Category Archives: couplets

Using form: Couplets/Sonnet: Gail White, ‘Prayer Updated’

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To Anyone who still may be
attentive from Infinity,
we bless you from our dot in space
and thank you for our privileged place.

Give us this day on which to feed
a bit more gluten than we need,
and when we’re adequately fed,
help us to get and stay ahead
and save for our retirement
enough plus twenty-five per cent.

May old age find us cheerful still,
our life in order like our will,
with neither pain nor care nor debt.
Thy kingdom come, but not just yet.

*****

Gail White writes: “Religion and irony are not incompatible I find that a good deal of poetry comes from taking a speculative or questioning view of Bible stories (e.g, how did Adam and Eve react to the murder of Abel by Cain? We don’t hear a peep out of them about it.) And I’ve often said that if God hadn’t wanted at least one cynical feminist poet, I wouldn’t exist.”

‘Prayer Updated’ was published in the current issue of Lighten Up Online.

Gail White is the resident poet and cat lady of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. Her books ASPERITY STREET and CATECHISM and the chapbook SONNETS IN A HOSTILE WORLD are available on Amazon. She is a contributing editor to Light Poetry Magazine. “Tourist in India” won the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award for 2013. Her poems have appeared in the Potcake Chapbooks ‘Tourists and Cannibals’, ‘Rogues and Roses’, ‘Families and Other Fiascoes’, ‘Strip Down’ and ‘Lost Love’.

Illustration: “Global Prayer” by thorntonsdigital is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

Weekend read: Odd poem: French President Emmanuel Macron, ‘Pour Sophie’

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On a trip to Paris one day, little Sophie
Met a giant lady lighting up the night sky.
“What’s your name, you magical monster?”
“My many visitors call me the Eiffel Tower.”
“In all your attire, don’t you sometimes tire
Of being seen only as a humdrum tower?
You, a dragon, a fairy watching over Paris,
An Olympic torch held aloft in grey skies?”
“How you flatter me! So few poets these days
Ever sing the praises of my Parisian soul,
As did Cocteau, Aragon, Cendrars,
Trénet and Apollinaire… Since you’re so good
At seeing beneath the surface, you could
– If you like, when you’re back from France –
Take up your pen and write down
Why you like me – it would be nice and fun!”
“You can count on me! There’s so much to say!
I’ll write twenty lines… but who will read them?”
“Well, I know a man who’ll read your verse.”
“Really? Who?”
“The President of France.”

En voyage à Paris, la petite Sophie
Croisa une géante illuminant la nuit.
“Comment t’appelles-tu, monstre surnaturel?”
“Mes nombreux visiteurs m’appellent Tour Eiffel.”
“N’es-tu pas parfois lasse, avec tes mille atours
Que l’on ne voie en toi qu’une banale tour?
Toi le dragon, la fée, qui veille sur Paris,
Toi, immense flambeau planté dans le ciel gris!”
“Quel plaisir tu me fais! Ils sont devenus rares
Ceux qui comme Cocteau, Aragon ou Cendrars,
Trenet, Apollinaire, avaient su célébrer
Mon âme parisienne aux charmes singuliers.
Puisque tu sais si bien percer les apparences,
Tu pourrais, si tu veux, à ton retour de France,
Prendre à ton tour la plume et conter en anglais
(It would be nice and fun) ce qui chez moi te plaît!”
“Tu peux compter sur moi! Il y a tant à dire!
Je t’écrirai vingt vers… Mais qui voudra les lire?”
“Oh, moi j’en connais un qui lira ton cantique.”
“C’est?”
“Monsieur le président de la République.”

*****

This poem by French President Emmanuel Macron is in French alexandrine: 12 syllable lines, rhyming couplets. The translation is either by him (he is fluent in English) or by the French Embassy in London, as the poem was written for the English girl Sophie’s 13th birthday. She herself had initiated everything with the poem below, which she had sent in April 2017 to the French President… at that time the President was François Hollande, but Macron won the presidency later that year, and responded for Sophie’s birthday on November 1st. Her poem was 20 lines long, written out on her drawing of the Eiffel Tower; his response is also 20 lines long (counting the final question and answer as a single line, which it clearly is by metre and rhyme).

