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G is for Glosa

Apr7

“Poets help us by discovering and uncovering the world-its history, culture, artifacts, and ecology, as well as our identities and relationships.” ~Wallace Stevens

Glosa: an early Renaissance form that was developed by poets of the Spanish court in the 14th and 15th centuries. In a glosa, tribute is paid to another poet. The opening lines, called a cabeza, is by another poet, and each of the cabeza lines are embedded elsewhere in the glosa.

This poem takes me back to my days of studying and reading in Spanish. I’m a little rusty, but I enjoyed trying to understand this Spanish poem, Glosa de el mismo (Poem of myself) by San Juan de la Cruz.

'fire' photo (c) 2005, baronsquirrel - license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Sin arrimo y con arrimo,
sin luz y a oscuras viviendo
todo me voy consumiendo.

I
Mi alma está desasida
de toda cosa criada
y sobre sí levantada
y en una sabrosa vida
sólo en su Dios arrimada.

II
Por eso ya se dirá
la cosa que más estimo
que mi alma se ve ya
sin arrimo y con arrimo.

III
Y aunque tinieblas padezco
en esta vida mortal
no es tan crecido mi mal
porque si de luz carezco
tengo vida celestial
porque el amor da tal vida
cuando más ciego va siendo
que tiene al ama rendida
sin luz y a oscuras viviendo.

IV
Hace tal obra el amor
después que le conocí
que si hay bien o mal en mí
todo lo hace de un sabor
y al alma transforma en sí
y así en su llama sabrosa
la cual en mí estoy sintiendo
apriesa sin quedar cosa,
todo me voy consumiendo.

I found this translation:

'Replica of St John's Cross outside Iona Abbey' photo (c) 2012, Andrew Bowden - license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Without support yet with support,
living without light, in darkness,
I am wholly being consumed.

I
My soul is disentangled
from every created thing
and lifted above itself
in a life of gladness
supported only in God.

II

So now it can be said
that I most value this:
My soul now sees itself
without support yet with support.

III

And though I suffer darknesses
in this mortal life,
that is not so hard a thing;
for even if I have no light
I have the life of heaven.
For the blinder love is
the more it gives such life,
holding the soul surrendered,
living without light in darkness.

IV

After I have known it
love works so in me
that whether things go well or badly
love turns them to one sweetness
transforming the soul in itself.
And so in its delighting flame
which I am feeling within me,
swiftly, with nothing spared,
I am wholly being consumed.

Here’s another translation I found at First Things, by Rhina P. Espaillat.

F is for Found Poem

Apr6

There is poetry in a porkchop to a hungry man.” ~ Philip Gibbs (NYT, 1951)

Found Poem: “Found poems take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. The literary equivalent of a collage, found poetry is often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, or even other poems.” Found Poems at Poets.org

Book spine poems are a kind of found poem, and Travis Jonker at 100 Scope Notes is collecting submissions from readers for National Poetry Month.

I tried to make a poem of all of the T-shirt slogans I read at the mall one day, but I lost my scribbled notes of what I found.

So I thought I’d check my twitter feed for a found poem:

Don’t Look Back
Live Through This
God’s Not Dead
Recognizing Truth.

Have you found any poems lately?

D is for Dramatic Monologue

Apr4

“Well, I think maybe people who write poetry are different in their thinking, to begin with, and how they translate what they experience into writing or maybe what they experience is somewhat different from what others do.” ~Lisel Mueller ~

Dramatic monologue: a poetic form in which a single character, addressing a silent auditor at a critical moment, reveals himself or herself and the dramatic situation.

Shakespeare (450 years old this month) was the quintessential poet/dramatist. Hamlet’s “To Be or Not to Be”, Macbeth’s “Tomorrow and Tomorrow”, King Lear’s insane and yet curiously apropos ravings, are all a part of our Shakespearean heritage.

But this monologue by Portia from The Merchant of Venice is one of my favorites:

'Blind Justice' photo (c) 2013, Tim Green - license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence ‘gainst the merchant there.

Other masters of the dramatic monologue in poetry: Robert Browning (My Last Duchess), Edgar Lee Masters (Spoon River Anthology), T.S. Eliot (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock), Rudyard Kipling (Gunga Din and others), Edgar Allan Poe (Annabel Lee).

C is for Cento

Apr3

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering. ~ Robert Frost ~

cento: “a poetical work wholly composed of verses or passages taken from other authors; only disposed in a new form or order. The term comes from the Latin cento, a cloak made of patches.” ~Wikipedia, Cento (poetry)

Let’s build our own cento, discover our own poem. I’ll post a couple of my favorite lines of poetry, and anyone can add, in the comments, one or two lines from another poem that you think feed into the cento. We’ll see what we have by the end of the day. Be sure and tell us the source of your lines.

