Poetics and Ruminations

Miss Pussy's Parlor Songs, Part Twenty-nine

MISS PUSSY'S PARLOR SONGS

 

PART TWENTY-NINE

 

Donald Trump has more than lied;

Donald Trump is fit to be tried.

 

THE CATERWALL

 

Donald Trump, The President,

Did not know what "govern" 

                                        meant,

"I want my wall without dissent!"

He pouted in his discontent,

"Or I'll shut down my. 

                                government!"

 

CUT AND RUN

 

Cut and run, cut and run,

I think it would be so much fun

Just to quit, to cut and run

Without consulting anyone!

 

Cut and run, cut and run,

Declare a win, just say we won

And tell our allies that we're 

        done,

Then cut and run, cut and run!

 

OH SHUT UP

 

Government is shutting down, 

Shutting down, shutting down,

Government us shutting down -- 

Trump's a moron.

 

Build his wall with iron bars, 

Iron bars, iron bars, 

Build his wall with iron bars,

And his bullshit.

 

Merry Xmas everyone,

Everyone, everyone,

Merry Xmas everyone,

Happy New Year!

 

 

WALLFLOWER

 

The thing that I don't get at all

Is why Trump thinks he'll get his wall.

 

DONE

 

I'm gonna keep the government shut,

I'm gonna keep the government shut,

I'm gonna keep the government shut,

To prove that we don't need one!

 

I'm gonna prove I'm useless here,

I'm gonna prove I'm useless here,

I'm gonna prove I'm useless here,

And then I will have won!

 

AGAINST DONALD TRUMP

For Gail White

 

If I were in a crowd with Donald Trump

I would not care to have the bugger bump

Against me and remark, "Excuse you, please,"

Because by then I'd have a case of fleas

Compounded with a nasty nest of lice

And other pestilences not so nice,

As for example anthills filled with ticks

Plus several tapeworms filling out the mix.

I hope Trump does not hold things out against me,

For I would be disgusted most intensely!

How could those women crawl between the sheets

Even for thousands, hold him to their teats

And act as though they liked what he was doing?

(I doubt that one could even call it "screwing."

"Nailing" might be closer in intent,

"Impaling," though,is more like what I meant.

While he works just watch the girls grow paler

Working under Donald the Impaler.

 

EDEN

 

Everyone knows that Adam and 

     Eve

Lived in a leafy bower,

And who doesn't know that 

     Donald Trump

Wanted a Moscow Tower?

 

From MISS PUSSY'S PARLOR SONGS by Claudette McFang.  

 

 

Sent from my iPhone

Miss Pussy's Parlor Songs, Part Twenty-eight

PART TWENTY-EIGHT

 

NOT BORDERLINE

 

"I'm not the Lord,

But I AM the lorder.

Shut off our border!

That is an order."

 

 

GUTS

 

"My gut tells me more than my 

         brain does --

The reason for this is simple:

My gut is the size of a goiter,

My brain is as big as a pimple."

 

 

PUTIN IN A PENTHOUSE

 

"I offered my friend Vlad a no-

                                    rent house

Worth fifty million bucks on top 

                                             of my 

Hotel in Moscow if he'd let me 

                                               build

It there. That never happened.          

                            I 'm not a louse

Because what didn't happen's 

                                        not a lie,

It's just a Russian castle in the 

                                                 air.

 

"A guy can dream, can't he, and 

                                  not be called

A traitor when nothing     

                happens? When a deal

Falls through? I just like building 

                                              walls,

So why should people be     

                                         appalled

When I make money from it? 

                               Walls are real,

Not castles in the sky. When 

                              Mammon calls

 

"I answer, rush to build a well-

                                meant house

So I can offer Vlad a great 

                                   penthouse."

 

PRONE

 

Common sense has been 

                              Trumped,

Intelligence dumped,

And General Kelly

Is out on his belly.

 

 

KASHOGGI WAS A CUTUP

 

Kashoggi was a cutup,

But there is no smoking saw,

So he lies here with his butt up

Looking beaten up and raw.

 

We know the Saudi Crown 

                                          Prince

Was the cause behind the 

                                          scene,

But there us no smoking saw

Lying where Kashoggi's been.

 

The reporter was a cutup,

Now he's just some lumps of meat

Trump says we have to swallow

Smiling while we chew and eat,

 

Fir we  can't upset the Saudis,

They are much too damned 

                                important --

They buy our finest weapons

And their oil must be imported.

 

Yes, Kashoggi was a cutup,

And the Saudis Trump the law,

So he lies here with his butt up

For there is no smoking saw.