Here is 12-year-old Sophie’s ‘Centre of Attention’:

She has four beautiful legs,
Which help her stand proud,
She looks over everyone,
With her head in the clouds,
She is elegant and tall,
Wears a pretty, lacy skirt,
Whilst staring at her in awe,
Your eyes will not avert,
Her spine is amazingly straight,
Whilst her head touches the sky,
People look up and take pictures of her,
As they are passing on by,
You need to tilt your head up,
To be able to see all of her,
But when you do,
She is as pretty as a picture,
She is the centre of attention,
Noticed by everyone.
She is the Eiffel Tower,
She is second to none.

Macron created a nice circularity with his response to Sophie’s poem, by pretending it was written first and caused Sophie’s poem, rather than the other way round. All very playful.

Photo: “170714-D-PB383-151” by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Max Gutmann, ‘Villaintine’s Day’

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It’s horrible and rather stupid
To hold each year a day for Cupid
Whose claim to fame is shooting folks,
Aggression none of them provokes.
Is this behavior to condone?
We have no day for Al Capone.
No holidays are lavished on
John Dillinger or Genghis Khan.
We don’t exalt the memories
Of vicious monsters such as these.
Would we have changed our attitude
If they had been in flight and nude?

*****

Max Gutmann writes: “Since this was written, we’ve found other ways of celebrating villains.”

The poem was originally published in Light.

Max Gutmann has contributed to New Statesman, Able Muse, Cricket, and other publications. His plays have appeared throughout the U.S. (see maxgutmann.com). His book There Was a Young Girl from Verona sold several copies.

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Couplets: Richard Meyer, ‘The Benighted States of America’

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now we, the people, willingly obtuse
and largely satisfied with self-abuse

elect a narcissistic psychopath
who rules with lies, incompetence, and wrath;

accept a healthcare system that’s a mess
and limp from life to death with less and less;

continue to dismiss without a care
the shit we dump in water, land, and air;

allow the filthy rich to have their way,
to run the world, to bleed us day by day;

abandon logic, reason, vital news
and swallow whole all sorts of crackpot views —

we piss away our brains, our soul, our nerve
and get the fucked up country we deserve

*****

Richard Meyer writes: “Current cultural and political circumstances have me feeling ornery, so I hammered out this verse about the great American democratic experiment. My caustic verse was partly inspired by the comments of various prominent writers throughout history, including Thomas Jefferson who said, “The government you elect is the government you deserve”.”

Richard Meyer, a former English and humanities teacher, lives in Mankato, MN. A book of his collected poems, Orbital Paths, was a silver medalist winner in the 2016 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards. He was awarded the 2012 Robert Frost Farm Prize for his poem “Fieldstone” and was the recipient of the 2014 String Poet Prize for his poem “The Autumn Way.” His poetry has appeared in a variety of print and online journals and has also received top honors several times in the Great River Shakespeare Festival sonnet contest. His most recent book, Wise Heart, is a memoir of his mother Gert who was born in poverty, came of age during the Great Depression, enlisted in the army during World War II, served overseas, and was awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service performed during the Battle of the Bulge. His books are available through Amazon.

Photo by Fort George G. Meade is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Weekend read: George Simmers, ‘Hymn’

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All things dull and ugly, all creatures gross and squat,
All things vile and tedious, the Lord God made the lot.

He made the sly hyena, the hookworm and the slug,
Your moaning Auntie Margaret and pervy Uncle Doug.

He made that dreary Welshman who so often reads the news,
And he made us, the ragtag lot who worship at St. Hugh’s.

We’re far from high achievers, we don’t have gorgeous bods;
At best you’d call us humdrum, a group of odds and sods.

We’re verging on the useless and we have got a hunch
No deity could think we were a preposessing bunch.

That’s why we’re rarely cheerful, but feel a bit less blue
When thinking how the mighty Lord can be ham-fisted too.

‘Cause frankly we’d be daunted by a more efficient chap.
We feel a lot more comfy with a God who’s slightly crap.

*****

George Simmers writes: “This is a poem that would never have existed had it not been for the Spectator magazine, which each week sets a challenge to its readers, demanding produce a short piece of writing (it might be 16 lines of verse or 150 words of prose) on a particular theme. The task is often a silly one. A couple of years ago the demand was for a hymn beginning ‘All things dull and ugly…’

“Competitive light verse is a tradition that stretches back a long way in Britain. In the early years of the twentieth century Naomi Royde-Smith of the Saturday Westminster Gazette set challenges that were responded to by up-and-coming writers like Rupert Brooke and Rose Macaulay, among others. In the thirties the Weekend Review was notable for its literary competitions, and when that magzine was incorporated into the New Statesman, the comp came with it.

