze.

 

She throws off her coverlet to rise,

cover her mouth, walk to the kitchen through

the laddered beams of light and dust to find

the mop, the rag, the vacuum cleaner she

put away before she lay down to nap.

 

By Lewis Turco from A Book of Fears: Un Libro Di Fobie with Italian Translations by Joseph Alessia (First Annual Bordighera Poetry Prize, 1), W. Lafayette, IN: BordigheraPress.edu, 1998, 58 pp., ISBN 1884419194, cloth. (O-P); ISBN 1884419208, paper.

So glad George liked your poem, Lew, re “The Fear of Dust, Amathophobia.” The Book of Fears is delightful. I will give George an extra copy that I have next time I see him, Daniela Gioseffi.

Form of the Week 14: Bad Poems

          On November 16, 1972, while I was still teaching at the S.U.N.Y. College at Oswego, an interview I did for the student newspaper The Oswegonian was published. The interviewer was Peter Bernhardt, and at one point he asked me, “Last year you and one of your students, P. J. O'Brien, gave a reading of nothing but bad poems, mostly by nineteenth century authors. What brought that on?”

          I replied, “I don't know what brought it on. I've very often read bad poetry to my classes. It's a good thing to read, for instance, to an introduction to poetry class because many students feel they don't know what a bad poem is. Or a good poem, for that matter. How do you tell? Well, if you read a really bad poem, an obviously bad poem, that gives the students a water mark or, I should say, a low water mark, They can then judge other poems according to how much higher they rise above the low water mark.

         “With regard to creative writing classes, I find that young people despair that they're ever going to turn into competent writers. If I read them a bad poem I can say, ‘Look, you're already better than this.’"

          Without a doubt one of the bad poems I read to my classes in those days was by Walt Whitman. Before he discovered that prose could be a vehicle for poetry, as in the Bible, Walt Whitman wrote very bad metrical verse and published it in the pages of the Brooklyn Eagle; here is The Good Gray Poet’s very worst rhymed and metered poem (his best is “O Captain! My Captain!):

 

OLD GRIMES

 

He lived at peace with all mankind,

         In friendship he was true;

His coat had pocket-holes behind,

         His pantaloons were blue.

 

Unharmed, the sin which earth pollutes

         He passed securely o’er, —

And never wore a pair of boots

         For thirty years or more.

 

Walt Whitman

 

Of course, any poet may write a bad poem, or at least a bad line now and again, and many do:

 

R.I.P. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

August 4, 1792-July 8, 1822

 

He said to the skylark, “bird thou never wert,”

A line for which no poet would give his shirt,

Nor even a pair of socks that were worn and smelly.

Nevertheless, we honor Percy Shelley.

 

Wesli Court

 

          A poet I used to know who was given to overwriting pronounced the word poem as though it were spelled poyme.  Unfortunately, not everyone can pull off just writing a poem, and they wind up underwriting a pome.  Rather a large number of people, poetasters they are called, can't even rise to that level, and they write a peom.  Still others have no conception of what a poem actually is, and they write somep'n else.  Those are the categories of my Turco’s Instant Critical System:

Poyme

Poem

Pome

Peom

Somep'n Else

 

          A famous bad poem is “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer; why is it a bad poem? Because the rhymes are trite, the sentiment is sentimentality, and the images are ridiculous:

 

TREES

By Joyce Kilmer

Drawings by Socrates Samson

 

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree,

 

 A tree whose hungry mouth is prest 


Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

 





 A tree that looks at God all day, 


And lifts her leafy arms to pray; 



 

A tree that may in summer wear 


A nest of robins in her hair; 



 

Upon whose bosom snow has lain; 


Who intimately lives with rain. 



 

 

 Poems are made by fools like me, 


But only God can make a tree.

 

 

 

Suggested writing assignment:

 

Write a bad poem.

Removing Plague

 

Wouldn't it have been great if they'd had these available in London 400 years ago?

THE BLACK DEATH

London, 1665

 

“I have a bubo, mum,” my daughter said

and raised her sleeve to show me. In the street

the bellman cried aloud, “Bring out your dead.”

 

The heart of me froze like a drop of sleet,

dropped into my bowel when my darling child

Raised up her sleeve to show me. In the street

 

the crier’s bell rang out both dark and wild.

The end of time opened like a flower,

fell into my bowel as my darling child

 

showed me her fatal wound. Our final hour

blossomed before my eyes in Satan’s garden,

for the end of time had opened like a flower.

 

I felt the heart in me begin to harden

against a Deity who could ordain

such an evil blossoming of Satan’s garden.

 

What were the sins that could have earned such bane?

What sort of Deity could so ordain?

 “I have a bubo, mum,” my daughter said.

The bellman called aloud, “Bring out your dead.”

