Author: mary

Fire No Guns, Shed No Tears

It’s pretty obvious that I love repetition in my poetry. Every quatrain in “The Marian Lee” opens with the same line; the quatrains and the tercets are all mono-rhyme. Each quatrain in “Wear the Lightning” ends with the same phrase.

So I am delighted by the form of Stan Roger‘s “Barrett’s Privateers”.

The second line of every verse (in which all sing) is “How I wish I were in Sherbrooke now!” From the poet’s point of view this isn’t too bad a line to repeat, both from the stance of (1) having it accumulate meaning as the song/story progresses and (2) having only one line into which to get to the point where repeating it would make sense. In fact, in this case, there are a number of instances where the cognitive dissonance between the first line of the verse and “How I wish I were in Sherbrooke now!” is a wonderful frisson, which grows as you gain insight into the story (and listen to it repeatedly).

There are only three free, or variable, lines in each verse: the first one, and the two lines sandwiched between “How I wish I were in Sherbrooke now!” and the following:

God Damn them all! I was told
We’d cruise the seas for American gold
We’d fire no guns, shed no tears
Now I’m a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett’s privateers.

Admittedly, Rogers gives away the whole story in the first verse when we get to this utterly huge repeton. But the point is, of course, to watch the tragedy unfold, and to ramp up the volume and the harmony along with the inevitability. Rogers is amazing.

From a poet’s point of view, I am gleeful: how does he manage to propel the story along with only two lines before we crash back into the whole group singing “God Damn them all!”???

It’s a reminder that you can probably say it in fewer words, that there is room in the form if you find the right words. Of course, it probably helps to have such an extraordinary repeton.

Full Moon Tonight

I am in a mood for Judith Wright poetry, to rail against the world and still find beauty. And the full moon tonight stops me turning pages at:

Old Woman’s Song

The moon drained white by day
lifts from the hill
where the old pear-tree, fallen in storm,
puts out some blossom still.

Women believe in the moon.
This branch I hold
is not more white and still than she
whose flower is ages old;

and so I carry home
this branch of pear
that makes such obstinate tokens still
of fruit it cannot bear.

Wright’s poem is in quatrains (four-line stanzas) with a rhyme scheme of ABCB, meaning that the second and fourth lines rhyme and the first and third have no relation to each other or to the even-numbered lines. I’d identify this piece as “heterometrical” because I think the lines are mostly iambic but rarely do they contain the same number of iambic feet. I like this “form” because it allows the reader to experience the rhythm of the poem and allowes the writer to use the visual effect of line breaks.

To me this poem speaks of the futility of beauty, and more: the persistence of beauty in spite of said futility.

The first line of the second stanza shocks me with its end-stopped-ness and its implications: men don’t? What is there to believe? What does that belief gain you or subtract from you? Lots of moonlit paths to pursue.

And what does the title tell me? That this is not the epiphany of a young woman, although the poem, by its existence, lends this epiphany to those of any age or identity. But it is the voice of a woman who feels she is past her prime and may be looking for a reason to keep going.

It’s a beaut.

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Crossover.

Help Wanted

I have always admired how Peg is so open to poetry; it seems to trip her, hide under rocks for her, shout.

I can’t seem to get poetry into my life in the way that she does but I would like to try. I don’t necessarily even think that I mean reading poetry, because I do that, it’s more a necessity for other people’s words. (Writing words is my necessity.)

How do I do that? I would like advice, please, suggestions, improvements, deportment, poems to read, maybe, I don’t know. Some help. I would like the input of poetry to be as vital to me as the output is. How do I do that?

Women in Iran

Excerpts from Niloufar Talebi’s Belonging: New Poetry by Iranians Around the World.

From Reza Farmand’s “My Mother Did Not Become Beautiful”:

My mother was not able to
Avoid bearing children
Or secretly
One night
Feed her uterus
To dogs.

My mother
Could not scour away
The thick crust
Of human ignorance
As she could the burnt
Hardened rice
On the bottom of the pot.

My mother was not able to
Win her wings
And breathe the boundless
Air of knowledge.
In her,
Stews repeated themselves
Teas repeated themselves
And the bubblings of meat soup.

….

My mother was not able to
Learn a spell
Become a bird
And one dawn of day
Break out
Of the kitchen window.

…

Granaz Moussavi’s “Post-Cinderella”:

I have gone so far for you
that my foot does not fit in any lone shoe
but has to,
so much has to have gone from me
to fit into you.

Not Lorca’s Green

Perhaps this has already been done, perhaps it is tasteless, but it is what I needed to write, and I only half believe those detractions may be true. Modified triolets are the only way I can parse the news.

Do you recall when Michael Jackson died?
The crowds, their rhythmic fists, the scenes
of Tehran bleeding in a sea of green?
That Neda Agha-Soltan died
for a democracy the whole world had denied?
We listen but that bridges no divide.
Do you recall when Michael Jackson died?
Tehran, bleeding, in a sea of green.

What Feeds Us

I went to hear Diane Lockward read at the Dire Literary series in Cambridge.

There was an hour of open mic readings (which I arrived moments too late to sign up for), a break, and then the 3 featured readers. I enjoyed all the featured readers, although I thought Kim Adrian’s piece was a little too long to listen to.

I had never heard Diane read before and it was a treat. She’s so expressive, both in her tone and her phrasing. I’ve never heard anyone read the way she does and it is enchanting.

Because they are mostly free verse poems, I think it is impossible to capture how she does read on the page. Even metrical poetry wouldn’t notate the pitches she uses. So I encourage you to hear her, if she’s ever in your neck of the woods.

Read “Pyromania” (scroll down to the bottom of the page), which opens:

The heart wants what the heart wants,
and what it wants is fire.

Thank you, Diane!

Monster Bowl

Since Peg mentioned it, I took a stab at a poem inspired by the feast-bowl.

I’m ambivalent about it, although it felt like real writing.

I stayed to play with shells
to float the leaves downstream
to find what dusk means
to an adult. The darkness twists
its hands around me
covering my every breath
with canine step or howl
the sound of wings on air
the air-shake as the tree
beside me shivers with a predator.
The moon comes up
and in the brightness I see home
until the light fills in
with teeth and claw
and opens wider, grinning, hungry,
singing that all children
taste so beautiful in flight, in fear.

Don’t Laugh

More Mongol stories come out as heterometrical lines, opening:

Take this knife.
Your mother might have known a better way,
instructed you in how to please a man,
but I am father third and will not woo again.

I’m still one behind but I am optimistic about tomorrow night.