 

 

HAVING A SMOCK

 

Now and then Trump likes to have a smock,

And then he taps his keg, turns on his cock.

 

 

DISGUSTION 

 

We watched Schumer and Nancy Pelosi

Have a disgustion with Bela Lugosi.

Miss Pussy's Parlor Songs Part Twenty-Seven

KHASHOGGI

 

"The Sheik of Araby told me

He's not some sort of bogey

And had no hand in the murder of

The journalist Khashoggi.

 

"They did not lure him into their

Embassy in Turkey,

Kill him, cut his body up,

And pile him in a murky

 

"Basement hideaway where he 

Festered in a corner

Until he learned to write nice things

Like little Jackie Horner.

 

"And I believe my oily friend,

He gives me lots of money

Which I respect him for a lot,

And I don't think that's funny! 

 

"But I'll investigate these claims,

And I'll get at the facts

About this weird Khashoggi mess

Like a butcher with an axe."

 

 

FAKE NEWS

 

"I love to yell 'FIRE' in a crowd

And then, when someone sets one,

I blame the bullet that was fired

Or the idiot that gets one."

 

 

FIRED

 

it's okay because I'm tired

Anyway. I've been mired

In his muck, I've been liared

At for months since I was hired

To be his stooge, so now I'm fired.

 

Fine and dandy. Bye-bye, Trumpy!

May your life be short and lumpy.  

 

 

BALLS

 

Baltics, Balkans, I ain't seen 'em!

Not a set of balls between them.

 

 

GRUMPY

 

Donald Trump is feeling grumpy,

For the Democrats have won

Lots of seats that once were 

                                            Trumpy.

Now his works have been undone!

 

Governors have disappeared

All across the USA,

Representatives that he has feared

Have appeared, ruined his day,

 

Not to mention month and year,

So he mopes and pules away,

Wipes away mucus and tear --

What can anybody say

 

To make Trumpkin feel much 

                                           better?

Take away Fake News's passes!

Write that nasty judge a letter

When he shields that bunch if asses!

 

He is just a legal leech 

To defend freedom of speech!

 

 

HIRE AND FIRE

 

Who is Trump about to hire

For his "shitshow in a dumpster 

                                              fire"?

Don't ask me, I'm not a liar.

 

 

NO LOVE AFFAIR

 

Trump wants to help Nancy Pelosi

Keep her leadership of The House?

Watch her button up her blouse!

He cries, "Why don't you?  I love 

                                                    me!"

Nancy shows no jealousy.

 

 

LOYALTY

 

"I will not hear the murder tapes--

They're just a case of sour grapes

Being crushed. My Prince will 

                                                 come

Someday and he will pat my bum

For being purposefully dumb.

He'll thank me for my loyalty

To the Saudi royalty."

 

Miss Pussy's Parlor Songs Part Twenty-Six

PART TWENTY-SIX

SUSAN COLLINS

The Mainely Republican senator
Won't let constituents menace her.
She'll put on the Court
A pro-woman sort
Unless he's a Donald Trump creditor.

MANNEQUIN

Maine's Representative Poliquin
Won't be interviewed or dare frolic in
The media 'cuz
They think he's a scuz,
But he's merely a standard Republican.

TESTICULAR TESTIFICATION

Did white men grill Anita Hill,
Then toss her on the DC landfill?
Did they appoint that dumbass Thomas
For his lifetime to the SCROTUS?
Should Christine Ford just jump aboard
The Brahma bull and then get gored?
If I were she I'd simply flee.


TRUMP'S HURRICANE

"This is a tough hurricane,
One of the wettest we've ever seen
From the standpoint of water."
(But not from the swimpoint of an otter.)


I DO NOT LOVE THEE

I do not love thee, Donald Trump,
I see you and I take a dump --
It hurts because it's such a lump!
I do not love  thee, Donald Trump!


THE INJUDICIOUS JUDGE

We saw him blow his top,
We watched in utter awe
As this resentful man
Displayed his fatal flaw:

His failure to believe
He had a flaw at all
From the moment he was born
Till we saw him start to bawl.

Poor ickle-wickle Brett!
How did we dare accuse
This paradigm of law
Of trying to amuse

Himself at a high-school party
By trying to screw a girl
Without her full consent?
Far, far too drunk to hurl

Her on the bed and strip
Her party clothing off,
He let her get away
And never got his boff!

He gave his best defense,
One he would not allow
In his own court of law:
"Not guilty then and now!

"That's all you need to know!"
Now here we sit in awe
Of this unappointable
New Justice Kavanaugh!


