Poetics and Ruminations

Miss Pussy's Parlor Songs, Part Eleven

 

 

KNOCK-KNOCK, WHO'S THERE?

 

"Who's that knocking at my door,

Who's that knocking at my door,

Who's that knocking at my door,"

Cried Donald J. Trump, Junior.

 

"It is only I, a Russian spy,"

Cried a dark young woman.

"Come in, come in!" cried Donny Trumpkin.

 

"Who's that knocking at my door,

Who's that knocking at my door,

Who's that knocking at my door,"

Said Donald J. Trump, Junior.

 

"Oh, just another Russian spy,"

Called a lobbyist.

"Come in," said Donny, "and join the list."

 

"Who's that knocking at my door,

Who's that knocking at my door,

Who's that knocking at my door,"

Said Donald J. Trump, Junior, etc., etc....

 

 

CELEBRITY APPRENTICE

 

You want to work for me?

Okay, you're hired.

You call that loyalty?

Okay, you're fired.

 

You'd like to do the job?

Okay, you're hired.

You tell me, "Don't butt in"?

Screw you -- you're fired.

 

SCARAMUCCI

 

Scaramuccia (literally "little skirmisher"), also known as Scaramouche or Scaramouch, is a stock clown character of the Italian commedia dell'arte. The role combined characteristics of the zanni (servant) and the Capitano(masked henchman). Usually attired in black Spanish dress and burlesquinga don, he was often beaten by Harlequin for his boasting and cowardice. -- Wikipedia.

 

A stock clown character of

The commedia dell'arte,

The "little skirmisher" of

The grand Republican Party,

 

Dressed all in black, becomes

The latest White House hack --

Sucking on his thumbs

He'll go on the attack

 

As the servant of a zany

Who is, like him, a boaster.

During the Trump campaign, he

Rode the roller-coaster,

 

Seemed not to be too scared,

Although he did get dizzy,

A fuzziness he shared

With those that he kept busy

 

Talking to Russian banks,

Raising lots of money --

Now Trump bestows his thanks

On a clown who is not funny.

 

 

FALLING TOWN

 

Washington is falling down,

Falling down, falling down,

Washington is falling down

Due to Donny!

 

Soon there will be nothing left,

Nothing left, nothing left,

Soon there will be nothing left --

He's worse than Ronny!

 

Fit him out with iron bars,

Iron bars, iron bars,

Fit him out with iron bars,

This disaster!

 

Lady Liberty is dead,

She is dead, she is dead!

Lady Liberty is dead:

He's dis-assed her!

 

Our religion is silver and hold,

Silver and gold, silver and gold,

Our religion is silver and gold,

Our leader's a Brahman!

 

Washington is falling down,

Falling down, falling down,

Washington is falling down,

Our God is Mammon!

 

BULLY

 

Trump is nasty, sad and bitter,

Knows how to use the bully Twitter.

 

MITCH McCONNELL HAD A BILL

 

Mitch McConnell had a bill,

Oy veh, oy veh, oh!

And in this bill there was mere swill,

Oy veh, oy veh, oh!

With a suck-suck here

And a suck-suck there,

Here a suck, there a suck

Everywhere a suck-suck,

Mitch McConnell had a bill,

Oy veh, oy veh, oh!

 

And so that bill was bound to fail,

Oy veh, oy veh, oh!

Just listen to the Senate wail!

Oy veh, oy veh, oh!

With a weep-weep here,

And a snivel there --

Here a weep, there a weep,

Everywhere a snivel-weep,

Suck-suck here

And a suck-suck there,

Here a suck, there a suck

Everywhere a suck-suck,

Mitch McConnell HAD a bill,

Oy veh, oy veh, oh!

 

Donald Trump will be so mad,

Oy veh, oy veh, oh!

He'll throw a tantrum oh! so bad,

Oy veh, oy veh, oh!

