Poetics and Ruminations

Form of the Week 20 — The Recipe Poem

Form of the Week 20 — The Recipe Poem

 

On October 11^th 2012 Clarinda Harriss wrote:

Dear Hotties:

Sorry if I'm taking liberties with that salutation, but it's a habit Moira Egan and I got into among ourselves when working with our Hot Sonnets anthology. I hope you're taking note of the rave reviews it continues to get and are aware that the book is being used in numerous college classrooms—doubtless improving the class atmosphere and temperature.

Here's my idea: I'd like to look at another "something hot" from you — specifically, a recipe or description of a dish — for possible use in a piece of fiction I'm working on. It stars Simone Stiles, a Johns Hopkins PhD drop-out who is becoming famous for her erotic cookbooks, including Orgasmic Organics, Smokin’ Loins and Buggery (this last about making yummy and/or aphrodisiac edibles out of stuff — not excluding bugs — which people find yucky. (Of course that makes way for all sorts of oysters, ocean- and mountain.)

The epigraph for Simone's abandoned PhD dissertation, by the way, is Mark Strand's "Eating Poetry." Thanks to Moira, Strand has already given me permission to quote it in the story. Since I'm rather fond of fiction which contains some non-fictitious people (Thomas Pynchon liked it too), I'm hoping to include Moira, Hot Sonnets (surely it was a source of inspiration to Simone), and some food fun from real-life contributors to the anthology.

So: how about sending me a recipe or just a description of a dish which is somehow "hot"— in the sexy sense or the double entendre sense? Or something for Buggery which uses ingredients that many find repellent but produce something delicious?

If you do send, please include a few of your own words characterizing the dish and also let me know whether you'd be OK with my using your actual name in the story or would prefer me to characterize you simply as "one of the famous poets from the anthology."

Here's an example of what I had in mind: Ilse Munro, wonderful writer and online editor of Little Patuxent Review, sent me a recipe for a Latvian aspic from pig-parts-broth, pointing out that its gelatinous quivering upon the platter "can be quite suggestive." I have a few recipes of my own which involve possibilities during the cooking process, and Simone particularly likes this kind of recipe for her barbecue book (Smokin’ Loins). In fact, there are a number of poems about sexy cooking in Hot Sonnets. You might be willing to let me quote some tidbits even if you don't have an actual recipe to send.

Don't think about this too hard. Just let your mind riffle freely and a bit raunchily through your cookery file and your poem file and hit “Reply.” I would like to have your contribution by Thanksgiving, which is just around the corner. (I guess turkey giblets qualifies — do you do anything interesting with giblets? Ever nibbled leftover candied yams in bed w/a friend?) Also, please understand that the story, even if it develops into a novella, may not provide room for all recipes received.

Off to tend the tongue simmering on my stove as I write—

Clarinda

 

 

"Three Recipes" first appeared in The Critic, xxvii:1, Aug.-Sep., 1968;

"Sherried Artichoke Chicken" was anthologized in John Keats's Porridge, edited by Victoria McCabe, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1975. 

 

Lew,

 These are a marvel!  Thank you, thank you!   I imagine Simone will be quoting from all three, though I personally think #1 is the sexiest (despite the painful idea of hatching an artichoke).   Since her public name, Simone Stiles, is one she made up in homage to another exhibitionist, Simon Stylites, she will probably want to use both your names.  

Hmmm.   Perhaps she'll start on another book, Carousing (only recipes using booze), Savagery (wild game cooking, which really, there is, in real life, a need for), or maybe Drinking with Savages (booze and wild game)  or (but no, I can hardly bring myself to type it) Soread-Eagled (devoted to stuffings).

I am so grateful!  And btw, these are three of my favorite Turco/Court poems.

 

Clarinda

 

Glad you're happy with them, Clarinda,

Though they were published in the 'sixties, and one of them was even anthologized, they were lost for years until I reacquired them by writing to a library for a photocopy; they've never been collected. I remember writing them from recipes I saw in a women’s magazine my wife had.

Lew

Three Books by Ruth F. Harrison

Many people seem to believe that, because I wrote The Book of Forms, I am some sort of rigid curmudgeon. Jack Foley doesn’t think so, though he thinks I am weird because, in his opinion, I like any and all forms. On the other hand, I think Jack is weird because he seems to like any and all poems by whatever poets exist.

