Auntie's Anti-Poems [Archive] - Page 2 - Literature Network Forums

AuntShecky

03-16-2011, 05:10 PM

Thanks for the comments re: #243

Ol’ MacDonald

Though the pickings weren't all that slimy
half a century ago, with rare
perspicacity you saw
the creep of the collective brow
inching southward, shifting down.

Still, it wasn't at all difficult to see
quite fairly how the great
were bullied by the middling,
as if Gresham’s Law diversified
from the deeply rooted realm
of money into the less-worldly world,

not so much driving genius
away as elevating the average
to excellent, squeezing in a place
for non-threatening, lackluster
children at the grownup table.

Out of the wheat-covered prairies
straight-up novels reaped praise
from Bible-leaning folks -- leaving
gospels from an author’s youth
abandoned on the shore
for some old man and a fish;

believing songs of a chirping lass
as classy as Pygmalion, worshiping
warmth in Rockwell’s secular
apotheosis of the illustrated town;
ennobling Grant Wood’s
barnyard, Wyeth’s emotive hill.

You must take cold-eyed comfort
in the fact you no longer dwell
where the best is worse
than merely an “enemy of the
good” (as Voltaire said),
but deemed complex
and thus dismissed.

Consider yourself kissed
by Fortune, sparing you
from sitting through
a Disney-fied Aida,
amid a wasteland overrun
with cats, or the Bard
relieved of his depth
by the magic of 3-D,
or Leonardo chiefly
credited with creating a code,
prosaic prose mistaken for poetry--
proudly presented by, brought
to you by –well, take my word
you're lucky to have missed it
(wherever you may be.)

Here, “Elitist,” would label you,
as damnable as lice--
though a pretty neat trick
for an individualistic anarchist,
the kind of earthy egalitarian
who could level with a guy!
You'd never find present-day comrades,
their cognate to your Pinot, a vin ordinaire;
they depend on languid liquor to rebut
but--unlike Trotsky--without a shot of humor.

Every day we're “challenged”
(as it’s said) to uncover thinkers
who are unafraid to think,
and we hear fewer
and fewer wags whose shtick
is too hip for the room.
Why do I have this unshakable
suspicion that you may have been
The Last Man on Earth
who could get the joke?

Delta40

03-16-2011, 05:28 PM

Omg! I'm one of the dumb ones here. I really would be the last person on earth to get it Aunty! I guess you don't watch mindless sitcoms either....(praise be to you!)

deryk

03-16-2011, 05:45 PM

Typo on line 54. Egalitarianism as an opposition to self-critical improvement is the most relevant subject in modern writing, I think (I know 'relevant' is such a dirty word, consider me vulgar).

The allusions were delightful. I laughed while I read it. I'm sure I'll cry later on.

Hawkman

03-16-2011, 07:36 PM

What a wonderful rant! But I have to wonder at the loss of gratuitous artistry... Let me take an engineering analogy. When Bazelgette built the great steam powered pump houses to expel the effluvia of London's population, he created great baroque palaces in cast iron and gleaming brass. For the age in which he lived, time and labour were much, much cheeper. Go a little further back and great artists required patrons to support and finance their imaginations. Further back still, there was slavery, be it the villain craftsman in thrall to a fudal overlord or some poor sod grafting for the Ceasars. Even education is an expensive luxury, so few from the proletariate are now able to appreciate the mysteries of language and the sage like bards who plied their art in letters. Everything is colloquial and couched for the lowest common denominator to ensure a fast turn around and a quick buck. Erudition is a dirty word because, counter-intuitively, it hinders communication with a general public who don't understand the words! Hey, Ho! I blame Hemingway and LBJ! :D

deryk

03-16-2011, 11:51 PM

Very well said, but why LBJ (I have my reasons, but I'm wondering what yours are)? I'm curious.

Edit: Never mind, his victimizing proceeded himself well enough.

PrinceMyshkin

03-17-2011, 09:31 AM

An extraordinary rant but a rant all the same, thinly disguised as poetry when it would do better as a reasoned essay, where the strong points you make might not need to be made so artfully.

Bar22do

03-17-2011, 05:46 PM

Hawk is right, one can't be erudite and communicate these days... and one has to be erudite to get all your poem's references (well, except Pygmalion and da Vinci Code and perhaps Voltaire... ); otherwise - what a rant indeed (I went on too long an apnea while listening to what N was ranting on about!) oh, Auntie!...
I've only just surfaced, fascinated and speechless. What an effective poem, if you care to judge from my reaction...
Warmest regards as always,
Bar

AuntShecky

03-18-2011, 08:03 PM

I was hoping somebody would catch that the piece was about one of only three famous Americans named Dwight--
the first, nicknamed "Ike," a distinguished WWII generaland former President of the U. S. of A, the second, nicknamed "Doc," a phenomenally brilliant pitcher on the baseball mound and plagued by (in my opinion) a tragic personal life, and the third is Dwight MacDonald, noted leftist ("individualistic anarchist"), film critic, editor,
and most notably writers of cultural essays, the most influential of which is "Masscult and Midcult." That's the Dwight, Dwight MacDonald" to whom this poem is dedicated.

Thanks for all of your comments, and I'll comment on the comments anon. Right now the room where Pong 2.0 (the pc) is being used for the purposes for which it is intended, which means I've got to log out and scram (for now.)

AuntShecky

03-20-2011, 06:34 PM

Here are some replies to your wonderful responses to
#254, an elegy/encomium (without fulfilling any of the criteria of those forms) to Dwight MacDonald. I felt freer about posting it, since Blank_Verse's (admittedly better) piece about Charles Simic.

Omg! I'm one of the dumb ones here. I really would be the last person on earth to get it Aunty! I guess you don't watch mindless sitcoms either....(praise be to you!)

I thoroughly disagree with your second line and also the third and fourth. I watch sitcoms all the time (or used to.)

Typo on line 54.

I found line 45 (I think!) but can't find the typo. Would you please be more specific so I can correct the thing?

What a wonderful rant! But I have to wonder at the loss of gratuitous artistry... Let me take an engineering analogy. When Bazelgette built the great steam powered pump houses to expel the effluvia of London's population, he created great baroque palaces in cast iron and gleaming brass. For the age in which he lived, time and labour were much, much cheeper. Go a little further back and great artists required patrons to support and finance their imaginations. Further back still, there was slavery, be it the villain craftsman in thrall to a fudal overlord or some poor sod grafting for the Ceasars. Even education is an expensive luxury, so few from the proletariate are now able to appreciate the mysteries of language and the sage like bards who plied their art in letters. Everything is colloquial and couched for the lowest common denominator to ensure a fast turn around and a quick buck. Erudition is a dirty word because, counter-intuitively, it hinders communication with a general public who don't understand the words! Hey, Ho! I blame Hemingway and LBJ! :D

Thanks, Hawk. Dwight MacDonald, who died in 1982, wrote the essay "Masscult and Midcult" in 1960, I believe, and was responding to the culture of the 50s (mostly) rather than that of LBJ. MacDonald admired Hemingway's earlier works, but thought The Old Man and The Sea to be "middle-brow" (there's a reference to that in my piece.

An extraordinary rant but a rant all the same, thinly disguised as poetry when it would do better as a reasoned essay, where the strong points you make might not need to be made so artfully.

Not a "rant," more akin to Blank_Verse's poem about Charles Simic, even though his posts are superior.

I didn't want to post it as a "reasoned essay," because every time I put prose on the LitNet, everybody gets pissed
off.

Your philosophical musings are always in the form of verse, aren't they, Prince? I, for one, am really glad that they are. Same with The Dunciad and with Macflecknoe.[

Wouldn't it be great if 30 years after our demise somebody wrote a poem about us?

And Bar, you're the one of the most erudite LitNutters I know!

deryk

03-21-2011, 01:57 AM

I found line 45 (I think!) but can't find the typo. Would you please be more specific so I can correct the thing?

It's very difficult for one to spot something so minor, once it has already been committed.

for a individualistic anarchist,

The indefinite article is incorrect. For a second, I thought it might have been intentional, given the subject, but somehow that didn't strike me as your style.

AuntShecky

03-21-2011, 02:14 PM

The indefinite article is incorrect.
.

Oh my God-- you're right! I'll fix it right away. Many thanks from your red-faced auntie.

AuntShecky

03-22-2011, 05:08 PM

“Today’s Theme Will Be ‘What Being an American Means to Me’ “

God could have made me
beautiful or privileged or brilliant,
but instead He made me plain
and poor and just smart
enough to know what
I was missing. He also
made me American, right down
to the soft and gooey, genial core.

All of this comes with the territory
of the good ol’ U. S. of A.: rugged
and wild at bottom yet always refining,
redefining what is possible-- Hell!
Even the impossible is probable
in the good ol’ U. S. of A.

We believe, deep down in our spongy,
artery-hardened heart (of hearts) we can
eat anything we want and not get fat, can
own anything we want to have – We can!
because it is our God-given right,
our sacred right (as Americans.)

It means we have to Sacrifice.
We have to devote our entire lives
to the Heaven-sanctified quest--
that holy grueling grail-- to seek
through markets, within dim-
witted schemes, down between
fuzzy cushions of comfy couches
the Mean Green, the dough-
re-mi, the root of every
necessary evil. (We do this,
preferably, legally.)

When we're not upending
every rock, rifling every pocket
in the world for money, we're busy
seeking answers–
not any old answer, not necessarily
the right answer, but the answer
we happen to be seeking.
Not sure what it looks like,
or sounds like, or smells like,
we'll know we've found The Answer
when we find the one we like.

That’s my theme
on “What Being an American
Means to Me.” What’s
the hold-up with my gold
star and my “A”?

Here's the much more dignified and definitely less sarcastic
original. (http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/English_B.html)

Hawkman

03-22-2011, 06:12 PM

I loved the idea of holy gruel, definitley spiritual food for thought :D Good fun this, Auntie! I think you may be a little hard on yourself though - I've put a gold star in the post!

Live and be well. H

deryk

03-23-2011, 10:47 PM

I cannot punch my way out of this paper bag. As someone who spends too much time inside the U.S. secondary school system, this is nothing but a series of stiff reminders. The recalcitrants and deviants eat the authorities for breakfast and are rewarded in kind for their efforts. We'll be praying to them soon enough. /end hyperbole

Addendum: This poem inspired me to start writing from personal experience once more.

Bar22do

03-24-2011, 04:48 AM

Well, I'm not American, but think your anti- could apply to many other countries in the world... is it because of globalization...
best as always, Auntie, Bar

AuntShecky

03-24-2011, 01:21 PM

Thanks, Hawk, Deryk, and Bar.
The ditty was not really a parody of Langston Hughes's work as it doesn't fulfill the criteria of a parody, i.e. following the form of the original exactly. It's not even in the same spirit; except for the penultimate line of his poem, Langston's much greater work is not as cynical and sardonic in tone as this current posting.

For the past couple of decades, high school English classes have included Hughes's poetry in their curricula, wisely so. I do suspect, however, that it has been chosen for the wrong reasons. True, his work can fall under the category of "multi-cultural;" it is also true that adolescents can "relate" to Hughes's subjects. I would prefer that Hughes had been chosen simply because his work is good--which it is.

For instance, "Theme for English B" isn't strictly autobiographical. The poem is dated 1951--possibly date of pub. rather than the year he wrote it. Hughes was not a student at the time, though; he had graduated from Lincoln University in 1929. The poem, therefore, is not strictly autobiographical. The details, such as the local NY place names, could be "emotions recollected in tranquillity," in a way. Neverthess, there is absolutely no doubt that the theme of racial inequality which affected Hughes his entire life is handled so intelligently, skillfully, and subtly in his poems, cf. "Mother to Son" --"Life for me ain't been no crystal stair." The mother, not Hughes himself, is the speaker in that poem.

What I love about "Theme for English B" is how it makes gentle fun of a common school assignment, and the clichéd instruction: "Make it come out of you." Even more than that is the willingness of the speaker to meet the "instructor" --a representative of the white establishment- half-way:

But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white---
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that's true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me---
although you're older---and white---
and somewhat more free.

How about that word "somewhat"? It speaks volumes. Hughes's lines are deceptively simple and straightforward, yet imbedded multi-levels of meaning can be found beyond a literal reading. Every time I read something by Langston Hughes I see something new, similar to the experience I have when reading Robert Frost.

So, Deryk-- as you say, you're going to use "personal experience" in your creative writing. In one sense, that's all we can do, but I hope you try to do it in the way as Langston Hughes and Robert Frost. When we say "self-expression," it's always better to emphasize the "expression" over the "self." At least, that's what yours fooly tries to do.

But I don't always succeed.

deryk

03-24-2011, 07:45 PM

So, Deryk-- as you say, you're going to use "personal experience" in your creative writing. In one sense, that's all we can do, but I hope you try to do it in the way as Langston Hughes and Robert Frost. When we say "self-expression," it's always better to emphasize the "expression" over the "self." At least, that's what yours fooly tries to do.
Undoubtedly. My problem has always been when I try writing from that mode, I end up deconstructing myself into oblivion. So I'm left without either expression or the self but just a shadow of meaning.

AuntShecky

03-29-2011, 02:26 PM

{Continuing with themes in #253 and #264 (above^^^), this piece owes its title to a dialogue balloon from One Big Happy, the daily comic strip created by Rick Detorie.}

“Staring failure in the face and calling it ‘winning’–- that’s the closest thing we have to an American religion.” –Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone

“Selfish Steam”

To heaven floats a mist above the flame.
Incense of self expands the boiler’s girth.
The Faithful worship ideals of their worth
and genuflect on mention of their names.
Contrary fact’s been banished from the frame
where good works have vanished (as in their dearth.)
This faith alone rushed, streaming since their birth
and dreaming righteously. Still, tardy fame –-
as curriculum vitae lacks its turn–-
has dammed up aspiration in the lungs.
The puffy aye deflates; the stove’s gone cold.
Now, dismally, baptismal fonts must spurn
the sinless air, full-steaming in the young,
to damn esteem in pots boiled dry and old.

Delta40

03-29-2011, 04:33 PM

deryk

03-29-2011, 05:04 PM

"Selfish Steam" was appropriately scalding -rather than scolding. You've dispensed with what I thought were some rather aqueous abstractions, but meticulously melded with the properties of steam-works. Once the mold is complete, I'm left with feelings of an inverted faith, and the pains that follow. Reading this hurt, so given your subject, I'd say you've succeeded.

It's very interesting how airy this strikes me, and how lofty it is not; I feel as though the distance of the occasion from the objects of the poem is a bit stretched, but that could just be my semi-educated reading, in other words, I'm sure there are allusions I have missed. Either way, it is still an accomplishment.

Hawkman

03-29-2011, 05:52 PM

Well Auntie, you unleash a Petrarchan sonnet on us but I can't help feeling the form rather obscures the message here.

"Contrary fact’s been banished from the frame
where good works have vanished (as in their dearth.)"

in particular I find awkward. The forced rhyme of dearth with the end rhyme birth in the next line, just feels out of place and tautologous. A dearth is an absence and you've already said vanished. It might have worked if you'd gone on to expand the point in the same sentance, but the full stop pulls it up short.

However, picking through it I detect that you satirise the myth of the self-made, where success may be counted in the number of times an individual may have been declared bankrupt :D or how the self image is tailored only to admission of success, regardless of those failures swept under the carpet.

I found this one rather heavy going though, but mainly, I think, this is down to the form imposed on it.

Cracking effort though, Auntie.

Live and be well - H

Bar22do

03-30-2011, 05:28 PM

I don't understand your last very well, Auntie, but your previous, "American" one reminded me of G. Bernard Shaw's word: "An asylum for the sane would be empty in America." :smilewinkgrin: Hope you don't mind... now I'll read your last again and understand a little better perhaps.
Yours devoted
Bar

AuntShecky

03-30-2011, 06:06 PM

Delta, I checked out your Aussie thing and placed a comment there. (Love ya!)

Thank you Bar for giving #271 a look, and thank you as well, Hawk.

To your conscientious comments I can only say that the piece came to me after reading the line in Rolling Stone, which forms the epigraph above the title. I'm guessing a couple of LitNutters are beside themselves over the fact that Old, Old, Old Auntie actually reads Rolling Stone.

Anyway, I'm thinking that juxtaposing self-esteem (exploiting the metapor of Rick Detorie's funny phrase "selfish steam") upon religious imagery might --"might" in craftier hands-- make a metaphysical poem. I see by the comments, though, that both conceits have been "yoked by violence" together.

I hate "'splainin'" as Desi used to make Lucy (on "I Love Lucy.") But I will attempt to 'splain the line about "good works." Some religions hold that faith alone is enough to "save" a person; others say you have to do "good works" as well as having faith. They've "vanished" then, because the person who has overweening faith in his own self doesn't bother doing any "good works." And since his inflated "selfish steam" has come without the benefit of corroborating evidence (or achievements to justify his inflated ego) there's a "dearth" of that meaning of "good work" as well.

What's ironic is that the line I'd thought you'd nail me on, Hawkman, was line 12 -- it has ten syllables, but all the stresses fall in the wrong place.(Fixed, 3/31/11.)

Thank you, everybody!

AuntShecky

04-13-2011, 02:42 PM

For some reason not " 'splainable" to me, yours fooly keeps returning to the same theme, even in the anti-fiction. Cf. "The Worm" (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1021887#post1021887)

Same with this next ditty, which is the opposite approach to the last anti-poem ( #270 in this thread.) Here, as they say, goes nothin':

Wrong on Schedule

I missed the bus. Loathing to wait
for the expected turtle rate,
I saw its fleeting, fuming tail.
In vain I waved, arms in full-flail.
Too soon it came, I came too late.

Called to re-set the doctor date.
No alibi could well relate
the silly, squalid, sorry tale:
“I missed the bus.”

More fuel for kinfolk to berate
ball-dropping, my consistent state.
Unsettling scores, they’re quick to rail
that ev’ry move I make, I fail.
The emblem, thus, of my life’s fate:
I missed the bus.

everyadventure

04-13-2011, 03:00 PM

"Wrong on Schedule" was a great deal of head-shaking fun. I liked the fuming tail :)

In my family, I am dubbed the one who perpetually gets LOST. Sigh.

blank|verse

04-13-2011, 06:02 PM

This is an enjoyable piece, Aunty, written with your trademark sense of humour, somewhat sly and knowing. And I'm probably going into too much detail for what is an essentially light-hearted piece, but…

It's interesting to see how form and content work in this one. The reader might expect things also to be 'wrong on schedule' but it's quite a tightly written piece. It has 15 lines, maybe instead of the expected 14, and the two short lines break the rhythm, but also act as a refrain which gives the poem structure and holds it together. In short, there is a lot more right with the form of the poem, than wrong - namely the full-rhymed, nicely crafted lines of iambic tetrameter. (Although 'More fuel for kin to berate' is one syllable short; and I think it would have been better to have just bitten the bullet and had 'every' instead of the archaic "ev'ry". I'm sure most people elide the word into two syllables anyway, and, apart from me, who's counting? :)) Maybe this is telling us that poetry is where the poet feels she has the control lacking in life?

The elliptical, subject-less line 6 reads oddly in context and rather stops the poem in its tracks as the reader has to work it out. Another concession to the metre, perhaps? And while the metre gives the poem an attractive jauntiness, it does mean there are moments of inverted syntax, something about which never too keen am I. Eg. Why not just 'I waved in vain' instead of 'In vain I waved'; likewise, why not 'It came too soon' instead of 'Too soon it came'? As it is, of course, line 5 is an antistrophe, which is (that word again) an archaic rhetorical device. There is a tension between the archaic tone, language and syntax of the poem, and the 'failure' of the narrator to perform everday tasks, which produces a certain bathos and sympathy, and which is nicely encapsulated in the last two lines:

The emblem, thus, of my life’s fate:
I missed the bus.

Bar22do

04-14-2011, 04:29 AM

I enjoyed this light poetic effort! Have found its form was perfect till our forums' expert B/V :smile5: pointed out little irregularities that, nevertheless, seem to fulfill their purpose and work. I too was unprepared for archaisms, but the energy and disarming charm of this poem, as well as my unmentionable identification with its contents (ah ah - but I work on myself) have won me for its cause unconditionally! Thank you Auntie.

AuntShecky

04-14-2011, 12:30 PM

Thank you Everyadventure,B/V, and Bar for your comments.

A note on the form, if I may. (I'll try not to be too verbose.)

I knew I had a refrain with the opening phrase, so that dictated the form, a rondeau. The formula for the rondeau is: (R+a)abba aabR aabaR.

That formula confused the bejeezus out of me, because the source said the rondeau consists of 13 lines, not 15. (Apparently the two lines repeating the refrain aren't counted in the 13.) So rather than maneuver through the proscribed formula, I resorted to copying the form from a pre-existing model, in this case a rondeau by the inexplicably ignored Austin Dobson. (http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/32507-Henry-Austin-Dobson--You-Bid-Me-Try-) (As you can see, "You Bid Me Try" actually "does" what it says.)

