THE ART OF THE SESTINA
By Lewis Turco
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Modern Versions by Lewis Turco:
You Wasteful Woods, by Edmund Spenser
You Goat-Herd Gods, by Sir Philip Sidney
Since Wailing Is a Bud, by Sir Philip Sidney
Farewell, O Sun, by Sir Philip Sidney
Original Poems by Lewis Turco:
The Forest of My Seasons (1961)
The Obsession (1979)
The Dead Letter Office (1979)
Sestina in Indian Summer (1990)
Double Vision
- The Vision (2005)
- Second Sight (2009)
Sestina (2008)
Tsunami (2009)
Tsunami Strait (2009)
The Day We Bombed the Moon (and Barack Obama Won the Nobel Peace Prize) (2009)
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, All! (2012)
The Cathedral (2013)
The Green Knight and the White (2013)
BOHICA (2014)
SESTINAMANIA: AN ESSAY
The literary world in 2013 had two sestina anthologies to look forward to, the first to be published anywhere. The book that was in the works longest, since 2009, was The Incredible Sestina Anthology, edited by Daniel Nester, published by Write Bloody Publishing in December 2013 -- surely every poet knows about Daniel Nester who was editor of Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Sestinas, an Internet publication earlier in this century that published scores of sestinas (and nothing else). The second volume, Obsession: Sestinas for the 21stCentury, edited by Marilyn Krysl and Carolyn Beard Whitlow, started much later, in the summer of 2012.
I was involved in both these books from the beginning. Daniel Nester interviewed me regarding the sestina on December 15, 2004, for Poets and Writers On Line (January/February issue of Poets & Writers magazine) before he became “Sestinas Editor” for McSweeney’s. One year later Nester published my sestina “The Vision” on January 12, 2005 and another year further along, on April 10, 2006, he used “Tsunami” on-line. He chose to use “The Vision” in his anthology.
Carolyn Beard Winslow and Marilyn Krysl wrote to ask me for help in getting their book set and published in 2012, which I was happy to do through my publisher, the University Press of New England (Dartmouth College Press). The editors included “The Obsession,” from which the anthology was titled, and an “Afterword” that the editors asked me to write.
The verse form that we call the “sestina” is of Medieval French origin, attributed to Arnaut Daniel in the late 12th century and used by other Gallic poets and by Italians including Petrarch and Dante from whom it received its Italian name. The introduction of the form into English literature dates from the 16th century. George Puttenham (my mother was a member of the Putnam family) was the putative author of the first book of prosody written in English, The Arte of English Poesie (London, 1588) in which the form is described thus:
"There is another sort of proportion used by Petrarch called the setzino, not rhyming as other songs do, but by choosing six words out of which all the whole ditty is made, every [one] of those six commencing and ending his verse by course, which restraint, to make the ditty sensible, will try the maker’s cunning."
This is how I described the sestina in the Fourth Edition of The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, (University Press of New England, 2012):
The six end-words or teleutons of the lines of the first stanza are repeated in a specific order as end-words in the five succeeding sestet stanzas. In English the sestina is generally written in iambic pentameter or, sometimes, in decasyllabic meters. Its thirty-nine lines are divided into six sestet stanzas and a final triplet envoy (or envoi)…. In the envoy the six teleutons are also picked up, one of them being buried in, and one finishing each line.
Obviously, the series is just 1-2-3-4-5-6 with the last three numbers reversed and inserted ahead of the first three: 6-1-5-2-4-3. If the end-words of stanza one are designated ABCDEF (the capital letters signifying repetitions) and the sequence 615243 is applied to it, the order of repetitions in the second stanza will be FAEBDC. Apply the sequence to the second stanza, and the third stanza will be CFDABE. Continuing the process will give us ECBFAD in the fourth stanza, DEACFB in the fifth, and BDFECA in the sixth sestet. The order of repetition in the three lines of the envoy is BE / DC / FA.
An “envoy” is a cauda, a partial stanza used as a tail or coda at the end of a poem that originally sent the poem on its way to the person to whom the poem was addressed: “Go, little poem, speed on your way to my beloved.” This ancient function has slipped into disuse over the centuries, but the coda has remained as a climactic shorter stanza that ends a poem or song. Because it was originally merely an addition of this sort, any poem might have had an envoy, but most poems did not, and envoys are optional even in the sestina.
Edmund Spenser was apparently the first English poet to use a form of the sestina in his Shepherd’s Calendar which appeared in 1579. My modernized version of the poem begins the collection below.
It will be noted, in the first two stanzas of lines 151-189 of the Eclogue for the month of August, the teleutons of stanza one are not used in standard order in the second stanza. What happens is that the last word of the last line of the first stanza reappears as the first line of the second stanza, and the following teleutons remain in their original order. This is the pattern that is followed in the next four stanzas.
Roughly contemporary with Spenser’s atypical sestina were three sestinas written by Sir Philip Sidney, the oldest of which — a double sestina, actually — is "You Goat-Herd Gods," from his Arcadia. This is not merely a double sestina (twelve sestet stanzas rather than six), but a pastoral dialogue or eclogue as well, a playlet, as it were. I modernized the version given here and published it in the third edition of The Book of Forms (2000).
There were two other sestinas by Sidney published posthumously at the end of the sixteenth century, in later editions compiled by Sidney’s sister and titled The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia. “Since Wailing Is a Bud of Causeful Sorrow” used the standard form but was written in hendecasyllabic lines (eleven, rather than ten syllables, not in the usual unrhymed iambic pentameter blank verse); thus, all the endings are “feminine” or “falling,” ending on an unstressed syllable.
The third of Sidney’s sestinas, “Farewell, O Sun,” was the first sestina in English to use rhyme; the scheme was ababcc in the first stanza, but of course in succeeding stanzas the scheme had to change as the teleutons took their standard course. Many, not all, of the lines were hendecasyllabic, but some were written in regular iambic pentameter meters with masculine endings.
The sestina in English, however, disappeared after these manifestations and did not reappear for more than two and one-half centuries. It is thus largely a 19th century phenomenon in the United Kingdom, and an early 20th century phenomenon in the United States where it was quite possibly one of the five most popular strict verse forms in use which would include the sonnet, iambic pentameter blank verse, the villanelle, and Sapphics as well. In the 19th century Algernon Charles Swinburne picked up Sidney’s torch and wrote a double sestina titled "The Complaint of Lisa.” Edmund Gosse, a contemporary, like Swinburne wrote a poem titled "Sestina" (many poems bear this title) and, as sometimes was the fashion, he italicized the teleutons. Swinburne’s “Sestina” rhymed ababab which turned its stanzas into Sicilian sestets, thereby increasing the difficulty of the form, but some of the earliest French and Italian sestinas also rhymed, so these were not really what might be called “experiments.” However, experimentation with the sestina is a long-standing tradition in the history of the form, as it continues to be today, a fact that may well explain why so many people have used it and its permutations last century and this. However, neither of the great American formalists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Robert Frost and Edwin Arlington Robinson, wrote sestinas, though both used many other traditional forms, Frost notably in “Stopping by Woods on a Snow Evening,” an interlocking rubaiyat, and Robinson in “The House on the Hill,” a villanelle. Not long after the turn of the 20th century their contemporary, Ezra Pound, returned to the dramatic mode of Sidney and wrote a monologue, "Sestina: Altaforte"; this, together with his "Sestina for Isolt," and “Paysage Moralisé” by the English poet turned American, W. H. Auden, set off a steady trickle, if not a flood, of traditional and experimental sestinas in America.I was myself a late comer to the sestina, though I had always been interested in the traditional forms of poetry, even in childhood. This is what Donald Justice wrote in his “Foreword” to my First Poems (1960): For part of Lewis Turco’s exuberance, which is everywhere in evidence, is a matter of technique. No reader can avoid noticing the variety of forms here. There are Sapphics, several of the French forms, sonnets, syllabics, and a number of what this young poet…calls ‘triversens,’ or triple-verse-sentences; curiously, no villanelles, no sestinas – fashionable forms at the moment.” Some of the “experiments” with the form of the sestina, however, both last century and this, may have been accidents rather than laboratory work, for in the original 1968 edition of The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics (E. P. Dutton, 1968) I wrote, “lines may be of any length.” I meant any single length, not “of any lengths,” but people do not read carefully; therefore, I had to be more specific in subsequent editions, as I pointed out to Daniel Nester in his interview of me, because I began to see sestinas written in varying line lengths, including once in The London Times Literary Supplement, which astonished me; however, eight years before The Book of Forms came into print my instructor in the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1959-60, Donald Justice, had written a sestina with varying line lengths, “Sestina: Here in Katmandu,” which was published in his first book, The Summer Anniversaries, like my own first collection, in 1960, so perhaps I wasn’t entirely to blame. Of course, ultimately any poet may use poetic license to do just about anything he or she pleases; Justice’s "Sestina: Here in Katmandu" has no envoy and its line-lengths vary, generally between four stresses and one. He wrote other deviant sestinas as well.