Jack may be right about me. I do seem to like forms of any kind, as long as the poems written in those forms are well-done. My motto is, “Something said well is something well said, but something said superbly is a poem,” no matter what form it’s written in, or what mode, either prose or verse.

Case in point: Ruth F. Harrison is a vastly overlooked and underappreciated poet, as her latest book, West of 101 (Turnstone Books of Oregon, 2013), clearly shows. This first poem in the volume is, I think, magnificent:

 

HAVING EARS

 

I had forgotten silence, here

where the sea-voice, omni and present, surges,

dims, clatters, rumbles, is

first principle, the given of this assignment.

 

Crying, even by gulls, seems useless in

the presence of so much that is

water and salt, so much white sound.

Newborns hear that, before the mother’s voice:

what the world sounds like is compose of sea,

first sea, always sea, and over that

small tempered coos, the creak of chair, and step

of foot against this arrhythmic amnios of sound.

 

But I remember how, in the shadow

of some outcrop in the redrock, my ears

grew tall in that silence, swiveled

to pick op the sift and whisper of dust,

a minute tac-tac of lizard feet,

a sage-leaf’s slither, its fall. Far overhead

circled three turkey-buzzards in air so still

I heard the whisk of their wings.

 

Perhaps eternity speaks to

the roll and clash of surf, but

 

I think when the ocean has dried and gone

whatever ear remains will hear

under light wind the shift and settle of sand.

 

This poem is written in what many people call “free verse,” but what I call prose, because this is unmetered language (no one is counting syllables in any way), and that is the definition of prose. That it is not metered, however, doesn’t mean it isn’t rhythmic. Harrison’s ear is accustomed to the rhythms of the Pacific Ocean, and she writes her phrases and clauses in the counterpoint of the combers, tides, breakers and winds. None of these is perfectly regular, but there is an underlying regularity in the poet’s long lines. The language is beautiful, but not flowery.

A few pages farther along this poem exists in equilibrium with “Having Ears”:

 

A CERTAIN WEATHER

 

Morning brings rain and a leaden sky

and the feel of life-run-down-a-drain.

Nothing will change. Just, from on high,

morning brings rain.

 

Don’t tell her summer will come again.

Don’t warm her cold hands or catch her eye.

She is enwrapt in her pleasant pain.

 

She sits looking out, while heaters sigh.

Water oozes down her window-pane.

Her ears don’t hear what the seagulls cry –

morning brings rain.

 

This poem is written in verse, in a standard form, the eleven-line roundel. The refrain, which appears three times: in the first half of the first line, and as the last line of stanzas one and three. The long lines are iambic tetrameter, and the short lines are dimeter. But if one compares the meters of this poem with the rhythms of  “Having Ears,” one will not find much difference because English prose is comprised of iambs (-/) and anapests (--/) primarily, and the roundel here is made up of iambs and trochees (/-) which, when they come together, can sound like this: “morning brings rain” (/- -/), which sounds and acts like an anapest in the second foot, in other words, like “the presence of so” (-/- -/) as in line six of “Having ears.”

But what do we say of this poem? What do we call it? --

Despite the shape of this poem, which suggests that it is a calligramme or “picture poem,” the major effect it has, at least on this reader, is suggestive rather than assertive, subjective rather than objective. It even has its humorous side in the wordplay “deep-pression,” and the ensuing sonic effects of the surf-hissing words “cession, cessation, and recession” spilling over each-other. Like R. S. Gwynne’s poem “Chang      Eng,” about the famous Siamese twins, Ruth Harrison has invented a nonce form to express all that she has to say about her subject, which is Being, in the environment of the coastal sea. This form combines in unique equilibrium a “box” (perhaps the self?) containing the verb “be,” surrounded by sounds and scenes that outline the abode of the self and the landscape surrounding it.

If we take just these three poems, in a book full of poems just as fine, just as complexly simple, what can we deduce from them? First, that Ms. Harrison has talent. She was born with that, it cannot be gained. But skill can be inculcated, and it is perfectly clear that the poet here has studied and practiced a long time to be as capable of doing with the language pretty nearly anything she wishes to do. The third thing she has is intelligence, the ability to sense and absorb the world about here and to express it in forms that help her to do what she wants to do, whether those forms be traditional or invented, given or nonce. Perhaps this poem will illustrate how Ms. Harrison combines the old with the new; the traditional with a bit of her own invention. This piece turns on only two rhymes; it has one refrain that begins as the first line and works its way down the page to end the poem as well. In fiction we would call this a circle-back ending:

 

COME, COME, SPRING

 

The fuchsia’s hanging numb and slow

high in a pot the shadows take.