JUSTICE

Rah, rah, rah!
Ha, ha, ha!
I am Justice Kavanaugh!
Justice Thomas sits near me,
Justice Ginsberg on his knee --
Who'll be my gal? Wait and see --
Ha, ha, ha, ha! -- Who she'll be!

Miss Pussy's Parlor Songs, Part 25

 

NATIONAL ENQUIRY

(To the tune of "Where Has My Little Dog Gone?")

 

Where, oh, where has my dear Pecker gone,

Where, oh where can he be,

With my tale cut short and his friendship quite long,

Where, oh where can he be?

 

Alas! I fear that my Pecker has flipped

And he's telling stories on me!

My ass is dragging and his tongue has slipped --

Alas and alack! Woe is me!

 

Where, oh, where has my old Pecker gone,

Where, oh where can he be?

My tale's is unsaved and his safe was quite strong,

Who knows where my sad tale may be?

 

 

R. I. P. JOHN MC CAIN

August 29, 1936 - August 25, 2018.

 

The senator of many terms

Must now become dessert for worms.

No war devoured his flesh or brain,

But his own cells ate John McCain.

 

 

FAREWELL TO DONALD TRUMP

 

Don't insult me, Donald, when I'm gone!

Buddy, though our friendship was never on,

Why not try doing something right 

Now and then? Try hard, with all your might.

We're parting, you'll go your way, I'll go mine

I have just this to do

Give a little diss and hope it brings

Little luck to you.

I think it's kind of funny

How with all your money

Your friends are far snd few.

 

Don't insult me, Donald, when I'm gone 

Please don't talk about me, Donny, when I'm gone.

Though our friendship ceases, from now on,

If you can't say anything real nice,

Do not talk at all, is my advice.

We're parting, you'll go your way, I'll go mine.

I have just this to do:

Here's a little diss, I hope it dumps

Lots and lots of shit on you,

But makes no difference how I carry on

Please don't talk about me

Please don't talk about me

Please don't talk about me

Please don't talk about me

Please don't talk about me

Please don't talk about me, Donny,

And don't come to my funeral when I'm gone!

 

 

MONKEY BUSINESS

 

"My language may be kinda clunky,"

Says Ron DiSantis, "but you know,

Voting for Gillum would be to monkey

Up my nomination, so

 

"Vote for me for Governor

Of Florida, and don't go ape

Over this Black guy! I'm for Trump, 

So you're sure I'll never rape,

 

"'Cuz I can pay for prostitutes,

As my mentor always does,

Fot I'm a Navy lawyer, pal,

Not some Demo-Commie scuz

 

"Like Andy Gillum -- put him back

In the Tallahassee zoo

Where he belongs with simians,

Not on the streets with me and you."

 

 

DONALD TRUMP HOT

 

Donald Trump hot,

Donald Trump cold,

Donald Trump in a plot

With his gold.

 

Some like him hot,

Some like him cold,

Most like him in his plot

With his gold.

 

 

KAVANAUGH

 

What's Justice Ginsberg made of?

Sugar and spice

And everything nice --

That's what she is made of.

 

What is Judge Kavanaugh made of?

Slugs and snails 

And old lizard tails --

That's what he is made of.

 

 

ANNE OMINOUS

 

"She bravely grows euonymus

And signs her tripe 'Anonymous.'"

 

 

TOME

 

As Santa admonishes each elf,

"You have nothing to fear but 'FEAR' itself."

 

 

LITTLE JEFF SESSIONS

(To the tune of "Little Sir Echo.")

 

Little Jeff Sessions, find out who wrote

That op-ed piece! (What op-ed piece?) THAT op-ed piece!

Little Jeff Sessions, don't be a goat! 

(Won't be a goat) Don't be a goat!

Won't you ever do what I say? (I say!)

YOU say? (YOU say!)

You're a dumb Southern fellow

I know by your voice,

But you never will do as I say! (I say!)

 

Don't you dare to recuse yourself! (Recuse myself?)

Again! (Again?) Again! (Again?)

Or I will put you back on the shelf!

(The shelf?) YOUR shelf)

(MY shelf?) YOUR shelf. 

So you had better do what I say! (I say!)

You're a dumb Southern fellow

I know by your voice,

But you'd better do what I say!

Or else! (Or else?) OR ELSE!

 

From MISS PUSSY'S PARLOR SONGS by Claudette McFang.

Sent from my iPhone

Miss Pussy's Parlor Songs, Part Twenty-Four

PART TWENTY-FOUR

 

VISITATION

 

"The boss of Russia's not Rasputin!