Justice was responsible in a major way, I think, for the surge in popularity of the sestina form during the late 20th century. While I was at Iowa Justice introduced his Workshop students to a great, but at that time little-known, sestina written by Weldon Kees, “After the Trial.” It had a large effect on many of us, as did Kees’ “Sestina: Travel Notes,” which is an experimental short sestina ¾ four stanzas with an envoy.
The primary problem that poets encounter with the sestina is, generally, that the repeated end-words can be obtrusive. To draw the reader's attention away from the repetitions, poets may enjamb their lines so that sentences and phrases are not end-stopped on the teleutons; or they may use, on occasion, homographs of the end-words, like wind (as in "south wind") and wind (as in "wind your own clock"), or even such ploys as repeating one word, such as can, as part of another word, like toucan, as I did in my first sestina, “The Forest of My Seasons.” Mark Strand, who was one of Justice’s students at around the same time that I was, disguised his “Checkhov: A Sestina” by laying it out as a block of print justified at both right and left margins as one would find in any book of prose.My own first sestina was “The Forest of My Seasons.” Since then I have written quite a few poems in the form, several of them experimental, most of them under the anagram pen-name “Wesli Court,” which I used for years to publish my traditionally formal poems. One of these was "Sestina in Indian Summer" which used the inclusive technique of prolepsis to expand upon the subject of the poem and particularize it.
“The Vision” was the account of the moment in my life when I decided quite consciously to become a writer in order to entertain myself on the road to death. Nester chose to reuse it in his The Incredible Sestina Anthology.
In 1979 I had written, and in 1982 published a wildly experimental sestina titled “The Obsession.” Rather than disguise the teleutons, I took advantage of the obsessive quality of the sestina's repetitions: The first line of "The Obsession" contains all six of the end-words, and the same basic line is repeated incrementally as the first line of succeeding stanzas. Each time the line is repeated the syntax is transposed by hypallage; nonetheless, the line always makes sense. Because all six end-words do appear in this line, a particular problem arises at the envoy, for it cannot be of three lines. Instead, the refrain line reappears a seventh time as a one-line envoy rather than as the normal triplet, but with the sense of the original first line reversed:
Although “The Obsession” had been published in The Book of Forms and reprinted often elsewhere, I had never included it in one of my books of poetry because it was, like the envoyless sestina “The Dead Letter Office,” part of a series of poems titled “Letters to the Dead” which explored the permutations of the sestet. That series didn’t appear in a book until 2010 in “Wesli Court’s” The Gathering of the Elders. This collection also contained the whole of “Double Vision” for the first time and “The Day We Bombed the Moon (and Barack Obama Won the Nobel Peace Prize)” which had originally appeared on-line in 2010. “The Obsession” was chosen by Carolyn Beard Winslow and Marilyn Krysl to appear in and lend its title to Obsession: Sestinas in the Twenty-First Century, together with an Afterword by Yours Truly.
By the summer of 2013 I had written a great many sestinas including “Tsunami” which, toward the end of the poem, utilized the technique of hypallage in order to imitate the chaos of the Japanese tsunami ¾ it was published by Nester, as noted earlier, in McSweeney’s. Others of my sestinas were “Tsunami Strait” which appeared on-line minus the hypallage; “Sestina” on-line, in 2008, which used only one teleuton, the word “sestina”; “Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, All!” which used as its teleutons the words in the title; and “The Cathedral,” published in the revival issue of december in 2013, which had head-words instead of end-words: carven, cloven, craven, coven, corvine, and cavern.
By then I felt that just about all the various ways in which the sestina form could be used had been used by me and many others. I racked my brain for yet anther original variation, and I came up with the idea of a sestina written in Anglo-Saxon prosody with bobs and wheels at the end of each stanza which appeared in Mea’sure in 2015 as “The Green Knight and the White: A Sestina written in Anglo-Saxon prosody with bobs and wheels,” in the manner of Gawain and the Green Knight by the anonymous Medieval “Pearl Poet.” The result was published in Mea’sure, Vol. IX, Issues 1&2, 2014 (actual date of publication, May 2015). After I had written this poem I was inspired to write a modern version of Gilgamesh, the first epic written in the world, out of Mesopotamia. The second part of my inspiration was “The Green Knight and the White,” so I wrote my version of Gilgamesh, The Hero Enkidu: An Epic in the manner of the anonymous author of the Medieval Gawain and the Green Knight, and in revised form I included my sestina as “Canto III: The Betrayal of Lilitu” in my The Hero Enkidu: An Epic.
On Wednesday, May 21, 2014, in the midst of all this activity, I received a request from Kristin LaTour who wrote,
I am working on an essay for a presentation at a writing retreat that will be developed for publication. I will credit your answer, any lines I quote from a poem of yours, or words you list in your answer. In your answers, feel free to include an example of a set of words, or point back to the poem you have in the sestina anthology or another poem if it’s posted somewhere online. If you refer to another published poem online, please copy and paste the link to the poem How do you begin a sestina? Do you start with a set of words? Do you have any guidelines for choosing the words you’ll use?
A. There is no one way. Sometimes there is a series of words, as in “The Cathedral,” though first I had the topic in mind and chose the words to fit the topic; or a line, as in “The Obsession” – I think I almost always have a topic in mind first, then I develop the sestina to suit the topic.
Q. Once you’re going, how to keep up the thread? Do you worry about theme or do you just keep going?
A. Well, I guess if you mean by “theme” topic, that always comes first. I have no trouble keeping the sestina going once it’s started and I know where I’m going
Q. Have you ever tried a double sestina? Is the process any different?
A. Yes, I have, “Double Vision,” though I began with “The Vision” and later added “Second Sight.” I have never just sat down to write a double sestina.
Q. Do you have trouble revising a sestina given the set words? Why or why not?
A. I don’t do a lot of revising of a sestina. Any revisions are likely to take place while I’m writing the first draft or just after I’ve finished the first draft. “Double Vision” was the exception; the two halves were written at different times.
Let me end this disquisition by saying that both Nester’s The Incredible Sestina Anthology and Obsession: Sestinas for the 21st Century are interesting, readable, full of innovation and experiment. There is little, if any, overlap between them, and I doubt that they will do much to stem the obsession American poets have with this fascinating medieval European form.
YOU WASTEFUL WOODS
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You wasteful woods bear witness of my woe
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Where my complaints did oftentimes resound;
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You careless birds are privy to my cries,
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Which in your songs were wont to make a part;
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You, pleasant spring, have lulled me oft to sleep,
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Whose streams my trickling tears did oft
augment.