It may be May. You’d never know.

Winter persists. We had a fake

 

couple of days of summer’s bake.

The fuchsia’s hanging numb and slow:

Some tender leaves I watched her make

are small and bronze as if in snow.

 

Where are her buds, her urge to grow?

Her vines, instead of trailing, ache.

The fuchsia’s hanging numb and slow…

might as well move to Great Bear Lake.

 

Hang up the hose and garden rake;

brisk snow is falling. Vertigo

takes over as we watch each flake.

The fuchsia’s hanging numb and slow

 

I open Harrison’s second book, How Singular and Fine, (CreateSpace, 2012) to the first section, sonnets, finish one and say to myself, “What a beautiful poem!” And I read the next one — beautiful again!  And again, and again….  Then I run across a poem that uses the word “infundibulum,” which I have to look up — an organ shaped like a funnel…it works! And I’ve learned a new word besides. Then I run across “despoilation” and I think, “Hah! I’ve got her now! It should be ‘despoliation’! But her spelling is right, too, according to Babylon, though not to my other dictionaries. I can’t believe it.

In the next section I read a poem titled, “Playing Ping-Pong with Donald Justice” which, it turns out, is a rewriting in verse of my prose memoir about playing ping-pong with Donald Justice at Iowa half a century ago. Ruth Harrison is a wonderful writer who is ever inventive, often as full of song as a skylark, and always interesting.

This poet’s third book, Among the Cat Tales (Turnstone Books of Oregon, 2014), will be a delight to cat lovers everywhere, of whom I am one. When I received this slim volume of poetry and cracked it open, the first item I ran into was, "What Does a Catamount To?" I never saw a pun I didn’t like. Eight of the nine lines that make up this catalog begin with a word with the prefix "cat": catastrophe, cataclysm, catatonic, catapult, caterwauling, catalog, caterpillar, and category, and the author manages to slip in catnip as well. By the time one has reached the end of the volume all these items  and more have been explored and amplified in tuneful songs purrfectly illustrated with drawings by Anita Sue Andrews.

I think we ought to add a fourth element to Ruth F. Harrison’s pack of equipment. She has talent, skill, intelligence – and a great sense of humor.

-- Lewis Turco

 

 

Form of the Week 19 – The Elegy

 

         On Thursday, October 11^th, 2012, I got back into the classroom for the first time in a long while. The week before I had dropped in on Dr. Bennet Shaber, Chair of the SUNY College at Oswego Department of English and Creative Writing, to drop off a couple of books for the Department’s display of faculty publications: Wesli Court’s Epitaphs for the Poets and my Dialects of the Tribe: Postmodern American Poets and Poetry, both published in the same year. I was mildly surprised to see that Bennet seemed to be more interested in the former volume than in the book of literary criticism.

“I’m teaching the elegy this semester,” he told me. “It’s a seminar. How about coming to class next week and talking to my students?” he asked. “They’re smart and interested. These aren’t exactly ‘elegies,’ he observed, ‘but close.’”

I happily agreed, so I went home and prepared some materials. I asked Bennet to send me a list of the major elegies he had covered so far this year, and he sent me this list by email:

“Spencer's Astrophel, Nashe's A Litany in Time of Plague, Milton's Lycidas, Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Shelley's Adonais are the major poems so far.  We've also read some more modern/contemporary poems by Dennis O'Driscoll, Richard Garcia, Tess Gallagher, and Sharon Olds.  Next Tuesday they have a paper due, so I'll spend the class showing them some paintings that touch on pastoral elegy (Poussin's two Arcadian Shepherd paintings principally).  Then Thursday is YOU!  I've been using Sandra Gilbert's Inventions of Farewell to supply most of the modern poetry.  I can have them bring it to class if you know the volume and want to read some of those as well as your own poetry.”