The "wrong" in the title alludes, I guess, to the speaker, not the rondeau form. The first pronunciation for "fuel" in my antiquated print dictionary is for two syllables;the second pronunciation lists just one syllable as in "fyool," which is how most Americans pronounce it. (By the way, the word "fire" is just one syllable, but try as I can, it sounds like two when I try to say it.) The line is still has eight syllables, but still lacks a stress. Think I should put "my" in front of "kin"? (But that will make it nine syllables.)

Thanks again for your feedback.

Hawkman

04-14-2011, 06:15 PM

Enjoyed this one too, Auntie. Over on this side of the pond though, it would be more common to say, "loth (loath) to wait, and I think it would have scanned better. Not sure I get the turtle reference either.

Live long and prosper - H

Delta40

04-14-2011, 06:17 PM

What a delightful poem Wrong On Schedule is. I missed the bus is as good as the dog ate my homework!

AuntShecky

04-15-2011, 01:55 PM

Thank you, Hawk and Delta for reading this and for your comments. Also, thanks to you both for cleaning the cobwebs and dust bunnies off my anti-fiction story, "The Worm."

I'll probably get stuck with royalty bills from the heirs of the Desilu estate, 'cause here I go with "'splaining" again:

I went with "loathing" as the present participle form of the verb, "loathe," syn. of "hate," which I didn't want to use in addition to the long "a" sound as one of the two rhymes.

Turtles traditionally go slowly, right? As opposed to
hares, racecars, SSTs. (Watch--the news tonight will probably report on a tortoise that can go from zero to 60 in 0.7 seconds.)

Altered the clanging rhythm of l. 9-- it could be 8 syllables if you don't break "fuel" into 2 syllables, 9 syllables if you do. (Either way, it makes me look like a dolt.)

And thank you as well, Delta. Even though the "dog ate my homework" line has become hackneyed, it didn't stop me from using it in a poem from April of Ought Eight. It may have been previously posted, I can't find the link; nevertheless, here 'tis:

Excuses, Excuses

Uh-- on a sleep-over I overslept.
The alarm forgot to bzzt
because the power went out
partying last night

and this a.m. it’s choking
on the short hairs
of the dog who bit it.

After eating the kids’
homework, the pup regurgitated
facts: 1066, the sum
of the hypotenuse, meiosis.

I missed my ride,
and it doesn't miss me.
The bus broke down
in tears because it came
down with a case of dys-Lexus-ia.

Me, I've got Venus
envy at the wrong time
of month, cramping
my style. My water broke

all over my dry Tortugas.
I had to stop to smell
the peonies. I left
my wallet in my other plants.

I cut you
a check that bounced
while it jogged to the mailbox.
It sprung a hammy
while tying the string
on its sweatpants.

At the orifice I already gave
a fig that flouted Newton’s Laws.
My pockets are philosophical
but not deep --

they're empty now
of their last seven-fifty,
donated to an orphan in need
of pouring a latté
into his Florida panhandle.

These quicksilver dollar
sprout wings, right?--
just like the ones suddenly
protruding from my back -–

I'd really, really,
really love to help you out,
Pal, but right now
I gotta fly.

Jerrybaldy

04-15-2011, 06:20 PM

I loved your 'being an American' ... Didnt think you had it in you

deryk

04-16-2011, 10:59 PM

Wrong on Schedule

I missed the bus. Loathing to wait
for the expected turtle rate,
I saw its fleeting, fuming tail.
In vain I waved, arms in full-flail.
Too soon it came, I came too late.

Called to re-set the doctor date.
No alibi could well relate
the silly, squalid, sorry tale:
“I missed the bus.”

More fuel for kinfolk to berate
ball-dropping, my consistent state.
Unsettling scores, they’re quick to rail
that ev’ry move I make, I fail.
The emblem, thus, of my life’s fate:
I missed the bus.

The continuity between subjects is really lovely, it has sort of a "slide-show" effect (with nicely self-contained lines)- which adds to the silliness. I confess the word "emblem" on the same line as "fate" had me searching for some grand parable. I think it's a nice illustration of the distance between failure and scapegoating. I didn't need to place the "grand parable" because this poem is the story of my life.

AuntShecky

04-21-2011, 05:44 PM

Mandatum

Sure, I remember the man.
He was sitting right there,
on the center stool
of the bar. Brought in
a bunch of his buddies–must've
been a dozen of ‘em. Like
college kids in total awe
of their professor, they hung
on his every word.

Their fawning flattery he sloughed
off like a ratty old coat. I got
the feeling he was the kind of guy
who'd gladly scratch your back
without expecting a back-scratch
in return, ya know? I bet
he wouldn't even mind washing
some bum’s smelly feet. I swear
if a thug had rushed into my joint
and fired off an Uzi, he'd throw
himself in front of the bullets.
I mean, he split his sandwich
with his friends, kept buying them rounds.

You'd think a guy like that
wouldn't have an enemy in the world,
right? But– “Watch out
“for the ones who hate me,” he says.
“They'll eat you alive. They'll scatter
discord like promiscuous seeds, strangle
you as a vine. They'll pit
each of you against the other, trick
you into betraying me.”

“Oh, no, Chief! Not us!” every last
one of them cried. “Oh, yes,” he says,
“One of you will turn me in.” Now here’s
the thing that knocked me out – I swear
on my mother’s grave!–he shrugged!
“What are you going to do?” he says.
“It has to be done.”

You'll never believe what
he told ‘em next: “Love
one another.” That’s it. Pretty
simple, huh? Maybe not
as easy as it sounds. I picked
up his empty glass. “Another
one, Sir?” “No,” he says,
“I'm done.”

Tell you one thing, Pal. It'll be
a long time before I forget that night.
Never saw anyone like him before
(or since.)

Damn! It’s dark in here.
Let me open these blinds.
Where’s it written that a gin-mill
has to look like a mausoleum?
Look at it out there, the sky
half-blue, half-gold, the clouds
rolling around like happy lambs;
little green crowns poking out
on the ashy branches of that big
old corner oak; the relics
of snow sliding off the curb
and running like rivers down the street.
What d’ya think? Are we
finally gonna get a spring this year –
or what?

PrinceMyshkin

04-22-2011, 09:42 AM

How appropriate to the season, and how excellent a choice or series of choices never to have pushed the analogy with JC.

Jerrybaldy

04-22-2011, 04:52 PM

Jesus Auntie. I bet you are a card to share a beer with.

Bar22do

04-23-2011, 12:00 PM

Appropriate for the season, of course, but also adorned, as always, with your pitiless wit, humour and rhythm. I enjoyed the last S the most! Thanks! Bar

Delta40

04-23-2011, 07:10 PM

Excuse my ignorance in writing but isn't that a bunch of prose? Don't mind me Auntry but I get pinged when my poetry turns into a narrative, rather then a set of images. Your poem is just that too. Not that I don't enjoy it. I'm under the impression that prose poetry is a preference rather than a rule breaker.

deryk

04-24-2011, 05:03 PM

Well, AuntShecky, I have a feeling you have succeeded at one of those rare holiday poems that is not at all a chore at the expense of its syrupy context.

and fired off an Uzi, he'd throw

"Heater", "gat", "burner" might make for more appropriate colloquialisms. Uzi has a sort of a comical touch to it though.

“They'll eat you alive. They'll scatter
discord like promiscuous seeds, strangle
you as a vine. They'll pit
each of you against the other, trick
you into betraying me.”

I loved this block, it's such a potent quotation. Is it from Shelley's Queen Mab? It reeks of spiritual warfare.

"I swear
on my mother’s grave!"

This line made me laugh hysterically.

What d’ya think? Are we
finally gonna get a spring this year –
or what?

This is such a sweet poem at its core. As Prince said, you pushed all the right envelopes. What a jovial hoodwink you've created.

PrinceMyshkin

04-24-2011, 05:39 PM

Well, AuntShecky, I have a feeling you have succeeded at one of those rare holiday poems that is not at all a chore at the expense of its syrupy context.

"Heater", "gat", "burner" might make for more appropriate colloquialisms. Uzi has a sort of a comical touch to it though.

I loved this block, it's such a potent quotation. Is it from Shelley's Queen Mab? It reeks of spiritual warfare.

This line made me laugh hysterically.

This is such a sweet poem at its core. As Prince said, you pushed all the right envelopes. What a jovial hoodwink you've created.

As witty and lively and passionate as Aunty's poem is, this dialogue between you and her poem is an entirely worthy companion piece to it. But then your comments are always well worth reading.

AuntShecky

04-25-2011, 01:40 PM

. . . series of choices never to have pushed the analogy with JC.

Uh-oh. (It's exactly what I wanted to push.)

Jesus Auntie. I bet you are a card to share a beer with.

A "card." That's an epithet most associated with yours fooly-- an unemployment card! Oh, I kid!

Excuse my ignorance in writing but isn't that a bunch of prose?

Well, I knew that's the risk one takes with colloquial language. I did, however, spend much time in trying to achieve a sense of rhythm in the lines and especially set up an arrangement of line breaks, which is the most prominent way a writer can try to differentiate free verse from prose. I guess as far as you're concerned I've failed. I greatly appreciate your opinion, though, Delta.

This line made me laugh hysterically.

As well you should, because your fooly resorted to using a cliché. It does, however, sound like something a bartender might say for emphasis.

Thank you Bar for your kind comments and to allof you for commenting on my dramatic monologue from a talkative innkeeper to a inquisitive customer. The title is the root word for "mandate" or "commandment," which in earlier times was expressed as "Maundy."

I'm grateful to those of you who liked the imagery, but --except for the modern references of Uzi, sandwich and such-- much of it has been borrowed from the original Source.

Here are some of the passages to which my humble lines directly or indirectly allude, in the order in which they appear in the Holy Thursday liturgy, not necessarily in the order in which they appear in the poem:

Is. 61 (via poetic license "green" was substituted for "gold" with the word "crowns," as a modern bartender would probably not use the word "diadems.")

Rev. 1: 5-8
Luke 4: 16-21
Ex. 12: 1-8, 11-14
I Cor. 11: 23-26
John 13
John 15

Again, thanks to all with the hopes that you continue to enjoy your respective springtime celebrations.

Delta40

04-25-2011, 06:03 PM

I don't have an opinion on critiquing poetry in the same way that you do Aunty since I really do speak from ignorance. I don't think it is a matter of passing or failing here - just me learning.

qimissung

04-25-2011, 06:55 PM

A faberge, AuntShecky, glittering, exquisite, and beautiful.

Hawkman

04-26-2011, 09:09 AM

Sorry Auntie, a bit late with my appreciation, but it is very good. The JC analogy was obvious but not rammed down the reader's throat, and I enjoyed the wit and the rhythm.
best, H

AuntShecky

04-26-2011, 02:51 PM

Thanks again, Delta --I'm your fan, and thanks to our newly-minted mod, Ms. q., and to Hawkman.

Just to reiterate, because I feel like it: even though it's difficult, we have to try our best to follow the "mandate":
Love one another.

Up next--
Blank Verse's posting today reminded me of this one from 3 or 4 years ago. I can't remember if I posted it on the LitNet before. If so, here's the encore:

Gabriel’s Hounds

Like rejects from a choir,
they seem to wander
aimlessly, or toddle
comically in their
geese-y, gawky way,

the racket divining
for holy water –
a drainage pond here,
an impromptu puddle there.

Between the bullet and
the bow they would pray--
if they could--
(both in English and en Québécois)

instead of an angry howl,
a gaggle of trumpets
not yet tuned.

Meanwhile missed grace
assumes a guise
of flight, a true
arrow pointing
toward Judgment Day.

NOTE-- 5/7/11:
The source of this comes from Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by Ivor H. Evans, New York: Harper & Row, 1981, p. 461.

Whew!

blank|verse

05-06-2011, 01:51 PM

Mandatum - Err, better late than never? :) Apologies for the delayed response to this (formerly) topical allegorical poem!

It reminded me of Immram by Paul Muldoon (http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=12190), the modern master of long, narrative poems. (And a shorter poem called 'The Ferryman's Arms' by Don Paterson.) Muldoon is also a master of form, of course, which is where 'Mandatum' isn't as strong. Like Delta, I found this quite prosey - good lines of prose, don't get me wrong, but prose all the same. In your reply to her, you said:

I did, however, spend much time in trying to achieve a sense of rhythm in the lines and especially set up an arrangement of line breaks, which is the most prominent way a writer can try to differentiate free verse from prose.
I've sensed you're more comfortable with metred poetry and this might go some way to explain that. While line breaks play a part, they are by no means 'the most prominent way' to write in the style.

Free verse works more to voiced stresses - technically called 'isochrony' - rather than artificial metrical stresses. Line breaks play a part by delineating or breaking voiced phrases or clauses and helping create a rhythm that (most often) has a regularity - but a natural regularity, so it can fluctuate, rather than one chained to metre. So I found the rhythm here quite unnatural and jerky. For example, I found a lot of the line breaks odd. This stanza in particular:

You'll never believe what
he told ‘em next: “Love
one another.” That’s it. Pretty
simple, huh? Maybe not
as easy as it sounds. I picked
up his empty glass. “Another
one, Sir?” “No,” he says,
“I'm done.”
Why break phrases like 'Love one another'? Or 'Pretty simple, huh?'? Or the phrasal verb 'picked up'? Or 'Another one, Sir?' Breaking the language like this in the context of this dramatic monologue seems incongruous for this working-class, straight-talking character.

There are a couple of other phrasal verbs broken:

they hung
on his every word.

Their fawning flattery he sloughed
off like a ratty old coat.
Perhaps you have an argument with the first example, that it enacts the 'hanging on' being described; but I'm not so sure about the second.

And I found the final stanza to be uncharacteristically articulate and poetic for this straight-talking bar tender!

But all that's not to take away from the achievement of the content of the poem, which is brilliantly inventive and intelligent.

And thanks also for posting Gabriel's Hounds - another enjoyable, cleverly-written piece.

AuntShecky

05-06-2011, 06:22 PM

Thanks to all who responded to earlier postings, and esp. to you, Blank Verse. Thanks for the nice references to Paul Muldoon (of whom I've actually heard and read a little before) and to Don Paterson, whom I will learn about with great pleasure.

To your valid criticism, I will respond, as much as I hate "'splaining" (i.e. "justifying") my choices. Every line break is deliberate, with the notion of enjambment more than natural speech rhythms. I wanted to throw a couple of curve balls -- setting up one possible meaning while switching in the next line to something else, as in "pretty," "picked," (a ref. to the selection of the Apostles), "hung" you can fairly well guess what it refers to, given the occasion, as well as the two-word line "I'm done." (http://bible.cc/john/19-30.htm)

I already posted the scriptural references for the concluding lines of my ditty, and already 'splained the difficulty of combining such with colloquial speech. Still if the bartender/speaker is "uncharacteristically articulate," perhaps we can say this. (http://bible.cc/matthew/19-26.htm)

Thanks again! Now to the next one in Reply # 302

Hawkman

05-06-2011, 06:26 PM

Re Gabriel's Hounds. Sorry Auntie, I seem to have overlooked this piece but I bleatedly took a gander at it. :). Not sure why Gabriel's hounds though, with the reference to out of tune trumpets, maybe they should be Joshua's :D And why pointing towards judgement day, traditionally in these isles a goose was for Christmas, at least untill we acquired the Turky habit from our colonial cousins...

LLAP - H

AuntShecky

05-07-2011, 02:57 PM

DELETE
Sent via PM instead

AuntShecky

05-08-2011, 12:33 PM

Jack of Hearts

05-08-2011, 01:10 PM

It's hard for this reader to make sense out of most poetry. Regarding 'Heaven's Scent', it seems as though Hell is trying to sample the aroma of Heaven via balloon and cup. This might be an inane interpretation of a good poem. It's evident that, no matter what one makes of the content, the technique is solid and it's not often that it's done so well.

J

deryk

05-09-2011, 11:44 PM

Written from a model. The source of the form for this one will be "revealed" later.

Heaven Scent

Brimstone and its indistinct twin
both reek up through their membrane’s narrow rift.
The finer world’s aroma’s thin.
A dream-catcher hung out to drift,

reversed for this rare wind’s descent,
a censer's swaying lift:a secret cupped balloon that’s skyward sent
to snare from mystery the faintest whiff
of unknown mist, now captured down to sniff.

This poem is strikingly elliptical if not cryptic. I loved the negative image of the elemental opening. It immediately brings me to Milton's depictions of the varied gulfs and weird nebula that separate Heaven and Hell -as well as Earth.

I am confessedly completely lost when I arrive at "unknown". You've wrought a very alluring abstraction, but it simply implodes for me at that point. I travel from enticing Ark and incense imagery to tabula rasa in the final lines. This keyhole needs a source! I have searched!

I especially like the thought of you playing with fire on this piece! Very Faustian, AuntShecky!

O won't you share your secrets from those dark materials?

AuntShecky

05-12-2011, 12:11 PM

Thank you Jack and deryk for your "takes" on #302. I have to say that while nothing in the piece disputes your
interpretations, they were not intended. Your observations were part of the intention of an earlier piece, "Scratch,"
(#228.)

Did either of you recognize the form I used for "Heaven Scent"? I "borrowed" the meter and rhyme scheme from a 9-line stanza created way back when, specifically this one (http://www.users.csbsju.edu/~eknuth/jd/jdlit14.html).

AuntShecky

05-12-2011, 12:16 PM

Here are 2 more ditties -- not necessarily "blasts"-- from the past:

Bum

Call this guy a man on the street in every sense.
He lists his address as the corner of Hudson and Broadway,
but mail sent there would reach him just by chance.
Empty soda bottles stashed in the cart with his goods
can earn deposits for his pockets along with the spare change
and random smokes he cadges from workers on their break.

He gets along. Every day he hustles without a break.
We could say he’s got a full-time job in a sense.
Why not hang across the street? Who couldn’t use a change
of scenery? Find another block, walk a different way,
maybe hitch-hike to the country – that would be good.
Sometimes a guy’s got to climb out, step up, take a chance.

Head-shakers, tongue-cluckers, here’s a treat, another chance
to judge! For social scientists, an in vitro specimen to break.
Ready? Go: he’s drunk, on drugs, or in some other way no good.
Perhaps his brain is damaged, schizoid, or just lacks sense.
Maybe he’s a vet who came home and lost his way.
Would-be reformers, here’s your cause for social change!

Still, he gets along. He’s alive, he’s fine, no need to change
his ways to soothe the status quo. No chance
of our joining him, huh? The strata stand, in a way,
parallel: a rung up, better; a rung down, worse. No break
in this ladder. It rarely falls. We’re all stuck with the sense
that we can’t move up, won’t move down, in line with all our goods.

The old line “There but for the grace of God” is no damned good.
for the limits of sympathy end at temporary change.
For all we know the guy’s a Ph.D., with more common sensthe crisis team says he needs classes, training’s his only chance.
Give him a shower, give him some soup, but don’t give him a break.
Get him a job (at minimum wage), get him out of the way.

Who gave the command that he has to live this way?
Who wrote rule to write off lives, in the guise of doing good?
Who answers this man who begs for just one lucky break?
Those romantic ideals of freedom should change.
This poor slob’s not free!Ask the man who’s rich by chance:
he gets along, he’s doing fine, as far as he can sense.

The ranks could break, or get stacked in a different way
so they make sense – wouldn’t that be good?
Instead the structure stands, and change comes by chance.

Ninja Gal

In this world made for us we’re made to work:
sowing and reaping, building and ripping up our world.
The economy is too refined in our crude and greedy time.
Minions in suits run things, ruin things. They move
invisible money around. Nothing useful, nothing done by hand,
they transfer funds, crunch spreadsheets, manage assets.

Me, I’m outside the margin: “No income, no job, no assets.”
What doesn’t bring home bucks and bacon isn’t work.
On paper, little value accrues by my own hand.
Sewing and cleaning, cooking and washing make up the world
from which I crave escape, but too confined to move.
It could be a virtual prison, as if I’m doing time.

Reality seeks respite in dreams, as one time
I imagined I made a film: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Assets.
Of course, I was an “auteur.” I shouted “Action!” to move
the crew to block and grip, light and shoot my life’s work.
Naturally I was the star, the greatest in the world.
In every scene I directed myself and gave myself a hand.

I played a ninja, packing lethal power in my hand
while gracefully leaping into the air, in so-mo or frozen time.
“Impossible” you say, “in a gravity-strung world.”
Well, you can’t blame a gal for capitalizing on her assets,
no matter how many critics say they don’t work
or how my earth-bound feet and fate refuse to move.

Clad in black jammies, cat-like I could move,
with a scarf round my forehead, my serious hand
pointed perpendicular to the sky. Would that work?
Not every movie made is worth the effort and time;
some slice profits open, gutting assets.
The bottom line’s the top star in the world.

I’m just not cut out for show biz, or maybe any world.
Like going straight to video, I just can’t move
up. I’m a “ninja”– no income, no job, no assets.
Now, don’t go around thinking I exist hand-
to-mouth. I’ll remember to check in from time
to time and write if I find work.

Among the assets hidden in the world,
rewards for work might someday move
into my empty hand. When’s Show Time?

The Ol' Man

05-12-2011, 01:10 PM

Two sestinas - not a very tractable form to work in, ostensibly. I knew #302 was derivative
of Donne, from the very first flash of the structure, I thought "Donne." Very well. I like your palate.