With some drivel here and drivel there.,

Here a stomp, there a stomp,

Everywhere a stomp-stomp --

weep-weep here,

And a snivel there --

Here a weep, there a weep,

Everywhere a snivel-weep,

Suck-suck here

And a suck-suck there

Here a suck, there a suck,

Everywhere a suck-suck --

Mitch McConnell had a bill,

Oy veh, oy veh, oh!

 

From MISS PUSSY'S PARLOR SONGS by Claudette McFang.

Miss Pussy's Parlor Songs, Part Ten

BUMP AND TRUMP

 

Philip Bump and Donald Trump

Fell together in the D.C. dump.

The Washington Post had Philip Bump

Write sad tales about President Trump.

Together they made udp quite a clump

Of gunk that resembled Forrest Gump

Suckling on an obstructed sump.

Donald just had to get over the hump

Caused by the Tweets he continued to pump

Out of his iPhone lump after lump,

But that will not be -- he'll fall on his rump

Which is not, alas! all that plump.

Farewell, farewell, President Trump!

Enjoy your slide, delight in the slump

Reported by Nemesis Philip Bump.

 

 

MY CABINET

 

"I don't want poor people

In my Cabinet,

I just want rich people

Who drink Cabernet."

 

 

BLEEDER

 

"That cow that works for 'Morning Joe,'

Mika, is the biggest bitch I know.

The fact that she knows how to bleed

Is more information than I need.

She likes to call me coward, bully,

So I will punch her in the pussy

To prove I'm stronger than her dad

Who died not long ago -- how sad!

I'm gonna go dance on his grave

To prove I'm big and broad and brave

And stronger than his puny daughter,

The cow I'm gonna love to slaughter."

 

 

TRUMP BE NIMBLE

 

Trump be nimble,

Trump be quick,

Wrestle the media

And make us sick.

 

 

SITTING IN

 

My name's Ivanka Trump.

I'm sitting in for daddy

With all the other leaders,

Like Tiger Woods's caddy.

 

Although I'm not elected,

Before you start to boo it,

Remember: anybody,

Just about, could do it.   

 

All I need do is listen --

I do not need to know it,

Whatever "it" may be.

My dad would surely blow it...,

 

He cannot keep his mouth shut

Although his brain is empty,

But saying something stupid

Doesn't even tempt me.

 

 

TRUMPOSITY

 

The art of the deal?

Learn to steal.

 

 

LULLABY

 

Tell-a-tell-a-tall-one,

Tell-a-tell-lie,

Tell-a-tell-a-tall-one,

Hush now, don't you cry.

Tell-a-tell-a-tall-one,

Tell-a-tell-lie,

Tell-a-tell-a-tall-one,

That's a Trumpish lullaby.

 

Up in New York City,

Many years ago,

His mother sang a song to him

In tones so soft and low --
Just a simple little ditty

In her good old frumpish way,

And he'd give a dime if he could hear

That song of hers today:

Tell-a-tell-a-tall-one,

Tell-a-tell-lie,

Tell-a-tell-a-tall-one,

Hush now, don't you cry.

Tell-a-tell-a-tall-one,

Tell-a-tell-lie,

Tell-a-tell-a-tall-one,

That's a Trumpish lullaby!

 

 

TWEETYBIRD

 

Donald Junior will be heard --

He's turned into a Tweety-Bird.

He's learned a lot from his third-rate

Father whom he used to hate

While he lived with his sweet Mommy,

Donald Senior's first divorcee.

He joined dear Daddy's strange campaign,

Met with Russians, did not disdain

To keep a record of whom he Tweeted

Until the enemy was defeated,

And now that Daddy's in the hotseat

Junior's shown us every Tweet,

Paved the road to incarceration

For the leader of our nation.

Thank you, Junior Tweetybird!

We used to think you were absurd!

 

From MISS PUSSY'S PARLOR SONGS by Claudette McFang.