I'll visit, not embarrass, Putin,

I do not plan to harass Putin

'cuz he's my pal -- there's no disputin'

I'm as wacko as Rasputin,

And that is just as sure as shootin'!"

 

 

TWIT TWITTERING

 

Donald Trump

Thinks with his rump

And loves to Twitter

With his shitter.

 

 

COILLUSION

 

Donald and Rudy 

Are both being moody --

In the latter's confusion 

He says that "collusion

Is no kind of crime!"

Don says, "About time

We pointed that out!"

But Rudy's a lout,

For Oxford's rendition

Of the true definition

Of "collusion" is "Secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy in order to deceive others...." 

So Trump is a fool,

And Rudy's his tool.

 

 

TRUTH

 

"The truth is not the truth,"

Says Giudy Ruliani,

"My name is not my name,"

Cries Rudy Giuliani.

 

"My nose is not my nose,"

Says Trump's finest attorney,

"His ass smells like a rose

Supine upon a gurney

 

"As Don's rolled down the hall,"

Asserts the spaghetti lawyer,

"To have my nose removed --

I guess they'll need a sawyer

 

"To saw my wooden nose

Off there right at the crack line

Just below the spot

Where most folks have a spine,

 

"Which Donny claims he's got,

But who can tell what's true?

I don't think it is I (me?) --

It's certainly not you!"

 

 

CONVICTIONS

 

Fake news witch-hunt! No collusion!

I won't tolerate restrictions!

You're just stirring up confusion!

I'm a man of great convictions!

 

Sessions fails me with recusion!

Russians screw up our elections!

I can't even get my shoes on

Before I don my new convictions!

 

Manafort -- merely illusions!

Cohen is inventing fictions!

Stab wounds are more than contusions!

I have multiple convictions!

 

 

TRUMP LOSES PECKER

 

"Oh, no! Not Pecker too!

I may have been too cocky!

Flipping should be illegal!

This bed is feeling rocky!

 

"He used to be my friend!

He spiked that woman's story

By buying it, not to publish,

But own its rights to bury

 

"While I was running hard,

Trying for the erection 

Of a college of Electors

That would swing the big election.

 

Now Pecker's gonna soften,

Confirm that female's tale,

And I'll be hoist on my petard

In substance and detail!"

Miss Pussy's Parlor Songs, Part Twenty-Three

 

PART TWENTY-THREE

 

CLINTON CONFESSES

 

"I've suffered historically

Incredibly much, don't you see --

It's not about Trump

Or that Monica lump...,

It's all about Me, Me, Me, Me!"

 

 

GOD BLESS THE PRESIDENT

 

God, bless the President, man that I love!

Stand behind me and hide me

From the flight of the kite up above!

 

When she mounts me saying prayers

With Melania in my home,

God bless the President when he starts to foam,

 

God bless me, Donald Trump, man that I love

With Melania in my home,

God bless the President, wherever I may roam,

God bless me, Donald Trump, however I may roam!

 

 

THE SECRET

 

I have a little secret,

Kim knows the secret too,

But we will keep our secret,

And we're not telling you!

 

 

BOTTLE-BABY SESSIONS

 

"The Bible says that 'Thou shalt strip

Children from their parents

If they trespass upon your land

Without the proper warrants.'"

 

So says the nation's moralist-

In-Chief Jeffrey Sessions.

"This must be done so they may learn

Life's most important leshions...

Er, lessons."

 

 

THE WALL

 

I need to get my Border Wall --

That's what I want, and that's why all 

Those brats in Texas are in jail:

The Democrats want me to fail

And won't sign on to keep scum out!

I'll win this one without a doubt.

 

 

CIVILITY

 

"Let's be civil,

You son-of-a-bitch!"

Says our President,

Scratching his itch.

 

 

From MISS PUSSY'S PARLOR SONGS by Claudette McFang.

Miss Pussy's Parlor Songs, Part 22

PART TWENTY-TWO

 

PLAYMATES

 

I don't want to play in your yard,

You're just too darn mean to me.

I may take the fifth amendment,

You'll just haft-a wait and see.

 

There is no collusion, nossir,

No collusion anywhere,

No collusion with the Russians,

No collusion here and there!

 

I don't know a Stormy Pornstar,

Nor a Stormy Weather either,

If my lawyer paid her money

You should ask was he beneath her!

 

Or you might ask Giuliani,

He should know I would suppose--

He knows stuff I never heard of

Spoken in confusing prose.