I wrote back, “Attached you will find the titles and pages that I will read your class.” This is the attachment: 

ELEGIES

From The Book of Forms, A Handbook of Poetics, Fourth Edition:

Occasional Poetry, pp. 266-269;

Elegiac Distich, Elegy, and “Elegy for John,: pp. 201-203

  

From Fearful Pleasures, The Collected Poems of Lewis Turco:

 

“In a White Direction,” p. 41

 “Lines for Mr. Stevenson,” p. 48

 “Trilogy for J. F. K.,” pp. 51-54

 “The Pilot,” pp. 179-180

 “Cancer,” pp. 401-402

 “The Recurring Dream,” pp. 403-404 

From The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court:

“Elegy Composed in a Watermelon Patch,” pp. 181-183 

From The Book of Forms, Fourth Edition:

Sestina, pp. 334-344

 “The Obsession,” pp. 341-342

Interestingly, at least to me, is the coincidence that another book just out, Garnet Poems: An Anthology of Connecticut Poetry Since 1776, edited by Dennis Barone, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2012, contains, among an unusual but thoughtful selection of four of my poems, two elegies, “The Recurring Dream,” and the third part of “Trilogy for J. F. K.,” listed above, a Pindaric ode on the first anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, titled, “Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day 1964”:

ODE ON ST. CECILIA’S DAY 1964

by Lewis Turco

 

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 song.

 

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.

 

Here is an elegy written in the form of a ballade; listen to the author read it:

 

LATE ELEGY FOR AN OLD SUICIDE

In memory of Thomas Chatterton 1752-1770

"There's nothing that agrees worse

Than a proud mind and a beggar's purse."

 

Descendant of Redcliffe's deacons, a Bristol boy,

                St. Mary's ghosts were native to his blood.

He haunted Canyng's tomb.  His only joy

                Was in his own invention: "Rowley" stood

                More clearly in his sight than real life could,

                       Of greater substance than apprentice wages.

                He made the priest his mask, put on his hood....

                       Tom's suicide aches still across the ages.

 

He built a myth, turned Bristol into Troy

                And Camelot combined.  The Sacred Wood

Grew at the gate, and time became his toy.

                He brought the rill of local lore to flood

                And made St. Mary's cross the Holy Rood —

                       All for Rowley's sake.  Upon those pages

                He worked till Rowley's lyrics stood enthewed.

                       Tom's suicide aches still across the ages.

 

At last he went to London to employ

                Himself and Rowley in the common good;

He managed but to starve himself, annoy

                Great Walpole, tender Johnson.  When his food

                And pence ran out at seventeen, he rued

                       The day that he'd been born.  London's sages

                Looked the other way, cried "Hoax!" and "Fraud!"

                       Tom's suicide aches still across the ages.

 

Envoy:

                Yet what he wrote was true, the lines imbued

                       With haunting skill.  Death was his early wages.

                God rest his bones, however misconstrued.

                       Tom's suicide aches still across the ages.

    

From 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, $49.95; ISBN 1-932842-01-2, trade paperback,

Suggested Writing Assignment:

Write an elegy in a form or meter of your choosing.

The Late, Late Show

        It's too late for our planet. Earth is already polluted past repair: Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima, spent atomic fuel rods stored everywhere and unable to be destroyed; three gigantic eddies of trash in the oceans; India and others pouring rivers of raw sewage into the waters we drink; factories everywhere filling the skies with poison that we breathe. If we had any sense, we would find another planet to inhabit and destroy right now. Those who say "global warming" doesn't exist should be left behind to cope for themselves.

 

THE LATE, LATE SHOW

By Lewis Turco

 

                       It is now ten minutes after midnight,

                December 5th, 1965.  In honor

                             of the attack by the Japanese

                                    on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on

December 7th, 1941, all channels

 

                       are running movies about war.  On one

                channel, the come-on is newsreel footage of the

                             bombing inserted into a film

                                    made by the Japanese.  Channel

9 has topped that: also Japanese, the movie is

 

                       science-fiction: the Third World War is just

                beginning.  I'll take a gangster film — Channel 3:

                             it sounds incredible, but the third

                                    world war is already over

over here.  This one is American.  Let me check

 

                       the T. V. Guide: "'Five.' (1951).

                The only five survivors of atomic war

                             revive man's ancient hostilities

                                    and prejudices."  The whole thing

is starting again.  So I have turned to writing this

 

                       poem as I watch.  I have survived one

                Armageddon; I shall build a microcosm.