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Resort of people does my grief augment,
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The walled-round towns do work my greater woe;
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The forest wide is fitter to resound
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The hollow echo of my care-filled cries:
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I hate the house from whence my love did part ¾
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Her wailful absence bars my eyes from sleep
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Let streams of tears supply the place of sleep,
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Let all that’s sweet be void; that may augment
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My dole, draw near! What’s best to wail my woe
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Are the wild woods, my sorrows to resound,
Than bed or bower, both which I fill with cries
When I see them so waste, and find no part
Of pleasure past. Here will I dwell apart
In ghastly grove therefore, till my last sleep
Does close mine eyes: so shall I not augment,
With sight of such a change, my restless woe.
Help me, ye baneful birds, whose shrieking sound
Is sign of dreary death, my deadly cries
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Most ruthfully to tune. And as my cries
(Which of my woe cannot reveal least part)
You hear all night, when nature must crave sleep,
Increase, so let your irksome howls augment.
Thus all the night in plaints, the day in woe
I have vowed to waste, till safe and sound
She come back home, whose voice’s silver sound
To cheerful songs can change my cheerless cries.
Hence, with the nightingale will I take part,
That blessed bird that spends her time of sleep
In songs and plaintive pleas, to more augment
The memory of misdeed, that bred her woe.
And you that feel no woe, when as the sound
Of these my nightly cries you hear apart,
Let break your sounder sleep, pity augment.
Edmund Spenser, modern version by Lewis Turco
YOU GOAT-HERD GODS
A modern version of “A Dialogue between Strephon and Klaius” by Sir Philip Sidney from Arcadia (1593)
YOU GOAT-HERD GODS
A Dialogue between Strephon and Klaius
Strephon. You goat-herd Gods who love the grassy mountains,
You nymphs that haunt the springs in pleasant valleys,
You satyrs joyed with free and quiet forests,
Vouchsafe your silent ears to plaining music
Which to my woes gives still an early morning
And draws the dolor on till weary evening.
Klaius. O Mercury, foregoer to the evening,
O heavenly huntress of the savage mountains.
O lovely star, entitled of the morning,
Which that my voice does fill these woeful valleys,
Vouchsafe your silent ears to plaining music
Which oft hath Echo tired in secret forests.
Strephon. I that was once free-burgess of the forests,
Where shade from sun and sports I sought at evening;
I that was once esteemed for pleasant music
Am banished now among the monstrous mountains
Of huge despair, and foul affliction's valleys,
Am grown a screech-owl to my self each morning.
Klaius. I that was once delighted every morning,
Hunting the wild inhabitants of forests,
I that was once the music of these valleys,
So darkened am, that all my day is evening,
Heart-broken so, that mole-hills seem high mountains
.and fill the vales with cries instead of music.
Strephon. Long since, alas, my deadly, swinish music
Hath made itself a crier of the morning
And has with wailing strength climbed highest mountains:
Long since my thoughts more desert be than forests;
Long since I see my joys come to their evening
And state thrown down to over-trodden valleys.
Klaius. Long since the happy dwellers of these valleys
Have prayed me leave my strange, exclaiming music
Which troubles their day's work, and joys of evening.
Long since I hate the night, more hate the morning;
Long since my thoughts chase me like beasts in forests,
And make me wish myself laid under mountains.
Strephon. Me seems I see the high and stately mountains
Transform themselves to low, dejected valleys;
Me seems I hear in these ill-changed forests,
The nightingales do learn of owls their music;
Me seems I feel the comfort of the morning
Turned to the mortal serene of an evening.
Klaius. Me seems I see a filthy, cloudy evening
As soon as sun begins to climb the mountains;
Me seems I feel a noisome scent, the morning
When I do smell the flowers of these valleys;
Me seems I hear, when I do hear sweet music,
The dreadful cries of murdered men in forests.
Strephon. I wish to fire the trees of all these forests;
I give the sun a last farewell each evening;
I curse the fiddling finders-out of music:
With envy I do hate the lofty mountains
And with despite despise the humble valleys;
I do detest night, evening, day, and morning.
Klaius. Curse to myself my prayer is, the morning:
My fire is more than can be made with forests;
My state more base than are the basest valleys;
I wish no evenings more to see, each evening;
Shamed I have my self in sight of mountains
And stopped my ears, lest I grow mad with music.
Strephon. For she whose parts maintained a perfect music,
Whose beauty shone more than the blushing morning,
Who much surpassed in state the stately mountains,
In straightness passed the cedars of the forests,
Has cast me, wretched, into eternal evening
By taking her two suns from these dark valleys.
Klaius. For she, to whom compared, the Alps are valleys,
She, whose least word brings from the spheres their music,
At whose approach the sun rose in the evening,
Who, where she went, bore in her forehead morning,
Is gone, is gone from these our spoiled forests,
Turning to deserts our best pastured mountains.
Strephon, Klaius. These mountains witness all, so shall these valleys,
These forests too, made wretched by our music:
Our morning hymn is this, and song at evening.
Sir Philip Sidney, modern version by Lewis Turco
SINCE WAILING IS A BUD
Since wailing is a bud that’s caused by sorrow;
Since sorrow follows after evil fortune;
Since no ill fortune equals public damage,
Our princely loss has made our damage public,
Sorrow, we pay to you the rights of nature
And fill up inward grief with inward wailing.
Why should we spare our voice from endless wailing
Who justly make our hearts the feat of sorrow?
In such a case where it appears that Nature
Adds all her force unto the sting of fortune
Choosing, alas, this theatre in public
Where would be left trophies of cruel damage,
Then, since such powers conspired to our damage
(Which may be known, but never help with wailing),
Yet let us leave a monument in public
Of willing tears, torn hairs, and cries of sorrow ¾
For lost, lost! is, by blow of cruel fortune,
Arcadia’s gem, the noblest child of Nature.
O Nature doting old, O blind dead Nature,
How have you torn yourself, sought your own damage
In granting such a scope to filthy fortune,
By your bud’s loss to fill the world with wailing?
Cast your step-mother eyes upon our sorrow ¾
Our loss is public, thus your shame is public!
O that we had, to make our woes more public,
Seas in our eyes, and brazen tongues by nature,
A yelling voice, and hearts composed of sorrow,
Breath made of flames, wits knowing only damage,
Our sports killing ourselves, our music wailing,
Our studies fixed upon descents of fortune.
No, no, our mischief grows in this vile fortune:
That private pains cannot breathe out in public
The furious inward griefs with hellish wailing:
But we are forced to burden feeble nature
With secret sense of our eternal damage,
Feed sorrow by feeding our souls with sorrow.
Since sorrow then concluded all our fortune,
With all our deaths we show this damage public:
His nature fears to die who lives still wailing.
Sir Philip Sidney, modern version by Lewis Turco
FAIRWELL, O SUN!
Farewell, O sun, Arcadia’s clearest light!
Farewell, O pearl, the poor man’s plenteous treasure!
Farewell, O golden staff, the weak man’s might!
Farewell, O joy, the woeful’s only pleasure!
Wisdom, farewell! the unskilled man’s direction;
Farewell to you, farewell all our affection!
For what place now is left for our affection
Now that the purest lamp is quenched of light
Which to our darkened minds was best direction;
Now that the mine is lost of all our treasure,
Now death hath swallowed up our worldly pleasure
And left us orphans, void of public might!
Orphans indeed, deprived of father’s might,
For he our father was, in all affection,
In our well-doing placing all his pleasure,
Still studying how he might be our light.
As well he was in peace a safest treasure,
In war his wit and word was our direction.
Whence, whence, alas! shall we seek our direction
Whenas we fear our hateful neighbor’s might,
Who long have gaped to get Arcadians’ treasure?
Shall we now find a guide of such affection
Who, for our sakes, will think all travail light,
And make his pain to keep us safe his pleasure?
No, no, for ever gone is all our pleasure;
For ever wandering from all good direction;
For ever blinded of our clearest light;
Ever disabled of our surest might;
Forever banished from well-placed affection;
Forever riven of our royal treasure.