 

The Haiku

 

        Apparently, perhaps because recent books of poems by Richard Wilbur have been written in three-line syllabic "haiku stanzas," many writers have imitated his practice and by extension have decided that anything written in three short lines is a haiku. Neither Wilbur's stanzas nor poems are "haikus" in the traditional sense. 

        The haiku is a poem which has its basis emotive utterance, an image, and certain other characteristics as well, including spareness, condensation, spontaneity, ellipsis, and a seasonal element. A distinctions has sometimes been made between the haiku and the senryu, though  both have exactly the same external form. The senryu is an inquiry into the nature of humankind, whereas the haiku is an inquiry into the nature of the universe.

         The haiku is philosophically an outgrowth of Zen Buddhism. Haiku translated into English tend to appear, to Western eyes, overly sentimental and to fall victim to the pathetic fallacy — overstated personification. We do not understand that the Zen poet is trying to put himself or herself into the place of the thing perceived, empathizing with the inanimate object. Moreover, the Zen poet is trying to “become one” with the object and thus with all things.

         The haiku has perhaps been best described as “a moment of intense perception.” William Carlos Williams enunciated the American-British Imagist doctrine as “No ideas but in things.” Both conceptions are, if not identical, at least quite similar, for both are based upon the sensory level. Williams’ dictum and T. S. Eliot’s “objective correlative” q.v., sever the observer from the perceived object, while at the same time preserving much of the effect of Zen empathy. An objective correlative is simply the vehicle of a metaphor. The theory is that, if the correct object that correlates with the idea to be expressed (symbolizes that idea) is chosen, then the idea will arise through connotation and overtone without being stated denotatively. It is through this objectivity, finally, that the poet in English achieves empathy — which is only a way of saying there is no such thing as pure objectivity.

        Here are three traditionally constructed haikus (by yours truly):

 

THREE HAIKU

 

    When the rain falls through

the mountain, the bottom of

    summer's night turns white.

 

    What does the moon ask

of the summer? The sound of

    the rain is darkness.

 

    I hear the roses

caroling in the garden

    beneath the old oak.

 

-- Lewis Turco

 

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.

 

 

Miss Pussy's Parlor Songs, Part Five

PART FIVE

 

Palin waved to Putin from her porch,

She called to him over the Bering Sea,

"Donald will be sending you the torch

That once was held by our Miss Liberty!” 

"Da," Putin said.

 

 

CINNABON MAN

 

Oh, Cinnabon, who is gonna ice you?

Oh, Cinnabon, who is gonna ice you?

Oh, Cinnabon, who is gonna ice you, all in a day?

 

Run to the moon, "Moon, won't you ice me?"

Run to the sea, "Sea, won't you ice me?"

Run to the sun, "Sun, won't you ice me, all in a day?"

 

Trump said, "Cinnabon, moon'll be a-bleeding."

Trump said, "Cinnabon, sea'll be a-sinking."

Trump said, "Cinnabon, sun'll be a-freezing, all in a day."

 

Oh, Donald Trumpkin, won't you stop your lyin'?

Oh, Donald Trumpkin, won't you stop your lyin'?

Oh, Donald Trumpkin, won't you stop your lyin' just for a day?

 

Trump said, "No, because I am a lion."

Trump said, "No, because I am a lion."

Trump said, "No, because I am a lion roarin' every day."

 

Oh, Donald Trumpkin, where can I run to?

Oh, Donald Trumpkin, where can I run to?

Oh, Donald Trumpkin, where can I run to every single day?

 

"No use a-runnin' -- you already voted."

"No use a-runnin' -- you already voted."

"No use a-runnin' -- you already voted, all in a day."

 

 

Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, have you come back?

"I've been to Sweden to see the attack!"

Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, were terrorists there?

"Only poor Trumpkin under a chair."

 

 

It's a long way across the border,

it's a long way to go.

It's a long way across the border,

But Donald Trump says, "Blow!"

 

Farewell to all that's decent,

Back to poverty --

It's a long way across the border,

Back to what I tried to flee.