I am making this addition to my post, now, to thank for renewing my faith in poetry as an art
that is not entirely lost on those who publish their work on the internet - or, if not lost, in some
form affronted, maimed, or otherwise (if such were possible) corrupted. I'd commend in chief
your poem 'selfish stream' (I haven't the time to read them all) for its metrical achievement
in part, but for its altogether good writing. I must say I'm fairly disapproving of your free
verse ventures, or those I've read, and feel you fare much better in structured verse.

O.M.

Hawkman

05-12-2011, 02:08 PM

Indeed, a very tricky form, and a lengthy one. You cheated a bit with "Broadway" though :D I must give one of these a go and see how I get on... I really enjoyed these offerings which have strong rhythm to drive them forward.

Live long and prosper - H

IceM

05-13-2011, 12:51 AM

I'm not as well-educated in forms as our other posters, but I will say I enjoyed Ninja Gal especially. The overwhelming sense of futility was apparent, but not too self-pitying to be a turn-off.

What kind of meter did you use, if you don't mind me asking?

blank|verse

05-13-2011, 12:04 PM

Well, I tried to overlook my natural aversion to sestinas, Aunty, but to little avail.

They're both very accomplished pieces, the first in particular is recognisably your voice and anecdotal narrative style, but - like with all sestinas I read to be fair - I soon get distracted by the end words and feel the poem is going on too long just to satisfy the requirements of the form.

And now you're encouraging Hawk as well! Maybe at least he'll invent a 'hawkestina' or something...

AuntShecky

05-14-2011, 03:28 PM

Thanks, LitNutters, for your responses re: #306.

Advice that has come up more than once is that I should stick to metric forms rather than the netless game of free verse. That strikes me funny, because just a few years ago the strict moderator of another poetry-writing site kept telling me that I didn't know squat about metric verse. Since the LitNet seems to be telling me the opposite, maybe I'm in the wrong game. Know anybody who needs a humor writer?

To the current postings:
"Bum" (not necessarily a self-portrait) comes from Ought Eight, and is my first attempt at writing a sestina. The second one, "Ninja Gal" ( a "non-winning" entry in Pendragon's "Form Poetry Contest" here on the LitNet) is from the autumn the same year, during the time of the big financial burn-out, at least part of which some pundits blamed on the mortgage scandal.

Personally, I don't much care for the first one. It's way, way too earnest for its own good as well as polemical. The second one seems a bit more whimsical and doesn't take itself too seriously, a practice that is deadly for a poet.

The form is a complex one, no argument there. Many contemporary poets try their hand at the form, sometimes masterfully, such as "Sestina" by Elizabeth Bishop. I believe the trick to the sestina is choosing six end words that can have multiple meanings. That way the lines won't be as repetitious and provide more leeway with the subject matter.

To anyone who'd like to pursue metric verse, a handbook which I highly recommend is a slim volume, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, by Chris Baldick, published in 1990. Here's what that book says about the mighty sestina:

"The form was introduced into English by Sir Philip Sidney in his Arcadia (1590.) A modern example is W.H. Auden's 'Paysage Moralisé' (1933.) Even more remarkable as a technical feat is A.C. Swinburne's 'The Complaint of Lisa' (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=174548)(1878), a rhyming double sestina with twelve 12-line stanzas and a 6-line envoi."

A double sestina! That sounds daunting. I don't mean
writing it, I mean reading it!

Delta40

05-14-2011, 05:38 PM

I like Ninja Gal. It's rather political in a satirical way.

Bar22do

05-20-2011, 05:47 AM

I'm proverbially late to read poetry here, but found and read your latest two. I'm always scared by poems' length (language problems!) but applied myself to Ninja and found it light and enjoyable. I'm a total ignorant of form and therefore won't critique or praise yours.
But, back from my journey, I shake tiredness with your fine offerings or, rather, take refuge in them not to face the packed up schedule...
Be well, Dear Auntie, thank you,

Bar

AuntShecky

05-23-2011, 07:53 PM

Thank you all for your kind responses re: #306. Here's #314:

Eight Days of Rain

Radio wags have started counting down:
only thirty-two more till the next deluge.
Dryness seems mere memory (like wit.)
Our unsoothed nerves slip when wet
percussion pings this building’s plastic pelt;
sewers drown in sour songs from tinny pipes.
Mornings that once milled dew escape the mower,
catch the mold. What bent the honeysuckle’s blades

once pink, now brown? The world’s fingertips wrinkle
and crease, as after hours spent in banquet dishpans
or indulging in a too-long soak in the tub.
Condensate descends and splashes all lives,
but some float through with a now-and-then spritz,
while torrents pound the heads of others ceaselessly.
Awash in gray above, sinking into muck beneath our shoes,
we wring our hands and souls like sodden towels.

If our home star should suddenly deign
to show itself, wonder would strike
us with that alien yellow light.
O great Whoever, Herdsman
of gentle flocks grazing the blue;
Lord of the mayflies, midges, stones;
Dominus of clay and loam, fickle winds
and fearless weeds; and --yes, the Source,

swollen with color-free life-milk to nurse the earth:
wean us for a while, rest.
Then send as many sundrops as you will
to succor goldfinch infants in their nests
and warm the puckered skin of tiny frogs.
Sprinkle sun, dear Father, everywhere
from the faux-rainbow scum-shine on the streets
to the clean leaves of hidden violets in the woods.

Delta40

05-23-2011, 07:58 PM

What bent the honeysuckle’s blades
once pink, now brown? The world’s fingertips wrinkle
and crease, as after hours spent in banquet dishpans
or indulging in a too-long soak in the tub.

This is excellent Aunty!

Hawkman

05-23-2011, 08:05 PM

Rather an alliterative feast, Auntie, but some great wit here. Not sure about blades of honeysuckle though. Definitely escapes me as an image. Never really considered honeysuckle to be dangerously sharp, proficient in the use of swords, or even a comic book vampire killer. Hi ho, one lives and learns :D

Live and be well - H

Bar22do

05-24-2011, 04:33 AM

A new satirical gem, Auntie, in which keen intelligence and your poetic art combine successfully! Thanks for your 314.

Warm wishes from Bar

AuntShecky

05-27-2011, 04:49 PM

Thank you Delta, Hawk, and Bar for your nice comments re: #314.

Here's my characteristically prolix reply to your replies. (Pop a couple o' No-Doz.)

I had the LitNet equivalent of "buyer's remorse" -- "PPPS--post-posting poster's syndrome"-- as in the very days and hours I was laboring over every blessed line of this thing, real life occurring elsewhere caused multitudes in the Midwest and South of the U.S. to suffer through cataclysmic weather, while here I was writing about a lengthy spate of ordinary rain, at best a nuisance.

But the damn thing was finally "done" and I went ahead and posted.

Although I certainly don't mind -- in fact, I'm flattered -- that the current ditty comes off as satirical, but I'm afraid for this one I wasn't trying to channel Juvenal and Swift as much as wanting to catch a whiff of Wordsworth and especially Thoreau. I get obsessed w. Nature that sometimes I think I might be the flesh-and-blood version of the Enthusiast in this famous Thurber cartoon. (http://www.cartoonbank.com/1930s/i-come-from-the-haunts-of-coot-and-hern/invt/106070/)

In any event, the reference to the honeysuckle "blades" in #314 was meant to play off the mower mentioned in the previous line. I went outside to check and yep, the honeysuckle petals are spear-shaped, though slightly broader and not as "pointy" as those of the shadbush earlier this spring. If you plug the phrase "pink honeysuckle +free photo" into the Google machine, most of the pictures that come up will show the blossoms as a deep "hot" pink, almost a fuchsia color. The wild honeysuckle around here is --or was-- a much paler, pastel pink, but from this, as well as the white variety, comes the sweet aroma that the honeysuckle is famous for in song and legend.

As of this writing, especially after all that rain, the honeysuckle is wrapping up its gig for the year, along with the violet and the lilac. Next up are pockets of pink mallows and a few early specimens of the wild phlox, with 5-petaled blossoms,and smooth-edged, opposite leaves. I sometimes confuse it with another plant that's also made its appearance this year. It looks a lot like the wild phlox; the only differences are 4 instead of 5 petals, and saw-toothed, alternative leaves) -- which, conveniently enough, segues into the next number:

Dame’s Rockets

Oh, say what are these–
long past dawn,
deep into day,
bursting like benign bombs
in the glare of neglect,
weedy overgrowth, tossed tires?

Their pink, ivory, purple diversity
gives translucent proof
through the blight
that wild hope can defy
their glorious uselessness.

Oh say how those soft petals
thrive–never wavering!

They're almost enough
to make one forget
the bad –also good–
shoots of a woman
whose shared roots,
by sheer chance,
happen to be American–
red, white, and oh-so
blue.

Hawkman

05-27-2011, 05:48 PM

Well Auntie, I have quite an extensive Thurber collection in my library, so precious to me that I actually made a great effort to ensure that his stuff was disenterred from the mountain of boxes in my front room, so that it could be easily accessed from the shelves of one of my few bookshelves.

The honeysuckle that grew in the garden of the last dwelling I actually owned, in that dim, distant past before my fortunes took a nose-dive, was actually white flowered, but my memory may just be playing me fale with my recollection of the shape of its leaves. I believe they were rounded rather than pointy. This particular plant was quite vigorous, having eaten the iron railings on the veranda.

Oh, and ps, Loved the last poem, too, even with it's corney, patriotic finale, with its incorporated pun :D Who was it said that patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel?

Live and be well - H

deryk

05-27-2011, 06:25 PM

that wild hope can defy
their glorious uselessness.

This was my favorite couplet in the poem. It speaks volumes for the appeal of uselessness. The wild hope seems to tie to the "lost" memory of whomever the titular "Dame" might be. I'm still uncertain, but I love the unity of diverse floral colors and metaphorically blighted roots in this poem. Cultivation and neglect rarely strike such a beautiful image when they are both entwined so tightly.

Jerrybaldy

05-27-2011, 07:55 PM

I took it you were the dame dear auntie (I always wonder that this should be 'aunty'). I usually find the sign off most difficult and your final stanza here is a fine example of a close that feels just right.

Each line is poetic in it's own right, far removed from prose, giving a lush feel straight through.

I have failed to decipher the rockets thus far.

IceM

05-27-2011, 08:54 PM

bursting like benign bombs
in the glare of neglect,
weedy overgrowth, tossed tires?

Their pink, ivory, purple diversity
gives translucent proof
through the blight
that wild hope can defy
their glorious uselessness.

Oh say how those soft petals
thrive–never wavering!
They're almost enough
to make one forget
the bad –also good–
shoots of a woman
whose shared roots,
by sheer chance,
happen to be American–
red, white, and oh-so
blue.

Such a beautiful contrast in the first bold, one that gives firework-esque radiance to the flowers, also enhanced by the ugly, almost trashyard feel the abandoned tires offer. The repetition of sounds (I think consonance, the term) makes it much more pleasing to the ear.

I know the italicized expression was to glorify the unwavering strength of the petals but it didn't do much for me. It seems out of place, although that may be just me.

The pink, ivory, purple image sets up a nice parallel, and perhaps subtle contrast? between the red, white, and oh-so blue image later. Perhaps edit out oh-so and leave blue instead? Oh-so seemed banal.

I very much enjoyed this posting Auntie!

Edit: I just realized essentially everything in the quote was italicized, so specifically the "Oh, how those soft petals...wavering" was what I refered to when I meant "italicized" expression.

Bar22do

05-28-2011, 06:24 AM

Your last, Auntie, is poetically very different, an inspired combination of nature, poetry and your unique sensibility. The (very unexpected and good!) finale "smells" of satire or at least is a wink of an eye. Congratulations, from me, with my lasting thought, Bar

PrinceMyshkin

05-28-2011, 07:44 AM

I assume one is meant to hear the echo of "The Star-Spangled Banner" in the background of this and I loved to keep the play of the two in mind as I read through this but like some others I was puzzled as to the identity of the "dame" - the Statue of Liberty?

AuntShecky

05-28-2011, 03:34 PM

Thank you Hawkman, deryk, Jerryb., Iceman, Bar and Prince for your comments re: #318.

Here I go "'splaining" again:

Hawk, perhaps the species of these honeysuckle are indigenous to the New World; the ones that grow wild near my past and present abodes-- come in both white and pale pink varieties, but they're all brown and spent.I forgot to check out the shape of the honeysuckle's leaves.

Here's the deal on the fleurs mentioned in #318, if I culled the info from the Google Machine correctly--re: the diff. between wild phlox and Dame's Rocket. If I've got it correctly, both come in a variety of pastel colors.
The wild phlox blossoms have 5 petals and the Dame's Rockets have 4. The leaves of the phlox are smooth-edgedand opposite each other but the dames rockets' are saw-toothed and alternate.

Speaking of phlox, there are several cultivated varieties, especially the small plants that are often used over here as ground covers for borders or small hillocks. That species is called "creeping phlox" which, upon first hearing the term, made me think was some kind of skin disease.

"Dame's Rockets" are the ones which appear in #318. Around here they grow on a trail first forged by a utility company. The electric company does a lot of work on the trail with bulldozers and the like, but seldom picks up the trash that people throw there indiscriminately. The wild flowers, raspberries, and strawberries don't seem to mind, though.

One more thing about #318. Prince nailed the connection with and the Star-Spangled Banner. (Wish yours fooly was as knowledgeable about "O Canada"!)

I believe he name of the flower came from the Old World, and origin. the name alluded to Our Lady. But the rocket part of the name reminded me of "And the rocket's red glare. . ." Just as the wild flower grows in disheveled areas, the word "Dame" can refer to both a noble woman and a gun moll.

In my ditty, the dame was just a generic "woman," not exclusively the speaker of the verse, but a mujer Americano just the same. (Not the "Statue of Liberty." though.)

Thanks again to all of you for your encouragement.

AuntShecky

05-30-2011, 05:09 PM

The next ditty is located here:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1039436#post1039436

Bar22do

06-04-2011, 04:46 PM

I posted a reaction to your last, Auntie, and it mysteriously disappeared somewhere... have you found it or it just dissolved into virtuality? Strange...

In any case, I enjoyed its pace and craft and while I thought that, seeing the situation, you may never "catch a break", I also felt your humour would keep you going. Best as always, Bar

AuntShecky

06-12-2011, 05:30 PM

In the Dark

Nothing shocks us anymore,
not deviant flukes nor freakish rewards.
One ship can lightly breeze
into a festooned, cheering port
as another obscurely sinks–
that’s taken as a given.

If I should be so bold as ask
how to grasp the power to discern
what separates graceful sheep
from hapless goats, wits will chafe,

with each response as opaque as fog,
an impenetrable head-shake or shrug,
the clear truth, warned the New England sage,
as hard to catch as light. Still
I'd really like to know

why seeds, planted with promise, fail
to germinate, or at best do not raise
their stunted status, shunned by the sun.
Don't for a second think
the significance of losing
the garden I loved
has been lost on me. Yet–
I really want to know

why this vague desire
for rarefied fruit remains.
It twirls around the mind’s staff
like ivy; or nagging music:
the persistent query
of a plaintive horn
while wry woodwinds clang
in futile cacophony. It bangs

on the door to the existing room,
where the question’s all but drowned
out by the trumpeting blast
of a Ganesha who dares
the world to ignore his blatant stench.

Meanwhile the power outage looms;
we might as well unplug, disconnect
from even attainable desires –
let alone some yacht, or flower-
flagged country digs.
But all at sea
in a motor-less craft,
how about a hint, a clue
to steer through this chilling
vacuum late at night, so
to spot the faintest spark,
neither blinking nor revolving
before it all disappears
off the coast of tomorrow:
is that too much to ask?
I'm dying to know.

Hawkman

06-12-2011, 05:55 PM

An eloquently lyrical lament, Auntie. We look back to review the hopes and dreams of our youth in the knowledge of the present and imagine the future with trepidation. Ultimnately we endure and stay the course with faith or fatalism. I don't think there are any easy answers, only fellow travellers and friends we meet along the way. Great poem.

Live and be well - H

Jerrybaldy

06-12-2011, 06:28 PM

My extended metaphors wilt unwatered beside a lengthy Shecky x

Jack of Hearts

06-13-2011, 02:51 AM

why seeds, planted with promise, fail
to germinate, or at best do not raise
their stunted status, shunned by the sun.
Don't for a second think
the significance of losing
the garden I loved
has been lost on me. Yet–
I really want to know

Hit.

In a lot of ways, this is what this reader fears. Maybe his poetry/prose doesn't get better. Maybe making it through college isn't enough. Maybe it all ends sadly spoiled or maybe it never was the promise we'd thought it'd be.

Thanks for being terrifying.

J

IceM

06-14-2011, 03:56 PM

AuntShecky

06-22-2011, 06:49 PM

Thank you, IceM, JerryB for your nice comments, and Hawkman and Jack of Hearts, I don't know how you both did it, but your responses seem to echo quite closely what I was thinking, but not explicitly stating, in #328. I wrote it before the proverbial you-know-what hit the fan couple weeks ago, but the premonitions were uncanny.

In case anyone is interested, the "New England sage" is, of course, Emerson, and the specific piece of music reference in the fifth stanza is here. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbArUJBRRJ0)

PrinceMyshkin

06-26-2011, 03:20 PM

Sorry that I overlooked this when it was first posted. It was written with your heart's blood, wasn't it? One feels that all the way through. Would that writing it had brought some comfort to you.

Bar22do

06-27-2011, 05:51 PM

Oh there is a new offering in this thread. I am evidently late to read it. And it's late at night, too. So I'll keep it for my tomorrow's treat and these lines are only to say I'll return. If in this hard time you manage to write, I bow low before you, dear Auntie.

AuntShecky

07-18-2011, 01:31 PM

A very lively thread (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60810) in the Poetry Games and Contests
forum reminded me of a little ditty from Ought Eight, inspired by a famous American painting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nighthawks), reproduced posters of which hung in many a dorm room a number of decades ago.

In any event, here she is, a retitled retread which we like to call

Ekphrasis

I serve consolation by the cup,
and if both towering urns run dry,
there are plenty more grounds
waitin’ in the hopper.

Easy there, Skip--
she’s taken,
I told myself.
The twin triangles
of my crazy lid
like a dunce cap worn all wrong
can’t stand up
to the mystery of the fedora.

The dame with her hair
smoldering like a torch,
her dummy-upped guy,
and the lonely eagle
near the end
of the counter
wonder what they'll have.

With our backs turned
from the empty street
we've already decided
to ignore the empty stools.

Doralace

07-18-2011, 05:15 PM

You give a very special life to the painting! Your allusion, through the conversation of outside observers, to the painting's young woman's beauty is great and, altogether, I was able to actually see the scene before I went to look it up on the web. For, I must confess, I didn't know Jo Hopper (well, generally, I know very little, I'm afraid). Thank you for sharing your knowledge and letting me discover the painter and his art.

PrinceMyshkin

07-18-2011, 05:27 PM

Your wonderfully painted poem reminds me of the fine film "Fat City" based on Leonard Gardner's novel. The final frame is rivetting when Stacey Keach whirls around on a bar-stool and stares blank-eyed at the rest of the customers or at us or at his future - a truly Hooperesque moment.

Bar22do

07-18-2011, 05:37 PM

Your « overheard » and poetically related outside whispers inspire new life to this famous painting! Your originality never tires, Dear Auntie.
Your excellent poem brought to my mind another example of ekphrasis, by an Israeli painter, Marcel Chetrit who created a series of impressive paintings inspired by B. Britten’s War Requiem, some of which are available on You Tubes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZqEo7JA38U and another fragment right after this.
A stimulating subject, ekphrasis, and I think you'd like to read about musical ekphrasis, please look at
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~siglind/ekphr.htm
Hope you're doing fine, Auntie, warm thoughts, Bar

Delta40

07-18-2011, 07:00 PM

Excellent! You captured the mood of the pic and left me in doubt I'm the dude watching that couple....

Lovely writing Aunty

qimissung

07-18-2011, 11:19 PM

I like your little allusion to the painter's name, Aunty, and overall, a lovely, mysterious piece, as the painting, itself.

AuntShecky

12-19-2011, 07:08 PM

(First new one in over half a year.)

Volt

The world’s wires have split; they’re all disarranged.
The cold has cracked the lines, too stiff to mend,
with darkness casting shades where no shades blend.
The sun, so dim and limited in range,
has lost its erstwhile warmth to powers strange
enough to lure the day toward early end.
The light lies low and lies to souls of men
that puny hopes are powerless to change.

A good conductor turns, accepts the charge
to zap us with a bolt– a sudden surge
of energy, electrified, on fire.
This tiny cosmic corner then grows large
as solstice, yule, and year connect and merge
to spark the clarity of bright desire.

PrinceMyshkin

12-19-2011, 08:44 PM

God, this is beautiful! One can feel the joy you must have felt in composing it. And the discipline of your structure is submerged beneath the seemingly effortless flow of thought.

Bar22do

12-20-2011, 05:16 AM

Your first in half a year, and another jewel in your lyrical Crown, Auntie!
It reminds me that as of tomorrow sunlight will be more generous every day, just like the Hanuka candles we light for eight days (as of today): one more each evening.
But it's also this extraordinary moment of gathering energies that Christmas and New Year bring with them...