 

-- Lewis Turco

Originally published in Trellis on-line magazine, Summer, 2007, www.trellismagazine.com/Currentissue.html#Villanelle%20Article. Also anthologized in

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.

The Passing of Norman Friedman

Michael Webster wrote to say that Norman Friedman, my friend and professor at UConn in the late ‘90s, had passed away. Webster said, “On Thursday Zelda called with the sad news that Norman died at 2:00 a.m. that morning (November 6). Zelda said that he had Alzheimer's. There will be a memorial service on Monday, Nov. 10 at Sinai Chapels in Forest Meadows, New York, near their home… Sad news, but as we know, Norman lives on in so many ways.

"beauty is more now than dying's when" (Cummings)

My wife Jean and I have known Norman Friedman and his wife Zelda for over fifty years, as long as I’ve been married to Jean. During the spring and summer of 1956 Jean graduated from the University of Connecticut, we were married just before the U. S. Navy released me from active duty, and in the fall I entered UConn myself as a sophomore where I took a modern poetry class with Norman. I was a bit younger than he, but less than a decade, and I had been publishing poetry in the little magazines for three years by that time, so it seems to me looking back that our relationship was rather more friendly and neighborly than academic, for Jean began working for the university administration as an information specialist and we truly were neighbors in Storrs.

I finished the requirements for my B. A. in January of 1959 and enrolled as a graduate student instructor at UConn for the spring semester, and then Jean and I traveled out to the Writers’ Workshop of the University of Iowa in the fall. We stayed in touch with the Friedmans ever after, and in 1984 I was doing the second of four annual poetry roundups titled "The Year in Poetry" for the Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook 1984, (edited by Jean W. Ross for Gale Research, Detroit, 1985, pp. 132-144). Here is a bit of what I wrote:

Those who know Norman Friedman's work will be astonished to discover, perhaps, that The Magic Badge: Poems 1953-1984 (1984) is his first collection of poetry. Those who do not know his work have some fine reading in store. I have quoted Emily Dickinson on how one recognizes a true poem. That shock of recognition occurs again and again as one turns these pages. For Friedman life is a dream, often a bad one. He writes a controlled verse-mode line, and his forms are loosely traditional, but within these structures hallucination occurs, the likeness of reality. Here is

"The Salmon-Falls, The Mackerel-Crowded Seas"

 

Patrolling the breakers with the insistent

intensity of gulls, all these people jamming

the beaches seem younger than I, having

been reproduced at a greater rate, millions

of assembly-line dolls coarsely made,

cheaply put together and as quickly falling

apart, in their shocking clothes and flashy

talk, swarming over the world, chattering,

they skim the coastline in flocks, flooding

the shore, foraging for food, rummaging,

raging for love, each with a frantic heart

as dangerous as mine, genitals as hungry,

genetic package as obsessed, each feeling

as much emptiness, as much right to ravage

the planet, they dive for clams or crabs

to snatch in talon and beak, lift up in

shocks of air, and let flash on rocks to

crack and be torn to glut the glutinous

meat within, scolding and clawing each other,

then jamming once again to swarm the seas

on their frenzied search, muttering nearly

intelligible cries, guttural and mournful in

my tireless throat, toys against the harsh

and unheeding scrutiny of the spoiling skies.

 

Friedman somehow turns people into birds, birds into the planet made flesh and blood, the planet and its hungers into himself. This is some of the best writing of the year, and of the years during which Friedman has been writing.

We all know what a fine scholar of E. E. Cummings Norman Friedman was, and that he was the editor for many years of Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society, but twenty-four years later I still think that’s a great poem, as fine as another Friedman poem I will never forget, “An End to No Encounter.”

I spoke with Zelda on the phone today, November 9^th, 2014, and she sounded fine. She told me that Norman had suffered from dementia for the past seventeen years, since he was 72 years of age. Although she was his primary care-giver all that time, she said she wouldn't hear of him living anywhere but at home with her, and she is very grateful that they were still together at the end. He continued to recognize his family until the last. What a wonderful person she is, a wonderful woman living with a loving husband till death did them part.

Form of the Week 13: Spatial Poetry

 

The four levels of poetry are the typographical, having to do with the appearance of the poem on the page; the sonic – having to do with the various elements of sound; the sensory – imagery, and the ideational – theme and meaning. A prosody or “system of composition of poetry” based on the typographical level is called “spatial prosody”; synonyms would be Carmen figuratum, typewriter poem, hieroglyphic verse, concrete poetry, calligramme, and shaped stanza.

