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IT'S TIME TO STRETCH YOUR UNIVERSE THROUGH JOURNEYS INTO
YOUR PRESENT
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As this new year spins rapidly into the past, we are challenged again
and again to make the most of what time we have remaining. One way
to recall the Now when the Now has become the Past is to freeze it in a
poem. Write it, any form, but write it, now, as you feel it.
Later when you read it, you will be pleased at the feelings that come over
you--the past recaptured. Marcel Proust's huge novel, first
translated from the French as Remembrance of Things Past,
supposedly originates in the taste of a cookie that the narrator eats as
the book begins. He recalls hundreds of pages' worth of experience
from that single moment. Have you stopped to think what you could do
in poetry with your Present? Why not spend a little of your life
saving it? I can tell you are a busy group--note how many haiku we
resort to when we are busy! But whatever the form you choose, just
make sure you capture this place, this time in your life. Then share
with us, here.
Our last commonly used irregularity in metrical verse is the spondee [DUM
DUM], which is two accented syllables in the same foot (measure).
You can accent any syllable not regularly given the beat (that is,
any unaccented syllable) and have a spondee. The spondee attracts
attention to itself for emphasis. It is frequently used in negative
statements [I'm Nobody]. It is also used in repetitions [No,
no, a thousand times no], commands [Don't cry for me,
Argentina], and counting [one, two, buckle my shoe]. It is a
handy tool to give extra power or importance to an idea. Note that a
spondee seems to slow the rhythm to make sure the added emphasis is
observed. Look at the examples below. Name the poet and the
poem.
1. "Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments.
Love is not love"
2. "Death be not proud though some have called thee / Mighty
and dreadful"
3. "When as in silks my Julia goes / Then then methinks"
4. "But quick-eyed Love, observing me go slack"
5. "Go, lovely Rose"
6. "The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep"
7. "From the bells, bells, bells, bells, /
Bells, bells, bells"
LAST MONTH'S WINNER AND ANSWERS ON HYPERMETRICAL SYLLABLES (duh DUM duh))
Winner =
Darwyne Tessier, 7 out of 7 correct.
1. "And I will make thee beds of roses / And a thousand fragrant
posies"--Christopher Marlowe, "The Passionate Shepherd to His
Love"
2. "The shadow of the dome of pleasure / Floated midway on
the waves"--Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Kubla Khan"
3. "And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers"--William
Wordsworth, "The World Is Too Much with Us"
4. "And there will I keep you for ever / Yes, forever and a
day"--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Children's Hour"
5. "The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting"--Walt
Whitman, "O Captain, My Captain"
6. "If you can keep your head when all about you"--Rudyard
Kipling, "If"
7. "Grew lean while he assailed the seasons"--Edwin
Arlington Robinson, "Miniver Cheevy"
--Tom Padgett, Editor
CONTENTS:
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POEMS BY MEMBERS:
A SEAMSTRESS'S PROVERB
Andrea Cloud
Do not wait to sew your dreams
While motionless in the grave,
For life is lengthened by the seams
When actions here are brave.
POETIC INNOVATION
Mark Tappmeyer
He handed me
His poem,
A collage of
Words and spaces like
Eccentrics write,
Who in their lines
Wear hats indoors and
Jeans to banquets and
Leave their flies unzipped
Rather than obey the law
And social graces--the
Avant-garde of innovation.
I thought him clever in design.
Then he said flatly,
"I had trouble with the
Printer."
VALENTINE MEMO
Tania Gray
All
powers
we summon
to grant our wish
to lavishly live
all the love we can spill
two hearts true hearts grown entwined
inseparably blended now
welded melded chemically fused
embracing our past and future fission
DEATH CAME TO YOU
Judy Young
Death came to you; on me he placed his hand
And made me know that I have lost once more.
A thief nor beggar could not countermand
To stay the closing of this mortal door.
He made me know that I could not retrieve
The past, nor of the future could I've known.
Not only of your death did I bereave
But also of lost chances to atone.
Though tried I down to throw defiant glove,
Youth oft times can't defy authority,
As Capulets forbade their daughter's love
Exists it now through immortality.
My love from you was taken like a thief;
You'll not know it as you'll not know my grief.
HAIKU
Valerie Esker
plume of pampas grass
bowing in December wind
broken neck dangles
BRUSH ARBOR MEETINGS
Todd Sukany
Chocolate scrub several
meters high will untie heat
when fresh snow pillows.
Sunday's crimson birds,
shocked by the crack of cold, find
strength to fight for food.
Cotton and harem
huddling in the flurry warmth
will move soon or die.