You achieved a wonderful Sonnet here, on the Italian scheme, one that can successfully compete with a Milton's or Millay..!

Amongst your never ending errands, your art and sunny nature did theirs and brought into being the fulfilement of your "bright desire" and a contagious optymism for us the readers.

Visit here more often, Dear Auntie, and I wish you a beautiful, enlightened Year 2012!!!

Bar

Bar22do

12-20-2011, 05:17 AM

Your first in half a year, and another jewel in your lyrical Crown, Auntie!

It reminds me that as of tomorrow sunlight will be more generous every day, just like the Hanuka candles we light for eight days: one more each evening.
But it's also this extraordinary moment of gathering energies that Christmas and New Year bring with them...

You achieved a wonderful Sonnet here, on the Italian scheme, one that can successfully compete with a Milton's or a Millay's..!

Amongst your never ending errands, your art and sunny nature did theirs and brought into being the fulfilement of your "bright desire" and a contagious optimism for us the readers.

Visit here more often, Dear Auntie, and I wish you a beautiful, enlightened Year 2012!!!

Bar

Hawkman

12-20-2011, 06:31 AM

Hi Auntie. With regard to Ekphrasis, I'm fairly sure I commented before, but if I didn't I certainly should have. I love this poem as much as I love the picture. It flows so well and it's brushstrokes are as mticulous as the artists.

I like your latest offering too. It has such good pace and rhythm and is an appropriate offering for the end of the year. one thing I might suggest though that you replace that (S1 L8) with whose. As it is the hopes seem to be free floating and I feel that if they belonged to the afore mentioned men it would make marginally more sense.

A lovely sonnet though, with an echo of Grey's Ellergy in luring the day "toward an early end."

Thoroughly enjoyed. Thank you

Live and be well - H

AuntShecky

12-21-2011, 08:32 PM

Thank you, Prince, Bar, and Hawkman for your kind responses to this thing.
It's a mere extended metaphor, "violently yoking" two "disparate" concepts together, the contemporary modern energy grid with ancient rituals revolving around the Winter Soltice. Chose the Italianate form in an attempt to get the volta, along with a conscious effort to use hard consonants found in the languages of Northern Europe. Those Latin roots have a way of sneaking in, though, as well as one from the Greek--kosmos.

Again, I'm grateful for the three of you for sharing your critical expertise and please accept my warmest wishes of the season.

Auntie

AuntShecky

12-31-2011, 05:39 PM

Deleting History

Amid stony suspicion
and core-deep fear
neo-Luddites fail to grasp
the brazenness of cyber magic
flouting the laws of physics.

How delightfully unnatural
for somebody to occupy two spaces
at once: mind and senses in Manchester
while cozily posed–-still here!--
on a basement chair in Sheboygan.

Any tracks, like elongated footprints
in the snow, will follow the hot demand
to disappear– pfft! - as if they’d never
planted themselves anywhere before.

Likewise that mysterious term “Restore”
can cast a spell poised to hearken
to an earlier date. Time
Travel sans a wormhole or a rocket,
but “retro” just the same.

Oh, if only to re-set this little life!
If only to blank up the platform
for a miraculous restart,
escaping the bio fallacies,
every eggy-faced bêtise,
the ego slammed by a thousand
invitations lost in the mail
and opportunities which failed to load,
the cache of gold that shunned this fool
it took for Kryptonite or virus-borne Plague.

What if this oddly alchemic mix
of silicon, algorithms, and wire
could squelch Joyce’s nightmare,
to wake up from the bad dream
copying files every blessed day?

Who wouldn’t want to witness
such a liberating End,
solidly free of cataclysm
as it opens up a future
with hopelessness scrubbed clean?

With just one click,
watch the green segments

race across the narrow box
going, going --

Hawkman

01-01-2012, 06:00 AM

An original New Year poem Auntie :D Ah, that miracle of absolution, Cntrl> Alt, Delete! thus may one pass through the beaded gates of silicone heaven shriven and pure , unencumbered by regret or the burden of our sins - lol Trouble is, one throws out the baby with the bathwater. The more advanced the computer, or the older one gets, there just so much more to back up!

Live and be well - H

Bar22do

01-03-2012, 01:26 PM

I have read and re-read your poem Auntie and some of it still remains a bit cryptic to me (perhaps only to me.. - like:

"escaping the bio fallacies,
every eggy-faced bêtise,"

or S3???)

though I did get the sigh towards the end, as you would expect it, I believe.

This stanza spoke to me beautifully:

What if this oddly alchemic mix
of silicon, algorithms, and wire
could squelch Joyce’s nightmare,
to wake up from the bad dream
copying files every blessed day?

It is always challenging and rewarding to read you Auntie, it forces one to ponder your personal questioning which reflects something of the universal and which we can't, as you masterly do, put it into words.

Thank you a lot and - a happy new year to your and around you!

Bar

Jerrybaldy

01-06-2012, 08:41 PM

I enjoy a good cryptic crossword Auntie ( BTW I have never asked why Auntie and not Aunty?) (Or maybe thats an angloamerican thing, with your fawcetts and your drapes etc).Anyway, I digress, you are an artiste Ms Shecky (could i ask your age and your marital status?) (ungentlemanly I know, but you have read my stuff) I enjoy reading you, for I know from my time here that I am in the company of a craftswoman and like others I greatly enjoy your analysis when you choose to comment. You have also taken a laid back approach when I have choosen to take the piss and for these reasons I have grown to appreciate your prescence here. Shall we get a room? lol. Hold on, back to the poem, I got the delete to trash type references, but overall sooooo cryptic I could be blowing sand from egyptian scribblings. There is nothing wrong in that, I for one enjoy reading something I know I will never decipher as when you write it I know it has a meaning I am just not getting. More power to your elbow Auntie and please, pretty please answer my questions.
best wishes
jerryB

AuntShecky

01-23-2012, 04:37 PM

Thinking & Talking

Think about a woodland pool
beneath leaves gone or green or bronzed.
Talk about how sun, air, and water
all blend to nurture life’s beginnings.

Think of nourishing bits and sweets
captured hard. Then talk about
what’s left to savor
beyond chewy clouds of bread.

Hearthstone reliefs and lights;
a touch of warm, familiar flesh
both firm and soft, both to and from
our mirrored selves, full-grown or small:
think and talk about all these.

Think about corporeal cuts
and a stiffness in the soul.
Talk about buoyant breath
and liberated pain.

Think & talk, talk & think,
think, think & talk some more.

Though some may declaim
against the limits of thought,
and damn endless speech,
its cheapness and its glare,
preferring baseless feelings
and free-floating affects
without cause or cure–
while prizing the mindless noise
of Action! above all--

keep thinking, keep talking.

For each cottage comfort
and showy manse, every ill
that ever met repair, and all
machinery and lore running
round the earth,

think & talk & talk & think
think & think & think about how
anything & everything begins:

thinking & talking,
talking & thinking.

Hawkman

01-23-2012, 06:20 PM

Hi Auntie.

There's a lot to like in here, particularly Stanzas 3,4, 6 and 9. S 1 has a few punctuation problems: Line 2 needs a comma after 'leaves', as it reads awkardly as is, and line 3 doesn't need a comma after 'and'.

I find the refrain:

"Think & talk, talk & think,
think, think & talk some more."

over stated in the think department. I feel sure that by cutting the first think in the second line of this it would improve the flow somewhat. Same goes for penultimate verse.

As for the poem itself, the overall reflective tone has a delightful dreaminess, but also an edge. This contrast works well, I feel. As I said, lots to like.

Live and be well - H

PrinceMyshkin

01-23-2012, 07:07 PM

Aunty! dear Aunty! Except for the intelligence and feeling that runs through this, I would hardly recognize that it was by you! There's something somewhat more free about it, more uncaring about the strictures of rhyme or rhythm...

It's wonderful, so thoughtful, so... confiding.

Delta40

01-23-2012, 07:11 PM

I loved S2 Aunty and after reading some of ramblings in a certain sophisticated thread, I was particularly taken by this poem. I love the urging nature of this piece and snatches of thought.

AuntShecky

01-27-2012, 04:52 PM

Thank you Prince, Hawk, and dear Delta for weighing in on this thing.

As a way of 'splainin': I see how an appositive situation might occur in l.2; however, I deliberately left out the comma, maybe to keep open a possible ambiguous shading for "leaves," which then fades with the little series that follows, a participle accompanied by two adjectives already separated by an "or"; hence, no comma needed.

As to the repetition of "think"-- fully intended to have more weight, in a quantitative way, to establish its supremacy over "talk." Yes, both form a partnership, but not 50/50, more like 40/60 or 25/75. Though the product may appear to some as desultory, I did try to be diligent about the word choice, and to my fractured mind, at least, can justify the presence of every single one. For instance, there was a reason for "corporeal" rather than "corporal" that has nothing to do with the extra syllable. Same with "machinery" and "lore" (rather than learning or wisdom or law, the latter pronounced similarly to "lore" in this here neck o' th' woods.

Thanks again, though, for the constructive, thoughtful criticism which I do appreciate greatly.

Bar22do

01-27-2012, 05:06 PM

I have just savoured it all, dear Auntie, I read it as an ardent/urgent appeal for communication between us humans... I'm also reminded of how Word was at the beginning and how, once uttered, it became World!

Love to read you always, dear Auntie!!! Thank you for your inspiring words!

Good thoughts from Bar

Jerrybaldy

01-28-2012, 04:11 PM

Hello Auntie Fawcett Majors. I read this in two opposing ways both of which are probably wrong. I read it first as a percieved uselessness of thinking and thinking and talking doomed by inevitability (that may well just be me .. lol) and secondly as somebody giving advice (maybe a kindly aunty) to think more and to take time to do so.

Had me thinking so thought I would talk to you about it :D
cheers
JerryB

AuntShecky

01-28-2012, 06:05 PM

Thank you, Bar and Jerry. Bar you came very close to one of the intended aims of this thing. Jerry your second interpret. aligns with that of yours fooly.

PS -- "Fawcett Majors" ? "Tis not the double-surname of the long-maned actress? I was flattered until I remembered that a couple of years she went to the other realm, the Great
Vault of Syndicated Action TV Shows in the Sky.

AuntShecky

02-14-2012, 04:24 PM

‘Bye Lines

It seems I'll never smoke enough
to spark success. I need a puff
of what it takes to write this stuff:

epics with a Nibelung ring,
bacchant bachelors on a fling,
well-tooned penguins who dance and sing;

chicks lit up by some guy’s bright eye,
the worldly wiles of a novel spy,
a twisty whodunit? (Not I.)

Sharp how-tos for investment tools,
show biz tell-alls, cable news fools,
vampires, zombies,* teen wizards, ghouls:

none quite fits my creative quirk.
Guess I'm just the wrong type of jerk,
not cut out for this line of work.

* Except for "Zombies on Ice" (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=852371&postcount=69)

BookBeauty

02-14-2012, 05:14 PM

Your latest -- What a fun, humourous and spunky poem, AuntShecky! :D

And prior to your latest-- I'm going to take time to read these.

Delta40

02-14-2012, 05:23 PM

lol. Can you be the wrong kind of jerk? That line really had me laughing Aunty.

Nice and witty
with a pinch of self pity

:grouphug:

Haunted

02-14-2012, 05:38 PM

Auntie there's so much delight in reading this. I confess I can't read long poems, but the short ones I find in your trove is nothing short of amazing. Add me to your list of "jerks", I can't do any of those either :D

smerdyakov

02-14-2012, 07:43 PM

Neat poem Auntie.

(Delta - love the group-hug graphic. It kicks @ss! :grouphug::grouphug: :smilewinkgrin:)

:grouphug:

Hawkman

02-15-2012, 06:59 AM

I sincerely hope that the title "'Bye Lines" is not prophetic. You aren't thinking of departing the boards are you Auntie? That would be a crime against humanity! As a characteristically self-deprecating statement of bewilderment at the tastes of the masses, it is delivered with your trademark irony and a cheek fully occupied by tongue, at least, I hope so. If I'd been writing this poem I think I'd have gone for a more regular rhythm, but there's nothing wrong with the way you have presented it.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. I sincerely hope it won't be the last time I enjoy one of your offerings.

Live and be well - H

Bar22do

02-16-2012, 04:36 AM

Dear Auntie, are you fed up with us all here and want to take a vacation? Please do not..
Your poem is more than tongue in cheek, it reads beautifully but feels threatening a bit and makes one feel a very concerned a jerk...
Anyhow, applause for this, plus for your honesty!
And my usual best to you!!! But no, not "Bye Lines"!

Bar

AuntShecky

02-17-2012, 04:24 PM

Thanks for the nice responses to the last little "ditty" #360. The subject was a kind of invective against the types of writers whose scripts become Hollywood blockbusters and whose products populate the Best Seller List. Thanks, Delta, for getting the joke about the "wrong kind of jerk" as I had misgivings that noone would "get it."

Unless somebody persuades me to the contrary, I have no plans to leave my fellow LitNutters (for now.) Meanwhile, please don't ever take anything I say too literally. And don't judge a crook by her cover. Oh, I kid.

Re: the fractured meter in the triads or "triplets." Unless I miscounted, each of the lines has 4 stresses; the first stanza is roughly iambic but many other lines start with a "headless iamb" (such as you might find in the opening lines of many pop songs.)

It never occurred to write my triplets in trimeter and had to go with a lengthier line. Even with an extra foot (in mouth), it was difficult to cram everything in. You should have seen earlier drafts that had mouthfuls like "Nibelungenian" and "bacchanalian" in them. The lines varied so much in length that I was very nearly trespassing on Ogden Nash's territory. The difference being, of course, that his stuff was great and this thing is doggerel.

Woof!

AuntShecky

02-21-2012, 05:23 PM

The increase in the number of commercials promoting fish sandwiches at fast food joints reminds me that once again Lent is almost here. (Great! Just what we need--more deprivation!) As a matter of fact, Bigggus's verses today are on "Pancake Day." So tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. Hence, the following irreverent reverence:

“Heaven for the climate and Hell for the company.”
–Mark Twain

The Defined Comedy

Inferno

The searing red and orange of fires
most starkly stake this doom as fact,
but stoke with doubt the truth of hell.
Reality’s always in black-
and-white, and fantasy, pastel.

Purgatorio

Where sin belatedly atones,
where souls can scrub and scour and groom,
will not be found on maps divine,
but earthly sites: a waiting room,
a call on hold, an unemployment line.

Paradiso

Even here nothing’s perfect.
The meals are bland; there’s peeling paint.
Admission comes with a heavy price.
Yet no one hears a sole complaint.
That’s why they call it paradise.

Delta40

02-21-2012, 06:23 PM

lol Aunty. What sharp wit you have. I tried to pick a favourite but I like them all. Great finishing lines but also nice descriptors. They're very atmospheric too. One can imagine reeling these off in a bar after one too many to an appreciative audience!

Buh4Bee

02-21-2012, 09:35 PM

Very funny, and as usual, much enjoyed.

YesNo

02-21-2012, 10:59 PM

Nice view of purgatory as an unemployment line.

I agree: With all that colorful fire, hell must be more pastel-fantasy than reality.

DieterM

02-22-2012, 03:41 AM

Hey Auntie, Purgatorio really did it for me – I was giggling all alone here in the office! And what to say about Paradise being a place where no one complains? I should've known it - France is definitely NOT Paradise, then! Truly brilliant!

AuntShecky

02-23-2012, 03:46 PM

Thank you--Delta,Buh4Bee, YesNo (both of you), and Dieter--for responding to this latest ditty. According to conventional wisdom it's not quite cricket to comment on one's own work. On the other hand, I'm itching to clarify a couple of matters concerning this particular piece, and it's my thread, so what the heck:

Poets aren't supposed to be afraid of "offending" anyone, a point which the notorious "Railing at Greatness" thread (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1007042#post1007042) tries to hammer home with a sledge hammer. It would bother me personally, though, if anyone thought I harbored animosity toward religion, which I don't. Along with others whose hearts break at the thought of evil wrought in the name of "religion," I'm against that, as well as disdaining those who maintain the self-righteous posture of having all the answers. At the same time I'm completely behind the comforting aspects of religion. If that constitutes a cognitive disconnect, so be it. (Anybody who wants to challenge me on this, please feel free to do so, but in a separate thread.)

Back to commenting on my own verse. This one's not to be construed as a parody of Dante, because parodies exactly imitate the form of the original, which we all know is in terza rima, and which this ditty definitely is not. Not only that, one line of the tetrameter of "Defined Comedy" has an extra foot (in-mouth.) But a couple of the commentators liked the "unemployment line" schtick, so I'll leave it. (In a rationalizing "stretch" I suppose I could say that the lengthier line underscores the long wait in the actual queue.)

"Inferno"-- The "searing" reds and oranges of hellfire aren't really the same as soft watercolors or candy colored "pastels" by my definition. When I was a kid, I couldn't quite wrap my little mind around the idea of Hell, because I wondered how a "soul" rather than a actual body with a nervous system, could actual experience being burned (even eternally.) Decades later I somehow came to the conclusion that hell could exist, but not in earthly terms and could only be imagined in terms of metaphor. Hence, hell is neither fish nor fowl, not quite "reality" (as we know it) and not really "fantasy" because it's possible that Hell could exist on some plane presently unknown to you and me.

"Purgatorio"-- Historians (a tribe of which I'm not a member) hear the word "Purgatory" and automatically think of a certain medieval practice perpetuated by the Church to drum up revenue. For a given price, members of the Faithful would be offered an opportunity to purchase "indulgences" -- a way to knock a given number of years off his inevitable sentence in Purgatory, sort of like an insurance policy. The centuries-old scam was just one of the abuses leading to the Protestant Reformation. But it's the older, more orthodox concept of Purgatory that my little verse plays with--the escape clause by which a person can shave off his bid in Purgatory through atonement and suffering here on earth (while, as the good old Gospel song tells us," there's still time, Brother.") The time off for good behavior relates to the various degrees of suffering, from intense pain to moderate discomfort to minor inconveniences, such as being stuck on hold, and--it is to be hoped--substitute teaching.

"Paradiso" Speaking of being presumptuous, who do I think I am to speculate what Heaven is like? ( It's kind of fun though.) When I wrote "Even there, nothing's perfect," of course, I didn't mean God. In Stanley Elkin's brilliant comic novel, The Living End, God gets bent out of shape to hear His heaven compared to a "theme park." (Pastels again?) Hence, this little ditty's metaphor of a slightly rundown resort, with the perq that certainly compensates for any imperfection in the facilities.

Thanks again for reading the poem, as well as this admittedly self-indulgent comment.

firefangled

02-25-2012, 12:47 AM

I liked the sarcasm in these. As a kid I went to a catholic school and I never was satisfied with the criteria for getting into these places. As kids we always wondered what could a child do to get into hell, but there was always a way it seemed.

Nice poem Auntie

AuntShecky

02-27-2012, 06:11 PM

[February 29, 2012-- Please note this is a revised version of a piece originally appearing in this space a few days ago. Although it's best to wait until one can revisit a work so she can look at it with a fresher, more objective eye, I decided to go ahead and fix it right away before another reader suffers through its original dreadfulness.]

Refuse

For just a little while let’s lay
the old realities aside.
Those cramping have-tos, shoulds, and musts
are nags who never were much use,
like dusty “practical” presents
or grab-bag gifts we meant to throw
away. We thought it best to keep
the parts that make us act with sense,
befitting the role of mature
adults. All of that’s debris!

Why not pretend we’re like the kid
who sees a party as a chore
but cries when it’s time to go home?

Instead some staid, sad ritual
stepped in to crumple up and stuff
our wistful sparks in plastic bags
and roughly dumped them all outside.

PrinceMyshkin

02-27-2012, 09:02 PM

I find stanzas 2 & 3 a bit stiff, mannered, especially after the full-tilt authority of the first stanza and the felicity of it.

AuntShecky

02-29-2012, 02:58 PM

I find stanzas 2 & 3 a bit stiff, mannered, especially after the full-tilt authority of the first stanza and the felicity of it.

I knew there was something wrong with it, but hadn't the foggiest notion of how to fix the damn thing. Thanks to this reply and your PM on the matter, and to the other LitNutter who came to my aid, I was able to work on it (for hours!) last night so I can revise it today.

Here's the revised version

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1119102#post1119102

See? Yours reply is a fine and thoroughly useful example of constructive criticism which other LitNutters would do well to follow!

I really appreciate it, Prince!

PrinceMyshkin

02-29-2012, 03:42 PM

Wow! I think the whole of it works so much better now - and I was going to mention the possible pun intended in the title, which one can read as a verb in the imperative sense or as a noun; and I believe seeing those two possibilities fits the poem well.

Jerrybaldy

03-01-2012, 10:19 AM

FREE the Wistful Sparks!!!!! The campaign starts here, let them out there plastic bags, let them flutter like fireflies lighting our miserable adult existence. I know where to find them, they were dumped out side.

"What do we want?"

"Free our sparks!!"

"When do we want them let out of there plastic bags, probably some really cheap arse chain store bags, and set free to flutter like fireflies returning childlike simplicity to our dour existence ?"