 

There's a guy that I admire!

He says what? That I paid back

To my lawyer Stormy's payoff?

Fire him that Guinea whack!

 

 

I RAN CONTRA

 

I ran Contra to Obama

Who was born in darkest Chad,

Not Chicago or Hawai'i,

To a mixed-up mom and dad.

 

I ran Contra to the Clintons:

I beat Hillary really bad

Though she got three million more votes

Than I guess I ever had.

 

Now I get to undo all the

Stuff they did that made them glad....

No collusion! Much confusion!

Wind up Mueller! Sad! So sad!

 

 

DONNY TRUMPKIN

 

Donny Trumpkin, soup on his fly, 

Kissed the porn star and made her sigh.

She said when she had cashed her check,

"I'll talk about it...what the heck."

 

 

INNOCENCE  

 

Does Donald know the meaning of innocence?

In no sense.

 

 

APOLOGY

 

"The dizzy Disney CEO

Did not apologize to me

For all the nasty stuff they said

About me on their ABC,"

 

Said Donald when his fan Roseanne

Dropped racist turds upon an aide

Who worked for our last President,

But for the nasty cracks he made

 

About the Bureau and everyone

In DC that he could despise,

Did Donald Trump take back a tweet

Or look like he'd apologize

 

To an American or Haitian 

Or anyone from a shithouse nation?

 

 

TRUMPARDONS

 

Are you a crooked pal of mine?

I'll pardon you, dear Valentine.

 

 

PARDON ME

 

"I have the right to pardon me

(Though I cannot say 'Pardon me,'

Even when I sneeze or fart --

It's simply not a part of me)."

 

 

From MISS PUSSY'S PARLOR SONGS by Claudette McFang.

Miss Pussy's Parlor Songs, Part Twenty-One, by Claudette McFang

 

PART TWENTY-ONE

 

FIRE, FIRE

 

"Fire, fire! I am a liar!

I am just kidding! My fly is dryer

Now that I've pissed on those I could hire,

Browbeat, batter, drag through the mire

And, as on teevee, fire! Fire!"

 

 

BOLTON

 

Is revolting --

I feel like bolting.

 

 

TRUMP, TRUMP, TRUMP

In my pup-tent here I lie

Thinking, Donald dear, of you,
And your White and slave-built House so far away,
But these tears that fill my eyes

Are attracting lots of flies
Though I try to teach my comrades to be gay.

Chorus:

TRUMP, TRUMP, TRUMP, the boys are marching,

Worry, Wetbacks, here we come,
And beneath our Starry Flag
We shall breathe the air again
In the genocidal land that we call home.

 

 

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

 

Didn't Georgie Boy say that?

He had a sign when he arrived 

board the ship in uniform

To remind us how he had contrived

To avoid war service in the reserves

To achieve the glory he deserves.

 

At least The Donald didn't wear

The uniform of the private school

That he attended before his hair

Turned orange so that he'd look cool

In the fruit trees of the Caribbean --

He just repeated what he had seen,

 

So now he too can be a hero

Since he, like Bush, has accomplished zero.

 

 

THE GANG

 

Trump has a thumb up his rump;

Cohen is gnawing on a bone;

Insanity, thy name is Hannity;

Comey, your mouth is foamy, but

Stormy Daniels takes on spaniels.

 

 

DONALD'S INSULTS

 

"That comic thinks insults are fine.

But the only good insults are mine!"

 

 

AGENT ORANGE

 

Donald Trump takes Agent Orange

To promote the growth of hair,

But he wants his pride to show,

So he shaves his nubbies bare.

 

SAD. VERY SAD

 

Trump now works with Giuliani.

Sad Rudy couldn't work with Ronny.

 

"The Poet's Bible"

 

 

 

       A. R. Ammons, Robert Huff, Lewis Turco, Richard Frost at Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, 1961.

 

A BRIEF HISTORY OF "THE POET'S BIBLE"

        In the fall of 1959 I was a graduate student in the Writers' Workshop of the University of Iowa, a member of the poetry workshop taught by Paul Engle and Donald Justice.  I had always been interested in the traditional forms of poetry — I was born a formalist, and I wanted a reference book that contained the whole range of them, but I'd never been able to find one other than those that contained merely the standard sorts of things: the sonnet, the villanelle, the haiku and tanka, the sestina — mainly the Medieval Italian and Provençal forms plus a few others.