Spatial poems are relatively popular in our own age. An extreme form of spatials is the sub-genre called “concrete poetry” which takes the poem further toward graphic art than does shaped stanza. Concrete verse is ideographic spatials. For instance, in Japanese the character for “rain” (an ideograph looks like the thing it is meant to represent; the Japanese have characters rather than the letters of an alphabet, and the characters are ideographic) might be arranged on the page so that it will look like rain falling. At the bottom of the page there might be the character for “house”; thus, the characters for rain are falling pictorially on the character for house. Concrete poetry is really more picture than poem, as in “Leo’s Casino,” a print by D. A. Levy that uses the letters of the alphabet simply as elements in a picture:

A “typewriter poem” can be a picture of something made with the letters of the alphabet or words, as in “Town Square “ below:

 

Spatials can be quite elaborate. A “sampler” was originally an exercise primarily for schoolgirls who would design a piece of embroidery that illustrated their ability to sew various stitches. It would be comprised of the alphabet, mottoes (q.v. mote, above) and, often, illustrations of various kinds, but the colonial American poet Edward Taylor wrote a poem that was a sampler:

 

The opening motto of this poem is,

 

This Dove and Olive Branch to you

is both a Post and Emblem too.

 

These words appear written within a crude drawing of a dove holding an olive branch with which the American Colonial poet Edward Taylor decorated or “illuminated” this page of his manuscript.

Besides being a sampler and an acrostic (the alphabet is spelled out down the left-hand margin), this extremely complicated poem is also a concrete poem, and an epistle (a “post”) addressed to Taylor’s first wife, Elizabeth Fitch, whom he married on November 5, 1674:

 

These for my Dove

Tender and only Love

Mrs. Elizabeth Fitch

At her father’s house in Norwich.

 

The design of this sampler is of a circle within a triangle that reads,

 

The ring of love my pleasant heart must be

Truly confined within the Trinity.

 

The second line doubles as the base of the triangle and

as the line illustrating the letter “T”; it is therefore a refrain.

 

The circle reads,

 

Love’s ring I send

That hath no end.

 

At the center of the circle is a drawn heart.

Here is a modern rendering of the acrostic portion of

 

ACROSTIC LOVE POEM TO ELIZABETH FITCH

 

Aspiring Love, that scorns to hatch a wish

Beneath itself, the fullest, chiefest Bliss

Contained within Heaven’s crystal pale and shine,

Doth wish its object always; so doth mine.

Elect no more presented in desire:

For Heaven’s roof, aye, lets not a wish soar higher.

Got though too dim, none can get to sign

Hear you, (my friend), is strengthened wish of mine.

In drossy silver should, I should by this,

[J is included in the representation of I, above]

Keep dull my post, and stain my serious wish,

Lest which polluted be, or the fearful Dove

My post-out foiled, I run a ring of Love

New polished, where my centered heart doth reek

Out highest streams of Love, which here do meet.

Presented thus your heart, Love’s Ring you’ll find

Quest I unless, always best befits the mind.

Reserve mine that. Yet let our secret breast

Set Love the tune which tunes this Ring the best.

The Ring of Love my pleasant heart must be

[Truly confined within the Trinity. — refrain]

Upon your heart (I pray you) put Love’s Ring

V[=U]nerringly; Love’s Swelt(ering) heart herein

Wearing a True-love’s-knot at center’s set.

Wherewith I send to you an alphabet

Xenodict¹ whence all syllables complete

[e]Xtracted are to spell what love can speak.

Yea, see, then, what I send. Yet I design

Zion my Ring shall license with her Trine.²

 

Edward Taylor

 

 

         ¹Xeno” means strange or foreign, and “dict” (spelled “dick” in the original) means spoken; perhaps what this neologism means is “strangely spoken,” which would be an accurate description of this poem.

²The last line of this metaphysical (extended metaphor) poem may mean something like, the license of marriage, or even of poetic license, is allowed within the strictures laid down by the Trinity.

 

However, spatial poems need not be so elaborate. This one, “Nymphomania” by Richard Kostelanetz, is quite straightforward:

 

Sometimes spatial verse requires just a bit of art besides the shape of the poem, as in this poem I wrote in college after a game. It has baskets at each end of the basketball court:

 

According to the author of “The View from Khufu’s Tongue,” there are two kinds of spatial poem, “positive” and “negative.” “Positive shaping utilizes the words and negative shaping, the spaces.” His poem is an example of negative shaping.”

 These next two poems are products of the 1960s; the first was written for President John F. Kennedy, and the second emerged from the “ban the bomb” movement:

 

 

 

 

 

Suggested writing assignment:

 

Write a spatial poem of some type on an original theme.

 

 

As Much As I Love to BS about Poetry

Hi Lewis, your poem "As much as I like to BS..." is now live on Vox Populi. Perhaps you can post the link on Facebook and any other social media you use? It's a lovely poem, and I'd like for as many people as possible to read it. Thanks! Michael Simms:

http://voxpopulisphere.com/2014/11/05/lewis-turco-much-as-i-love-to-bs-about-writing-poetry/

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.