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.
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The mote (motto, device, posie) is a one-sentence poem written in two lines. Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro” is a mote; it is printed here as it originally appeared in 1913 in Poetry, complete with examples of sight pause — that is, spatial caesuras:
IN A STATION OF THE METRO
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Ezra Pound
The subject of the sentence is "apparition," and the verb "is" is understood at the point of the semicolon or, if one wishes, one can imagine an equals sign at that point:
"The apparition of these faces in the crowd = petals on a wet, black bough."
LINES TO BE ETCHED ON A WINDOW
For Donald Justice
Clearly, you may see clear through me,
As though I were not here.
Wesli Court, from
Poetry Features Verse from Afghan Women
The entire June issue is devoted to two-line poems and photographs from Afghanistan
CHICAGO — The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is pleased to announce the publication of the June 2013 issue, “Landays.” The issue is dedicated entirely to poetry composed by and circulated among Afghan women.
After learning the story of a teenage girl who was forbidden to write poems and burned herself in protest, poet and journalist Eliza Griswold and photographer and filmmaker Seamus Murphy journeyed to Afghanistan to investigate the impact of the girl’s death, as well as the role that poetry plays in the lives of contemporary Pashtuns. A year later, Griswold and Murphy returned to Afghanistan to study the effects of more than a decade of U.S. military involvement on the culture and lives of Afghan women. In the course of this work, Griswold collected a selection of landays, or two-line poems [which are called “motes” in our culture – see The Book of Forms]. These poems are accompanied by Murphy’s stunning photographs from the same period and are presented in the June 2013 issue of Poetry.
Griswold describes the characteristics of a landay in her introduction:
“Twenty-two syllables: nine in the first line, thirteen in the second. The poem ends with the sound “ma” or “na.” Sometimes they rhyme, but more often not. In Pashto, they lilt internally from word to word in a kind of two-line lullaby that belies the sharpness of their content, which is distinctive not only for its beauty, bawdiness, and wit, but also for the piercing ability to articulate a common truth about war, separation, homeland, grief, or love.”
Clarinda Harriss responded:
"Hmmm. My own 22-syllable form, which I term" "vantadu," "Vantydu," or Vantydoo, pretending it is an ancient Malay form imported, like the pantoum, by the French, have little to no social conscience, and do not generally end in "ma," but 22 IS a very workable number of syllables.
Clarinda Harris"
Yes, Clarinda, The Japanese thought so too when then invented the katauta, the tanka, the senryu, and the haiku.
Lew
Here are our two “vantydoos” presented as a duet:
TWO VANTYDOOS
Recent Xrays Reveal
Richard Third, my kith and kin,
our twisted spines serpentine.
How time maligns and misaligns.
Clarinda Harriss
Some Embalmy Day
They dug up old Dick the Three;
Maybe they'll dig you and me--
I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Lew Turco
But rather thee than me.
DON'T REALLY MEAN THAT, LEW DARLIN'!
Clarinda
Of course you do, Clarinda…we all do.
Lew
Suggested writing exercise:
Write some two-line poems.
The Toys of Coventry Patmore
THE TOYS
By Coventry Patmore. 1823–1896
From The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900, ed. Arthur Quiller-Couch,1919.
MY little Son, who look'd from thoughtful eyes
And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,
Having my law the seventh time disobey'd,
I struck him, and dismiss'd
With hard words and unkiss'd,
— His Mother, who was patient, being dead.
Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,
I visited his bed,
But found him slumbering deep,
With darken'd eyelids, and their lashes yet
From his late sobbing wet.
And I, with moan,
Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;
For, on a table drawn beside his head,
He had put, within his reach,
A box of counters and a red-vein'd stone,
A piece of glass abraded by the beach,
And six or seven shells,
A bottle with bluebells,
And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,
To comfort his sad heart.
So when that night I pray'd
To God, I wept, and said:
Ah, when at last we lie with trancèd breath,
Not vexing Thee in death,
And Thou rememberest of what toys
We made our joys,
How weakly understood
Thy great commanded good,
Then, fatherly not less
Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,
Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say,
'I will be sorry for their childishness.
CRITICISM
The critic R. S. Gwynn thinks this is a "great" poem about parenting masquerading as a parable about a daddy and his little boy. I have a few criticisms:
In the first line the poet Coventry Patmore shows that he doesn't want the past tense of words like “pronounced” to be spoken as though they had three syllables rather than two -- “pronounce-ed” -- as was common in nineteenth century British poetry, so he inserts an apostrophe to indicate that an elision occurs where the letter “e” is missing and is not to take even a minor stress (we do this automatically in contemporary English, so we don’t need an apostrophe). Later on, after the father in the poem prays to God, Patmore will change this “rule” because he intends no longer to use “Romantic” period style (a “period style” is a form of poetic diction that is adopted strictly for the use of writing poetry by most poets of a period) but to use “Biblical style” when the point of the poem becomes clear.
