April 28 From Bad to Verse
April 28
As this thread comes down to the wire, I still have a short list of poetic forms which haven’t yet made an appearance in “30/30.” I’ll save the list and attempt to explore them at a later date in the “anti-poetry” thread. Today I’m returning to the type of verse which Robert Frost likened to “playing tennis without a net,” although yours fooly has never been able to wield a tennis racket, with or without one. Writing competent netless verse, however isn’t exactly a matter of phoning it. In a way it’s just as difficult to execute as using an established form, because the writer has to come up with a unique structure for that particular piece.
Perhaps that’s the reason there have been relatively few, truly “netless” poems in this thread, namely April 3, April 5, and April 10. On April 12, the net was hiding way up in Iceland. But back here today is another piece of netless verse, also known as “free,” with absolutely no cost to you.
The source of this next number is an online ad consisteing of just a single line asking the Freudian question, “What do rabbits want?”
What Do Rabbits Want?
We want a comfortable patch
of turf that’s nettle-and-burdock free
where we can lie on our furry backs
and lounge for hours at a stretch.
We want that show-off hawk,
cruising above us in the threatening sky,
to spin his fancy spirals somewhere else.
And we want that sneaky fox,
that foul-smelling coyote, and that
vicious pit bull down on Elm Street
to leave us the hell alone.
We want our digs
to stay dry. Now
and then we don’t mind
a freshening shower,
but you can’t imagine
how depressed an otherwise
well-adjusted young rabbit
can get when a suburban
septic tank overflows.
On a balmy moonlit evening
we want to come our and arrange
ourselves in a leporine ring
and hop the night away,
but most of all we want
to pitch a bit of woo, make
a lot of whoopie, and produce
more
and more
and more
rabbits.
PS-- A similar subject had been masterfully treated by a "real" poet, Philip Larkin, whose name has been "haunting" the LitNet in recent days. The title of that poem is ""Myxomatosis."
PPS I've been having a devil of a time connecting to the Web this day. Just my luck!-- with just two more of these things to go. I will try to log back on when the April 29 thingie is ready for posting, but if it should be noticeably absent tomorrow, I will try to finish up this thing on Monday if the connection problems cure themselves. Thanks for your patience, and thanks for all of your support this month.
Auntie
April 29-30 From Bed to Worse
At last we come to the next-to-closing spot with a verse form called an epyllion, a miniature epic poem. The epyllion is a narrative poem, metrical but unlike its massive big brothers, it is much less lengthy. Often full of discursive sidetracks and mythological allusions, the main topic is romantic, in our modern sense of the word–“erotic,” if you will (which I’m sure many of you do.) The best known epyllia in English are Marlowe’s Hero and Leander and Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis.
Shakespeare’s take on Ovidian myth evokes the Elizabethan society in which he lived and wrote but especially displays his signature gift for figurative language, wit and unprecedented insight into human emotion. His poem notoriously focuses upon the horniest woman in English literature, Lady Chatterley notwithstanding. The object of Venus’s affection, a hot-looking young dude named Adonis is just the opposite: annoyingly prudish, self-righteous, and more than a little impressed with his own awesomeness. A little of Adonis goes a long, long way, but he’s not the kind of “bore” that is the crucial factor in this love affair. Their pastoral seduction scene is just shy of going over the top in its passionate expression and explicit depiction of the lady’s desire, not to mention a vignette about a stallion and a mare doing– as the kids say– “the nasty.”
Published in 1593, Venus and Adonis was Shakespeare’s first major effort establishing his poetic reputation. Some of his contemporaries considered the poem “improper;” despite that fact or maybe because of it, it went through nine printings. The subject and the expression are tame by modern audiences inured to salty language and full-frontal nudity on pay cable tv.
The sesta rima stanza with an ababcc rhyme scheme carries the soubriquet, “Venus and Adonis stanza.” The following posting is a feeble attempt at a epyllion, which through ignorance avoids allusions and maintains our modern idiom. Every effort was made to steer clear of anachronisms, but if any pop up, like the proverbial wristwatch on a Roman soldier in a movie, please inform me. Not only that, this 2012 piece is a lot less hot than the original. (Sorry.) There are, however, imbedded references, direct, and indirect quotes from Shakespeare’s writing in his career that did not begin until some eleven years after this imagined episode. Within the few facts known about his life, official documents still extant establish that his wife was eight years older than he. That fact, coupled with Venus as seductress , makes it seem almost counter-intuitive not to portray the male character in this piece as the reluctant conquest. Instead it takes the more or less conventional view, with the male as pursuer, though in life the result often lies somewhere in between. So in a way yours fooly is not only inspired by Shakespeare but also Irving Berlin: “A man chases a girl until she catches him.”