"Errrmmm. Now. "

Give me a S
give me a P

etc etc :D.
Loved it Auntie Fawcett

Bar22do

03-01-2012, 07:26 PM

These:

Why not pretend we’re like the kid
who sees a party as a chore
but cries when it’s time to go home?

are my preferred lines here, Dear Auntie, though I loved the "revolutionary", ie ironic at least tone that permeates all the poem!

Thanks a lot, your offerings always surprise with the exactness of what they spy on and reach!

AuntShecky

03-06-2012, 04:43 PM

Just for the hell of it, I'm reposting these two from way back in 07, when I was just a tiny LitNutter, still wet behind the jeers.

On the Nose

(by a nose)

It’s plain as myself
on this face that I
am always sticking myself
into other people’s business
when I'm not stuck in a book,
or stuck up in the air
or looking down myself.
If not stuffed up,
I'm running,
though even when I smell sweet
(or sweetly)
a nose is a nose is a nose,
so I guess the
only thing left to do is
to cut off myself
to spite my face,
for as everybody knows
no nose is good nose.

------

"Chick Sal Sand"

Note how
in the dankest digs

someone remembers
to water the plants
struggling through
lack of light.

It’s helpful to catch
the briefest spark of humanity:
the pedestrian’s grinning shrug
when the “Don't Walk”
sign won't change;

the abbreviated
lunch order scribbled
on a little green pad.

AuntShecky
"A louse in the locks of literature."

Hawkman

03-06-2012, 05:09 PM

Well I like, "On the Nose" for its wit and good humour, but I'm missing something in the title of the second offering. Not sure why you put a stanza break after the opening two lines and the last three don't seem to relate to anything which has gone before. My feeling is that the last satnza either needs extending or cutting. As a two stanza poem I think it would be stronger.

Anyway, Thanks for giving us the opportunity to peek at your back catalogue.

Live and be well - H

Bar22do

03-06-2012, 07:13 PM

Well, Cyrano would have stuck his nose into your nose business for sure had he been younger! for his nose was his life business... and indeed, what a strange whim of evolution, nose...
I like your nose poem very much.
And as for the second, it's another amazing poem, elliptic, its surreal meaning(s) floating in the urban air for one to ponder as one is bound by a street sign to the pavement.
No end to your creativity, Dear Auntie, and you say it was at the very beginning...!

Haunted

03-07-2012, 03:34 AM

a nose is a nose is a nose

Now that's hysterical. Tiny LitNutter...maybe, but one can spot a budding rose (is a budding rose is a budding rose) of a poet here without a doubt.

The second one is full of ironies. Watering plants even when dank; don't walk sign suggests it's being walked on; and Chick Sal Sand...the abbreviated for Chicken Salad Sandwich? The scribbled note is discarded, littered, the final insult to the poor plants.

Jerrybaldy

03-07-2012, 09:41 AM

I particularly like the second one which reads as very PrinceMYshkin-like to me. Its brilliant disparate observation.... or is it ? Hugely enjoyable, if you were wet behind the jeers there is no sign.

AuntShecky

03-09-2012, 04:02 PM

If It’s Friday, This Must be Egypt

Near an obelisk
a slinky odalisque basked,
‘til a basilisk snuck by,

with its wings tucked and linked
and its breath’s putrid stink,
and that lethal look in its eye.

With considerable risk,
she gave its scales a quick frisk,
donning a mask so she wouldn’t die.

Then, after dancing to a disk,
clicking tunes hot and brisk,
they supped on crocodile bisque

and a slab of gooseberry pie.

Hawkman

03-09-2012, 05:10 PM

Wonderfully trippy wordplay and a very conscientious skivvy! Obviously very well trained :D A very witty and enjoyable read. More please!!!

Live and be well - H

Jack of Hearts

03-09-2012, 05:46 PM

#386- Haha, nicely done Auntie.

J

tailor STATELY

03-09-2012, 10:29 PM

Lol, loved the gooseberry pie (it's been years).

"Odalisque" was a nice touch; googled.

I noted "bisque" breaks the form you chose to work, followed by "pie" tongue and cheekily placed in the "off" line (interesting); or perhaps a form I'm not acquainted with. Quite fun>

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

AuntShecky

03-12-2012, 03:21 PM

Thanks, Hawk and Jack and Tailor STATELY:

I noted "bisque" breaks the form you chose to work, followed by "pie" tongue and cheekily placed in the "off" line (interesting); or perhaps a form I'm not acquainted with.

Good catch! You're right, it breaks with the form as it adds an extra line.
But what the hey. Not an established form, just something cooked up from
the cobwebby recesses of yer auntie's brain.

Thanks for the comment. Good to see ya back on the LitNet again.

AuntShecky

03-13-2012, 04:00 PM

An old one from 2007, probably written long before that:

Thirteen Ways Of Looking At Wallace Stevens

I
Five bucks says
you don't get him
the first time.

II
There was a jockey
with the same last name.
Every time I bet on him
he lost, and every time
I bet against him,
he won.

III
You know, there are several
different kinds of blackbirds.
One species has a broad red
racing stripe on each wing.
The others don't.

IV
I really dread doing it,
but I guess I'd better
start looking into getting
some kind of insurance.

V
What’s the big deal with
the glass of water and that jar
in Tennessee? I thought
down south they were
big on bourbon.

VI
Things as they are
are never quite as good
as we want ‘em to be
and never quite as bad
as we think.

VII
You don't see many women
wearing peignoirs these days.
Then again, you can find
a load of complacency
in a pair of sweatpants.

VIII
What kind of ice-cream
would you order if you were
an emperor?

IX
On MTV tonite:
The Man With The
Blue Guitar
(Unplugged.)

X
Why can't I be
the comedian?
Oh, please let me.
Pick me.
Clip me.

XI
I can, oh I can,
I can quote the man:
“It is possible, possible,
possible.”

XII
Oh, hell, he’s just
so good. Let me quote him
again: “we keep coming back
and coming back
to the real.”

XIII
I'd say more,
but it’s Sunday
and time for
my bath.

Oh, and by the way–
you owe me five bucks.

Bar22do

03-13-2012, 05:08 PM

An Auntie, An Attorney and A Blackbird are now ONE!!!!

Though to think of it, Auntie, there would be countless ways of looking at your amazing personality!

Kudos for this fantastic offering. Spanking good, really! A blackbird must have possessed your soul (just as it did Wallace's then) as you started to conspire to bring this one about!

AuntShecky

03-14-2012, 01:13 PM

March 14

In Memory of My Sister
(March 14, 1953-November 17, 2010)

It used to be auspicious, this day
before the Ides. It was all about
you, turning trouble into triumph
with those sardonic quips of yours,
that quick laugh, sincerely and freely born
from some place way down deep. Love landed
on you unsummoned, like a bird
gently settling on your shoulder. Life
hit you hard, so you smacked it straight and strong,
like wind gusting through leafless branches.

Remember how the pussy willows
once charmed you so? They’re already here,
and just the other day I saw four
fat robins hopping on the yellow grass.

But my heart still thinks it’s winter.
The room is dark when I’m nudged awake
by unsettling thoughts of those who have gone:
the people I liked and the ones I loved,
those whom you knew and those you didn’t.

Just like the blanket I grasp for warmth,
there’s comfort in the platitudes
we secretly hope, deep down, are true:
that there exists a place where you still
live, with no struggle nor snagging strings,
but where soft and bright mornings come attached
to a brand-new birthday without end,
where you in joy and glory thrive
among all of those whom you love,
the ones I know and the ones I don’t.

PrinceMyshkin

03-14-2012, 01:52 PM

"Treacly," my Aunt Fanny! Although, to switch metaphors, I did experience a bit of whiplash in response to the images in the last line of the first stanza: the wind gusting through leafless branches seemed so discordant with all the lively, vital images that had preceded it, and when did it suddenly turn autumn or winter?

But the last line of all is one that one can and wants to dwell on: on the surface it's regret for not having had the opportnunity to know more of your sister's life, but there's also a hint of reproach in it, that you didn't have the opportunity to express all your love for her, just as you didn't get to know all whom she loved and you might have come to love.

YesNo

03-14-2012, 02:27 PM

I liked the last line acknowledging that there is something you did not know about your sister.

Bar22do

03-14-2012, 04:09 PM

What a beautiful tribute to your sister, Dear Auntie.
We need hope. Perhaps what is in our minds creates our REAL afterlife experience just like it does while we're over here...

Hawkman

03-14-2012, 04:20 PM

I loved this poem the first time I saw it Auntie, and time has not diminished its impact.

Live and be well - H

Jerrybaldy

03-14-2012, 07:28 PM

There is a great warmth to this. You would not want to get this wrong and you didnt. You are in reminiscent mood at the moment it seems. Pussy willows and fat robins. Beautiful.

Delta40

03-15-2012, 10:13 AM

What a lovely poem for your sister. The warmth and comfort of the blanket and the attachment to memories make this especially sweet Auntie but as Prince says the final lines in the last stanza beautifully wrap up the tranquil lines already penned.

Haunted

03-16-2012, 09:11 PM

Auntie, your description of your sister comes alive in the first stanza, you remember her as though it was yesterday. The sincerity and grief you feel is so touching:

But my heart still thinks it’s winter.
The room is dark when I’m nudged awake
by unsettling thoughts of those who have gone:
the people I liked and the ones I loved,
those whom you knew and those you didn’t.

My deepest sympathy for your loss, I feel privileged that you shared this with us.

AuntShecky

03-19-2012, 02:39 PM

A belated thanks to my fellow LitNutters re #381, # 386, #391, and #393. Oh, and Happy First Day of Spring tomorrah.

Turtle

Hail, fellow agoraphobe,
my soul-mate of the marsh.
If dangers hover, duck and cover
‘gainst creatures cruel and harsh.

Surviving with a shell game to snatch
stray marks of fly or flea,
ambivalently napping, seldom snapping.
Slow-moving? Deliberately.

Versatile reptile with mobile digs,
at home wherever you kneel.
Cursed be the scoop that plunges you in soup
as prelude to some mocking meal.

Voiceless, unlike the mourning birds
biblically cooing the waning of the flood.
Let those namesakes fly, I only speak of thy
Benediction of the mud.

1998

Bar22do

03-26-2012, 06:31 AM

Dear Auntie, turtles are my beloved creatures! they symbolize eternity too and ah! how terrible some would heedlessly throw them into boiling water to make a soup...
Here too it's the beginning of spring, turtles show up everywhere, so many will perish on the roads...

Have plenty of green in your eyes and flowers' scent in your nostrils, be well and thank you so much for this poem.

Haunted

03-27-2012, 12:43 PM

Enjoyed this very much Auntie. I pretended I didn't see the turtle soup :D. The dark humor is weaved in quite, um, deliciously. Oh I can't believe I said it!

I have small orange turtles here but the one that made an impression was on the beach on Hilton Head Island. The poor thing was probably dead. It was huge, flipped over like a Hummer.

AuntShecky

08-13-2012, 01:32 PM

Nothing posted in this thread since March! My, how time flies when you ain't havin' fun!

The following is the first piece of personal "poetry" I've written since the 30/30 thread. (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68342) It was originally intended for the "Favorite Places" poetry contest, but for reasons beyond my control, I missed the deadline, even though I'd finished writing it in time. Two weeks ago today, I sat down to type and post it, only to find that Pong 2.0 would not power up for me. Just like a defiant child, it wouldn't put its boots on! Not even after I threatened it with jumper cables. Back to its natural parents it went. Another device has temporarily stepped in, again borrowed but this time from a different relative. He, like the generous person who lent me the first one, doesn't know what he's in for. Oh, I kid, I kid! (Mostly.)

Preferences

In October’s midst to stand
on the arch of a rustic bridge,
cresting above a slow-moving stream,
beneath some birches’ yellow flags
surrendering to the lazuli on high;

OR –-

just past the crepuscular moment
when a wide window reflects
the moon upon that creek’s clean glaze –-
in an accommodating chair
fronting a carefree fire –-
enhanced by a book, a useful light,
and – - perhaps – - a sleeping setter
reclined on a braided rug;

OR –-

when a verdant burst wakes up the world,
the chance to plant one’s feet on the spongy earth
beside that now-exuberant brook --
unvexed by buzzing pests, though curious creatures
might come around, uncoaxed, to sniff
the new radii of mellow mallows
and the amiable points of anemones;

BUT – -

while pledging summer riches to prior claims,
fate has failed to shine her favor here,
assigning instead the option of default,
proving, after all, the optimal choice:
any time and any place with you.

Delta40

08-13-2012, 05:39 PM

I'm going to have to look up crepuscular. That was like a thesaurus of the first moment Auntie which just got better and better until rounded off with the final stanza and (penultimate line?) which is a spectacular reminder in all of nature's beauty. You've made my morning before I even open the blinds!

Hawkman

08-13-2012, 08:37 PM

There is the melancholy of endings and things to be left behind permeating these pieces. I feel as though I've just read the script of a eulogy for happiness, recited at its graveside and left pinned to its headstone. Tragically eloquent and deeply affecting.

I've perused them several times. Wonderful writing Auntie, though I might suggest a comma in L1 after midst.

Best to you as always,

live and be well - H

qimissung

08-14-2012, 11:52 AM

First you made me laugh (13 Ways of Looking at Wallace Stevens), and then you broke my heart (you know which one).

Thanks a lot, Auntie.

AuntShecky

08-15-2012, 02:42 PM

Thank you, fellow Lit-Nutters, for your comments re: #404. Here's a quick one on the same theme:

Immobile Phantom

Everybody has to be someplace,
even when there is nowhere to go,
devil-dumped on an unknown isle,
a guard-less Gitmo, a cage of space.
Even when there is no place to go,
reality’s hot – - and colder than snow.
An unguarded Gitmo, a spaceless cage
needs sunlight the same time as rain,
while reality burns more coldly than snow.
Fuzzy and vague as an angel’s face
and in need of sun as much as rain,
I cannot move, but I can’t remain.
Fuzzily vague, like an angel’s face –
an unknown devil held on an isle,
I cannot move, and I can’t remain, but
everybody’s got to be someplace.

DocHeart

08-15-2012, 04:43 PM

Even though I read often, I rarely comment on your poetry, dear Aunt. I admire your work and occasionally amuse myself by trying to guess which well-known poet is hidden behind our dear Aunt's persona. I don't feel I have anything important to contribute here, nothing that the others haven't already said. So if I replied more often, I'd just be singing praises all the time.

Thank you kindly for sharing.

Regards,
DH

firefangled

08-15-2012, 10:36 PM

After I read your poem, Auntie, I couldn't help but think of Juliet when she says (I looked this up to be exact) to Romeo: "O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,/That monthly changes in her circled orb,/Lest that thy love prove likewise variable."

Though seasons and places may have their own intrinsic charm, the beauty of being with someone dear to us adds the wonderful thread of consistency, no matter where we find ourselves.

Beautiful poem, Auntie. For me it had a matter-of-fact tone that gave it much more strength than to ladden it with more emotional language.

Jerrybaldy

08-16-2012, 04:59 AM

Well, I had to google Gitmo, is it a well known word Stateside?

I love the repitition and more so the tinkering each time. The opening line, tinkered, then re-appearing at the end.

A cage of space, a spaceless cage.

Immediately resonant is ' I cannot move, but I can’t remain / I cannot move, and I can’t remain.

This may be following a poetic structure that I really should know. I don't know. But I know it is my favourite Auntie production to date.
JerryB

AuntShecky

08-16-2012, 03:53 PM

Thanks Lit-Nutters for your comments re: #408.

The structure is a "Pantoum" which is a good form to use for "practice." As the poetry columnist for the Writer's Digest wrote long ago, writing lines for a pantoum is similar to a piano student practicing scales. I choose the form for this topic because its prescribed repetition carries a circular effect, i.e., it ends up exactly where it starts.

Once you have the pattern for a pantoum, it's not difficult to write, provided that you haven't skipped a line or two (which of course happened to me in the first couple of go-arounds.) It doesn't necessarily have to be metered or have end rhyme-- just the prescribed pattern is enough.

So the whole thing is a metaphor of being stuck --an inability to move while simultaneously being unable to stay where one is. Hence the senseless burning snow, and the other images--you should excuse the last two syllables of the expression-- as "oxymoron."

Another term for the idea behind the double-edged cliché-- a rock and a hard place-- is "syzygy" -- a word that's as hard to spell as it is to pronounce.

"Gitmo" is an abbreviation for Guantanamo, a prison on the isle of Cuba, where once there, it's nigh impossible to leave. (I wasn't intending any political comment in the piece, just looking for a synonym for Devil's Island.)

Once again, I've 'splained too much. Thanks again for the feedback.

Auntie

Bar22do

08-21-2012, 06:17 PM

Auntie, your 408 is a clean staccato in my ears, intentionally cold. Its enclosing form only adds to the anguish of someone in an impossible life situation. On a much smaller scale, it refers me to my own present condition. The form you chose to express the subject fits perfectly. But well, you're often just simply perfect. Plus, we ALWAYS learn so much from you. Thanks for your generous sharing, Auntie.

AuntShecky

12-11-2012, 07:39 PM

The Way It Used to Be

Winter is reliable – -
it doesn’t fool around,
doesn’t offer youthful promises
to be swiftly snatched away,
never teases us with thoughts
of newness, plenty, life.

That’s the old dependable
season for you. It covers
the sky with a dusky shroud,
and when it deigns
to grant a glimpse of sun,
the light is steely, strong:

neither a soft caress
nor a blazing blast.
The mat it lays
upon hardened earth
will crunch one day
and slosh the next,

or diabolically deny
traction, yet still step up
the gravity. It’s not defiance,
for winter stands
on its own solid ground:
what it wants is what you get.

Hawkman

12-12-2012, 02:09 PM

Nice poem Auntie, but I'd be inclined to tweak and trim it a little. The last line of S1 has poor rhythm so you might try:

"newness, life or plenty."

You might consider adjusting the line break in S2:

"and when it deigns to grant
a glimpse of sun,"

S3 I'd be inclined to drop "hardened" as it's superflous in the face of "crunch... or slosh..."

In the last verse I'm not keen on, "step up the gravity" because it doesn't :D

try:

"or, diabolically,
deny traction.
It’s not defiance,
for winter stands
on its own solid ground:
what it wants is what you get."

I like the poem though, a reflective take on winter :)

Live and be well - H

firefangled

12-13-2012, 09:54 AM

Aunty, I have tried to reconcile the tense of the title (past) with the tense of the poem (present). I read this as a sutle comment on climate change (that winters are not like they used to be), but then why the present tense?

That aside, I enjoyed the poetic description, particularly S4 and getting stuck in snow (which rapidly turns to slush from the heat of spinning tires and, yes, gravity pulls the car deeper and deeper in the mud, which ends up on those trying to help push. That would have been a nice addition to this description.

Love the last line, the futility of trying to pretend everything is as usual (getting to work on time for one), when winter has full control over one's life using many of its devices.

Then of course we stop by woods and our view of winter changes to that of Mary Oliver, even as we are reminded of Frost and his little (quite observant) horse.

AuntShecky

12-13-2012, 05:37 PM

Thank you, Hawkman and firefangled for your comments. "Step up" -- to quicken or to increase the power of, intended as word play, the other meaning of "step."

It is possible to read the thing as a comment on climate change. Or not. The title comes from what young folks might hear from an old-timer, among whose ranks yours truly might belong much sooner than later. (To tell the truth, I recall that the winters of yesterday were really much more brutal than they seem in recent years.)

This particular "anti-poem" itself comes from cynicism and perversity, against the sentimentality of softly falling snow, sleigh bells, and the like, but most of all it was an attempt to fulfill a challenge (by yours fooly) to write about winter without the usual suspects: snow, ice, cold, wind, etc.

Jerrybaldy

12-13-2012, 07:17 PM

Like your take on the harshness of winter as a metaphor for a lament of lost youth/ the way we were, the grass was greener..........? acceptance perhaps. Nostalgia ain't what it used to be. Reminds me of a Pink Floyd lyric ' hanging on in quiet desperation is the english way'. Now that's a fine line. And your poem also has many.

Bar22do

12-14-2012, 05:26 PM

Always love your verse and this one particularly for all the reasons you mentioned yourself. "what it wants is what you get" is absolutely great.

AuntShecky

12-14-2012, 07:35 PM

Thank you JB and Bar for your comments. The ditty was going for irony -- the opening line that "tells" too much contradicts (intentionally) the final line, "what it wants is what you get," so winter is not really "reliable" at all.

That's my last word on what has turned out to be a fairly lame piece of banality.

Now you know why there hasn't been much verse-posting from yours fooly since August! Maybe I peaked here:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?68342-Auntie-s-April-2012-Thread-30-Poems-in-30-Days

Gee, I've been on the LitNut for hours! What's his name must be wondering where his supper is. And if that's not enough reason to log off, the ad on top of the page says "Click here to view your arrest record now!"