                             I am writing very carefully:

                                    the woman is pregnant, and the

Negro is building a house.  I want my facts to be

 

                       accurate, in case this is the last thing

                to be left.  The sounds do not matter, only the

                             sense.  If you are reading this, I hope

                                    that it will not upset you, sir,

whoever you are.  It may be that my typewriter

 

                       was hocked, passed peacefully from dark shelf to

                dark shelf in ancient shops until it was sold for

                             scrap.  Grant us this: that was possible.

                                    But if you should find this lying

rolled in my machine, the letters of our alphabet

 

                       scrambled in the dust, grant us this much more:

we foresaw the end too clearly for it to matter.

 

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 from Amazon.

 

The Development of the Haiku

 

This following poem illustrates a number of the Japanese forms:

 

PARADIGM

 

         Why does the brook run?

The banks of the stream are green.   — MONDO

  

         Why does the stream run?

The banks of the brook bloom

with roe and cup-moss, with rue.               — KATAUTA

  

         The trees are filled with

cups.  Grain in the fields, straw men

         talking with the wind.

 

Have you come far, water-

         borne, wind-born?  Here are

hounds-tongue and mistletoe oak.            — CHOKA

 

         When the spears bend as

you walk through vervain or broom,

         call out to the brook —

it will swell in your veins as

you move through broom or vervain. — WAKA (5-7-5, 7-7)

 

         Have you spoken aloud?  Here,

where the swallows' crewel-work

         sews the sky with mist?

 

You must cut the filament.

You must be the lone spider.                       — TANKA (5-7-5, 7-7)

 

 

         The bole is simple:

Twig and root like twin webs in

         air and earth like fire.                         — HAIKU (5-7-5)

 

-- Lewis Turco

From Seasons of the Blood: Poems on the Tarot 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. Also available from Amazon.com in a Kindle edition; and 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.

 

 

Folding Mirror

 

The entry on the “folding mirror” form from 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, reads,

Marc Latham, inventor of the form, says that the FOLDING MIRROR verse form calls for two halves of a poem to mirror each other in structure and subject either side of a folding middle line.  The number of words in each corresponding line (outer and outer etc) should be the same if possible.  The folding middle line can be used to divide or connect the two halves.” 

HOURGLASS OF TIME

is birth a blank page? or a weighty tome
crammed full of ingrained wisdom
and lesson plans to draw on
as we climb the hill
of learning and
striving until
on the peak
we turn:
a change of
view sliding
down with ease
the relentless decline
grains of truth spill between
our hands until the sands run out
and the tome of life swells with more pages

Claire Knight

 

 ‘THALATTA, THALATTA’

(THE SEA! THE SEA!)

Waves roll in at my window.
The sun sets:
Silence.
The sea is my mirror:
My face is the ocean.
Twilight descends:
Great gulls are swooping.
The storm is brewing:

Turn, Tide, Turn

The storm is abating:
Small terns are soaring.
Daylight approaches:
The ocean is my face.
My mirror is the sea:
Silence.
The dawn breaks:
Waves roll out from my window.

Caroline Gill

 

242 Mirror Poems and Reflections [Kindle Edition]

http://www.amazon.com/242-Mirror-Poems-Reflections-ebook/dp/B0094QWNOW

is Dr. Marc Latham's second poetry collection, after the first one was published by Chipmunka in 2009. The first collection contained poems written by Marc from his youth to the cre-ation of the Folding Mirror form, while this book focuses on the FM form recognised by Lewis Turco in his definitive The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Including Odd and Invented Forms. 

Caroline Gill, an award-winning poet whose 'Thalatta, Thalatta' Folding Mirror poem was used as an example in 'The Book of Forms' provides an introductory explanation of the Folding Mirror form at the start of this book.

This book contains 121 Folding Mirror poems created in three years by Marc Latham as he tried to make sense of the universe and life's place in it. They are supported by 121 reflections relevant to the poems’ themes.

Marc Latham was born in St. Helier, Jersey during 1965. He grew up in Wales, and became a big heavy rock and metal fan in his youth. Along with Kerouac's 'On The Road' and other counter-culture books, rock music lyrics were a big influence on Marc's desire to write. He hitched from home aged 21, and travelled on a shoestring to all the populated continents between 1987-94. Marc kept a diary along the way, and it was on-the-road thoughts fuelled by rock lyrics that developed into his first poems. After completing his big journeys, a desire for new challenges led Marc to the University of Leeds, starting in 1995. He graduated with a PhD in 2005. The stimulus and stresses of university life and the rave-dance culture of that time provided further inspiration for Marc's poetry. Marc opted to become a freelance writer after graduating from university, and he is still working out of Leeds and the greenygrey.co.uk website.