Let tears for him therefore be all our treasure,
And in our wailful naming him our pleasure.
Let hating of ourselves be our affection,
And unto death bend still our thoughts’ direction.
Let us against ourselves employ our might,
And putting out our eyes seek we our light.
Farewell our light, farewell our spoiled treasure;
Farewell our might, farewell our daunted pleasure;
Farewell direction, farewell all affection!
Sir Philip Sidney, modern version by Lewis Turco
THE FOREST OF MY SEASONS
Desire today is a cavern of snow;
ice rimes all limbs with synonyms for wind.
Yesternoon it was goat-time, time for horns
rampant on a field vert under the woods
quartered in a southern compass. Toucan
tones rose close beneath the surface of shade,
threatening rupture. Poet, draw your shade
today upon a mirror made of snow
shadowed. Men may hibernate if bears can.
Desire must sleep in a cavern of wind
till it may be harried awake by wood-
pecker beak and Pan's sunsharp or ramshorns —
Too many words, like girdles built of horn,
confined in an attic. How to say shade
but make it mean more, as: tiles of the wood
laid for light to walk on; and to have snow
imply more than God's linoleum. Wind
is wind, but direction matters. Who can
help me? Where's my muse today? Shake your can,
you errant Echo, and get home. My horns
sprout long as the cuckoo's song while you wind
your own clock and make love with your own shade
someplace up a cavern or down the snow
where wild Narcissus buds among your woods.
The forest of my seasons grows strange woods
sometimes; this fall of words grows as it can,
not as it ought. My pen is cold as snow:
its ink runs like chilled honey from the horns
of silence. Lie you down, lie down in shade,
word-warbler. Sleep sound with your mistress wind.
And while you sleep, dream. Dream of the south wind
needling you awake with slivers of woods:
birch and pine, maple that sweetens in shade;
oak on the white hillside. Dream, if you can,
of gray moles, brown mice, winter's hunting horns
blown to silence. Dream no longer of snow,
for time and flesh shall do more than wind can
to blend your words with woodwinds and woodshorns.
There will be tonics. It's time for shades now.
THE OBSESSION
Last night I dreamed my father died again,
A decade and a year after he dreamed
Of death himself, pitched forward into night.
His world of waking flickered out and died —
An image on a screen. He is the father
Now of fitful dreams that last and last.
I dreamed again my father died at last.
He stood before me in his flesh again.
I greeted him. I said, "How are you, father?"
But he looked frailer than last time I'd dreamed
We were together, older than when he'd died —
I saw upon his face the look of night.
I dreamed my father died again last night.
He stood before a mirror. He looked his last
Into the glass and kissed it. He saw he'd died.
I put my arms about him once again
To help support him as he fell. I dreamed
I held the final heartburst of my father.
I died again last night: I dreamed my father
Kissed himself in glass, kissed me goodnight
In doing so. But what was it I dreamed
In fact? An injury that seems to last
Without abatement, opening again
And yet again in dream? Who was it died
Again last night? I dreamed my father died,
But it was not he — it was not my father,
Only an image flickering again
Upon the screen of dream out of the night.
How long can this cold image of him last?
Whose is it, his or mine? Who dreams he dreamed?
My father died. Again last night I dreamed
I felt his struggling heart still as he died
Beneath my failing hands. And when at last
He weighed me down, then I laid down my father,
Covered him with silence and with night.
I could not bear it should he come again —
I died again last night, my father dreamed.
THE DEAD LETTER OFFICE
Our Hero has been writing to the dead
Because they have been coming to his room
During his sleep and cumbering his dreams.
They never speak, however, and it seems
That if he hopes to send them back to Doom
He must write missives which must then be read.
But how can he be sure they will be read?
He addresses them c/o Office of the Dead,
Stamps them all and sends them to their doom.
But have they been delivered, or is there room
For a sure and certain doubt? He sighs. It seems
There's nothing for it but to resort to dreams.
He goes to bed and enters into dreams.
He stands before a building made of red
Incendiary brick lost in the seams
Of cobbled streets. Office of the Dead
Is lettered on the door in runes of rheum
And flaking paint, as though the Day of Doom
Had cracked upon these boards. "Is this the doom
Of writing, then?" Our Hero asks, "of dreams?"
For he has forced the door, stands in a room
Hollow as any novel he has read,
Empty as any poem, and as dead.
There are no letters here, or so it seems
At first — but then an envelope that seems
To have been spared for solitary doom
Catches his eye — it is not for the dead;
It is addressed to him. Our Hero dreams
He opens it and reads. What he has read
He understands...but only in that room.
When he awakens in his own bedroom,
He cannot think of what it was he seems
To have understood in the epistle that he read
There in the cobbled streets where he sought the doom
Of letters full of silence, the sound of dreams
Echoing in the Office of the Dead.
SESTINA IN INDIAN SUMMER
After the frost summer returns and settles
Into the orchard. The sluggish yellowjacket
Describes its ovals over the bright windfall,
And the leaves begin to color our landscapes
The russet of oak and the maples' ocher.
This is no time for us to think of winter
And its white song, no time to sing of winter,
Of fires on our hearths, before our settles,
Running along the backlog turning ocher
And crimson. The chestnut falls from its jacket
Into roots; sunlight lies long on our landscapes.
We listen in the night to hear the wind fall
And wonder when it will rise again to fall,
To take the leaves and pile them into winter
Among the stooks that walk across our landscapes.
It is enough for now that the wind settles
Into breeze and the grass removes its jacket
Of frost while the landscapes of maple, oak, or
Chestnut put on their robes of russet, ocher,
Saffron, and settle in to wait for the fall.
Asters and cedars have the yellowjacket
Along the brook, and we will not now inter
Our languid hours where the dragonfly settles
Among the rushes. The warmth of the land escapes
Slowly eastward toward the stony coasts, capes
And bays where the vacant beach wears a choker
Of brown kelp, a necklace of shells that settles
Into the sand. We wait and ignore the fall
Of leaves, the failing summer, and the winter
Impending. We hear the late yellowjacket
Circle, the horsechestnut fall from its jacket
Of thorns; we watch color transform our landscapes,
Knowing that the allcolor of our winter
Is nascent beneath this flowering of ocher.
This renaissance of summer is but windfall.
Soon we will hunker down upon our settles
In sweater and jacket. Backlogs of oak or
Maple will burn; their smoke will stitch our landscapes
To the winter weather that falls and settles.
TSUNAMI STRAIT
The world was washed away by a wall of water
That first became the horizon: a rising wall
That pulled the shallows outward and away
From the shores. The coastal sealife washed
Out to sea with the boats. For a moment there was
Stillness everywhere, and then the world
Listened to a roar that became the world,
The sound of a thousand thunders, not of water
Merely, but of the fluid earth. It was
Then that liquid turned to stone, a wall
Hard as rock that rose before it washed
Ashore and tore the screaming child away
From the mother, lifted the father, whipped him away
From the place he worked. The ocean became the world,
Crushed the buildings along the beaches, washed
Limbs and torsos into the trees. The water
Filled the wells with salt and blood. A wall
Of bricks became a gristmill grinding what was
Lying behind it into a paste. It was
Mud and plants and trees spun away
Into a maelstrom of single items now all
Things undifferentiated, whirled
In eddies and backwashes of polluted water
Where everything and nothing could be washed.
What could float, floated, what could be washed
Away was washed away, out to sea, was
Caught in a tree that held, held above water
Or drowned or buried in mud or floated away
Into who knew where? It was a world
That was unsafe ashore, but at sea the wall
Did not exist. It was safe above the wall,
On the surface of the wave that rose and washed
Away the earthen world, the solid world,
The world where creatures breathed an air that was
Lighter than liquid. It sent them far away
From breath, from sight, from the living world.
Instead, it gave them a whelming wall that was
Scoured into the minds of those not washed away
From the world of earth into the world of water.