 

 

Do you have a peepee?

Nono, not the girls' room.

Do you have a pussy?

Nono, not the boys' room.

Peepee in the boys' room,

Piddle in the girls' room,

Do them both -- piddle or crap

Sitting in Donnie Trumpkin's lap.

 

 

Rumpletrumpkin says, "I'll choose

Which media may hear my news:

Not those that may be run by Jews

Like The Times that may abuse

My fake stories -- those amuse

My supporters who don't accuse

Me of holding such stupid views."

 

 

ATTORNEY GENERAL

 

Did Jeff Sessions

Talk to the Russians?

He says he didn't, but the answer is "Yes."

Shouldn't the law

Stick in his craw?

Of course, but instead he's making a mess.

 

His new recusal

Is now an accusal

But Trump's still patting his lawyer's back.

Trumpkin's attorney

Will soon take a journey --

Hopefully both will enjoy Session's sack.

 

From MISS PUSSY'S PARLOR SONGS by Claudette McFang.

Trumped-Up Anthem

 

TRUMPED-UP ANTHEM

By Pierre Bennerup

Edited by Claudette McFang, "Miss Pussy."

 

My Country Tis of Me

Greed and Mysogyny

    Of Thee I sing.

I don't pay tax, you see —

That's sheer stupidity.

From my Trump Tower I see

    Just glam and bling

 

Send Lady Liberty

To weight loss surgery,

    Make her a ten.

Send back all refugees

Except my current squeeze:

After she needs new knees

    I'll trade her in.

 

Another billion bucks?

My payroll truly sucks—

    That's how I save.

My money’s in my vault.

Who cares if you default?

I’ll never call a halt,

    Not from my grave!

Recalling Nancy Willard

 

Recalling Nancy Willard

June 26, 1936 – February 19, 2017)

 

I am deeply sad to note the death of my old friend Nancy Willard on February 19th of this year. I reviewed her first book of poems in an essay titled, ”Of Laureates and Lovers,” published in The Saturday Review, l:41, October 14, 1967. I thought that it was a fine first book, and she went on to write many more. When eventually we met, we liked each other, and we were friends until she left us this month. This is the review I wrote:

 

Nancy Willard's collection of poems, In His Country (1966), volume four of the Generation New Poets Series of Ann Arbor, is a fine first book. Ms. Willard has a mind that likes to tangle strange but relevant ideas in the skein of language, as in the first stanza of "Picture Puzzles":

 

It's because we're broken

     that we love

puzzles; pictures

     cut all askew, fifteen hundred

pieces, salvage

     of divine catastrophe.

For two dollars my mother

     buys, in good fait,

Fra Angelico's Nativity,

     incredibly cracked,

sung

     like God's defense

on a skeptic's tongue.

 

And then she unravels the strands gracefully in the dénouement. "See?" she seems to say, "This is where we were heading all the time. Everything makes sense at last."

Well, perhaps not everything, but Ms. Willard is capable of making us think so while she is performing, and that's half of art. The other half is perhaps indefinable, but one might bet she has that as well. This much is sure: Nancy Willard can build a whole poem, an unusual talent in this era of fragments and fragmented poets.

— Lewis Turco

Gwendolyn Brooks

 

From Dialects of the Tribe: Postmodern American Poets and Poetry, by Lewis Putnam Turco, Nacogdoches, TX: Stephen F. Austin State University Press, www.tamupress.com, 2012, 336 pp., ISBN 978-1-936205-30-1, paperback. Available from all booksellers.