Cento for April Third, National Poetry Month

It was many and many a year ago
In a kingdom by the sea

'The Two LIghthouses' photo (c) 2011, Anita Ritenour - license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

B is for Ballad

Apr2

Poetry is music written for the human voice. ~Maya Angelou

Ballad: ‘A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French chanson balladée or ballade, which were originally “dancing songs”. Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of the British Isles from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe.” ~Wikipedia, Ballad

'Gypsy Mellodee AHR# 106548' photo (c) 1985, Virginia Hill - license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/Raggle Taggle Gypsy

There were three old gypsies came to our hall door
They came brave and boldly-o
One sang high and the other sang low
And the Lady sang the raggle taggle gypsy-o

It was upstairs and downstairs the lady went
Put on her suit of leather-o
T’was a cry all around the door
She’s away wi’ the raggle taggle gypsy-o

It was late at night when the lord came in
Enquiring for his lady-o
The servant girl replied to her lord
She’s away wi’ the raggle taggle gypsy-o

Oh then saddle for me and my milk white steed
My big horse is not speedy-o
I will ride and I’ll seek my bride
She’s away wi’ the raggle taggle gypsy-o

Then he rode east and he rode west
He rode north and south also
But when he went to the open fields
It was there that he spied his lady-o

I love Celtic Thunder. Sadly, when I retrieved the above video, I read the news that George Donaldson, the anchor and father figure for the group, died on March 12, 2014 of a massive heart attack. He will be missed by the fans of Celtic Thunder and by his colleagues.

A is for Anaphora

Apr1

Most of the time, poetry enjoys the visibility of other minor cultural subcultures like chess or quilting. ~ Anita Diamant

April 1st is, of course, April Fool’s Day, a good day to turn the world upside down and notice poetry. Have you been fooled yet today?

For the month of April, in addition to my regular book reviews, I’m going to be posting some of my favorite poems: anaphora, ballads, cento, an abecedarian collection of poetic forms and types. April is National Poetry Month, and I intend to give you a gift this month: a poem a day. If I miss a day, forgive me. If my poetical selections displease you, again forgive. If you enjoy deceptively simple poetry, and light verse that’s not always so light, and meaning cloaked in the language of poetry, you might have a good time celebrating Poetry Month with me.

For today, I thought I’d kick off this series with A is for Anaphora.

Anaphora: a type of parallelism created when successive phrases or lines begin with the same words, often resembling a litany. The repetition can be as simple as a single word or as long as an entire phrase. As one of the world’s oldest poetic techniques, anaphora is used in much of the world’s religious and devotional poetry, including numerous Biblical Psalms.

A List of Praises by Anne Porter

'Sunset behind pine trees' photo (c) 2010, Ula Gillion - license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Give praise with psalms that tell the trees to sing,
Give praise with Gospel choirs in storefront churches,
Mad with the joy of the Sabbath,
Give praise with the babble of infants, who wake with the sun,
Give praise with children chanting their skip-rope rhymes,
A poetry not in books, a vagrant mischievous poetry
living wild on the Streets through generations of children.

Give praise with the sound of the milk-train far away
With its mutter of wheels and long-drawn-out sweet whistle
As it speeds through the fields of sleep at three in the morning,
Give praise with the immense and peaceful sigh
Of the wind in the pinewoods,
At night give praise with starry silences.

'Humpback Whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) lunge feeding' photo (c) 2012, Mike Baird - license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Give praise with the skirling of seagulls
And the rattle and flap of sails
And gongs of buoys rocked by the sea-swell
Out in the shipping-lanes beyond the harbor.
Give praise with the humpback whales,
Huge in the ocean they sing to one another.

Give praise with the rasp and sizzle of crickets, katydids and cicadas,
Give praise with hum of bees,
Give praise with the little peepers who live near water.
When they fill the marsh with a shimmer of bell-like cries
We know that the winter is over.

Read the rest of this anaphoric poem at Poets.org.

Favorite Poets: Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Mar28

“A Sonnet is a moment’s monument,—
Memorial from the Soul’s eternity
To one dead deathless hour.”
~Dante Grabriel Rossetti


Hidden Harmony

THE thoughts in me are very calm and high
That think upon your love: yet by your leave
You shall not greatly marvel that this eve
Or nightfall—yet scarce nightfall—the strong sky
Leaves me thus sad. Now if you ask me why,
I cannot teach you, dear; but I believe
It is that man will always interweave
Life with fresh want, with wish or fear to die.
It may be therefore,—though the matter touch
Nowise our love,—that I so often look
Sad in your presence, often feeling so.
And of the reason I can tell thus much:—
Man’s soul is like the music in a book
Which were not music but for high and low.

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Mary Lee Hahn is hosting the Poetry Friday Roundup at A Year of Reading.

Poetry Friday: Lucy II by WIlliam Wordsworth

Mar21

Lucy II

'Image taken from page 9 of 'The poetical works of William Wordsworth. Edited by William Knight'' photo (c) 2013, The British Library - license: http://www.flickr.com/commons/usage/SHE dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and oh,
The difference to me!