"We keep coming back and coming back to the real.” -- Wallace Stevens

AuntShecky

01-02-2013, 02:00 AM

Pantoum for Jan. 1

Welcome, New Year, though you may be the same
old year dressing its number up as new.
I never ordered tears, and yet they came –-
they’ll come again to dun, as bills past due.
Same old year, counting numbers that seem new,
rings up no interest in what’s been shown
to dun as bills long past and overdue.
The same old devils that I’ve always known
bring little interest in what’s been shown
when losses are gained. And nothing’s earned
by the same old devils I’ve always known.
If only laughter, for once, had a turn
when losses were gained and nothing was earned.
I never ordered tears, and yet they came - -
unless one’s laughter had not missed its turn.
Well, come next year, I may not be the same.

miyako73

01-02-2013, 02:06 AM

Nice one, Auntie. Should this "when losses are gained. And nothing’s earned" (L10) be "when losses are gained. And nothing is earned"?

firefangled

01-03-2013, 02:40 PM

Wonderful Pantoum, Auntie! A perfect form for how we react in and with time and circumstances. Pantoums are not easy to do without losing the sense of the content. This is playful in its usage without losing the seriousness of the poem. It was indicative of the way we worry the same fundamental experiences year after year and wish to do so, as often as possible, with some laughter.

I've been trying to write one of these for years. You have inspired me to take it up again.

Haunted

01-03-2013, 05:24 PM

Auntie, you are one of the very few here who can do a rhyming poem and do it like a pro, without any hint that there's any compromise to the content in order to fit the rhymes. The opening three lines are my favorite and I like the repetition at the end. I really enjoyed it!

AuntShecky

01-05-2013, 07:05 PM

Thanks for your comments re: #421. ^^^ For this one, I chose the pantoum, because in that verse form the poem begins and ends the same way. That’s the point it was attempting to make about the so-called “new” year: each one blends into the other, and essentially the only thing that changes is the calendar.

I truly appreciate that some readers may have detected the irony, which was exactly what I intended. The “laughter” and “tears” are both banally generalized terms (almost abstractions) and both clichés, common to poems about the turning of the year. You’ll also notice the glaring absence of optimism, though the remaining pessimism can be construed as possibly self-inflicted and definitely self-perpetuated. What’s inferred and not spelled out is that interchangeable years as in the adage, “the devils you know,” are much less painful to confront than the unknown ones. The “same old, same old” keeps recurring because it’s comfortable! The final line of the piece, “Well, come next year I may not be the same,” of course, is a delusion, if not an out-and-out lie, because odds are the speaker -- like the misnomer “new” year - -is fraught with the same intractable inertia.

Finally, I confess that the inspiration for this piece comes directly from John Kilgore’s cogent and truthful analysis of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” in Kilgore’s fine essay “Why Teachers Can’t Read Poetry,” which I strongly urge every LitNutter to read:

http://thescreamonline.com/essays/essays08-01/poetry.html

AuntShecky

02-13-2013, 06:00 PM

“I hear tell he stays up to all hours of the night working on strambotti and rispetti for her.”

“He makes pasta?”
–from The Lyin’ King, Part Eleven (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?70680-Auntie-s-Fairly-Flailing-Tales-2-quot-The-Lyin-King-quot&p=1194082&viewfull=1#post1194082)

The Fat Little Archer

That chubby sprite’s less threatening than a toy;
His naked, winking grin that barely covers
his sensual self, shows as modestly coy.
Not high above, with flighty wings he hovers – -
not quivering, takes aim at a girl and boy
as unsuspecting shots for certain lovers.
One arrow pierces both sharply, and – - I guess –
directly points them to unsure happiness.

Jerrybaldy

02-15-2013, 06:08 PM

Were you in a valentine state of mind Auntie? I dont think you needed 'unsure' in the closing line. Think it was a given. Great title. Hope you are well.

AuntShecky

02-16-2013, 03:34 PM

Were you in a valentine state of mind Auntie? I dont think you needed 'unsure' in the closing line. Think it was a given. Great title. Hope you are well.

Not so much in a valentine state of mind as much as seeing if yours fooly could come up with an example of those eleven-syllable Italian-style poems. I needed two syllables; hence "unsure." Thanks for reading this, Jerry.

AuntShecky

03-13-2013, 03:45 PM

Spider in the Shower

This creature in my washing spot:
“Itsy-bitsy” clearly was not!
With an exasperated scowl,
I wrapped it in a paper towel,
then dressed and took it for a ride
to find it better digs outside.
Shaken out, the stubborn fella
scampered back into the cellar.
I’d be rich if I had a dime
for each one caught at shower time:
all coming from some dark, dank den –
or this same one over (and over) again?

tailor STATELY

03-13-2013, 06:10 PM

LOL Love it.

It's usually shrieks that prompt me to action.

Yes, I too prefer to put the octolegs back outside where they belong.

A spider poem I wrote almost a year ago:

Trapped / 7.4 (3.20.2012)

It's a small village, not
too far from Oaxaca, where
a tarantula struggles to
scale the slick porcelain
basin walls it has trapped
itself within. It has already
been a difficult day and the
cool water smelled so inviting
as it drip-dropped-splot down.
Vibrations... Fear, as the
spider imagines the return
of the people who scorn it so.

The light breeze trembles
Wave upon wave pulse the earth
Children cry; Dogs bark

3/24/2012 r.4/2/2012

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

Hawkman

03-14-2013, 07:16 AM

Hi Auntie. This is a lot of fun! It rather reminds me of when I awoke in an African lodge to discover that I'd spent the night with a large arachnid. Remind me to send you a photo!

But back to the poem. I can't help wondering why you tied yourself to such a rigid syllable count, at least until the last line. In a humourous verse like this I feel that fluidty in the read would be preferable. Line two doesn't flow as well as it could because of the order of stresses, which for the most part in the body of the poem, is much more consistant. You might try:

"an "Itsy-Bitsy" - clearly not."

L9 suffers from the mixing of 'I'd' and 'I had' - "I'd be rich if I'd a dime," reads much more snappily.

The last line isn't really working for me though. I know it's possible that you elected to let it ramble, breaking your own rule on syllable count for comic effect, but I feel that this is a bit of a cop out, a self-deprecating admission that you couldn't think of a tighter ending which rhymed with den. Den certainly makes it difficult to wind up the last line succinctly. You might consider replacing it with lair which would give you more options, even if it means diminishing the alliteration of the line. This may not be a bad thing anyway as allteration isn't really a feature of the piece. Also, dank and damp are a touch tautologous.

Nevertheless, an enjoyable read, Auntie.

Live and be well - H

AuntShecky

03-18-2013, 12:34 AM

Thanks Tailor STATELY and Mr. Hawk -- nice to see you both back here in LitNutterland.

Line two doesn't flow as well as it could because of the order of stresses, which for the most part in the body of the poem, is much more consistant. Headless iamb.

L9 suffers from the mixing of 'I'd' and 'I had' - "I'd be rich if I'd a dime," reads much more snappily. Nah. wanted to keep it at 8 syllables. It's an idiom over here (and evidently in Canada, whence the Bare-naked Ladies hail:
"If I had a million dollars, I'd be rich."

The last line isn't really working for me though. I know it's possible that you elected to let it ramble, breaking your own rule on syllable count for comic effect, but I feel that this is a bit of a cop out, a self-deprecating admission that you couldn't think of a tighter ending which rhymed with den.
Actually, colloquial and an idiom again -- maybe a joke in that we almost always repeat the phrase (over and over), similar to what the oft-quoted line from Casablanca had done, to this day, to the word "shocked."

dank and damp are a touch tautologous. You got me there, eagle-eye Hawk. Actually a misprint.Thinking of "dank" as the same as "dark"but with dampness. Now edited to read the way it's supposed to read--"dark and dank."

Thanks again to both of you for your comments. It's rare when yours fooly gets 'em, so when I do, I truly appreciate them.

PS The critter was back last night, only this time in my kitchen area.

AuntShecky

03-20-2013, 06:45 PM

Before I present the next two numbers, let me say that writing so-called "free verse" is every bit as difficult for yours fooly as is blank verse and all the other varieties of metrical form. I guess in my particular case I have the same problem when attempting prose. One would think I would find it easier after all these decades of trying, but no. Perhaps the more one reads, the more she sees examples of what good writing can be. So with that disclaimer, here goes nothin':

“It Just Seems Easy, Dunno Why”

It’s reached the point
of an epidemic, this delusional
disease from which few are immune.
Our names, though yet unknown, are Legion:

an Adonis beaming back
from every mirror,
and in the distorted steam
of each shower,
a Sinatra.

No dorm without scores
of students of unquavering faith
in their ability to play the guitar.
No kitchen operating without
a chef worthy of the Cordon Bleu.

Firm is the personal belief
in oneself: clearly
a faultless driver
and an expert lover
with a sense of humor
(motoring but one way);
and when so moved
“to take pen in hand”
who isn’t quick
to describe the inky spurts
spilling out as “poetry”?

Amid the cloudy source
of the certifying chops,
presumed the peers of professional quals,
for the instant diagnosis
delivered in a snap:

you’re crazy.

Lines for the First Day of Spring

I love the look
of sun-lit snow,
the white costumes
and caps of conifers,
and seeing the bittersweet
scene play out,
as winter’s finale
slowly drips away.

Hawkman

03-21-2013, 06:52 AM

There are some nice puns: "unquavering" is rather jolly, although in my experience of musical internet instruction, it seems to be the norm for notes to be referred to as half, quarter, eigth, and sixteenth, rather than minims crotchets, quavers and semiquavers - at least when teacher is American :D of course, there don't seem to be may opportunities for breves in Banjo music - lol. "Cerifying chops" is also rather good. But "the motoring but one way" would be improved by moving it.

Not sure about the first line of S2, the excision of ing from beam would make the line more comfortable in context. I think I'd prefer it thus:

"an Adonis beams out
from every mirror,
and in each shower's distorting steam,
Sinatra sings."

"Firm is the personal belief
in oneself:"

really dosn't read well. Combining personal and self-belief is unnecessary, tautologous and just makes the line tortuous. "The self-belief is firm." would be quite sufficient

"clearly an expert lover,
a faultless driver
with a sense of humour
(motoring but one way);

would have been my choice here.

I like the chops pun, although it might be a bit obscure to those unfamiliar with the term for a Chinese seal/signature ;) Overall I like the conceit of the piece which highlights conceit lol.

The second poem is a fitting little tribute to the changing season.

Thanks for the entertainment.

Live and be well - H

AuntShecky

03-27-2013, 05:55 PM

Originally appearing on this forum on 4/15/12, it is re-posted here because the topic came up today.

A Kid Does His Homework

(Translated from the original Martian by William McGonagall, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor and Chairman of the Department of Martian Language and Literature at Downstate University at Hogwash.)

Our assignment was to report
about an aspect of our neighbor,
the one that’s one step closer
to the star we share.

My composition is about whatever it is
that almost covers that entire sphere.

It is a sickening color.
It is not red at all.
It is nothing like we have here.

Below a bunch of star-colored streaks
that follow the big ball while
it rotates and revolves, we see
the non-red thing wrinkling
the way our sand ripples in the wind.

When we get a closer look,
we see the expansive edge
rush back and forth
like it’s chasing itself.

If you put a small quantity
into a transparent vessel,
the color goes away.

If you put some in a flat container
and wait–
all of it goes away
(except for the mark it leaves behind,
a gray shadow, like a ghost.)

There are a few solid places
where this covering doesn’t reach.
But on those stony parts you’ll find
basins full and narrow lines of it
wriggling and cross-cutting rocks.

When you’re next to a border
and bravely stick an appendage in,
it feels strange, as if you want
to shrivel up and get yourself small,
as you do in night-time.

There’s a story about
how these aliens catch
some of it in little containers
which they keep by their sides
everywhere they go, like captured prisoners,

though from time to time
they tilt the contents out--
right into their maws!

I don’t believe this.
It makes me gag!

Also, it’s said that tiny, noisy
bits of it shoot down
from the tops of boxes
where the creatures stand erect.

They let these flashy meteors
fall directly on themselves.
They’re happy --
sometimes they sing –
as they rub and caress
these needles into their body-shells.

But when they move about their world
and the white streaks in their sky
meld into great clumps of dark gas
and begin to ooze the identical drops,

the earth-beings bolt in fear.
Sometimes they hold up parabolic shields
but mostly they run

as if they must avoid this stuff
or die.

They should do what our ancestors did
three million years ago
when they gathered up the putrid poison
and hid it all underground.

Mittfzlzl
(“The End”)

Hawkman

03-27-2013, 06:45 PM

I don't beleive this was translated by McGonnagall, there aren't enough execrable rhymes... It's a fun read though, even if it is, perhaps, just a teensy bit prosaic. Maybe the Martian lyricism has been lost in translation ;)

Live and be well - H

Delta40

03-27-2013, 09:36 PM

I don't get the joke about mcgonagall. This is no where near his style at all.

hack

03-28-2013, 12:29 AM

This is marvelous.

AuntShecky

04-01-2013, 06:29 PM

Thank you, Hawkman, for your comments re #433 and #435^^^
And thanks, all of you, for weighing in on the Martian thingie, originally posted about a year ago in the 30/30 thread for National Poetry Month, at which time this particular piece generated nothing in the way of a response. I guess one could say "Better late than never."

The impetus of so-called "Martian" poetry comes from a pressing need in contemporary poetry to see the world through an entirely new lens. The idea is to present the subject as "unfamiliar," a theme masterfully explored by poets such as Diane Wakoski, as well as those mentioned in the Wikipedia link. What more convenient way to present an object as unfamiliar than to look at it as if the writer were a Martian? (Not at all to imply that yours fooly's writing is in any way "out of this world.")

The piece, purporting "translated" by Prof. McG, is allegedly a classroom exercise written by a student in the Red Planet's counterpart to middle school.

RE: The question of Prof. McGonagall, the chairman of the department of Martian Language and Literature at the upstate campuse of Downstate University at Hogwash (DUH.): that particular institution of higher learning has been strapped, financially speaking; hence the inability to pay for top-notch talent. (The highest paid staff member is of course the athletic director. It's an open question of whether he earns his keep, with the Hogwash Boars this season going 0-9.) Prof. McG, while an earnest scholar, is no Mark Van Doren. The only joke is an "inside" one, I guess, in that the surname is the same as an allegedly bad poet. Perhaps the Professor's namesake, the unappreciated bard, is one of his ancestors, a distant
relative on his father's side. Then again, maybe it's just a coincidence.

Speaking of which, it is definitely a coincidence that Opening Day coincides with April Fool's Day. You may undoubtedly think the following is a little of both:

Opening Day

The season’s fresh: a level field;
the spotless record holds a shield
against what ruthless fate may yield.

The new slate’s clean for groups of nine,
though numbers slide and sink in time,
as water reaching its own line.

While clouds of doubt are pitched away,
the sun sits high and cheers today.
Our trust runs sacred: Let us play.

Delta40

04-01-2013, 08:14 PM

Aha. We were all thinking of the worst poet in the world...many apologies, even if he is a distant ancestor!

AuntShecky

04-02-2013, 03:00 PM

Thank you,Delta.

In addition to the "triplets" in #439^^^there are two more on the same topic. While the season is still fresh, here are the two parodies posted back in the 30/30 thread from this time last year in reply #58. (If you scroll up that April 2012 thread to the posting April 16, you'll also see the posting inspired by the sestina by Diane W. if you are interested):

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?68342-Auntie-s-April-2012-Thread-30-Poems-in-30-Days&p=1134096&viewfull=1#post1134096

AuntShecky

04-09-2013, 06:30 PM

This revised version closes out the last of a group of three jazz-themed poems written in April 2008, but never before appearing on the LitNet, maybe fortunately so. (The other two are in separate threads.)

It takes a long time to revise a poem; one should probably wait for a period of time to elapse in order to see it with fresh eyes, even if it takes as long as half a decade.

The title comes from the opening line of the old, old song, "Let's Face The Music (And Dance), but other than that lifted lyric, that's it for references to Irving Berlin (at least in this particular thing.)

“There May Be Trouble Ahead”

“The saxophone of melody”
blows hot, blows cold,
as young hands deftly dribble keys.
The alto runs a scale, puts down
a triad or two, and segues
into “Caravan.”

What if Rashawn should one day
leave his instrument at home?
Would false assumptions,
with undertones untrue,
blow his innocence away?

Why should he tote around old bags?
All he wants to do is blow his horn.

In this reverberant land
some of us still bleat
overheated hymns from Hell
drowning out the soft desert’s cry
and strangling the blues.

Noise overfloods and undermines
the tunes, rejoicing, reflecting,
as heat might flash upon tin.
Heads filled with historic sand
keep feet moving, moving on

in caravans against discordant dust
kicked up by gritty winds.
Godspeed to nomads
who seek cooling springs
of sun-sparkled harmony.

Hawkman

04-10-2013, 05:58 PM

Hello Auntie. I surprised myself while reading this, and the surprise came from my personal association with your word choices in the opening stanza. Whilst I understand perfectly what you were conveying in terms of the depiction of playing music, and although you are quite correct in your use of 'keys' when describing the things one fingers on a sax (or any blown instrument that has them) the image which springs to my mind is of piano keys, which caused some confusion to my internal image associated with your words. I can only assume that this was because the first instrument that I encountered was a piano, as early as the age of two. My mother always had a piano in the house, though when I was very young we had two. I don't think she played it in the last 20 years of her life, though. I remember after she died I lifted the lid to see if it was in tune and I depressed a key. It snapped off in a puff of microscopic dust; the instrument was absolutely riddled with woodworm. Your last verse reminded me. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that I had a positively gothic upbringing. :D

The second minor issue is with your use of dribble. Apart from a rather unpleasant image of drooling, culturally, on this side of the pond, the word, when not associated with wetness, conjures up the picture of a soccer player dribbling a ball. I spose this isn't entirely inappropriate in context, except that if he uses his fingers then it's 'hand ball!' Lol.

On a technical note I do have a relevant issue with the conclusion of the final verse. Harmony is a very weak word with which to conclude the poem. The three syllables forming a dactyl allow the two weak stresses to diminish the impact. Whereas this might be perfectly acceptable in a piece of music it doesn't really work in the written word. A stronger beat is necessary to close the tale. You might try:

"who, in sparkled harmony
seek cooling springs."

But it's only a suggestion and I accept that my opinion is entirely subjective. I'd prefer sparkling, but it doesn't work with cooling.

Anyway, an enjoyable read.

Live and be well - H

AuntShecky

04-11-2013, 10:44 PM

"Dribble" is the word, associated w. basketball -- going up and down the keys like going up and down the court. "Harmony" has a double-meaning, both intended here to contradict "discordant." Again, I've said way too much.

Your comments are always appreciated, Hawkman.

AuntShecky

04-12-2013, 04:24 PM

This next number is fresh off the keyboard and offers in a "slanted" way a sop to those who loathe end rhyme. (There's an eye rhyme as well.)

The Window-Washer

To wipe square glass encased in steel
means dangling by a single belt
some fifty-seven stories steep.
The comic hard-hat’s tipped to bolt–
a useless tenant, like The Rich,
who hang where softer winds have blown,
a penthouse just beyond his reach:
a short way up, a long way down.

Hawkman

04-13-2013, 05:30 AM

With a little modification in tense this would make a fine epitaph :D

Live and be well - H

AuntShecky

05-01-2013, 05:33 PM

With a little modification in tense this would make a fine epitaph :D

H

Not meant to be, though. More like leaving the poor workin stiff "suspended."
Thanks for reading this. You're the only one who graces my work with replies and I appreciate it greatly.

Auntie

AuntShecky

05-01-2013, 05:40 PM

1.
Foggity, Hoggity,
Limbaugh, on radio,
Rush-es where patriots
oft fear to tread.

Liberals: tongues wagging
Ultraconservative
paranoid listeners:
rocks in their heads.

2.
Parsily, Farcily,
Simon and Garfunkel,
songwriting troubadours,
dabbling in rhyme.

Absent of irony,
sentimentality
wore out their wholesomeness,
stuck in their time.

3.
Hippity, Hypety,
Phineas T. Barnum
schlepping his circus to
parts near and far.

Faking zoology
incontrovertibly
showed to the world just what
monkeys we are.

4.
Hartily, tartily,
Sisters Kardashian,
plastered on tabloid sheets,
talent unknown.

Hawking “reality,”
pseudocelebrity
blasted its horn brashly:
Culture’s last groan.

Double Dactyl (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/glossary-term/Double%20dactyl)

Grit

05-01-2013, 05:47 PM

1.
Foggity, Hoggity,
Limbaugh, on radio,
Rush-es where patriots
oft fear to tread.

Liberals shudder.
Ultraconservative
paranoid listeners:
rocks in their heads.

I like the rhyme scheme for this one and the last line made me style. Well done.

2.
Parsily, Farcily,
Simon and Garfunkel,
songwriting troubadours,
dabbling in rhyme.

Absent of irony,
sentimentality
wore out their wholesomeness,
stuck in their time.

I really like this one, but it's hard for me to pin point why. I suspect it's the second stanza. The first is kind of silly and had me smiling. For some reason, the second strikes me as more serious, and kind of sad. Time stops for no man, no matter how his hair looks.

3.
Hippity, Hypety,
Phineas T. Barnum
schlepping his circus to
parts near and far.

Faking zoology
incontrovertibly
showed to the world just what
monkeys we are.

This is clever, and I'm seeing a pattern in these here with the first lines. Sounds like witch talk from Wiz of Oz.