TSUNAMI
The world was washed away by a wall of water
That first became the horizon: a rising wall
That pulled the shallows outward and away
From the shores. The coastal sealife washed
Out to sea with the boats. For a moment there was
Stillness everywhere, and then the world
Listened to a roar that became the world,
The sound of a thousand thunders, not of water
Merely, but of the fluid earth. It was
Then that liquid turned to stone, a wall
Hard as rock screaming that before it washed
Ashore and tore the rose child away
From the whipped, lifted the torsos, mother him away
From the ocean he worked. The place became the world,
Crushed the beaches along the buildings, washed
Limbs and father into the trees. The gristmill water
Filled the wells with salt and gristmill. A wall
Of bricks became a blood grinding what was
Paste behind it into a lying. It was
Mud and plants and trees spun away
Into a nothing of single eddies now all
Things, backwashes and polluted and whirled
In items of undifferentiated water
Where everything maelstrom could be washed.
What could float, buried, what could be washed
Away was unsafe away, out to sea, was
Washed in a tree that held, held above water
Or drowned or floated in mud or floated away
Into who knew where? It was a world
That was caught ashore, but at sea the wall
Did not exist. It was safe above the wall,
On the surface of the wave that rose and washed
Away the earthen world, the solid world,
The world where creatures breathed an air that was
Lighter than liquid. It sent them far away
From breath, from sight, from the living world.
Instead, it gave them a whelming wall that was
Scoured into the minds of those not washed away
From the world of earth into the world of water.
DOUBLE VISION
A Double Sestina
- The Vision
It came upon me while I was on the crapper
of my father’s parsonage, my eyes
boring into the porcelain of the tiles
before me on the wall. The tiles were white.
They spread across the vacancy of time
That seeped into my mind and filled that blank
jug of puberty with a vast Mont Blanc
of sorrow and ennui. On that crapper
I saw that I would have to fill up time
with something more than the nothing that met my eyes,
the emptiness that seeped out of those white
ranges of porcelain whose trackless tiles
led finally to death. I feared those tiles
worse than I feared my death, that ultimate blank-
ness waiting for me on the snowy white
crest of age. I saw life was a crapper
that had to be filled with something. If I closed my eyes
perhaps I could dream myself to a better time
than this one snowing before me. There was no time
to dream. What could I do? I could fill tiles
with words. I could write. I filled my eyes
with reading every day; I could fill blank
sheets with my own words. I rose off that crapper
thinking I might pave my way with white
sheaves laden with stories, poems — I could write
my way to death by filling my living tome
with endless lines of type till I came-a-cropper
at last and alas! perhaps, on the devil’s tines,
if I kept my gaze steady and didn’t blink,
and if I did not try to romanticize
my life with gods and demons, with the sighs
of wishful thinking, with the little white
lies of religion that covered up the blank
of existence with the stuff that fills a crapper.
I pulled myself out of the abyss of tiles
Ready to take on life and move in time.
I’d use my eyes to read. Perhaps in time
I’d use those words to write, to fill up tiles
With something more than blankness on that crapper.
- Second Sight
So that is what I’ve done. I’ve been the croupier
in life’s casino to this point, with ice
in my arteries. My column of tales
and songs has risen to a decent height
and I am old at last, although not tame
as maybe I should be. But I won’t blink
at this point, for why should I wish to blink?
I’ve been raking in what a good croupier
rakes in — coin of the realm like leaves of thyme,
minutes and moments that one can use to spice
the pot of emptiness when it gains heat
enough to flavor these mortal tales
that I’ve been cooking up. There’s nothing stales
a blend of blandishments quick as a blink
faster than losing interest at its height
even as one’s flesh grows crepier
with every year and hour. So, throw some ice
into the mix, perhaps, but never tame
the cold gazpacho one swallows nigh the tomb.
Trade the rake for a ladle, but keep those tales
swirling about in that bucket of mordant ice
and, before your readers can even blink,
serve it like a waiter, not a croupier,
when the flavor has hit its tasteful height.
Some folk feel that life is just a hoot,
a game of chance played with a friendly team
and not alone with “God” as one’s croupier
dressed in cummerbund and a set of tails
spinning the wheel. Before you can even blink,
the game is done and you are soused with ice
dumped on you by the “team.” You make your choice,
and if you manage to gain a little height
you place your bet, the wheel whirrs — if you blink
(or even if you don’t) the suave croupier
pushes over your pile of songs and tales
and you find out there is no game or team,
there’s only ice that chills you till you’re tame
and lowered by that croupier from about man’s height —
he doesn’t blink and he will tell no tales.
SESTINA
It drives you crazy to write a sestina.
First off, in order to write a sestina
you need six end-words that don’t shout, “Sestina!”
One should hide the fact that it’s a sestina
you’re writing. I mean, why holler “Sestina!”
if you don’t have to? Why give the sestina
game away right away? For a sestina
needs to be a subtle thing. A sestina
should lead readers away from the sestina,
make them think, “This is no kind of sestina,
it’s a sixteener, maybe, no sestina
sustaining itself on sestets. Sestina
indeed! I don’t believe it. A sestina
doesn’t announce itself, “I’m a sestina,
no less! I live on end-words, a sestina
to end sestinas! I’m a sustainer
of sounds, echoes of a choral Sistiner
bouncing off Michaelangelo sixteen or
so ways from Rome to Nome.” A fine sestina
that would be. Thirty-nine lines of sestina
mumbling into the reader’s ear, “Sestina,
sestina, sestina.” Who could sustain a
poem like that for so long? A sestina
ought perhaps to read more like a sonetto
rispetto than like what it is. Sestina
end-words are teleutons, and a sestina
should tell you tons about what a sestina
is all about. Certainly, a sestina
is about disguise, subtlety, sestina
reticence, reluctance to be sestina-
like. Rather, it ought to be a soul-stainer,
nuanced, a mind-mellower. A sestina
ought not to be the thing, just the sustainer
of thingness in the memory. Sestina
is teleutonals, not end-words. Sestina
is an earful of sense, not a sestina
ending in a coda that says sestina,
repeating end-words, sestina, sestina,
sestina, and a final time, sestina!
THE DAY WE BOMBED THE MOON (AND BARACK OBAMA WON THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE),
A SESTINA
October ninth, 2009, we sent
A rocket off to Luna. We meant to bomb her…,
Into submission? No, a test intent
On blowing up surface dust to test for ice.
On the same day the Nobel Prize Committee
Amazed the world by bestowing its amity
Award upon a tyro. A calamity,
It seemed to some — an evil precedent
To settle on Washington, D. C.,
By giving the Peace Prize to Barack Obama!
Many Republicans needed to ask for ice
Water and Schnapps, or even an oxygen tent.
No one had dreamed an explosion of this extent
Could blow moondust in the face of amity
Around the House and Senate. It wasn’t nice
That these Norse should cause old pols to resent
Explosive love. It was a suicide bomber
NASA sent to ruin comity —
If not around the world, the R. N. C.
At the very least. Gaddafi in his tent
Celebrated Luna’s death. “Embalm her!”
Was his battle cry, his enmity
For global infidelity was sent
To Cocoa, Florida, well packed in ice.
But NASA said, “It isn’t very nice
To imply we had an impact on the Committee
Rather than the moon! Our bomb was sent
Out into space. We’re not incompetent!”
Meanwhile, a wave of pure tsunamity
Engulfed the Oval Office, and Obama,
Although surprised himself, felt like the balm or
Salve of sweet salvation in a trice
Had rehabilitated amity,
Restored a modicum of comity
To the world at large to some extent,
One could nearly sense the aloe’s scent.
Barack Obama, the Nobel Committee,
And malcontents hope NASA finds its ice,
But what price amity amid dissent?
THE CATHEDRAL
Carven images bedeck its eaves;
Cloven hooves of fauns must scrabble where
Craven blackbirds arch their wings and call
Coven members to their burning duties.