 

          For many years, despite her early involvement with the NAACP, Brooks wrote a formal poetry; during the 1960s, however, influenced by the militancy of her old friend Langston Hughes and by the aggressive posture of the young Blacks, such as Amiri Baraka, she found she could no longer afford to appear as though she remained on the sidelines.  She therefore began to write a more militant kind of poem.  In the lead essay of A Life Distilled edited by Gary Smith and herself, Maria K. Mootry, in her essay titled "'Down the Whirlwind of Good Rage': An Introduction to Gwendolyn Brooks," said that "at the nexus of Brooks's art lies a fundamental commitment to both the modernist aesthetics of art and the common ideal of social justice." (1)

         Brooks was born in 1917 in Topeka, Kansas, and educated at Wilson Junior College in Chicago, from which she was graduated in 1936.  She married three years later and became the mother of two.  During the Depression she worked as publicist for the NAACP Youth Council in Chicago, and subsequently she taught at various institutions of higher education in and around that city including Northeastern Illinois State College, Columbia College, and Elmhurst College.

         "Nowhere is this dual commitment more apparent," Mootry continued, "than in the multiplicity of voices in her works.  If the reader finds echoes of T.S. Eliot and Countee Cullen in her poetry, there are also equally strong folk vernacular voices punctuating her forty-year literary career.  Her three early works, A Street in Bronzeville (1945), Annie Allen (1949), and The Bean Eaters (1960), present a wide range of poetic forms, including blues poems, ballads, experimental free verse, quatrains, Petrarchan sonnets and Chaucerian stanzas.  Her subsequent publications, In the Mecca (1968), Riot (1969), Family Pictures (1971), Beckonings (1975), and To Disembark (1981), are written primarily in free verse and show her increasing concern with social issues, yet the variety of speakers continues."

         Brooks' Selected Poems was published in 1963.  In the "Foreword" to New Negro Poets U.S.A., edited by Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks wrote, "At the present time, poets who happen also to be Negroes are twice-tried.  They have to write poetry, and they have to remember that they are Negroes.  Often they wish that they could solve the Negro question once and for all, and go on from such success to the composition of textured sonnets or buoyant villanelles without the transience of a raindrop, or the gold-stuff of the sun.  They are likely to find significances in those subjects not instantly obvious to their fairer fellows.

         “The raindrop may seem to them to represent racial tears — and those might seem, indeed, other than transient.  The golden sun might remind them that they are burning." (13)

         One of Brooks' simplest and most-anthologized poems exemplifies both her innovative approach to traditional verse forms and her social commitment:

WE REAL COOL

The Pool Players.

Seven at the Golden Shovel

"We real cool. We

Left school. We

Lurk late. We

Strike straight. We

 Sing sin.  We

Thin gin.  We

Jazz June.  We

Die soon."

         First, on the typographical level, it is clear that this is a poem written in couplet stanzas.  The second immediately noticeable point is that it is a parallel series, for each line except the last ends with the word "we."  Next, the eye is caught by the fact that immediately preceding the last word of each line, except the final one, there is a period — the series is made up of short independent clauses, a set of assertions.

         When we read the poem, though, we wonder at first, perhaps, why we ends the lines; it ought to appear at the head of each line, for it is the subject of the parallel clauses: "We real cool.  We left school.  We lurk late.  We strike straight.  We sing sin.  We thin gin.  We jazz June.  We die soon."  But when we read it in its "correct" parallel arrangement we realize why Brooks wrote it otherwise: it is not syncopated.  Read normally," another thing happens to its rhythms:  Some of the strong stresses are demoted.  Written as Brooks has written them, each line except the first and last consists of three strong stresses.  The prosody is accentual verse.  Line one has four beats, the last has two.

         The rhymes of the poem from lines two through seven thus appear medially — they run right down the center of the poem. All the verbs — the strongest words — from line two on, are pushed to first place; they are drum beats.  The rhyming words are also drum beats sprung by their sounds, and each is followed by a full stop, a rest.  Then another drum stroke, we: ¢ ¢ [] ¢, and the line is enjambed into the next stress.  The poem is jazz; it is a dirge played in the streets, like those of the black bands that march in slow time through New Orleans alleys to the graveyard.  The dirge begins slowly with four beats, and it ends abruptly with two.  The entire little poem is an exercise in linguistic counterpoint.