4.
Hartily, tartily,
Sisters Kardashian,
plastered on tabloid pages,
talent unknown.

Hawking “reality,”
pseudocelebrity
blasted its horn brashly:
Culture’s last groan.

I couldn't agree more. Why is it that today all you need to be famous is absolutely no shame? I think the brash horn line suits the hole culture quite well.

Grit

05-01-2013, 05:54 PM

AuntShecky

05-01-2013, 06:04 PM

Thank you for reading these, Grit. The nonsense double dactyls introducing each verse are prescribed by the rules. (Click "Double dactyl" in brown-colored font in the original posting for an explanation of the form.)

Hawkman

05-03-2013, 05:46 AM

1.

Foggity, Hoggity,
Limbaugh, on radio,
Rush-es where patriots
oft fear to tread.

Liberals: tongues wagging
Ultraconservative
paranoid listeners:
rocks in their heads.

I'm afraid I had to look this chap up on Google. He sounds like a bit of a twit, a bit like Jeremy Clarkson over here, but Clarkson doesn't subject us to his wilder opinions on a daily basis, and anyway, is obviously being ironically humorous. I don't get that impression about Limbaugh, from what I've read. Why have you split rushes with a hyphen? Not sure about 'oft' either as to my ear fear counts as bi syllabic. "Liberals: tongues wagging" doesn't fit the metre whereas, "liberals: wagging tongues," would.

2.
Parsily, Farcily,
Simon and Garfunkel,
songwriting troubadours,
dabbling in rhyme.

Absent of irony,
sentimentality
wore out their wholesomeness,
stuck in their time.

Poor old Simon and Garfunkle! Is this the voice of a disillusioned ex-hippie? 'Tis a jaundiced view for sure :D

3.
Hippity, Hypety,
Phineas T. Barnum
schlepping his circus to
parts near and far.

Faking zoology
incontrovertibly
showed to the world just what
monkeys we are.

Can't argue with that.

4.
Hartily, tartily,
Sisters Kardashian,
plastered on tabloid pages,
talent unknown.

Hawking “reality,”
pseudocelebrity
blasted its horn brashly:
Culture’s last groan.

again I have issues with the metre. The addition of the s on pages adds a syllable and upsets it. "blasted its horn brashly" doesn't work either. Try: "Horn blasting brashly, it's"

Thanks for the entertainment.

Live and be well - H

AuntShecky

05-04-2013, 05:04 PM

Hyphenated "Rush-es" to underscore his first name. Makes me think of "rush to judgement."

Lines 4 and 8 in each double dactyl are supposed to rhyme. Also, the two stressed syllables are supposed to come in the form of dactyl-spondee.

To my (tin) ear "Liberals: tongue wagging" sounds more like a double dactyl (/xx /xx) than "WAGging TONGUES" (iamb + stressed syllable.)

Likewise, "Blasted its horn brashly": /xx /xx (double dactyl)

This morning on my handwritten draft I noticed the extra syllable in "pages." Will fix.

Thanks, Hawk.

AuntShecky

06-12-2013, 08:26 PM

Perhaps there is a definite reason for G.K. Chesterton's observation, cited earlier today in a LitNutter's thread:
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?75378-Poems-about-cheese.
The following is from 1998, during a phase when yours fooly was so infatuated by enjambment that all the punctuation fled in disgust.

Making A Toasted Cheese Sandwich

When you have nothing
the philosophers tell you
to be happy with
the little you have
take delight in the simple things
philosophers say

Well, I have a slice of cheese
and two slices of bread
what could be simpler
or cheaper
than that

I'd prefer wheat bread
healthy whole grain
with a hearty bite
and some Swiss
neutral like the country
and therefore harmless
though subtly nutty
and not as pully
as mozza-pizza
but snappy enough
to melt into what
product researchers call
"mouth-feel"

What I have
is a square
of store-brand synthetic
processed stuff
that's tasteless
and bland
and therefore one
hundred per cent
American

imposed between a pair
of machine-cut sponges
to pop into
the toaster-oven

That's right I'm making
this the old-fashioned way
not like the greasy-spoon staple
drowned in margarine
and slapped on the same griddle
that burned burgers
through three shifts

(while listed on the ripped plastic menu
as "grill" cheese)

Nor would I be crazy
enough to consider
the wacky Heloise-style
hint of wrapping it in foil
and cooking it at the same time
as doing the ironing
(nobody irons anymore)

and besides -- what about the crumbs
escaping from the Reynolds' Wrap armor
and mixing with the
inadvertently-washed Kleenex
in the pockets
of your pants

No, when it comes to
toasting cheese sandwiches
I'm a purist though not a true
vegan, having been known
to consume your occasional fish
the communal omelet
and of course
cheese

So I'm standing guard
in front of the countertop appliance
that's like an abandoned wife
whose husband left her for
a younger, flashier microwave
and I'm watching the coil
turn red
in embarrassment or anger

You'd think I were some snooty
chef from the Cordon Bleu
fussing over a feast
for some fastidious dignitary
the way this social-climbing sandwich
has commanded my attention

But you've got to watch
you've got to know
the precise moment
when to flip

or one side burns
and the other side stays pale
and the cheese, inside,
doesn't even warm up,
let alone melt

and you can bet
somebody will complain
about the crumbs
on the floor

you've got to watch

Though I'd much prefer
to look out the window
and see the sky stretch
and change into its evening wear
that isn't quite basic black
and definitely not blue

and into the brush to catch
a glimpse of furry beings
sniffing the twilight air
while hustling for a meal
they can afford
to be curious and brave
now that it's dusk

and the sportsmen have all
gone home or to a diner
for a quick beer
and a burned burger
there are no hunters left

except for Orion
amid the sharp and witty stars
and the Moon
rumored to be made of green cheese
playing Toastmaster to the night
and raising a shimmering glass
that spills a silver spotlight
over the dance floor of the field

which in the cold morning
will melt into bits
of glittering confetti
these frosty crumbs
of moonlight in the grass

with the Cosmos taking its
simple delight
in the things it has
both little and big
though when you're talking
about the Universe
and its timeless banquet
size doesn't matter

while I'm inside
in the kitchen

toasting cheese

tailor STATELY

06-12-2013, 08:37 PM

lol

Noteworthy: [quote]"there are no hunters left

except for Orion"

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

AuntShecky

06-13-2013, 06:39 PM

lol

Noteworthy: [quote]"there are no hunters left

except for Orion"

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),

tailor STATELY

Yep. He's the Gaelic constellation. ("O'Ryan.")

Hawkman

06-14-2013, 02:40 PM

Well, Auntie: even warmed up and re-served it's a witty and amusing rant, but is it "poetry"? It's damned good Prose because its a witty and amusing rant, but does it actually qualify as prose poetry?

Not sure about this bit:

"and slapped on the same griddle
that burned burgers
through three shifts
and listed on the ripped plastic menu"

as it reads as if the grill is listed on ripped plastic menu, rather than the burger. Too many un-demarcated subordinate clauses perhaps... the insertion of an 'is' before listed would sort this, I think.

Overall, the piece comes over as a monologue infused with amusing digressions. I could imagine someone like Alan Bennett coming up with this as one of his "Talking Heads", although He was more quintessentially English in tone, and, rather than burgers, would probably have mentioned scones and jam.

here's a taste http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGCg3ARv14U

if you hit this page you should find other examples, though unfortunately not the one I was thinking of, but there are some shorts read by Bennett himself, which adds to the flavour.

Hope you enjoy them, and I did rather enjoy your offering btw, whether it's poetry or not! :D

Live and be well- H

AuntShecky

06-19-2013, 03:03 PM

but is it "poetry"?

No more or less than (m)any of the other pieces posted on the Personal Poetry forums, your fine verse excepted of course. On the one hand, I hear my fellow LitNutters bemoaning meter and rhyme, while others complain about free verse, which Frost famously likened to "playing tennis without a net." Guess yer ol' Auntie can please none of the people--none of the time!

does it actually qualify as prose poetry?
Beats me. Aside from the "fish nor fowl" characterization, I'm not sure I know what it is.

as it reads as if the grill is listed on ripped plastic menu, rather than the burger.

You got me on this one, from the gal who's always harping about "misplaced modifiers." The line, wallowing in its error for a decade and a half, has been
edited.

Thanks for weighing in on this one, Hawk.

AuntShecky

07-24-2013, 07:38 PM

Your fellow LitNutter has spent the better part of the afternoon reviewing this thread, for reasons unknown (other than a particularly virulent masochistic streak.) The experience was one long exhausting cringe, my already-furrowed mug reddening at the sight of "every eggy-faced bêtise" (#348, above.) On a much more "positive" note, yours fooly is --and will forever be--grateful for the many thoughtful and thoroughly helpful comments throughout this thread, which shall-- the poetry gods willing-- continue as long as the little verses strain to make their appearance and "Pong 2.1"-- the plucky little PC--holds on.

In the meantime, though, your indulgence is begged as this author attempts to revise and re-post earlier offerings from time to time, though from the looks of many of these would take another lifetime, years perhaps better spent in devotion to Finnegans Wake (as the author of that cryptic novel advised. )

Concerning revision, the conventional wisdom is to wait a certain length of time after the first version in order to approach the piece with "fresh" eyes.
Here, then, is a slightly revised version of #108, which originally appeared on 7/9/10:

“I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floor of silent seas.”
–T. S. Eliot

Hermit Crab

Two times dumb luck named her wrong.
Not quite a solo fixture stuck in salty sand,
she could do better among large social groups
swirling in tide pools streaked with sun.
Genus, species, identity--already cracked apart
before science deemed her class of crab not “true,”
(though crustaceous, to be sure.) Not doomed
like that fabled Dutchman, wandering the sea,
yet just as unmoored and marooned,
now scours round for a fitting carapace,
in which to squat: abandoned digs
vacated by whelks and periwinkles.

To such a creature one could call me kin:
born by chance beneath the star-sketched sign
which shares its name with a deadly malady –-
that gritty pearl! –-but not the hardest wave
to ride. An absent birthright’s tougher still.
I washed ashore with nothing; just the same
I’ll leave. Oh, for a harbor, safe against
the perils of poverty’s rough surf.
I tend to shun my fellow creatures’ company --
never at home in the tossing seas
of fleeting treasures, whistles, and brash tweets --

not fish nor fowl, not swimming, nor floating,
with trepidation treading modern times.
A voyage to a century twice past
might chart a map to show the way to thrive.
New England’s recluse, left alone to dry,
retiring to her room, was thought to clench
sweet solitude close to her quiet heart,
the plangent sea-song in her ear.
To the surface came scores of pithy poems,
unsigned, the dactyl of her name obscured,
the boast of frogs too public for her taste.
At times she’d greet the children passing by
the weathered windowsill where she had set –
to cool for future fruit – an empty shell.

Haunted

07-26-2013, 11:02 PM

I admire how you craft the parallel. The melancholia is not lost on me. These lines touched me particularly:

I washed ashore with nothing; just the same
I’ll leave. Oh, for a harbor, safe against
the perils of poverty’s rough surf.

It's really a great poem, Auntie.

Hawkman

07-27-2013, 04:47 AM

Hi Auntie.
There’s a lot to like in this poem: the analogy of the hermit crab is a fun one and there is a kind of mournful, tongue-in-cheekiness to the poem which is amusing. But there are also things in here which don’t quite work, at least for me. I’m not keen on that opening line.

“Two times dumb luck named her wrong.”
For a start, “two times” sounds like a multiplication table. “Twice” would have been much better here, and “named her wrong” may be idiomatic, I suppose, but it isn’t elegant. Neither do I like the opening line terminating in a full stop. The opening statement, as it were, is too bold, too stark and stops the poem, so that the reader has to “start again at line two, which incidentally changes the subject from the misnaming of the beast to where it lives and goes on for three lines before returning to the theme of classification at line 5. More logically this should flow directly from line one. The aside, (though crustaceous to be sure) obviously included for humorous effect doesn’t actually touch my funny-bone, it just stalls the flow. It feels to me like unnecessary exposition.

The Flying Dutchman is a fun image, but unmoored and marooned doesn’t really work for me, although I do see what you were getting at, but it would work better if this flowed from the beach and rock pools bit:

Twice misnamed by luck and man, her genus,
class and species cracked apart, long before
science deemed her class of crab not “true.”
Not quite a solo fixture stuck in salty sand,
she could do better among large social groups
swirling in tide pools streaked with sun.
Not doomed like that fabled Dutchman,
wandering the sea, the hermit is marooned,
and scours round for a fitting carapace,
in which to squat: abandoned digs
vacated by whelks and periwinkles.

The second verse has better structure, although I’m not sure that:
“that gritty pearl! –-but not the hardest wave
to ride.”

Does that much for the flow. Presented as it is, “that gritty pearl” reads as another aside with the subsequent bit about the wave being another aside tacked on the end. Again, I do see what you’re getting at, but I’m not sure that it’s expressed very well: Cancer or homelessness? I know which I’d prefer! The only other problem in this verse is in the last line; not sure what whistles have to do with anything, so I’d be inclined to drop it.

The first line of S3 might be better by omitting one of the “ings” try:

“not fish nor fowl, neither swimming nor afloat,”

I’m not quite sure where “a voyage to a century twice past” takes us either. I guess what you are saying is that life was easier 200 years ago. I’m not sure I’d agree. Oh, and boasting Frogs, what have you got against the French? ;)

“At times she’d greet the children passing by
the weathered windowsill where she had set –
to cool for future gifts – an empty shell.”

This image is a little confusing and I can’t quite get the sense of it. I know to what it should refer but the “empty shell cooling on a windowsill” (for some reason) makes me think of apple pies, although as it’s empty I guess it’s just the pastry. But, “for future gifts” has me thinking of a classical cornucopia.

The trouble is, that having introduced the hermit crab seeking temporary digs, we are left wondering whether the empty shell is a previous abode, or, having brought them up, some kind of poem without meaning. I feel there needs to be a little more focus in the conclusion and a decision made about the nature of the metaphor. It almost feels the poem was rushed to a conclusion; “an empty shell” is certainly a good way to wind the poem up, but it just doesn’t sit quite well enough with what immediately precedes it.

Generally though, the poem has good rhythm and is sprinkled with fitting and inventive imagery and was a fun read.

Live and be well - H

AuntShecky

07-31-2013, 02:40 PM

Thank you, Haunted and Hawkman for reading the previous posting and offering such thoughtful responses. I truly appreciate them, and promise to give your suggestions serious consideration.

This next number is making its debut, after fermenting for three weeks or so:

Power Outage

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!
What the hell was that?
That shock of sound

too loud for a leftover
crack from the Fourth,
this unnatural thunder.

Out of meadow-locked mansions
across the asphalt divide
the tee-shirted squires streamed,

their eyes blinking with wonder,
arms raised in inquiry,
if not surrender.

Couple of hours later
(by our still-counting clocks)
rumbling equipment charged ahead.

Inside a human crow’s-nest
cranked up by a metal crane,
glinting in the brass ball of the sun,

a hard-hatted crewman stretched
and poked the problematic pole.
Exploding like a pod,

something split open, spilling
acrid, yellow powder
upon the road below.

Another blast! The foreman
signaled over to our window:
everyone’s okay.

Our second-hand microwave whistled;
the refrigerator continued to hum,
as the ball games segued

into Sixty Minutes, Sunday
prime time. Overhead
the ceiling light beamed

with no gloating in the glow
of the temporary switch
from disparity, transformed.

The inconvenienced haves
waited in the day’s vestigial heat
and interior darkness,

while the work went on all night,
lit by the headlights of company trucks
beneath the flickering stars.

Hawkman

08-01-2013, 11:45 AM

Hi Auntie. There are a couple of places in here where the syntax feels awkward, if not actually inverted. I daresay you could claim idiomatic usage, but it seems inconsistent.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!
What the hell was that?
That shock of sound

too loud for a leftover
crack from the Fourth,
this unnatural thunder."

The use of that and this is jarring, and the punctuation feels wrong.
it could be written thusly:

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!
What the hell was that?
That shock of sound,

too loud for a leftover
crack from the Fourth;
an unnatural thunder."

or perhaps

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!
What the hell was that?
Some unnatural thunder,

a shock of sound;
too loud for a crack
left over from the Fourth."

Again, probably idiomatic, but jarring to my ear:

"Couple of hours later"

I keep looking for an indefinite article at the start of the line. I'd prefer; "Two hours later" here, and I'm not sure that the parentheses are strictly warranted in the next line either.

I'm sure this is intentional:

"a hard-hatted crewman stretched
and poked the problematic pole.
Exploding like a pod,"

but every time I read this (and I've read it several times) I skip the full stop after pole. Quite an amusing image that. :devil:

I have trouble with the sense of this verse:

"with no gloating in the glow
of the temporary switch
from disparity, transformed."

Are you commenting on the news programme (or more likely) saying that the voice of the poem, usually a 'have not' in the great divide, is now surprisingly a have, whereas the usual 'haves' have been deprived. This would make sense in context, since the explosion of the transformer doesn't seem to have affected the author's household, but the use of 'from' in the last line confuses this. If 'to' were used it would make sense. Thus, in the next line, "The inconvenienced haves" now temporarily deprived of power, wait in darkness.

Overall it reminds me of one of Edmund Crispin's tales (I think it's Glimpses of the Moon) set in some rural habitat, where the habitual fizzing of "The Pizzer," a pylon or power pole, means the locals live in perpetual expectation of its imminent detonation.

Anyway, it's an entertaining tale, Auntie.

Live and be well - H

blank|verse

08-01-2013, 08:06 PM

I'll have to come back to 'Hermit Crab' later, as it's certainly an ambitious poem, but I find I'm in agreement with some of Hawk's concerns, as well as having a few of my own. I'll try and post a more detailed response soon.

As for 'Power Outage', it just reads like prose, or a monologue. It's a decent enough narrative, and I didn't have a problem with the idiomatic voice, but it just feels like a simple recounting of an event that happened, and is lacking in any poetic magic. It's not bad, but I don't feel I want to read it again, which isn't a good sign. Perhaps some of us have come to expect more?

wordwaymike

08-02-2013, 03:45 PM

The Puzzle and the Pity

We cannot see the ciphers, such a stretch
of forest, dense with senseless reason, and
no rhyme. A murky stream from a source unknown
churns deep beneath our unschooled reckoning.
*************************
I really liked the way you came charging out the gate on this one. The murkiness of origins has always weighed heavily upon my attempts to understand the "now" that I/all inhabit.
Good stuff!

*******************************************
O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:

Robert Burns (old Gallic)

AuntShecky

08-02-2013, 03:46 PM

Thank you, Blank_Verse and Hawkman for offering comments on this latest number which I had labored over. The form of "Power Outage" was the result of a conscious attempt to mimic (or make a parody of) the kind of poems that used to be published in the Sunday paper. As selected by Ted Kooser, a former U.S. poet laureate, the majority of the reprints seemed to deal with slices of American life, especially (to my observation) middle-class, suburban life.

The poems were all short with short lines, sometimes resembling broken-up lines of prose (though yours fooly did try to inject somewhat less literal elements into this piece.) Although a great many of the Sunday poems were little gems, there was --again, to my way of thinking -- a certain similarity about them, giving the unsettling impression that they could have been composed by the same person.

Certainly there was never, ever anything the least bit offensive "edgy" about any of the them, let alone taking the risk of invoking a litany of the saints in the opening lines, not that the ejaculation here is all that irreverent, but an honest,instantaneous reaction. In line with such non-"family fare" is the "brass ball" metaphor, referring not only to the sun but to the worker who poked the pole. For intestinal fortitude,that guy ranks right up there with Joe Kittinger (Google him.) His nickname must be "B.B." if you catch my drift.

The metaphor introduced in the title was meant to suggest the kind of "power outage" that lasts a lifetime. The third stanza describes the houses ("homes") affected by the blackout-- if "middle-class," then the highest echelon thereof, with imposing football field size lawns fronting each ("meadow-locked.")

Mentioning of the television programs, the microwave, the ceiling light, etc. was a roundabout way (i.e. non-prosaic,non-linear way) of showing that the electricity in the speaker's household stayed on, while the much-better-off neighbors (the "haves") had lost theirs. Despite the temptation to do so, there was no "gloating," but the irony of having the tables turned (for once) was striking.

Now I'm starting to feel sorry for the folks. The incident which was the impetus of this piece occurred on the Sunday following the Fourth of July, a holiday marked by loud fireworks; it happened again last Friday evening, and once more at 4 am (EDT) today. As laypersons we assumed that the explosions and subsequent power outages were caused by a "blown transformer," but we have it on excellent authority (a retiree who did this line of work for several decades) that it wasn't the transformer (though I'm keeping "transform" in my poem.)

Not fifteen feet away from where I sit the power company is preparing to run underground wires as I type this. The vibrations from the excavator are making the screen on my monitor bow in at the middle. But that's not nearly as distressing as it must be for those who have a fancy freezer full of top-of-the-line groceries melting away (though some have back-up generators.)

AuntShecky

08-07-2013, 07:31 PM

Still another attempt at--I don't know what it is. I'm pretty sure it ain't that elusive "free verse"

Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda

If only that frothy nag had come in,
or that high fly ball had never been caught;
vindication from a last-chance foul shot,
or redemption from a penalty kick.