“Those New Statesman competitions became a notable feature of English literary life, producing star writers such as Allan M. Laing, Stanley J. Sharpless, Roger Woddis, E.O. Parrott, Martin Fagg, Bill Greenwell and Basil Ransome-Davies.. look in any good anthology of light verse, and you’ll find glittering examples of some of their work. The Spectator and Punch were later in running competitions that attracted many of the same writers.

“I first entered a New Statesman competition in 1981, earning a pound for a one-line joke. Easy money! I entered a few more, mostly prose, and it was a while before I had a verse winner. Before that my verse writing had been a bit modernist and self-indulgent; no more. To succeed in the comps you need to master rhyme and metre. It’s a great training ground. Wendy Cope, one of the best writers of neat epigrammatic verse today began in New Statesman competitions (Much of her first, and arguably best, book, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, is made up of her competition winners.) At about the same time, D.A. Prince began her competition career, which continues in the Spectator today (and I’m proud to have her as regular poet in Snakeskin.)

“From the thirties to the seventies, the New Statesman was a crucial publication in British culture, with a left-wing front-end but back half that was welcoming to all sorts of attitudes and points of view. A couple of dull editors diminished its appeal and importance in the eighties, but the comps continued to flourish, though in the twenty-first century they mostly seemed to welcome only rather predictable political humour. A few years ago the editor, Jason Cowley arbitrarily cancelled them. I’ve not looked at the magazine since then, but I’m told that it has gone from bad to worse.

“The Spectator, meanwhile, has flourished. My first Spectator winner (which imagined Wordsworth doing a snooker commentary) was in 1983. It was the top winner that week, and in addition to a small cash prize I was sent a very good bottle of wine. Those were the days. At that time the competition was run by James Michie, himself a good poet notable for his translations of Horace and Catullus. His was a generous welcoming personality, and many talents flowered under his watch.

“After him, Lucy Vickery ran the comp for many years, showing good judgement Though when she went away on maternity leave for a while, a substitute was brought in who gave prizes to some very inept stuff. It’s not an easy job. At present Victoria Lane is the adjudicator. I like her, because she has awarded me a good few prizes. Others may have grumbled.

“The Spectator competition is today just about the only forum for light verse in Britain. While the respectable poetry outlets have mostly given up on traditional rhyme and metre (Have you ever tried to read the stuff printed in the heavily subsidised Poetry Review?) the Spectator comp still demands well-formed and witty verse. Bill Greenwell and Basil Ransome-Davies are still star turns, and they have been joined by Adrian Fry, Janine Beacham, Sylvia Fairley, Chris O’Carroll and others.

” ‘All things dull and ugly…’ was a task that appealed to me, because I’ve always been struck by the way church congregations can make even sprightly tunes like ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ sound really drab and tedious. The ‘dreary Welshman’ is Huw Edwards, a BBC news-reader whom I had always found obnoxious, especially when toadying to the Royals. I’m rather proud of having had a dig at him in this poem, which pre-dates his fall from grace when he was dismissed after his appalling taste in pornography was discovered.”

George Simmers used to be a teacher; when he retired he then amused himself by researching a Ph.D. on the prose literature of the Great War. He now spends his time pottering about, walking his dog and writing a fair bit of verse. He is currently obsessed by the poetry of Catullus, and may be issuing a volume of translations within the next year or so. He has edited Snakeskin since 1995. It is probably the oldest-established poetry zine on the Internet. His work appears in several Potcake Chapbooks, and his recent diverse collection is ‘Old and Bookish‘. ‘

Photo: “Mother Spider” by agelakis is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Short poem: RHL, ‘Sassy, Classy’

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Easy to be young and sassy;
add experience, and it’s classy.

*****

I have absolutely no idea what inspired this couplet. Be that as it may, it was published in The Asses of Parnassus in October – thanks, Brooke Clark!

Photo: “Cece 220223 (1)” by ceciliajaner is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Using form: unconventional couplets: Helena Nelson, ‘The Hill’

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His heart is okay (it has been checked)
but not far from the top his pace is checked

and he stops. ‘Enough. Let’s go back.’
Mrs Philpott doesn’t want to go back.

If they get to the summit, they’ll see the view.
He doesn’t give tuppence about the view.