         The level of diction of the poem is idiomatic, the tropes mainly rhetorical — it is heavy with macho braggadocio.  And it ends with the assertion of a truth that brings the reader up short with a jolt.  The major genre of the poem is, plainly, the lyric, but it is also almost equally a didactic poem with a clear social message.

         Brooks' second book, Annie Allen, received the Pulitzer Prize in 1950.  "Then, as now," Bernard W. Bell wrote in the introduction to his anthology Modern and Contemporary Afro-American Poetry, "Miss Brooks' race consciousness was low-keyed, yet keenly felt in every line.  And her lyrics pulsate with the joys and sorrows of life. (9-10)

         "Stylistically, Annie Allen is a masterpiece.  Tracing the path of a black child's movement from innocence to experience, Miss Brooks skillfully employs adaptations of many of the major metrical patterns and stanzaic forms in the English tradition, from couplets and blank verse to sonnet sequences and free verse. In this and subsequent volumes, she maintains a remarkable balance between being a poet's poet and a poet of the people."

         Writing in Women Poets of the World, edited by Joanna Bankier and Deirdre Lashgari,  Barbara Christian, in her essay titled "Cultural Influences: African American" said, "Gwendolyn Brooks wrote much of her poetry during the 1940s and 1950s when Blacks were striving to achieve integration into the American social structure.  By the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement gave way to the Black Power movement.  Brooks' later work, published in the late 1960s and early 1970s, reflects that shift.  The dominant literary movement of that period, Cultural Nationalism, focused on the development of Black selfhood and nationhood.  There was a renewed interest in African and Afro-American history and culture.  Poets saw themselves as revolutionaries in the service of their people” (337-8). Gwendolyn Brooks died in 2007 as one of America’s most highly respected literary figures.

 

R.I.P. GWENDOLYN BROOKS

June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000

 

When she was young Miss Gwendolyn Brooks

Lost and found herself in books.

 

Wesli Court’s Epitaphs for the Poets, by Lewis Turco, Baltimore, MD: BrickHouse Books, (www.BrickHouseBooks.com) 2012, paperback, ISBN: 978-1-938144-01-1.

 

MISS PUSSYCAT'S PARLOR SONGS, PART TWO: INAUGURATION SPECIAL

 

 

 PART TWO

 

Meow, meow, meow,

Whose puss art thou?

Not Donny Trump's puss,

Not ever and not now.

 

 

Trump is but a braggart baboon

Who tootles a bad jazz bassoon.

       The end of this story: 

       He'll go on to glory

Playing jazz in a hot air balloon.

 

If Donald could write poultry too

(In a Poulter's measure or two),

       Then he might invent 

       Rhymes with a scent

Quite nasty, as I like to do.

 

 

Twitter, twitter, twitter,

Trump needs a pussy sitter --

Twitter. twitter, tweet,

He thinks that would be sweet.

 

Flitter, flitter, prance,

Oh! How he loves a dance,

Flitter, flitter, flap,

If pussy's on his lap.

 

 

Humpty Trumpty sat on his wall.

Humpty Trumpty had a great fall.

All Congress' whores and all congressmen

Couldn't put Humpty together again

Although they tried with main and with might,

And every one of them was white.

 

 

Bye, Donny Trumpkin,

Daddy's gone a-huntin'

To get a little snake skin

To wrap the Donny Trumpkin in.

 

 

Cock-a-doodle-doo!

Poor Trumpkin has no clue:

He's lost his flabby fiddlestick

And can't tell what to do.

 

Cock-a-doodle-doo!

Niagara Falls are blue,

A lot like his Viagra pills,

Which serve him tried and true.

 

Cock-a-doodle-doo!

What is poor Don to do?

To find his sorry fiddlestick

He'll need Cialis too.

 

Cock-a-doodle-doo!

His dame has donned her shoe,

And he has found his fiddlestick,

Sing doodle-doodle-doo!