April 29
Love in the Woods
Some overgrown weeds on the river path
bent to angry steps of an employee.
But Nature was not the source of his wrath
for loose from the shop, he was not quite free.
From commerce into the wild he’d been hurled,
full of briers is this working day world
He passed two swans, immaculate, too proud
to note the muddy stream, the sluggish flow.
Any lumbering goose plucked from the crowd
could grab the fowl mid-wade and bring them low.
A burly hand, tough armour ‘gainst the peck,
with one swift twist could break a slender neck.
Here he’d been sent to do what he’d been told:
to check on conies, also gulled and caught.
Less tame, this hunter was eighteen years old;
for greatness he was born, he gamely thought.
When hope thus suppurates, a trap enjoins
a man to bonds of mind and heart and loins.
His salad days arose with wants, not needs.
In youth bright dawn won’t sleep with darkest fears.
Like lilies festering among the weeds
raw goals run rampant through the greenest years.
Yet vines will try to bolt and vault the ground
‘til tender, earthy tendrils keep them bound.
Unrapt in his task, still he searched each snare
he’d set for pelts which wrapped the ordered flesh;
to seek out other prey did not prepare
for rare sites woven in the forest’s mesh.
Not primed for sights less common than a hare,
his eyes first missed the hidden creature there.
Part dappled in the sun, part in the shade,
a lass remembered her mother said
to fetch some rosemary for a stew she’d made.
Her dutiful daughter would cull the sylvan bed.
The figure snatched the swain’s distinctive eye.
For a few moments more he stood to spy.
He recognized her-- Master Hathweys’ girl
whose strange wander to the woods that day
discovered sweetly. Like the tribesman’s pearl,
he hold a while, then softly throw away.
To salvage the hour its charm worn thin,
he’d try to charm her, not to woo nor win.
He ventured closer to the shadowed glade
to greet her gently with his voice of silk,
though faintly she could smell the butcher’s blade,
also a vague trace of a mother’s milk.
Conversing as a couple anywhere,
in no time both forgot both herb and hare.
Then, asking about her family’s lot,
and signing, his own spelling much the same:
at times the alpha’s shown and sometimes not.
With weighty words writ down, what’s in a name?
He was no bumpkin, this he’d let her know,
to make the buds of her esteem to grown.
He bragged how he’d been to London town
where he’d seen Euphues and St. Paul’s boys,
and had felt the pull of the cap and gown;
how he’d tamed mad steeds like children’s toys.
No mention of the jobs not among his loves–
of cutting meat and cutting rich men’s gloves.
Perched upon the friend of his father’s knee,
he’d heard fine learning, verse, and Latin lore.
He told her of his hunger for the sea
which gains advantage on this kingdom’s shore.
In turn she told him nothing of herself;
she listened, as volumes speak upon a shelf.
But drenching rains near filled her barren well
with thoughts that would bring drought to moister maids:
cold death–then leading brutish apes in hell,
the wasted wombs of women in parades.
Yet marching in a spinster’s sense-souled shoes,
she knew this youth would not be hers to choose.
Still–if in faith he felt that love is blind
and fails to mind the wide gap ‘tween their years,
against conventions’s tide he’d wall his mind
and let her waves wash over his frank fears.
Her overripe wish came perhaps too soon,
while dallied discourse ate the afternoon.
As the sun prepared to take to his bed,
and lovers meet to consummate their plans,
he saw up close her eyes and noble head,
and sipped the creamy skin upon her hands.
Then not too roughly seized her by the wrist.
Not frightened she did not fight nor resist.
On mossy bed they hadn’t planned to lie,
nor Venus’s chariot meant to ride,
yet both in thrall to one another’s sigh:
impromptu groom and most unwitting bride.
That tavern wench with her ill-fitting love
matched not this snugness, like his father’s glove.
Postscript signs in her middle swelled before
belated banns sealed fate, perhaps one heart.
A babe soon born; then twins a quick year more,
a wife at home, another one in art.
Two loves wrought in ebb and flowing stages
That brought to life immortal light for ages.
And finally, we’re going to shut this thing down with a limerick:
April 30
30/30
A LitNutter in a strange kind of haze
entered an oddly deranged sort of phase.
She called herself “Auntie”
and her wit proved quite scanty,
writing verse for a full thirty days.
And that’s a wrap!