Marc had his first collection of poetry published by Chipmunka in 2009. It contained over ninety poems from his youth through to his first Folding Mirror (FM) poems. There are now over 200 FM poems on the fmpoetry.wordpress.com website that Marc administrates. This '242' book contains the FM poems created since Marc's first collection was published, together with old and new thoughts and poems. Marc has also had several poems published by independent poetry publications, a Saturn FM poem featured in a musical composition, and the Folding Mirror form was included in Lewis Turco’s definitive 'The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Including Odd and Invented Forms'.

Global Pollution

This poem, about global pollution, was written in the 1950s, long before the term “global warming” was in common usage:

 

THOUGHTS FROM THE BOSTON POST ROAD

 

                           By Lewis Turco

 

Today ten thousand vehicles have passed

              In cursing columns down the nearby Post

Road, left that sparrow on the billboard gassed

              Whose muddled instincts panic to the west

              Beyond the screws and monkey-wrenches tossed

       From mobile windows.  But the west is east,

       And east is south, and south is north at least.

 

The land is shot for sparrows, shot for men.

              But for machines it's Paradise on Wheels!

The lubricated sky remembers when

              Its clouds were H2O, not high grade oils;

              And everywhere the graded turf recalls

       When it grew grasses rather than these goddam

       Vines of white concrete and black macadam.

 

If that poor sparrow ever manages

              To climb above our gamma-powered smogs,

Let him look down upon these acreages

              And see if apple trees are bearing cogs,

              Of if some tractor isn't laying eggs,

       Its mate a diesel truck that proudly roars

       To herald a new age of dinosaurs.

 

We've done a grand job building road and rail.

              There's nowhere some good engine cannot roll

(With some good man behind the driver's wheel),

              And I would not be worrying at all

       Except, this afternoon, out in the hall,

       I overheard my vacuum cleaner say,

       "They built Der Furor just the other day."

 

From 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. Also available from Amazon.com in a Kindle edition.

The Second Coming

Brick House Books Year-End Sale

 

 

 

 

Wesli Court’s Epitaphs for the Poets, by Lewis Turco, 2012, is available at 30% off until the December 31, 2014, in the BrickHouse Books Year-End Sale, https://brickhousebooks.wordpress.com/2014/12/03/tis-the-season/. His most recent book is The Familiar Stranger, poems, published by StarCloudPress.com, 2014, paperback. Installments from his epic, The Hero Enkidu, which will be published next year by Bordighera Press, are in Per Contra (http://www.percontra.net/issues/30/poetry/canto-i/)and in Radius (www.Radiuslit.org).

 

Form of the Week 17: The Descort

 

THE DESCORT By Tad Richards

At the encouragement of Lewis Turco, for the fourth edition of his Book of Forms, I tried my hand at writing a descort — a form characterized by its infidelity to any one form. Each stanza is written in a recognizable form, but a different one. Lew said that he had never actually seen one, so my entry didn't have much competition.

A little research into the form: there is actually a Wikipedia entry on it, in which the invention of the descort is credited to Garin d'Apchier, whose exact dates are lost to history, but he did write the first descort, and I would share it with you, but it, too, is lost.

Gautier de Dargies, for whom we do have approximate dates, ca. 1170 — ca. 1240 (he lived to be approximately 70, a ripe old age in those days), is said to have written three descorts.

Dargies has his own Facebook page, which I am the only person, as of this writing, to like.

Here's one by Raimbaut de Vaqueiras (1180-1207). It's written in a variant of the form — each stanza is in the same verse form, but in a different language. And it's quite beautiful. English translations are interspersed between the verses.

 

Eras quan vey verdeyar

Pratz e vergiers e boscatges,

Vuelh un descort comensar

D'amor, per qu'ieu vauc aratges;

Q'una dona.m sol amar,

Mas camjatz l'es sos coratges,

Per qu'ieu fauc dezacordar

Los motz e.ls sos e.ls lenguatges.

 

[Now that I see becoming verdant

lawns and bowers and woods,

I want to begin a contrast

about love, on whose account I am distraught;

for a lady used to love me,

but her mind has changed

and therefore I sow enmity

among the words, the sounds and the languages.]

