Fifty (50) years ago, on 19 April 1968, I wrote in my journal, "The Book of Forms has arrived! It has the most incredible art nouveau cover." The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, first edition, by Lewis Turco, New York, NY: E. P. Dutton, 1968. Paperback original.
The New Book of Forms, A Handbook of Poetics (second edition of The Book of Forms), Hanover: University Press of New England, 1986 (www.UPNE.com), ISBN 0874513804, cloth; 0874513812, paper.
The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Third Edition, Hanover: University Press of New England, 2000. ISBN 1584650419, cloth; ISBN 1584650222, paper. A companion volume to The Book of Dialogue and The Book of Literary Terms. “The Poet’s Bible."
(Listen to Lewis Turco read his poem, "Body Part.")
I offer you the same old gift again:
This ancient shriveled organ of my flesh
That we have used since who remembers when?
It’s shoddy now, but it was strong and fresh
When we were young. You held it in your hand
And felt its pulse when we had seed to thresh.
It throbbed for you and needed no command
To flame and ache when it was called upon
To do its duty, dilate and expand
To fill the evening or the breaking dawn,
The morn or afternoon with the lover’s art…,
So many years have passed now and have gone
To seed, so many organs have come apart --
Still, I offer you this same old heart.
By Lewis Turco
From The Sonnetarium, by Lewis Turco, New York: Bordighera Press (www.BordigheraPress.org ), VIA Folios 130, 2018. ISBN 978-1-59954-126-6, trade paperback. Available from any bookseller, on-line or off.
Jean and Lew Turco in an Oswego Opera production of Carmen, 1980s
Shaking the Family Tree, A Remembrance, by Lewis Turco, West Lafayette, IN: www.BordigheraPress.org, VIA Folio 15, 1998, ISBN 188441916X, trade paperback.
NEWBURYPORT, MA: On the evening of February 27, 2016, in Newburyport, Mass., Alfred Moskowitz passed away in his home on Charron Drive, where he had lived since late 1990.
Born in the Bronx, N.Y., to Rumanian immigrants David and Mary Moskowitz, Alfred was educated in New York public schools, served as an infantryman on the European front during WW II, returned home in 1945 to attend NYU on the G.I. Bill, and went on to teach Industrial Arts in the NYC public schools for 30 years.
In 1952, he married Rhina P. Moskowitz, with whom he had two sons, and brought up a third. He took a highly active part in the formation of the United Federation of Teachers, and in demonstrations for civil rights, desegregation of the schools, and other liberal social causes. In 1990, the couple moved to Newburyport, Mass., from New York City. For many years Alfred Moskowitz was an active member of the Newburyport Art Association, and of the News & Views Club of Newburyport, among other organizations.
He is survived by his wife, son and daughter-in-law, Philip and Lauren of Georgetown; son and daughter-in-law, Warren and Lori of Ipswich; foster-son, Gaston and daughter-in-law, Colleen of New York; as well as grandchildren, Evan, Ilana, Ambrose, and Perry; brothers, Marvin and Howard; sister-in-law, Gayle; nephews, Gregg, Brad and Keith; and nieces, Janine and Diana.
FOR ALFRED MOSKOWITZ
When last I visited Alfred and his wife We spent the evening talking about his art. Sculpture was his passion, the largest part Of his endeavor, his creative life.
Rhina is a writer. She and I Became the best of friends. Her poetry Shows readers how the heart and mind can fly Through the Muses' ever-greening tree.
Now Alfred's mind and heart have taken wing And she is left alone to write her songs -- She feeds them to the wind: it, too, can sing Even when her heart breaks and belongs
To breezes in the needles and the limbs Of brooding woodlands that can echo hymns.
While I was at the 2013 West Chester University Poetry Conference from June 4-8 I met many old friends and made some new ones, including Anna Evans with whom I discussed the pantoum and some of her experiments with it. This is the entry on the pantoum from the new Fourth Edition of The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics:
The PANTOUM, a Malayan form, is an interlocking poem composed of quatrain stanzas, and all the lines are refrains. The meter is generally iambic tetrameter or pentameter. The second and fourth lines of each stanza become the first and third lines of the following stanza: A1B1A2B2, B1C1B2C2 and so forth. It can be ended with a circle-back to the two unrepeated lines of the first stanza, or in a couplet made of those lines in reversed order: A2A1.
THE EUNUCH CAT
She went to work until she grew too old,
Came home at night to feed the eunuch cat
That kept the mat warm and its eyeballs cold.