 

Cock-a-doodle-doo!

His dame will dance with you

While Donald fiddles with his stick

And makes it stand anew!

 

 

Remember old King Nero

Who worshipped Great God Zero?

Trump worships Zeros too -- 

He's collected quite a few.

He and his pussy minions

Like millions, but love billions

And are heading for sextillions.

 

 

If he could have, Dryden (1631-1700)

Would have gone into Haydn (1732-1809),

But Trump

Prefers the dump.

 

 

I love lots of pussy,

It makes me feel warm.

If I buy them diamonds

They'll do me no harm;

I'll just pat their tails,

Make sure they're not gay

Or cross-dressing males,

And then we can play.

They'll dance in my lap,

I'll feed them some food --

Good pecker, not pap --

Be maybe less rude.

I'll pat my sweet pussies,

And then they will purr,

Each showing thanks

For my kindness to her;

I'll not bite their knobs,

Nor tread on their paws

Lest I should provoke them

To use their sharp claws;

I'm sure that my pussies

Will not be displeased --

I will over-sex them

If they're not diseased.

 

 

Grump grump Donald Trump,

How I wonder why you pump

In the cellar with your sump

That sounds a lot like Forrest Gump.

 

 

Rub-a-dub-dub

Three Trumps in a tub,

And who do you think they be?

The Trumpet, the Strumpet, the lass who can hump it --

Waterboard them, all three!

 

 

Donny Douchekit's gone to sea, 

Silver buckles at his knee.

He'll come back and pee on me,

Pretty Donny Douchekit.

 

 

Hickory, dockery, dick,

Donnybrook tripped on his prick --

     He fell on his fly,

     And put out his eye --

Now, how did he pull off that trick?

 

 

KING TRUMPKIN'S WALL

 

Little King Trumpkin will build a fine wall,

The Mexican people will pay for it all.

The pales will be made of nothing but words,

The crossbars and slats, of batshit and turds.

 

"No, senor, no -- you pay for your fence

All by yourself, you spend your own Pence

Or pesos or euros...it's all your expense

And none of our own -- that's mucho nonsense.

People go over, go through, go around,

The cartels build highways deep underground.

The Great Wall of China was built to keep out

The nomads and Mongols -- you see them around

In Bejing and Hong Kong; they can be found

Everywhere these days, just like Hispanics

Who give Kinglet Trumpkin his asthma and panics.

So, no, senor, no -- you pay for your wall.

We Mexicans will not repay you at all."

 

Religions of the World: An Antapostolic Survey

 

RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD

An Antapostolic Survey by Wesli Court

 

The Pantheists think there’s a faun

Or a nymph for each blade on the lawn.

         The rocks are alive!

         And each one must strive

To be home and in bed before dawn.

 

The Hindus have multiple deities

Plus multiple castes and impieties.

         They never eat meat,

         For their cows are so sweet

That they leave them out of their dieties.

 

The Path to Nirvana now has to be

Simpler for Buddhists than it should be,

         For those who believe

         Can simply achieve

Oneness with a lobotomy.

 

The Jainists reject the Creator,

Avow the Enjoyed and Enjoyer.

         Although there’s a void,

         One won’t be destroyed

If only one’s not a Destroyer.

 

The Jews are devotees of El,

The One God who puts them through Hell,

        So they said to the Arabs,

         “You can round up your scarabs

And evacuate Israel.”

 

The Christians believe in a Ghost

That’s holy, a Father engrossed

         With a woman who’s wed

         But still Virgin in bed,

And a dead Son Whose flesh is their Host.

 

A Muslim who’s martyred will spasm

A millennium in an orgasm

         That he shares among virgins

         Who enjoy such perversions

With clitorisless enthusiasm.

 

The Mormons don’t find it ironic

That the figure they view as iconic,

         The angel Moroni,

         Must be simply baloney

Or they’d call their religion “Moronic.”