Corvine discourses are hushed within the
Cavern of the nave. Do knaves fill this
Cavern once again? Are these figures
Carven at, or on the altar? Are they
Corvine in their nature? How long have they
Cloven faith from service to formulate a
Coven of figures clothed in cerements?
Craven from the beginning, have they preyed
Cravenly on the choir serving this
Cavern of piety? Was their warlocks'
Coven formed expressly for this purpose?
Carven in the doctrine of three males
Cloven from Adam's rib: Father, Son, and
Corvine Holy Spirit, never from the
Curving womb? Was doctrine ever so
Craven, so fearful of the feminine? Can
Cloven hooves be heard scuttling among this
Cavern's aisles, before these seven stations
Carven with the symbols of the rood?
Covens have been purported to exist from
Coventry to Navarre, all of them
Corvine in their kind...wings hover over
Carven gargoyles in the umber eaves.
Craven shadows linger in this empty
Cavern, in the apse and in the choir.
Cloven vows lie riven at the altar,
Cloven vows that echo in this final
Coven of the Holy Ghost, in this
Cavern of the lost where in the vault
Corvine hosts prey upon the children,
Craven blackbirds raven far beneath
Carven gargoyles sitting in the eaves.
Cloven vows fall beneath this corvine
Coven dedicated to the craven
Cavern-dwellers, caryatids carven.
MERRY CHRISTMAS, HAPPY NEW YEAR, ALL!
The winter solstice is the time for merry
folks to celebrate. We call it “Christmas”
now, but all we want is to be happy
and to celebrate the year that’s new −
according to our calendar – a year
that has a different number for us, all
us former pagans of the West. That’s all
we want in life, simply to be merry.
That’s what we wish for every single year.
It’s seldom what we get except at Christmas,
maybe, through the brand new baby new
year, if we’re lucky. But are we truly happy?
Why this melancholy, this unhappy
“holiday depression” that we all
have heard about, experience anew
each December? Why can’t we be merry
as Santa’s elves all the way through Christmas
into January every year?
Probably because we know this year
coming will be just about as happy
as the old one dying. Every Christmas
hope may be reborn, but that is all
that’s born. There is nothing merry
in our future, merely something new
to distract us, hopefully: a new
toy or gadget to play with for a year,
until the next one comes along, some merry
gewgaw that may make us sort of happy
till the next disaster blasts us all
singly or en masse. Alas! for Christmas
past or future. Underneath the Xmas
tree the present we expect is new
for a little while, and that is all
we can expect for this or any year −
still, we wish each other every happy
happening and a very merry
Christmas this and every single year,
new or old, till we are slap-happy
all the time, but certainly at Christmas.
BOHICA
Here’s Lady Luck whipping ‘round the bend,
Checking us out, looking our bodies over,
Making sure she has good pickings here.
She tests her cattle prod, makes certain it
Is primed for use when the good time comes
Grinning beneath the sunny skies again.
Here she comes, aiming for us again
To find if now we’ll break instead of bend.
We seldom see her; nevertheless, she comes
Sneaking up behind us. When it’s over
We wonder how we could have overlooked it
Sparking in her grip! We didn’t hear
Her footsteps stealthily approaching here
Where we were caught flat-footed once again.
Suddenly, between our cheeks we felt it
And we could feel our creaking spine unbend,
Cracking like a bullwhip whistling over
The lightning of her cattle prod. She comes
Smiling like the temptress she becomes
Once she’s had her way with us. We hear
Her tender voice: “I’m sorry, Love, it’s over
Now. I couldn’t help myself again.
Won’t you forgive me, dear?” We watch her bend
Us to her will at will. We know that it
Is only a matter of indefinite
Time before she goes away and comes
Back in her red Ferrari ‘round the bend
Looking for us – and she’ll find us here
Tending our garden, offering again
Like a cat in heat yowling or purring over
Roses and dahlias till once more it’s over
And we straighten up. No doubting it --
She’ll find us in position once again
Whenever it is she chooses, and when she comes
She’ll find us patiently abiding here
Doing our calisthenics: a deep knee-bend
Or two, perhaps. Luck always overcomes
Any obstacle to stick it here
Where she will sweetly watch us bend again.
THE GREEN KNIGHT AND THE WHITE
A Sestina Written in Anglo-Saxon Alliterative Verse with Bobs and Wheels
In mad March the knight in green
Began to waken. The wild wind
Roared at the door, rattled the panes ¾
He lifted his lids to squint at light
Falling across the frosty sill
Onto the floor where chill tiles
challenged him
To step into the day
Where sunshine and the grim
Mists of morning lay
In shades both bright and dim.
As time flew it turned the tiles
From bone white to warm green.
Flowers bloomed under the sill,
Soothed by the sun, stroked by the wind
That wandered whispering in the June light
That daily rose and fell through the panes.
Out of the deep
Darkness the knight would awaken
From his sound sleep
And a rest well taken
To daylight’s castle-keep.
In the wildwood beyond his panes
The falcons fledged. Leaves shed tiles
On the forest floor of shadow and light
Until at last a darker green
Began to shimmer in a sharper wind
And colored leaves fell past the sill
like pennants of a boat.
Ripples broke the glass
Of blue that used to float
And reflect on clouds that pass
Over the castle’s moat.
.
Colors flowed over the sill
Out of the woodland, through his panes
Upon the gusts of October wind
Sweeping the leaves from cold tiles
Into piles not of green,
But rainbow strains in a brown light
that fell sifting
Out of a lowering sky.
The clouds, darkly drifting
Where they used to fly
Fleetly, do little lifting.
Dawns are darker; there is less light
As the days lengthen. The windowsill
Swallows shadows. The good Green
Knight senses approaching pains.
He must fall upon the tiles
That the Knight of winter will scour with the wind.
The blazing altar
Of Yuletide will not dwindle
Nor the solstice falter
Until it cannot longer.
Then the White Knight’ psalter
Will avail no longer. His prayers will wind
Toward the pole where northern light
Will glance from glaciers laid like tiles
Upon the tundra. The Green Knight’s sill
Will melt in the glow of moonlit panes
As April gains a patina of green,
begins to paint
The meadows with hues of spring
And woods without restraint.
The mating birds will sing
Above the dove’s complaint,
The wind will sough over the sill,
Warmth will lighten the night’s panes;
Spring will walk on tiles of green
once more.
The White Knight will stay asleep
Despite the freshet’s roar
Until the snow is deep
Around the Green Knight’s door.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The modern version of “You Goat-Herd Gods” by Sir Philip Sidney was first published in The Book of Forms, Third Edition, by Lewis Turco, Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2000.
“The Forest of My Seasons” was originally published in Northwest Review, iv:3, 1961; collected in Awaken, Bells Falling: Poems 1959-1968, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1968, and subsequently in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems 1959-2007, Scottsdale, AZ: Star Cloud Press, 2007.
“The Obsession” was Originally published in New CollAge, xiv:1, 1982; reprinted in Patterns of Poetry, edited by Miller Williams, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1986; The New Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Hanover, NH: University press of New England, 1986; The Book of Forms, Third Edition, Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2000; An Exaltation of Forms, Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art, edited by Annie Finch and Kathrine Varnes, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2002, and in The Practice of Creative Writing, edited by Heather Sellers, New York, NY: Bedford/St. Martin, 2007. Collected in The Gathering of the Elders and Other Poems by Wesli Court, Scottsdale, AZ: Star Cloud Press, 2010.
“The Dead Letter Office” was originally published in The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Winter, 2003. Collected in The Gathering of the Elders and Other Poems by Wesli Court, Scottsdale, AZ: Star Cloud Press, 2010.
“Sestina in Indian Summer” was originally published in The Southern Review, xxvi:1, January 1990; reprinted in Heartbeat of New England, An Anthology of Contemporary Nature Poetry, edited by James Fowler, Charlestown: Tiger Moon Productions, 2000 and in The Book of Forms, Third Edition, Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2000; gathered in The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court 1953-2004, Scottsdale, AZ: Star Cloud Press, 2004.