Now, say there’d been a better choice of road,
a fast track less bumpy, less litter-strewn–
what if I’d stood out, surpassing the pack,
consoled by its scraps and third-place tickets?

The folktale’s ending stands pat and pretty
were I to wind up coupled with a prince,
along with the sum that comes with his name.

The prime catch would willfully bet it all
on this sparse corpus suddenly made convex,
with newly lustrous hair and star-flecked eyes.

Hawkman

08-09-2013, 05:28 AM

I guess it's formalized free verse! Irregular 10 syllable lines with the odd line of blank verse thrown in :D Makes it rather an uneven read though...

Live and be well - H

AuntShecky

08-09-2013, 04:59 PM

I guess it's formalized free verse! Irregular 10 syllable lines with the odd line of blank verse thrown in :D Makes it rather an uneven read though...

That's it! The poetry realm's first "hybrid"!
Must do something about "lustrous" coming so soon after "lush," though. (OK-- it's fixed.)

Thanks for reading and commenting.

Haunted

08-11-2013, 03:10 AM

Power Outage — I like the casualness of it. Full of irony — "the tee-shirted squires", the powerful that becomes powerless in an instant, where the have-nots finding themselves having more than the haves. And how is anyone going to survive without a ballgame and Sixty Minutes on a Sunday? (For me it would be Person of Interest, I would go out of my mind.) And what drama:
Another blast! The foreman
signaled over to our window:
everyone’s okay.

Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda — a bit cryptic at times to my peabrain but the summer fun and fantasy is all intact.

All in all, two enjoyable treats!

Jerrybaldy

08-13-2013, 06:15 PM

Shoulda woulda coulda. I enjoyed. Took a couple of reads as it should. Then it felt like possible pasts and fleeting moments that could have changed everything and regret perhaps of not following a dream. You are convex in my mind auntie. X

AuntShecky

08-14-2013, 03:13 PM

Thank you, Haunted and JerryB--
You hit the nail on the head re: "Power Outage," Haunted, but the reaction it engendered goaded yours fooly into atarting that thread about free verse, a genre in which both you and JB are masters.
The "shoulda, woulda,coulda" was a result of trying to channel the world-view of Delmore Schwartz, especially his "True-Blue American."

blank|verse

08-19-2013, 01:57 PM

The latest poem shares its title with a Beverley Knight song, so things are off to a shaky start! Ignoring that, the rest of the poem is intelligently written, with some nice wordplay and recurrent imagery, wringing some wry humour out of a well-worn theme.

However, the argument of the second stanza loses me somewhat. Someone who ‘stood out, surpassing the pack’ sounds like a winner (in contrast to the loser of the first stanza); I don’t see why they would be ‘consoled by its scraps and third-place tickets’, it seems contradictory. Or are you saying the ‘fast track’ would be to a different mind-set, where winning was less important? Either way, it seems unclear.

The ‘prime catch’ is a nice touch, picking up the ‘catch’ of the first stanza (perhaps it would be better if the first catch were dropped, to reflect the change of fortunes). Line 9 should read ‘would stand’ rather than ‘stands’; and the words ‘corpus’ and ‘convex’ read oddly in context, they don’t seem like they belong in this poem.

And, even given the comedic tone of the poem, I wonder if a male poet would get away with objectifying a woman, as the prince does here by ‘betting it all’ on making her look more attractive? (Although the prince is also objectified as a ‘prime catch’.) It strikes a misogynistic tone that makes for an uncomfortable ending.

As for the form, all the lines are iambic pentameter, either 10 or 11 syllables; it’s 14 lines, broken into an octave and sestet with a volta at line 9; so I’d say this is a blank verse sonnet.

Even if you were writing free verse lines that use iambic pentameter as a guide and have predominantly four- or five-stress lines (even with occasional shorter lines), this would mean you’re writing free blank verse, a variation of free verse associated firstly with T.S. Eliot, but which can also be identified in the poetry of Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, Auden, and more recently I’d add Heaney, Andrew Motion and Don Paterson to that list, among many others, I’m sure.

AuntShecky

08-20-2013, 12:51 AM

Thank you very much, Blank_Verse, especially your final paragraph.

Beverley Knight is a new one on me. I will check her him? out on YouTube, or whatever site is free of charge.

L. * "consoled. . ." is an appositive, modifying "pack."

I'd say all of your criticisms are valid. As I said in another thread, yours fooly highly respects your opinion.

AuntShecky

09-04-2013, 01:45 AM

Aspirations

Outside the back window
the flash of a feathery thing
couldn’t be the bluebird of happiness --
probably some upstart jay
oblivious of the coming coldness, free
from worry over the real possibility
somebody will forget to fill the feeder.

Still, way down deep gnaws a whim
that at times I’d rather be like him.

You know, as long as I
am flying in the face of reality,
sanity, all those “-ties” that tie
us down, why can’t I swing
for those unattainable fences,
find the egg in a golden nest?

Take a deep breath.

For instance sniffing the whole
earth in a geranium, getting
all greenhouse-y like Roethke
or Heaney, putting
loamy, sod-y words
into other-worldly pots.

Inhale.

I really want to grab you
by the roots and shake
you up until you wilt
from laughter. You sit--
I’ll do stand-up,
like Hicks and Hedberg,
except they’re both dead.

Exhale.

Hawkman

09-04-2013, 05:12 AM

Sadly, I have no knowledge of Hicks & Hedberg but I could always substitute them in my mind with Peter Cook and Dudley Moor - sic transit gloria mundi.

I really enjoyed this one Auntie. I still respire, aspire and I'm filled with ire at all the missed swings :D Oh, and when did blue get bifurcated, you know, happiness and sorrow both represented by the same colour:

Oh I woke up this morning
I was feelin' kind o' blue
Oh I woke up this morning
I knew my happiness was through
That blue-bird who's so happy -
he's gone - just upped and flew

Oh yeah....

Live and be well - H

prendrelemick

09-04-2013, 04:01 PM

Gilliatt Gurgle

09-04-2013, 08:47 PM

Aspirations

Outside the back window
the flash of a feathery thing
couldn’t be the bluebird of happiness --
probably some upstart jay
oblivious of the coming cold, free
from worry over the real possibility
somebody will forget to fill the feeder.
...

Nice.
Raucous Jays, keeping the feeder full especially during winter, trying to keep the Squirrels out of the feeder - a day in my life.
Clearly there is more to it than your opening lines, but they struck home for me.

AuntShecky

09-17-2013, 06:53 PM

September 15, 1963*
The shy quartet prepared to praise
the Source of life in a modest way.
Across a mouth a hand was raised
to stanch a laugh in Church, that day.

The mirror shone back youthful skin.
More hands flew up, clamped tight, remained
still. Above the shattered porcelain
and glass–- some colorless, some stained–-

in rubble hung the silenced bell,
like faith too patiently expressed
with justice absent in its knell:
the sense of utter senselessness.

If any hope from it derives,
old wounds cry out for true suture,
demanding from four stolen lives
deprived of futures: the future.

*

For the historical significance of the date click this link (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/justice-story/justice-story-birmingham-church-bombing-article-1.1441568) to a newspaper article.

A Millimeter to the Left

The old habit hates to budge
from its familiar, thus comfortable, perch
and seldom sees the point
of changing its baseline position.
The quo protects its status;
compensation stays unsought.

Stuck on melancholy,
the needle might shimmy
when blue clarity
overcomes an autumnal sky
or a sudden shimmer of moonlight
splashes the kitchen floor.

Hawkman

09-21-2013, 03:31 AM

Well I've finally got around to giving these a serious look - sorry for the delay but I've had a rather busy week. The first of the two offerings did require me to follow the link for the exposition. About the only thing I remember about 1963 are the winter and Dallas, but the date was wrong for the latter.

The most powerful stanza is the second. I was particularly impressed with your use of enjambment here in the transition from L2 to L3. That single word, still, is very effective. The first three verses work very well - in fact I'm inclined to suggest that the poem should be confined to three. The comment on senselessness at the end of S3 is probably sufficient comment. The last stanza is over egging the pudding, I feel. Compared with the three which precede it, it's a bit clunky in execution. The suture, futures, future doesn't really work and the syntactical inversion - placing derives at the end of the first line - come across as a bit laboured.

The second poem I rather enjoyed, although one line does trouble me slightly. At the end of S1 you say, "compensation stays unsought." Given the preceding lines, which seem to dwell on the comfortable, the familiar as the norm, why would one require "compensation"? Diversion, perhaps, but I feel compensation isn't really the right word. Love the second stanza.

Enjoyed reading both.

Live and be well - H

DieterM

09-23-2013, 05:08 AM

You wanted me to be brutal, something I have difficulty being. I'm a people-pleaser, so please bear with me ;-)
Well, I'm not really sure about the first poem. I've first read it without checking the historical background, wanting to let the words and rythm soak in. And to be honest, is it the rhyme or what, there was something that disturbed me. I wasn't really able to understand, I thought you were talking about a bell that hadn't remained silent for whatever obscure reason. Of course, I understood better once I had followed the link beneath.
I agree with Hawk re. the last stanza that you could easily drop without changing the meaning. I really didn't like the suture-future-thing; it disrupted the rythmical flow of the rest. Where I disagree with Hawk is the line break in st2 because it, too, disrupts the rythm rather aggressively (and doesn't match the words "remained still" – I don't know if I'm expressing myself so as to be understood).

All in all, I preferred the second poem, especially the second stanza with its really great and inspiring images.

prendrelemick

10-18-2013, 03:43 PM

AuntShecky

10-18-2013, 07:16 PM

Leaf Peeping

As on a pilgrimage, in faith we came
to gape, not pray. We gasped at artistry
of star-and-finger shapes upon each tree,
all streaked and stained with russet, bronze, and flame.
Soon suffering for art, we quickly blamed
the smarting pain on necks craned constantly,
ignoring cricks in soulful inquiry,
not straying off trails always marked the same.
But seasons change, and change sometimes means death.
Another tree witnessed a different fall;
it’s by not knowing that a human grieves.
While vibrant hues tinge our collective breath,
we could keep looking, searching, asking all,
in case we don’t find answers in the leaves.

I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man. –-Chuang Tse

Choreography

Do I like baseball
because it reminds
me of ballet – -
or do I like ballet
because it looks
just like baseball?

AuntShecky

11-01-2013, 05:38 PM

Even though the previous anti-poetry post sank like a stone (i.e. gathered moss), here comes another. It was directly inspired by another LitNutter's thread questioning whether a college education is worth all the trouble and dough. (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?77051-What-Price-a-Degree)

Though disturbing, the problem isn't really new. Emil's thread made me a recall a song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MwlphDyfCw) which dates way, way back to the 1970s. I think I first heard it on the old Mike Douglas show. If I recall correctly, Harry Nillson sang it, but after considerable time doing online searches I found that the ditty originated with Steve Goodman. When you listen to it and hear a reference to extremely- former Pres. Ford, you'll realize how far back the issue goes. It still exists, so many decades later!Every kind of unemployment is heart-breaking, but the state of being "overeducated and unemployed" brings a special kind of humiliation.

Why is it that many college grads, if they can find work at all, can only find jobs for which they are overqualified? Maybe it’s because of automation–-no more openings for elevator operators.

“Training is everything. A cauliflower ain’t nothin’ but a cabbage with a college education."
–Puddin’head Wilson

Educating Waiters

On shoes all buffed to a blinding shine,
worn heels still trail slightly desiccated ivy
from Cornell, Bucknell, Drexel, Tulane,
the customary stance is attentively erect,
though the position necessarily requires
an obsequious bow. It’s all up here,
like a valedictorian’s address,
the obligatory script:
“Hi, I’m Brandon, Aiden, Conor, Flynn,
and I’ll be your server this evening.”

That’s all the intro management sanctions–
no expounding on the marketing plan
behind the à la carte’s hidden tiers, the design
of classical font on top-quality vellum,
sheepskin for gourmands. Same goes
for table botany: how paper buds evolved
in Physalis alkekengi, or why pigmentation
in a calendula will thrive in season.

Proffer the wine list, but hands off the history
of Gascony and the Hundred Years War,
the coveted cases purloined in WW II;
ditto the etymology, including Shakespearean
allusions to Sherris sack.
The diktat likewise to clam up
about the chemical process of molecular
gastronomy in layman’s terms:
the nearly-magical nitrogen immersion
transforming a blue point or a Brussels sprout
into a gelatinous jewel that mystifies the tongue.

Ixnay on the comments re:
the sociological-economic-political implications
of taking the Lady’s order first, or the latest
psychological research data about
post-traumatic check syndrome, e.g.
which dominant alpha male in a group
will pounce for the discreet leather folder.
Above all, the server is forbidden
to flaunt post-graduate expertise
by offering to calculate the gratuity
instantly in his head.

“It’s a sorry situation that you can’t avoid/ When you’re overeducated and unemployed.”
--Steve Goodman

Jerrybaldy

11-01-2013, 07:56 PM

Unemployed and over educated? This must be you dear Auntie. Think I may be employed and under educated. I feel under educated to enjoy some of your postings. I very much enjoyed my trip with you to the politics of fine dining though.
You are eclectic in your taste to enjoy anything I write. I can taste a strong seasoning of cynicism in your poem however so maybe that is our tender thread. Write me something guttural :) x

DieterM

11-04-2013, 06:31 AM

I really liked "Tea Peeping", surely because it's so very much novemberish outside right now… especially the lines
"While vibrant hues tinge our collective breath,
we could keep looking, searching, asking all,
in case we don’t find answers in the leaves."
give room for thought. Thought I'd bump this one up – it deserves to be bumped anyway.

Not so fond of "Choreography" but only because, personnally, I don't do sports (neither as an activity nor as something you'd watch on telly) and I've been to a ballet representation once and have nearly fallen asleep… ;-)

DocHeart

11-04-2013, 02:45 PM

Every time I decide to treat myself to spending some time in this thread I feel nothing but sheer admiration for how accomplished your poetry is. You *are* a published and well-known poet who's just trolling us, aren't you? :)

Thanks for sharing.

DH

AuntShecky

11-05-2013, 04:11 PM

Thank you, JerryB, Dieter, and Doc.

You *are* a published and well-known poet who's just trolling us, aren't you? :)

DH

From your mouth to God's ear -- or from your device to His (or Her) panoramic screen.

AuntShecky

11-09-2013, 07:21 PM

A widely-circulated factoid about the great poet Auden reports that he never stopped revising his works, even years after they were published and anthologized. Whether or not you are a compulsive tinkerer, it really is a good practice, sometimes, to take a poem hot off the press (or word processing file)and put it aside. Then after a time --days, weeks, even months--resurrect it for revising. The idea is to look at it with fresh eyes.

This next ditty is a revision of a (much) earlier effort, and, man, did it ever require rewriting! I first wrote the thing when I was young and foolish. Now I am just. . . young.

And I'm pretty sure that sufficient time has elapsed since --1987!

“Snail Explodes; Birthday Ruined”
(Actual headline in the Sunday paper.)

After the toast, a little whine
squeaks the brewing trouble:
in full-burst when entrees arrive
all garlicky and a-bubble.

The shells are steaming-- miffed!
The evening’s gone awry.
A sore gastropod makes a crack
and pops the diner in the eye.

Anarchist snail! Eschewing both
invertebrate God and Bible,
it bows to neither fetes nor fates
and leaves the restaurant liable.

“I’ll never order escargot again!”
quoth the birthday girl, still seething.
Somewhere in the south of France rest
molluscan kin, more easily breathing.

DieterM

11-12-2013, 03:49 AM

How nice that you kept the "young"-label whereas I mostly think all there's left for me is "and" ;-)

Very funny, anyway; but: I somehow stumbled over "garlicky", and my first thought was "all garlick and a-bubble" would perhaps let the line flow better. But that's just a thought, and one has to have a quibble, otherwise one would have to admit that one thinks this is very nicely done ;-)

prendrelemick

11-12-2013, 05:00 AM

[COLOR="#008080"]Even though the previous anti-poetry post sank like a stone (i.e. gathered moss),

I feel guilty now, I liked your tree peeping, but, rather than saying something inane, said nothing .

AuntShecky

11-16-2013, 05:03 PM

It's so rare to have a sunny and mild day in November, as we're currently enjoying in this neck o' the woods that yours fooly is loath to ruin it with ponderous and heavy stuff; hence a pair of light ones for this gorgeous Saturday.

Assessment

I made a faux pas and a flub
when I declined to join the club:
that girly-girly coterie.
There must be something wrong with me.

I hate the Mall, much as a male,
won’t salivate over a sale,
nor lust for gems marked womanly.
There must be something wrong with me.

To fix my face and hair unnerves,
but I don’t curse my lack of curves.
My shape’s as straight as straight can be.
There must be something wrong with me.

Make no mistake! I’d love a guy,
but won’t play coy to catch his eye.
I’ll only flirt with irony.
I guess there’s something wrong with me.
Oh yes, there’s something wrong with me.

----

On the Lake Road

Though all the leaves
have already blown,
the pears hang on,
ripe for a strong wind
or a passing deer.

prendrelemick

11-23-2013, 03:47 AM

Ahh a single rhyming in couples.

Flirting with irony is mostly lost on we chaps - the irony part that is.

AuntShecky

11-26-2013, 08:09 PM

The previous posting was a little lighter than this next number. (For yours fooly's latest bit of humor -- intentional, that is--click this reply in the Anti-humor Thread. (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?45674-Auntie-s-Anti-Humor&p=1246438#post1246438), post #84.) Meanwhile into a slightly more somber realm we go:

Reconciliation

More logs will be thrown on the fire
without adding fuel to the flames.
Tamp down the latent gas and ire.
Try to recall the children’s names.

It was not difficult
coming here.
Some obligations
are easier to meet
than others. Paying
attention to the Mass
on TV: does that count?

Watching The Parade
from a well-cushioned couch
is not The Real Thing,
not at all the same
as craning my neck
above a crowded curb,
while the icy wind
burns my face
and invades my bones
as the brass-blare
tickles my inner ear,
and the drumbeat burrows
deep into my heart.

Repeat the anecdotes and jokes.
Hold up your end of the chatter.
No lectures on the drinks and smokes,
nor fights about What Really Matters.

I’m thankful for inclusion
among this company gathered
for a revved-up meal. Sufficiency seems
like abundance, an overflowing
cornucopia spilling out the fruits
of a half-forgotten past.

It’s good to get out for the day,
away from the forever-so-humble digs
with the old, familiar plywood panels,
the plaster crumbs, and the gaps
letting in scores of unwanted things.

The porous walls reek of unsettled sounds
from the good-looking couple on the floor above,
up and at it all night
with the shouts and the squabbling,
the rumbling and the thuds.
They’re much too young to battle this much.

“What have they got to fight about?”
complains the busybody from 3-G.
She has a late-model car and a live-in beau.
Also, curiosity. So many questions!
But I’m not really sure she knows my name.

The tight-lipped guy who lives downstairs–-
the one who thinks he can play bass guitar- -
resents it when I try to say hello.
Once he yanked the pudgy arm
of his friendly, joint-custody son
and tugged the toddler back inside.

Of all the wild wars waged against a Noun,
The War on Poverty was first, Number One.
Fighting the good fight, oppressed, broke, and down,
we fought a War on Poverty. And Poverty won.

For ever I have scaled the “Ladder
of Opportunity,” on call,
each time slipping, getting madder.
The thud, always. Always, a fall.
(Which never really surprised me at all.)

All of us love to say
we hate personal drama,
although we seek it
like a drug.

Somehow we have to make peace,
patch up the past,
tacitly come to terms

with a universe that would
just as soon turn its back
on us as smack us down
with a what’s-it-to-me shrug.

Yet here we are
in this shared world

where nutmeg smells
as good to a pauper
as it does to a CEO,

where little fingers
sketch turkeys that look
like peacocks, the colors
of their fanned-out feathers
primal and bold,

where the unexpected
sight of soft snow
upon dead leaves
can catch one’s breath,
puffing out like a ghost
in the chilly night air.

Offer help with the greasy chore;
rinse that glass dry-flecked with foam.
Don’t linger too long at the door.
Just say your good-night and go home.

Go home.

AuntShecky

11-30-2013, 06:13 PM

Did anyone catch the Thanksgiving connection w. #494 above?^^^

Haunted

12-03-2013, 09:00 PM

Yes yes yes! I read this I think Friday but didn't leave a comment as I was in a rush. But I'm surprised no one else commented yet. That's what I found really disheartening with the state of Litnet poetry section. Other than the usual suspects that we hear from, there are just too many folks who post their stuff and solicit comments, but they *never* offer any themselves. In this cold hard world of one-way street, we still got each other Auntie!

Nice use of cynicism here. That's about the size of it — we go through the motion on these holidays, we even have a script for each occasion. I think the ital'd notes-to-self reads brilliantly. Some of the subtleties might be lost to those in other countries who don't celebrate Thanksgiving, but for us, well, from sharing a meal with people we have had a history, getting past all the baggage or maybe not, to smelling the nutmeg and tasting the turkey, it's all here. A lot of nice touches, including the visual of children stretching the bird. Lovely ending, cold breath puffing like a ghost. There is so much to love, like a full and fulfilling Thanksgiving dinner, minus the drama. Great job.