 

Ron Hubbard was aware that theology

Is stories; so, minus apology,

         He created religion

         From his science fiction

And labeled his church “Scientology.”

 

The Quakers are always quite quiet;

They never speak loudly, but sigh it,

         Then when one tunes his ears

         To something he hears,

He bears witness and hopes others buy it.

 

The Christian Scientists monitor

Their illnesses with a manna—tour

         Of fasting and prayer,

         And then they get gayer

When they think they’ve defeated the Minotaur.

 

The Shakers came up with a plan:

They’d be chaste to a woman and man,    

         For while they were waiting

         There’d be no generating —

They became God’s diminishing clan.

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. Available from all booksellers.

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Maxine Kumin

Maxine Kumin

 June 6, 1925-February 6, 2014

 

She wrote as well as she was able,

But when she tired she used the stable

On her farm — that way, of course,

She sometimes grew a little hoarse.

 

       Although she was born Jewish in Philadelphia in 1925, Maxine Kumin went to Catholic schools and Radcliffe College in Boston from which she received a B. A. in 1946 and an M. A. in 1948. She married an engineer, Victor Kumin, and raised a family of two daughters and a son. She studied poetry writing with John Holmes at the Boston Center for Adult Education where one of her classmates was Anne Sexton who became her friend and with whom she lunched the day before Sexton committed suicide. She became a colleague of Holmes at Tufts University in the late ‘fifties and the ‘sixties. Like Sexton and Holmes both, Kumin originally wrote in the standard academic formalist forms and style.

         Maxine Kumin's subject matter in her first book, Halfway (1961), was the same as that of the other Confessional Poets, that is, life as it must, not ought to be lived, but somehow this insight often got lost in the observation, even in a poem titled "The Moment Clearly" after the first simply described opening quatrain:

 

The pipes thump in the still house.

A mouse scratches behind the stair.

I hear the rise-and-fall of sleeping children

Calibrating the quiet and the night.

Write, saying this much clearly:

Nearly all, this is nearly all,

The small sounds of growing, the impress

Of unarrested time raising

The prized moment.

                                    And this is ours.

Love moves about, opening the doors.

 

          One of the things Kumin never forgot how to do, however, is to tell a story in this and subsequent books. The Privilege appeared in 1965 and was followed five years later by The Nightmare Factory. Some critics compared Kumin with Elizabeth Bishop rather than with Sexton because often her poems, as in The Long Approach (1985), were exceptions to the egopoetic rule-of-thumb. Although they logged the subjective voyages of the heart, they never excluded the reader from their narratives through excessive privacy, for the reader was always shown the compass, the latitude and the longitude of those voyages, and immersed in particulars. If the poems in this book that made the strongest impression were those that were longer-lined, those that approached, and sometimes achieved, the condition of verse, and the weaker poems were line-phrased prose, nevertheless this was a strong collection, one that gave sustained pleasure to the reader. This condition remained a characteristic of Kumin’s poems throughout her career as was shown clearly in her Selected Poems 1960-1990.

          Over the years Maxine Kumin continued to write some of the best poetry of her school, and she branched out into fiction and nonfiction as well. She was honored with a volume edited by Emily Grosholz, Telling the Barn Swallow: Poets on the Poetry of Maxine Kumin, in 1997.

The epitaph, "R.I.P. Maxine Kumin" is from Wesli Court’s Epitaphs for the Poets, by Lewis Turco, Baltimore, MD: BrickHouse Books, (www.BrickHouseBooks.com) 2012, paperback, ISBN: 978-1-938144-01-1; the essay "Maxine Kumin" is from Dialects of the Tribe: Postmodern American Poets and Poetry, by Lewis Putnam Turco, Nacogdoches, TX: Stephen F. Austin State University Press, www.tamupress.com, 2012, 336 pp., ISBN 978-1-936205-30-1, paperback, both are copyright © and all rights reserved by Lewis Turco and may not be reprinted anywhere in any manner or form without the written permission of the author.

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