She walked, but ran to wrinkles, then to fat,
Came home at night to feed the eunuch cat,
Then went to bed, slept dreamlessly till eight,
And waked. She ran to wrinkles, then to fat.
She fixed her supper, snacked till it was late,
Then went to bed, slept noisily till eight —
Must I go on? She'll feed the cat no more.
She fixed her supper, snacked till it was late,
Then died at dawn, just halfway through a snore.
Must I go on? — she'll feed the cat no more
To keep the mat warm and its eyeballs cold.
She died at dawn, just halfway through a snore;
She went to work until she grew too old.
-- Wesli Court
When I got back home I found this e-mail message from Anna already waiting for me:
Dear Lewis,
It was great meeting you at West Chester and being able to talk about forms. Thanks for offering to consider putting my haikoum on your blog. Here it is, along with another two I've written and the information you wanted.
In April 2010 I decided to follow the National Poetry Month challenge of writing a poem a day, and in order to make this easier on myself I decided all of them would be pantoums. (Note: I knew this would be easier, but whether this is because I'm a formalist geek or simply because I'm obsessed with structure and control, I couldn't say!)
Of course, writing 30 basic pantoums in blank verse iambic pentameter quatrains would be incredibly dull, so I aimed for variations, and therefore over the course of the month I invented two new versions of the pantoum--the haikoum and the sonnetoum. A haikoum is 8 haiku which is also a 6 quatrain pantoum:
HAIKOUM
Red tulips bloom
beside wilting daffodils:
spring changes hands.
Storm-felled trees scattered
beside wilting daffodils:
the sky is too blue.
Storm-felled trees scattered
by winter's last big tantrum:
the sky is too blue.
Patched up, the fabric ripped
by winter's last big tantrum:
the quarrel is done.
Patched up, the fabric ripped
out of the family home.
The quarrel is done.
They have closed the blinds
out of the family home:
no one can reach them.
They have closed the blinds;
they will not come out again.
No one can reach them.
Red tulips bloom;
they will not come out again:
spring changes hands.
-- Anna Evans
TRIPLE LUTZ
The ice, newly smooth:
a sheet of crisp white paper;
the skate blades, the ink.
Skaters trace the ice,
a sheet of crisp white paper,
with strange loops and whirls.
The skate blades, the ink
emptied into new poems
strange with loops and whirls.
All life's sadnesses
empty into new poems:
white anesthesia.
Our life's sadnesses,
erased by skating backwards:
white anesthesia.
Keep checking behind:
erased by skating backwards,
your first strokes forward.
Keep checking behind;
avoid others in your path.
You're first! Stroke forward!
The ice, newly smooth;
avoid others in your path,
skaters. Trace the ice!
-- Anna Evans
MEMORY PALACE
The old poets set down words,
drinking vessels, purses, stones,
so they'd remember:
The frames of the songs,
drinking vessels, purses, stones,
the things they lived with.
The frames of the songs
lean like ancient monuments,
the things they lived with.
The day your parents
lean like ancient monuments
you cover your ears.
The day your parents
forget how to remember
you cover your ears.
Furnish the rooms or
forget how to remember—
pictures, figurines.
Furnish the rooms or
prepare to lose the building,
pictures, figurines.
The old poets set down words,
prepared to lose them, building
so they'd remember.
-- Anna Evans
A sonnetoum is 2 sonnets which is also a 7 quatrain pantoum, rhyme scheme:
I read "Triple Lutz" in New York and David Katz fell in love with the form. He has since written several, one of which, "Haikoum for James Dean," we published in the Raintown Review. You can reach him at <[email protected]>
I hope this is sufficiently interesting for your blog and please feel free to email me with any further questions.
Sorry if I'm taking liberties with that salutation, but it's a habit Moira Egan and I got into among ourselves when working with our Hot Sonnets anthology. I hope you're taking note of the rave reviews it continues to get and are aware that the book is being used in numerous college classrooms—doubtless improving the class atmosphere and temperature.
Here's my idea: I'd like to look at another "something hot" from you — specifically, a recipe or description of a dish — for possible use in a piece of fiction I'm working on. It stars Simone Stiles, a Johns Hopkins PhD drop-out who is becoming famous for her erotic cookbooks, including Orgasmic Organics, Smokin’ Loins and Buggery (this last about making yummy and/or aphrodisiac edibles out of stuff — not excluding bugs — which people find yucky. (Of course that makes way for all sorts of oysters, ocean- and mountain.)