       But what else was there?  Perhaps there weren't enough forms to fill a short book.  Then, one day while I was browsing through the bargain bin of Iowa Book and Supply on Clinton Street in Iowa City, I ran across a book of poems by Rolfe Humphries titled Green Armor on Green Ground.  Humphries had laid out "the twenty-four official meters" of the Medieval Welsh bards, and he had written a poem in each of these complicated syllabic forms.  I bought the volume, of course — I think I paid a quarter for it, or maybe a dollar — and I took it home.  After I'd looked it over a while I got to wondering whether, with such forms as these, I might not be able to gather enough material for a book, particularly if I filled it out with examples of poems written in the forms.  I asked Don Justice whether he thought such a volume would be useful.  He encouraged me, and I began working on the project.

       That period of time when I began putting together what would eventually become, first, The Book of Forms, A Handbook of Poetics  (1968), then The New Book of Forms (1986), The Book of Forms, Third Edition (2000), and finally The Book of Forms, Fourth Edition (2011), which included “Odd and Invented Forms,” was not auspicious for such projects.  The so-called "Beat Generation" was in the process of consolidating its anti-intellectual stranglehold on a generation, and the self-righteous, self-indulgent decade of the 1960s loomed ahead. Heedlessly, I plunged forward.  Within two years I had a manuscript, a combined reference work/anthology that I titled Contemporary Poetry: The Book of Forms.  Between 1961 and 1968 I revised the manuscript over and over again, researching it, sending for books to Europe, rewriting whole sections, paging through volumes of contemporary poetry for examples of poems in the forms and adding them to the volume. 

       Whenever I submitted the manuscript to a publishing house I would argue that, although the book might not sell big, it would sell steadily and it would eventually help to create its own market, but I was always disregarded.  The verdict was ever the same: although it was a good book, there was no market for it.  In 1967, after many fruitless efforts to find a home for the volume, I deleted the poems in order to shorten the book and limit its reprint permissions costs so that a potential publisher might find it more attractive, for the examples I'd chosen were all by living poets. I added a bibliography of the missing poems so that people who were interested might search them out. 

       By a fluke — quite literally by accident, and after more frustrations — E. P. Dutton accepted The Book of Forms in its non-anthology format.  Then I discovered that Cyril I. Nelson, the Dutton paperbacks and poetry editor, would have been happy to have the poems as part of the manuscript.  I wanted the book published without further delay, however, and so it was, in 1968.  Although it did share a full-page ad in The New York Times Book Review when it appeared, it was reviewed only once, by my colleague at S.U.N.Y. College at Oswego Prof. Frank Hulme, in the local newspaper, The Oswego Palladium-Times; nevertheless, it began to sell, strictly by word-of-mouth.

        For sixteen years it stayed in print; then, although it was still selling at a steady rate, as I had predicted that it would, in 1984 The Book of Forms was dropped by Dutton without notification or explanation — Tom Trusky of Boise State University phoned to tell me he couldn't get copies for his classes anymore.  When I checked with the publisher, I found it was true.  Some folks out there in the world of "organic poetry" and "free verse" had bought more than 25,000 copies of The Book of Forms during the period that it was in print, not counting the passing around, the college resales, even the photocopying that went on.  I used to think it was 'passing strange that such a crowd of people was using a book that was at crosscurrents with the tidal flow of the times.

       I never stopped working on The Book of Forms, even while it was going through its several printings which, I might note, I was never informed were going to take place.  I was never given the opportunity to correct a number of typographical errors I had missed in the proofreading, or to reword some of the descriptions — people were misreading them; consequently, I was seeing such phenomena as villanelles with varying line lengths appearing in the London Times Literary Supplement and many other places.

       The year following publication of The Book of Forms the State University of New York Office of Continuing Education asked me to write a correspondence course study guide, Creative Writing in Poetry, and I used as the basis for that text the material I had collected since The Book of Forms had appeared.  The study guide went into service in 1970; the text it called for in the correspondence course was, of course, The Book of Forms.  At S.U.N.Y. College at Oswego, where I was teaching, I simultaneously developed a television course along the lines of the correspondence course; it was called “The Nature of Poetry.”  The Program in Writing Arts, which I had founded in 1968 and that I directed at Oswego, began offering such basic writing courses in the genres of fiction, drama, and poetry as the foundation of the tiered system of the Writing Arts major we developed despite the misgivings of the English Department, for no one believed that the students of the period would enroll in such demanding courses.  But they did, and in considerable numbers; they still do. In fact, the Program is now a Department of Creative Writing.