“Tsunami” was originally published on-line in Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Sestinas, April 10, 2006. Collected in The Gathering of the Elders and Other Poems by Wesli Court, Scottsdale, AZ: Star Cloud Press, 2010.
“Tsunami Strait” appeared on-line in The Tower Journal, Vol. 5, No. 3, Spring/Summer 2013.
“The Vision,” was originally published on-line in Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Sestinas, January 12, 2005;
“Second Sight,” was published on–line in Per Contra, January 2010; both “The Vision” and “Second Sight” were collected in The Gathering of the Elders and Other Poems by Wesli Court, Scottsdale, AZ: Star Cloud Press, 2010.
“Sestina” was originally published on-line in From East to West: Bicoastal Verse, Spring 2008; collected in The Gathering of the Elders and Other Poems by Wesli Court, Scottsdale, AZ: Star Cloud Press, 2010 and reprinted in A Poet's Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry, by Annie Ridley Finch, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012.
“The Day We Bombed the Moon (and Barack Obama Won the Nobel Peace Prize)” was published on-line in The Nervous Breakdown in 2010.
“The Cathedral” was published in the revival issue of december in 2013.
“The Green Knight and the White” appeared in the Summer 2014 issue of Mea’sure; it subsequently appeared in a revised version in The Hero Enkidu: An Epic by Lewis Turco, New York: Bordighera Press (VIA Folios 107), 2015.
“BOHICA” first appeared in Trinacria, Issue 13, Spring 2015.
Lewis Turco's Brilliant Enkidu Retelling, by Nicholas Birns
The Hero Enkidu: An Epic by Lewis Turco, New York: Bordighera Press (www.BordigheraPress.org), VIA Folios 107, 2015, 101 pp. ISBN 978-1-59954-098-6. trade paperback.
THE TROPES OF TENTH STREET
MUSINGS OF A CRAFTY IF SELF-CRITICAL ACADEMIC
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10, 2015
LEWIS TURCO’S BRILLIANT ENKIDU RETELLING
By Nicholas Birns
https://www.academia.edu/4850214/The_Stones_and_the_Book_Tolkien_Mesopotamia_and_Biblical_Mythopoeia_Nicholas_Birns
Lewis Turco is one of the great undiscovered treasures of American poetry, though those who really follow the scene know his work well, both as poet and as critic. In that latter role, he has not only provided cogent commentary on major poets and on the mode of poetry itself (and I say that being a less ‘formalistic' reader myself than Turco is, but granting and celebrating his percipience), but he has also rediscovered and championed a major early nineteenth-century American poet in Manoah Bodman. He taught at SUNY Oswego for many years and has been a vigorous and constructive participant on the poetry scene. Though I know full well that Turco was born in 1934, that he was already mature and established by the time I started reading him in the early 1980s, it astonishes me to think of him as over eighty, as his work is not only still buoyantly being produced but vitally contemporary, offering perspectives on imagination just not available elsewhere.
Turco's latest book, The Hero Enkidu: An Epic, is particularly timely, as we are all thinking about Mesopotamian civilization in the light of the atrocities toward archaeological remains in Iraq and Syria of the terrorist group calling itself ISIS. Or at least we all should be. Sadly, many of the same people who celebrated the movie The Monuments Men, about the heroic attempts of a special detachment of the U.S. Army to save European art treasures both from Nazism and general wartime destruction, do not seem to give a darn about these ancient Near Eastern antiquities. Not only are they so remote from most of us, erected by people whose languages are no longer spoken or known—they were not Arabs any more than they were Israelis —but they were built by people often described as villains in the Bible, and under the aegis of harsh-ruling kings whose combination of rigid authority and appreciation of artistic skill and craft brings to mind Walter Benjamin’s dictum that every document of civilization is also a document of barbarism. This is true of the history of Western art works, often born of hierarchy and privilege. But in the Middle Eastern context it is far more obvious that ‘we’ cared about Palmyra more than ‘we’ did about Hatra or Nimrud simply because Palmyra, architecturally, shows Greco-Roman influence and was influential on neoclassical architecture, is the proof of this shameful bias. Western concern about Palmyra may have—knock on wood—stopped the ISIS from utterly destroying it. But we should have spoken up just as much for Hatra and Nimrud.
This Western bias against the ancient Near East has extended even to the most prominent document of Mesopotamian civilization, the poem called Gilgamesh. As the recent scholarship of David Damrosch and Wai-Chee Dimock, has shown, Gilgamesh has assumed a privileged role in accounts of 'world literature' and has in turn been translated by writers of various gifts and dispositions such as David Ferry, John Gardner/John Meier, Herbert Mason, and, most recently, Stuart Kendall. As Michael Palma reminds us in his splendid introduction to Turco’s book, the Gilgamesh poem has also inspired a para-literature of epic, fantastic, and historically minded retellings.
One might see Turco’s focus on Enkidu, the best friend, homosocial soulmate, and sidekick of our hero Gilgamesh, as simply another instance of the various postmodern retellings of canonical stories from the vantage point of subordinate or alternate points-of-view. But Turco is turning to Enkidu for a different reason: to make sense of the tremendous distance between us and the poem, or the cultural origins of the poem, as figured not only by ‘our’ indifference towards the terrorist atrocities in Iraq and Syria but the way it is acceptable to be an intellectual in the humanities and have near-complete ignorance of ancient Mesopotamia; for instance, a literate reader of one of the translations mentioned above said to me, in deprecation of his ultimate abilities to assess the translator’s achievement, that he did not know the original Sanskrit! As if Sumerian were Sanskrit, a language that it has as little relation to as it does to Sindarin!
Turco uses Enkidu as a prism through which to relate to the poem: as Enkidu's earthiness, primal rage, and unbridled bundle of emotions are closer to us psychologically than Gilgamesh’s heroism, always imbricated with themes of piety to both his gods and his city, barriers that do not hinder our view of Enkidu, wild, unfettered, in Turco's words “hairy and naked” and thus unacculturated in Mesopotamian civilization. With this psychological proximity, Turco gives us verbal proximity: by making the bold, but infinitely successful, decision to approach the material through the verse forms of Anglo-Saxon and alliterative Middle English poetry.
Turco is not just making a a comment on the comparable ‘state’ of civilization between the two cultures, but also a musing on the possibility that Gilgamesh might have had, in Mesopotamian culture, a similar role to what which Beowulf might have had in Anglo-Saxon culture. (We can never know, as both works were rediscovered much later, after many of the other elements of the literary corpus of those cultures had been lost). Though we actually are as much at sea concerning the original date, author, or cultural purpose of Beowulf as we are of Gilgamesh, we have linguistic connections to Beowulf we do not to Gilgamesh, and even more to the Middle English alliterative corpus such as Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Turco’s verse maximizes these connections, especially in his deft use of alliteration:
Nimrod entered
the fertile forest
And found the traps
that he had dug
Had all been filled
with soil and scrub;...
Turco even uses rhyme at times, though this is highly anachronistic, as rhyme only entered the Western tradition in the High Middle Ages—the Greeks and Latins, as I discuss in chapter 4o of my recent book Barbarian Memory, did not use rhyme—it is our primary mode of poetic coherence. Since Turco only uses rhyme sparingly and tactically, it does not make the verse mawkish or stringy, as too much of it might:
Enkidu stopped,
To stare, astonished,
at this wonder,
then stood in sorrow,
in agony and woe
to see this man aglow
with manliness as though
he were godlike crown to toe.