The epigraph for Simone's abandoned PhD dissertation, by the way, is Mark Strand's "Eating Poetry." Thanks to Moira, Strand has already given me permission to quote it in the story. Since I'm rather fond of fiction which contains some non-fictitious people (Thomas Pynchon liked it too), I'm hoping to include Moira, Hot Sonnets (surely it was a source of inspiration to Simone), and some food fun from real-life contributors to the anthology.
So: how about sending me a recipe or just a description of a dish which is somehow "hot"— in the sexy sense or the double entendre sense? Or something for Buggery which uses ingredients that many find repellent but produce something delicious?
If you do send, please include a few of your own words characterizing the dish and also let me know whether you'd be OK with my using your actual name in the story or would prefer me to characterize you simply as "one of the famous poets from the anthology."
Here's an example of what I had in mind: Ilse Munro, wonderful writer and online editor of Little Patuxent Review, sent me a recipe for a Latvian aspic from pig-parts-broth, pointing out that its gelatinous quivering upon the platter "can be quite suggestive." I have a few recipes of my own which involve possibilities during the cooking process, and Simone particularly likes this kind of recipe for her barbecue book (Smokin’ Loins). In fact, there are a number of poems about sexy cooking in Hot Sonnets. You might be willing to let me quote some tidbits even if you don't have an actual recipe to send.
Don't think about this too hard. Just let your mind riffle freely and a bit raunchily through your cookery file and your poem file and hit “Reply.” I would like to have your contribution by Thanksgiving, which is just around the corner. (I guess turkey giblets qualifies — do you do anything interesting with giblets? Ever nibbled leftover candied yams in bed w/a friend?) Also, please understand that the story, even if it develops into a novella, may not provide room for all recipes received.
Off to tend the tongue simmering on my stove as I write—
Clarinda
"Three Recipes" first appeared in The Critic, xxvii:1, Aug.-Sep., 1968;
"Sherried Artichoke Chicken" was anthologized in John Keats's Porridge, edited by Victoria McCabe, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1975.
Lew,
These are a marvel! Thank you, thank you! I imagine Simone will be quoting from all three, though I personally think #1 is the sexiest (despite the painful idea of hatching an artichoke). Since her public name, Simone Stiles, is one she made up in homage to another exhibitionist, Simon Stylites, she will probably want to use both your names.
Hmmm. Perhaps she'll start on another book, Carousing (only recipes using booze), Savagery (wild game cooking, which really, there is, in real life, a need for), or maybe Drinking with Savages (booze and wild game) or (but no, I can hardly bring myself to type it) Soread-Eagled (devoted to stuffings).
I am so grateful! And btw, these are three of my favorite Turco/Court poems.
Clarinda
Glad you're happy with them, Clarinda,
Though they were published in the 'sixties, and one of them was even anthologized, they were lost for years until I reacquired them by writing to a library for a photocopy; they've never been collected. I remember writing them from recipes I saw in a women’s magazine my wife had.
The Virginia Quarterly Review "The Mutable Past," a memoir collected in FANTASEERS, A BOOK OF MEMORIES by Lewis Turco of growing up in the 1950s in Meriden, Connecticut, (Scotsdale AZ: Star Cloud Press, 2005).
The Tower Journal Two short stories, "The Demon in the Tree" and "The Substitute Wife," in the spring 2009 issue of Tower Journal.
The Tower Journal A story, "The Car," and two poems, "Fathers" and "Year by Year"
The Tower Journal Memoir, “Pookah, The Greatest Cat in the History of the World,” Spring-Summer 2010.
The Michigan Quarterly Review This is the first terzanelle ever published, in "The Michigan Quarterly Review" in 1965. It has been gathered in THE COLLECTED LYRICS OF LEWIS TURCO/WESLI COURT, 1953-2004 (www.StarCloudPress.com).
The Gawain Poet An essay on the putative medieval author of "Gawain and the Green Knight" in the summer 2010 issue of Per Contra.
The Black Death Bryan Bridges' interesting article on the villanelle and the terzanelle with "The Black Death" by Wesli Court as an example of the latter.
Seniority: Six Shakespearian Tailgaters This is a part of a series called "Gnomes" others of which have appeared in TRINACRIA and on the blog POETICS AND RUMINATIONS.
Reinventing the Wheel, Modern Poems in Classical Meters An essay with illustrations of poems written in classical meters together with a "Table of Meters" and "The Rules of Scansion" in the Summer 2009 issue of Trellis Magazine
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