       In 1971 David M. Ungerer, vice-president of the newly organized Prentice-Hall spin-off Reston Publishing Company, saw a copy of the study guide lying on a table in the office of the Dean of Continuing Education at the State University of New York at Buffalo.  He wrote to ask me to develop a college text-anthology based upon the S.U.N.Y. guide, and in 1973 Poetry: An Introduction Through Writing was published.  I conceived of it as containing everything about poetry not covered by The Book of Forms.  While Poetry: An Introduction was going through its own extra printings, I dreamed of combining it with The Book of Forms eventually, and that is in effect what happened in The New Book of Forms which was snapped up two years after the first edition had gone out of print, as soon as I submitted it to the University Press of New England, an academic boutique publisher that had begun as the Dartmouth College Press.

       On Friday the 27th of June 1987, three days after I sent the proofread page proofs and the completed indices of The New Book back to the publisher, I began to gather together all the manuscript versions of the four books to send to the special collections archives of the Homer Babbidge Library of my Alma Mater, the University of Connecticut.  I also intended to send the typescripts of the Dacey-Jauss anthology Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms, just published, which X. J. Kennedy and I had evaluated separately at the request of the publisher, Harper and Row, and the Miller Williams text-anthology Patterns of Poetry, to be published at the end of the summer of '86, which I had gone over at the request of its editor before it was finally accepted by the Louisiana State University Press.  In the course of this gathering I found the original 1961 manuscript of Contemporary Poetry: The Book of Forms, which I had caused to be bound in order to preserve it as it went its hopeless rounds of the publishers. 

       For the first time in I don't recall how many years I began to read the Introduction I'd written a quarter-century earlier.  I'm afraid I was both pleased and mortified to discover how long I'd been saying the same things.  Here is what I wrote in 1961, the year before I founded the Fenn College Poetry Center of Cleveland at what is now Cleveland State University:

       It used to be said that a sign of the poet is his mastery of the form; the sign of the poetaster is the form's mastery of him. However, one does not hear this very often nowadays.  Instead, when one comes into contact with a writer of verse one is likely to hear that it is not the poet who writes the poem, but the poem that writes itself: the poet is merely a medium through which some kind of cosmic vibrations get themselves transmitted to paper.  One line grows out of another "organically," that is, the first line is somehow inspired by the gods and from the mysterious poetic womb of this line there is born another line, and another, and another, until the poem has completed itself.  The poem is thus seen as a vital organism which exists and procreates naturally.

       This all sounds fine and esthetic, and of course it is tremendously romantic as well, which lends passion to the concept, if such a theory may be dignified by the term "concept."  But upon reflection, perhaps it seems a shallow and useless theory, for then of course poets may be born only, touched by providence with the divine gift of the Muses.

       The truth is, of course, that any good poem must have organic unity, but it is the poet who gives the poem unity, and it can be no other way.  Regardless of all sophistry to the contrary, without the poet there can be no poem; it is the poet who breathes life into the verse which is trying to be a poem; it is the poet who is the creator: he lives, and the poem cannot be born without him.  One line cannot follow another without a mind to link them and a hand to write them.  The poet, therefore, and no other, makes the poem, and the making is seldom easy.

       Take, for instance, the example of Dylan Thomas, who is the very prototype of the romantic bard to most young poets writing today. His verse is full of music; his lines rise and fall majestically, invoking allusion, rhetoric; giving insight and raising towering symbols which are at once primal and sophisticated.  He seems a veritable great wild stallion on the plains of poetry, master of herds of lesser steeds.  His poems must have poured forth spontaneously and grandly, for as he speaks it seems he is talking to the soul's ear.

       But Dylan Thomas often wrote in strict syllabics, always in strict patterns.  His symbols have assigned meanings.  His rhyme schemes are sometimes fantastic, but they are sequential.  Some of Dylan Thomas's poems have been through a hundred drafts.

       Is this how a poem makes itself?  If so, we are slaves to words, lesser organisms being used by literature, and not intelligent beings creating a literature to serve mankind.

       In the interest of sanity the author of The Book of Forms rejects utterly any theory of automatic writing.  In the beginning there may have been The Word, but since then there have been simply words, and if there is magic in them it is a studied magic which only talent, craft, imagination, intelligence and passion may invoke.

       No one, unfortunately, may give a person talent, imagination, intelligence or passion.  These are qualities the origins of which may be debated by the theologians and sociologists, not by me. The Book of Forms can help only with craft — but perhaps one ought not to have said "only," for a writer may have many things, but if he hasn't craft, he will never be a poet.