HAIKU
Wesley Willis
Just before the night
slips away to the morning
light--a dawn somewhere
through the misty fields
where huge trees hang together
and laughter echoes.
ANNIVERSARY
Pat Laster
Foster Sonnet
In early February's grayness, bleak
with icy wind chill factors, roads to match;
depressive news besieging us with crime
and war and homelessness, I spend some time
remembering when love bloomed on my cheek:
a new, forever love, a love unique,
I thought. Dame Fate inveigled me to snatch
you from a treadmilled, empty life, attach
myself. Your joviality refreshed
my soul--long steeped in silence. Bonded, meshed
in love, we wed amid red valentines,
those symbols cherished love defines, enshrines.
While vicious winter plays its warring tune,
I snuggle into memory's cocoon.
COMING HOME
Bev Conklin
I love to travel to unknown places;
to see and feel how others live.
Yet, when it's time for the trip to end,
I'm ready to be 'coming home.'
Each time I return, I am surprised by
that unique, short-lived moment
when my home town is just like
every other town I've been driving through.
The town, itself, feels different;
then, reality returns. I wind my way
down now-familiar roads, turning, at last,
into my own driveway, and stop the car.
Once again, the moment of strangeness returns.
Which way does this key go into the lock?
The door opens. I step in and critically assess
this new room I'll be staying in tonight.
I check the pictures, colors, size of TV,
--but wait! There's no bed in this room.
Then the house plants, ceramic animals,
and familiar belongings chase the strangeness away.
I'm home!
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SONNET FOR MARION
Gwen Eisenmann
What could be lovelier than baby girls?
A bud, a bloom, a butterfly, a bird?
A bud has yet to be; a bloom unfurls
then fades, its fragrance gone, its beauty blurred.
Ah, butterfly, your wings with angel dust
soft shimmering in golden summer light
are beautiful, but still your fanning must
give way to breath of baby girls at night.
The feathers of a bird, its flight, its song
are fashioned more of heaven than of earth,
so wonder might the most to them belong
except for cheeks of baby girls at birth.
How do I know the loveliest to love?
The baby Marion does all this prove.
HAIKU
Darwyne Tessier
a cold winter day
like the age that signals old
is all relative
GOD'S NAME IS AWESOME
Jean Even
God's name is holy and blessed
Above all names in the universe.
It is a name full of wonder,
And it is marvelous in deity.
God's name is holy and true,
Righteous and full of mercy.
It is a name of awesome power,
full of might and regality.
God's name is a delight,
Bringing honor and glory
With blessings of joy
And peace for all humanity.
CHOICES
Velvet Fackeldey
He loves her with his heart and soul and life,
But she can't breathe with such devotion deep.
She needs to be her own, her life alone
At no one's beck and call, not on demand.
He wants an answer, wants a love like his,
Profound, intense, exquisite, and so strong
That there could never be the slightest doubt
Of whom her life is dedicated to.
But she has no desire to be hemmed in,
To lose her life to his demands of love.
She wants her freedom to pursue her dreams
With no responsibility for him.
She breaks his heart, tells him to go away,
Knowing that the future holds a night
When she will be alone and wish him there.
ADVICE
Phyllis Moutray
Unlike E. F. Hutton,
when I spoke,
they didn't listen.
They spoke,
and I wished
I'd listened.
GUM-BALL THEOLOGY
Tom Padgett
John Skelton in 1523,
his mind flying free
in orbit to apogee,
works around the Tree,
restructuring theology,
raking myriad gum balls.
Lost in labyrinthian halls,
blind to Reason's pitfalls,
deaf to other sirens' calls,
this wondering wanderer stalls
before the granite walls
of Purpose in the Universe.
He mulls on pap (or worse)
he once was wont to nurse,
on Death that followed the Curse,
on dogma to coerce
belief and pall the hearse,
on Life in Kingdom Come.
The crux of Skelton's martyrdom:
why God by odd rule of thumb
designed Excess (plus some!)
to mock a Modicum--
the number leaves him dumb:
why all these balls of gum?
TAKEN TOO LIGHTLY
Harding Stedler
When I returned
to find your message
of just two words,
"God bless,"
I knew you never
would return.
When I left home this morning,
I took your departure lightly,
believing you'd be back.
But now I know
that's not the case.
The bitterness and hatred
that you feel
compel you to get revenge.
You go in search of justice,
to end the torment
of a decade,
to take the law into your own hands
without fear of dying.
Demons that make nightmares
of your dreams
possess you
and deny you sleep.
Today, in some distant land,
you seek the predator
while I await the bloody news.
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