This is disciplined and restrained, and coexists happily with the alliteration, blank verse, and Turco’s own elegant attempt to simulate the distich-structure of the Mesopotamian originals (as the text was first written in Sumerian then 'adapted' into Akkadian). The very end of the poem also rhymes in ways both apt and gratifying. My favorite mode, though, is the alliteration, which can capture ingenuous cultural truths in a sly apothegm, as when the gods Anu and Inanna are called "sky sovereigns”: simple, supple, and stark. In something i read by him in the 1980s, Turco pointed out that his middle name is Putnam, and that this is the same surname as that of George Puttenham, the great Elizabethan anatomist of metaphor. Turco's deft and seamless handling of figuration would have warmed the heart of his Elizabethan forebear.
There are some aspects of Turco’s poem I could have done without—I did not like the intrusion of Biblical personages based on, but not themselves present in, Mesopotamian myths and histories, although this objection is merely “Johnsonian” on my part and not meant to be taken as universal cavil. On the other hand I rather like the intrusion of Tolkienian references, based on Tolkien’s use of “Erech”—the Hebrew rendering of “Gilgamesh's home city and the version, rather than “Uruk” employed by Turco—to the resting-place of the Faithful Stone brought to Gondor by the Númenoranean exiles, themselves fleeing from a flood much like the Gilgamesh story's Utnapishtim.
On their trek to Erech
Lilitu told
Enkidu the tale
of the city’s founding:
“In the second age
Isildur carried
Out of the ruins
of golden Númenor
A great globe
made of stone.
Upon the stone
he etched an oath
And caused the great
King of the Mountains
To place his hand
upon the rock
And swear that he
would bear fealty,
To Isildur’s lineage
and to Erech when
Its temple and walls
were raised upon
The crown of the hill.
I myself explore this connection in my essay on Tolkien and Mesopotamia in Jason Fisher’s Tolkien and the Study of His Sources. Turco uses the Tolkien allusion to explore how the Gilgamesh story contains both history and prehistory, both the human and the supernatural. Turco’s moving poem shows how literature can be a bridge between the immortality Gilgamesh vainly seeks and the frail mortality that envelops even the ferocious Enkidu:
When he saw its walls
He also saw
that they were his
Immortality,
for they would last
Eternally.
Walls can in fact be destroyed, as we have seen all too vividly recently, but the stone tablets of the Gilgamesh story miraculously made it into the permanent record, and Turco has given us a thoughtful, innovative, and perceptive expansion on it, a contribution to the literary trove in its own resplendent right.
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Amazon Reviews
Turco's New Take on Oldest Extant Epic
The Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh is five millenia old. Such an antiquity doesn't seem likely to speak to readers today, in any measure. But it is a story examining the nature of friendship, the nature of loss, and the troubling question of human mortality. It is therefore as relevant to modern readers as it was in the beginning, when it existed first as an oral tale, and then when writing came along, as cuneiform inscriptions on clay tablets.
Gilgamesh has heretofore been the hero, the epic's central figure.The story's emphasis has of course been on the semi-divine king, over the centuries in various renderings.
What Lewis Turco does infuses the old tale with warm new energy by placing the emphasis on Enkidu, the wholly mortal and vulnerable companion to the king. In the course of the tale, Enkidu grows: from the innocent playmate of the animals, through experience, to become a seasoned and trusted warrior and leader. When Gilgamesh is set on destroying the ogre Humbaba, Enkidu advises him against it, but takes the dangerous lead position when they undertake the enterprise. The elders advise Gilgamesh:
Let Enkidu
be in the van
And you will be safe
Shamash has sworn.
Using the Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse form, Turco gives the tale the feel of antiquity, but a fresh antiquity, not that of Homer or the Bible. The story races along—it never lags--and that speed is due in part to the hemistich line pattern. Much of the delight of the rest is due to the splendid diction, the exacting choices, of a peerless poet.
And forth they marched
together, the heroes
And their warrior army
to find the spot
Where Humbaba dwelt
in the Cedar Forest
Where Enkidu
had been born ...
Ruth F. Harrison
Another tour de force-- in service of a great cause.
I speak with a forked tongue: one fork is that of a person immersed in Medieval literature, hence very much interested in the epic tradition; one fork is that of a person so sophomoric she had never been able to hear or see "Enkidu" without singing "inky dinky parlay voo" all day long. But thanks to Lew Turco's masterly poem Enkidu has been rescued from his thousands of years as merely an epic sidekick in the first epic poem ever written. Thank you, Lew. Another tour de force -- in service of a great cause. Oh, and great fun to read!
Clarinda Harriss
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COMMENTARY FROM CORRESPONDENTS
Lew,
The mailman dropped off The Hero Enkidu about an hour ago, and I’m already deep into the Afterword, which is fascinating! But first I read the Prologue to Tim Murphy, who called from North Dakota just about when the mailman arrived and I had just opened the package. When I finished reading he said, “Oh God! I have to order that!” And I replied, “Yes, you do.” I’ve just now e-mailed him the announcement you sent out in May, with information from Bordighera Press, and the quotes from the cover. I told Tim it’s so good that it reminds me of his translation of Beowulf, which is very high praise.
It seems impossible, but it’s even better than I remember, faster, stronger, more daring in its music, somehow reckless but perfect. Tomorrow I’m going to pass it around during the Powow River Poets’ workshop, but in the afternoon I’m going to read from it during the Open Mic that will follow the readings by Rick Mullin and Anton Yakovlev. Those guys are both wonderful, so we’ll have a fairly large audience, with guests coming up from Boston and NYC and down from NH. I’m excited over introducing it to the group! The Intro by Palma is excellent, by the way.
Alfred sends you his congratulations and best wishes: I read him the Prologue over lunch, and told him something about the legend itself.
I forgive you—just barely—for wreaking havoc on Walt Whitman. Tim Murphy did away with him some years ago in our screened-in porch, which has been known ever since as The Walt Whitman Memorial Porch. Tim says I had to mop up Walt’s blood after his savage discussion of several poems proved that poor Walt deserved to die. I am, I must confess, unconvinced by the evidence, and am still profoundly moved by many passages in Leaves of Grass. But we’ll let that issue rest, along with Walt, and I’ll close with this instead: Kudos to you, mio caro fratello, for achieving this magnificent project, and thank you for my copy with its priceless inscription!
Affectionately,
Rhina
Dear Mr. Turco,
I am fascinated that you fastened on heroic tetrameter with caesura mid-line as the form for your epic. Rhina has sent me a couple of emails and read some over the phone. I've wanted to translate the Gilgamesh since I was a kid, but now that is unnecessary. Congratulations! You manage the Gawain [and the Green Knight] meter far better than the poet did. Again, Congratulations.
Tim Murphy
Lew,
I passed your book around to the 19 people present at our Powow River Poets Workshop this morning, and some of them asked to see it again and jot down information from it during lunch. Then during the Open Mic section of our very well-attended reading this afternoon (by Rick Mullin and Anton Yakovlev), I discussed it briefly, and read the Prologue and the opening pages of the first section.
Everyone enjoyed hearing it! Some people were surprised to learn that The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest written story, and the source of much of what has come down to us as "biblical," and others were intrigued by the "bob & wheel."
Glad to see you're getting good reviews! And no surprise.
Love,
Rhina
Dear Lew,
Thanks ever so much for the kindly signed copy of The Hero Enkidu. Beautiful cover, sterling innards! What an accomplishment, to liberate the Enkidu story from the longer surrounding epic that obscured it. The Anglo-Saxon verse line makes the poem all the more tempting to read out loud, and willread out loud very well. Here’s hoping Enkidu finds a host of readers. And it’s clear that nobody will try to do what you’ve done, for a long while. Heartfelt congratulations!
Ever,
Joe (X.J.) Kennedy
June 12, 2015 in Anglo-Saxon Prosody, Bob-and-Wheel, Books, Commentary, Correspondence, Criticism, Epics, Essays, Fiction, History, Italian-Americana, Legends, Literature, Narratives, Poems, Poetry, Prosody, Religion, Review, Tales, Translations, Verse forms, Witchcraft | Permalink | Comments (0)