       A strong statement, and a precarious one.  For what is craft? Simply, craft is skill, as distinguished from talent, which is aptitude.  Skill in what?  Skill in language, including words and their meanings, rhythms, sounds; skill in handling ideas within the conventions of writing; skill in constructing forms that will enhance meaning.  Skill perhaps in saying ordinary things in an extraordinary way, or saying extraordinary things in an ordinary way.

       For all good poems are formal, though not all formal poems are good.  That is, all poems are organized in some way.  The organization may be around an idea, or a symbol, or a sound, or a rhythm, or an image or sequence of images, or any number of things, for each poem has its own locale and focus.  It is for the poet to decide what he is trying to do, and for the reader and time to corroborate or reject the poet's vision and statement.

       But how does one acquire craft?  It is not bestowed upon one, it is learned.  One way in which to learn it is to construct your own forms and, by trial and error, discover what may be done with them. Another way is to experiment with traditional forms and see what may be done with them.  Certainly, reading good poems and analyzing them is a third way, but the best way is to do all three.

       It is more than five decades since I wrote those words.  The Book of Forms has given way to The Book of Forms, Fourth Edition and to two spin-offs, The Book of Literary Terms (1999) and The Book of Dialogue (2004). During that period of time we have had the Beats, the New York School, the Black Mountaineers, the Confessional Poets, the Deep Image Surrealists, The Movement — which included the anti-war, the civil rights, and the early consciousness-raising schools; we have had the subsequent Feminists and the Gay Poetry movement, the Plain-Talkers of the Northwest, Hispanic and Native American and Cowboy and Rap poetry movements, and, most recently, the so-called L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets.  In criticism we have gone from the New Criticism to Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, and Deconstructionism.  But at last the pendulum has swung back, as it was bound to do eventually.

       Miller Williams' Patterns of Poetry was published in August 1986 — it differed from the Dacey-Jauss book in that it was more specifically focused upon the traditional structures of poetry, and it included work by poets ranging back to the Middle Ages. The New Book of Forms appeared in November; less than three years later, in the summer of 1989, it went into its third printing, with more than 10,000 copies in print.  The other Neoformalist books were doing well, too, according to their publishers.

       During the previous score of years before the pivotal year 1986, The Mississippi Review had been nearly alone in devoting a special issue to the subject of form in poetry: in 1977 it had published "The Problem of Form" — poets had been asked to submit a poem and then to write a short comment upon its composition and organization.  Contributors to that issue included Richard Eberhart, William Stafford, Vern Rutsala, X.J. Kennedy, and Richard Wilbur.  A decade later, in 1987, another formalist book following the same format was published, David Lehman's Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms.  Contributors included John Ashbery, Robert Creeley, Dana Gioia, Marilyn Hacker, Anthony Hecht, John Hollander, Richard Kenney, Brad Leithauser, Joyce Carol Oates, Molly Peacock, Robert Pinsky, Louis Simpson (who had been one of the three editors, including Robert Bly and Donald Hall, of the original showcase of the "Academic Poets," The New Poets of England and America, which had been the first shot fired in "the War of the Anthologies" in 1957), Mona Van Duyn, and Richard Wilbur — a real potpourri of both the older formalist poets and Neoformalists, plus many antiformalists, young and old. Now there are many books that pay attention to the formal concerns of verse-writing, and Neoformalism, or "The New Formalism," is no longer a "new" movement in American literature.

 

_______

Notes

Phillip Dacey and David Jauss, editors, Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms, New York: Harper and Row, 1986.

Donald Hall, Robert Pack, and Louis Simpson, editors, The New Poets of England and America [first selection], Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1957.

——, and Robert Pack, editors, The New Poets of England and America, Second Selection, Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1962.

Rolfe Humphries, Green Armor on Green Ground, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1956.

David Lehman, Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms, New York: Macmillan, 1987.

"The Problem of Form," Mississippi Review, vi:1, 1977.

Lewis Turco, The Book of Dialogue, How to Write Effective Conversation in Fiction, Screenplays, Drama, and Poetry, Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2004.

——, The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, New York, NY: E. P. Dutton, 1968.

——, The Book of Forms, Fourth Edition, Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2011.

——, The Book of Literary Terms: The Genres of Fiction, Drama, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism and Scholarship, Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1999.

——, Contemporary Poetry: The Book of Forms, bound ms., Special Collections archives, Iowa City: University of Iowa, n.d.

——, Creative Writing in Poetry, Albany: State University of New York Office of Continuing Education, 1970.

——, The New Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Hanover: University Press of New England, 1986.

——, Poetry: An Introduction through Writing, Reston: Reston Publishing, 1973.

Miller Williams, editor, Patterns of Poetry, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986.