The poet at the end of the first line says, “from thoughtful eyes”; this is a trope called metonymy, describing by using a word related to a word, rather than the original word itself which would have been “mind” or “brain”; however, the father here is reading his son’s mind through the boy’s eyes. Poets have often described the eyes as “the windows into the soul.” Since no one knows what a soul is, it’s a good bet that it is the mind.
The second line reads, “And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,” an awkward description. Patmore probably ought to have used another comma after "up" so as to avoid confusion, or “style” instead of “wise.”
Syntax is word-order in the sentence; beginning in the third and continuing in subsequent lines, “Having my law the seventh time disobey'd” is a distortion of the normal word order that is awkward. Normal word order would have been something like,
My son disobeyed me seven times,
[so] I struck him and dismissed
[him] unkissed and with hard words.
Notice that Patmore left out so and he which certainly should confuse the reader who would like to know what the subject of the sentence is, for at this point Patmore for unknown reasons inserts, “— His Mother, who was patient, being dead.” If one works at it, one may be able to figure out that it wasn't the mother who was unkissed, but the child. The mother “was patient, being dead.” A strange spot for a little macabre arch wit.
The father is apparently rueful at least for having smitten his little boy and sending him to bed — if not for having joked about his dead wife:
And I, with [a] moan,
Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;
For, on a table drawn beside his head,
He had put, within his reach,
A box of counters and a red-vein'd stone,
A piece of glass abraded by the beach
And six or seven shells,
A bottle with bluebells
And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,
To comfort his sad heart….
Obviously, the child did this arranging (which sounds authentic as most of the rest of the poem does not) through his blinding tears after his father "struck" him. How does dad know this? Perhaps Father always knows best,
“So when that night I pray'd
To God, I wept, and said:
Patmore at this point is about to change his syntax from Romantic to Biblical in order to get to the point of his poem; that is perhaps why he wrote “said” instead of “say’d…or maybe not. (Well, if he can make jokes in his serious poem, why can’t I in my serious criticism?)
“Ah, when at last we lie with trancèd breath….”
Patmore has now fully changed from “‘d” to “èd” thus signalling that he is in Biblical mode and wants this to be pronounced "tranc-èd." Why? Because he has addressed God and now needs to speak in Biblical, rather than Romantic fashion by using “Thee” —
Not vexing Thee in death,
“Thou” and King James translation verb endings such as “rememberest” —
And Thou rememberest what toys
We made our joys,…
From this point to the end, the meaning becomes entangled in tortuous verbiage:
How weakly understood
Thy great commanded good
Then, fatherly not less
Probably, to be consistent with Biblical tradition, we should have a capital “Good” and “Fatherly” in this passage; also on
“Wrath,” below; nota bene “Thou'lt,” (an elision of Thou shalt) as well:
Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,
Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say,
"I will be sorry for their childishness."
Patmore is using an episode of punishing his little son, rebuking him, and sending him to bed weeping as a metaphor for the ways in which God treats his human “children” and is rueful about his actions afterward, but not for smiting them over and over again over the subsequent centuries.
Moral: We are the "toys" of God, our stern daddy who punishes us repeatedly throughout history and is sorry for it but keeps on doing it anyway because we keep on being naughty. R. S. Gwynn is wrong about this poem being about “parenting,” except on a cosmic scale. It is a religious poem.
This is an actual poem about parenting:
A DAUGHTER MOVES OUT
for Melora.
She has left
her posters on the wall.
The phone lies overextended on
the floor, humming: its
black panel is gone;
it shows its coils.
There are dust
bunnies under the bed.
The books on the yellow shelves study
the color brown — an
uncertain shade tilts
against the sun
falling down
into the winter lake.
Who, though, is this in the closet, hung
from a rack, his slit
eyes lidded in the
gloaming? Is it
the specter
of the prom-watcher, ghost
of the dawn-waiter, the hanger-on?
Yes, it is he who
clutches at glass, sand
siling out from
beneath his
feet, between his dry toes
into the lower cone. Let him wear
shadow, let him hang
on for a while.
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.
August 07, 2015 in Bad Poetry, Commentary, Couplets, Criticism, Essays, Literature, Poetry, Religion | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: criticism, religious poetry