The interesting thing about this poem to me is the check in the rhythm at the very end between the last two lines. I don’t remember the technical terms (iambic tetrameter, then iambic trimeter?), but the rhythm is very sing-song –until you try to read the last two lines. Then, you’re almost forced to make a long pause after the word “oh”, and then either pronounce the three syllables of the word “difference” very distinctly, not a normal pronunciation in current American speech anyway, or slow the entire last line of the poem down and emphasize its importance and emotional impact.

Anyway, I like the picture of unheralded, little noticed Lucy, whomever she was, who made such a difference in the poet’s life that she has been immortalized in verse.

Today’s Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted by Julie at The Drift Record.

March 18th: St. Alexander of Jerusalem and Second Lieutenant Owen

Mar18

St. Alexander was a bishop in Jerusalem in the third century, and he is known for having founded a theological library and a school in Jerusalem during his tenure there. When he was an old man, he was arrested and taken to prison in Caesarea where he died, after being physically tortured and almost fed to the wild beasts.

“The glory of his white hairs and great sanctity formed a double crown for him in captivity.” Feast Day Of St. Alexander of Jerusalem, March 18th.

Wilfred Owen, World War One poet, b.March 18,1893, d.November 4, 1918.

2nd Lt, Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, 5th Bn. Manch. R., T.F., attd. 2nd Bn.
For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in the attack on the Fonsomme Line on October 1st/2nd, 1918. On the company commander becoming a casualty, he assumed command and showed fine leadership and resisted a heavy counter-attack. He personally manipulated a captured enemy machine gun from an isolated position and inflicted considerable losses on the enemy. Throughout he behaved most gallantly.

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young
by Wilfred Owen

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
and builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Poetry Friday: Winston Spencer Churchill

Mar14

Winston Churchill was a fascinating man, and he cultivated many vocations and avocations: soldier, politician, journalist, essayist, biographer, historian, bricklayer, painter, pilot, architect, lecturer, spymaster, head of the navy, member of Parliament, and Prime Minister—just to name a few. However, I’ll bet you never thought of him as a poet.

All students of World War II remember those inspiring and memorable speeches he gave in the House of Commons, on the radio, and in political gatherings. His speeches were carefully formulated, written out and memorized, with stage directions to himself such as “pause here” or “fumble for the correct word.” The orations he gave were typed up (by secretaries) in broken lines to aid his delivery, ‘speech form’ or ‘psalm form’, as William Manchester calls it in his biography of Churchill, titled The Last Lion.

'Churchill, Winston' photo (c) 2010, SDASM Archives - license: http://www.flickr.com/commons/usage/So, after Chamberlain’s betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich, Churchill declaimed:

The whole equilibrium of Europe
has been deranged,
And the terrible words
have, for the time being,
been pronounced
against the Western democracies:

“Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.”

And do not suppose that this is the end.
This is only the beginning of the reckoning.

This is only the first sip–
the first foretaste of a bitter cup
which will be proffered to us year by year–

Unless–
by a supreme recovery of our moral health and martial vigor,
we arise again and take our stand for freedom,
as in the olden time.

Or on October 1, 1939, Churchill spoke the following rather lyrical thoughts on Russia in his first wartime broadcast over the BBC, just after the Russian/German joint invasion of Poland:

'IMG_0510' photo (c) 2014, zaphad1 - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia.
It is a riddle
wrapped in an mystery
inside an enigma.

But perhaps there is a key.
That key is Russian national interest.

It cannot be in accordance
with the interest or safety of Russia
that Germany should plant itself
upon the shores of the Black Sea.

Or that it should overrun the Baltic States
and subjugate the Slavonic peoples
of southeastern Europe.

No, it doesn’t scan or follow a regular meter, but Mr. Churchill’s “poetry” certainly follows the conventions of free verse with its parallelisms and vivid images, and as I read, I can hear in my mind the familiar voice of Winston Churchill with its rolling cadences and barking baritone:

I would say to the House,
as I have said to those who have joined this Government:
“I have nothing to offer but good, toil, tears, and sweat.”

You ask, what is our policy?
I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air,
with all our might and with all the strength God can give us . . .
That is our policy.

You ask, what is our aim?
I can answer in one word: It is victory,
victory at all costs,
victory in spite of all terror,
victory however long and hard the road may be;
for without victory, there is no survival.

'Winston Churchil' photo (c) 2010, Cambodia4kids.org Beth Kanter - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/On June 4, 1940:

We shall not flag or fail.
We shall go on to the end.

We shall fight in France,
we shall fight on the seas and oceans,
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air,
we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.

We shall fight on the beaches,
we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills;
We shall never surrender.

Finally, perhaps Churchill’s most famous poem/speech, broadcast on June 18, 1940 after Petain’s surrender of Vichy France to the Nazis:

Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization.
Upon it depends our own British life,
and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire.

Hitler knows that he will have to break us on this island
or lose the war.

If we can stand up to him all Europe may be free
and the life of the world may move forward
into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if we fail, then the whole world,
including the United States,
including all we have known and cared for,

Will sink into the abyss of a New Dark Age
made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted,
by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties,
and so bear ourselves
that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth
last for a thousand years,

Men will still say:
“This was their finest hour!”

A poet indeed.