 

Io son quel que ben non aio

Ni jamai non l'averò,

Ni per april ni per maio,

Si per ma donna non l'o;

Certo que en so lengaio

Sa gran beutà dir non sò,

çhu fresca qe flor de glaio,

Per qe no m'en partirò.

 

[I am the one who have no good

nor ever shall I have it,

either in April or in May,

unless I have it through my lady.

True, in her own language

I cannot describe her great beauty,

fresher than gladiolus' flower,

the reason of my persistence.]

 

Belle douce dame chiere,

A vos mi doin e m'otroi;

Je n'avrai mes joi' entiere

Si je n'ai vos e vos moi.

Mot estes male guerriere

Si je muer per bone foi;

Mes ja per nulle maniere

No.m partrai de vostre loi.

 

[Fair, sweet dear lady,

to you I give and give up myself;

I shan't have my whole joy

unless I have you and you me.

You are a most treacherous enemy,

if I die through my good faith;

but still, there is no way

I shall part from your dominion.]

 

Dauna, io mi rent a bos,

Coar sotz la mes bon' e bera

Q'anc fos, e gaillard' e pros,

Ab que no.m hossetz tan hera.

Mout abetz beras haisos

E color hresc' e noera.

Boste son, e si.bs agos

No.m destrengora hiera.

 

[Lady, I surrender to you

as you're the best and truest

that ever was, and sprightly and valiant,

if only you weren't so cruel to me.

Most fair are your features

and fresh and lively your hue.

I am yours, and if I had you,

nothing would be lacking to me.]

 

Mas tan temo vostro preito,

Todo.n son escarmentado.

Por vos ei pen' e maltreito

E meo corpo lazerado:

La noit, can jatz en meu leito,

So mochas vetz resperado;

E car nonca m'aprofeito

Falid' ei en mon cuidado.

 

[But so much I fear your anger

that I am in complete despair;

for you I have toil and torture

and my body is racked:

at night, when I lay in bed,

I am awoken many a time;

and since I gain no good for myself,

I have failed in my intent.]

 

Belhs Cavaliers, tant es car

Lo vostr' onratz senhoratges

Que cada jorno m'esglaio.

Oi me lasso que farò

Si sele que j'ai plus chiere

Me tue, ne sai por quoi?

Ma dauna, he que dey bos

Ni peu cap santa Quitera,

Mon corasso m'avetz treito

E mot gen favlan furtado.

 

[Fair Knight, so precious is

your honoured thrall

that every day I despair.

Alas, what shall I do

if she whom I call my dearest

kills me, I know not why?

My lady, by my faith in you

and by the head of Saint Quiteria,

you have taken away my heart,

and stolen it by most sweet talk.]

 

English translation follows each stanza.  The original is in Provençal, Italian, French, Gascon and Galician respectively. In the envoi, the five languages are mixed together.

I did find one contemporary descort, in Drunken Boat. it's pretty good, and for some reason is unsigned.

 

— Tad Richards

 

This following poem may be considered to be a descort constructed from the Japanese forms:

 

PARADIGM

 

         Why does the brook run?

The banks of the stream are green.   — MONDO

 

         Why does the stream run?

The banks of the brook blossom

with roe and cup-moss, with rue.               — KATAUTA

 

         The trees are filled with

cups.  Grain in the fields, straw men

         talking with the wind.

 

Have you come far, water-

         borne, wind-born?  Here are

hounds-tongue and mistletoe oak.            — CHOKA

 

         When the spears bend as

you walk through vervain or broom,

         call out to the brook —

it will swell in your veins as

you move through broom or vervain. — WAKA (5-7-5, 7-7)

  

         Have you spoken aloud?  Here,

where the swallows' crewel-work

         sews the sky with mist?

You must cut the filament.

You must be the lone spider.                       — TANKA (5-7-5, 7-7)

 

         The bole is simple:

Twig and root like twin webs in

         air and earth like fire.                         — haiku (5-7-5)

 

 — Lewis Turco

 

 

NOTE: I tried to access Drunken Boat but was unable to do so. Therefore, Tad Richards’ poem, “Descort: Dupree Variations,” is the only published English language example of the form, to the best of my knowledge. It may be found on pp. 185-187 of my The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Including Odd and Invented Forms, Revised and Expanded Edition, 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.