‘It’s not far,’ she says. ‘Too far,’ he says.
She doesn’t care a bit what he says,

she wants to get to the top of the hill. ‘Come on,’
she says. ‘Best foot forward.’ ‘You go on,’

he says. ‘I’ll wait here.’ So she walks on her own
and quickly sets up a pace of her own

not pausing and not once looking back
until for some reason she stops and looks back

and he’s quite out of sight, could be anywhere
and a sort of fear catches her where

head and heart meet. This stupid emotion is love
and because of that, because of her love,

if he won’t get to the top of the hill,
then she won’t get to the top of the hill

either. Anyway, a few drops of rain
fall on her hair and she knows he hates rain.

He might even have turned
and gone home without her. She turns

and half-runs down the path. He’s waiting for her,
sitting on his coat and waiting for her.

‘About time,’ he says. ‘Where have you been?’
She says, ‘Where do you think I’ve been?’

He doesn’t ask about the view from the top.
She doesn’t tell him she didn’t get to the top.

She might think, ‘This is the story of my life,’
but although this is the story of her life

that is not what she thinks.
She thinks something else.

*****

This poem comes from midway through Helena Nelson’s 2022 book ‘Pearls – The Complete Mr & Mrs Philpott Poems‘, some 100 poems (I haven’t counted) detailing their years of marriage, starting with a couple of references to their first marriages, through to their own noticeable ageing.

The book’s blurb asks: ‘Where did Mr and Mrs Philpott come from? The author has no idea. They popped into her head over twenty years ago and have refused to go away. Their story is one of ordinary, difficult, everyday love. And yet they themselves aren’t ordinary. Their dreams, anxieties and needs, their separate and difficult pasts, have somehow coalesced into mutual understanding–even sudden spurts of happiness–despite the rainy holidays, arguments and illness. The ordinariness of their love is magical and miraculous. Because ordinary love is a kind of miracle.’

Helena Nelson writes: “I didn’t choose this absorption with the Philpotts. It just happened, and it seems I really have stopped writing them now. But I’m terribly fond of them and often think about them. Probably one of my top favourite Philpott poems is ’The Hill’. Nearly all the poems have some kind of formal pattern underpinning them. Even when they appear to be free, the rhythms are deliberate. I don’t know if I could say any more about them. I feel as though they’ve gone off on their own now, for better or worse, and I’m happy about that.”

Helena Nelson runs HappenStance Press (now winding down) and also writes poems. Her most recent collection is Pearls (The Complete Mr and Mrs Philpott Poems). She reviews widely and is Consulting Editor for The Friday Poem.

Photo: “Day 40: Grey Skies” by amanky is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Odd poem: Couplet wordplay: Daniel Galef, ‘Letters to an Editor’

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When I was in the printing biz,
in magazines (I worked at MS),
under my office door was slipped
a neatly-typed-out MS,
its cover letter curt and snippy,
return address in MS.
And what a scoop! New drug (its doses
prescribed for MS)
a fraud! The source, in bold defiance,
a chemist with a MS.
I showed my boss. “Yeah, right!” she reckoned,
and canned me in a MS.

*****

Daniel Galef provides this key to the various standard meanings of the abbreviation:
“Ms. Magazine; manuscript; Mississippi; multiple sclerosis; Master of Science degree; millisecond.”

Daniel Galef’s first book, Imaginary Sonnets, was published last year. ‘Letters to an Editor’ was published as part of his being the Featured Poet in Light Poetry Magazine. He is currently working on a book of comic poetry and wordplay, as well as on a PhD from the University of Cincinnati.

Photo: “Ms. magazine Cover – Winter 2015” by Liberty Media for Women, LLC is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Duncan Lawrence, ‘The Poet is the Luckiest of Artists’

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There is no struggling with a wayward cello on the train 
Or carting a large canvas through dank cornfields in the rain.

No need to worry chapter sixteen has somehow been deleted 
Or that the woodwind section remains a long way from completed.

No welding burns to speak of, hammered thumbs or calloused palms,
No temperamental band mates whose bad habits raise alarms.

No fearing, that the next plié will surely split these tights 
Or some acerbic, carping critic has got you in their sights.

Just, fingers crossed the last few lines like miracles unfold 
Before the walk is over or the bath become too cold.

Yes, I concede the poet’s lucky, yet still I do despair 
For all the artful artistry the money isn’t there.

*****

Duncan Lawrence writes: “I do not remember any specific incident as a catalysis for this poem. I did see an interview with John Cooper Clarke on the BBC, he said something to the effect that one might splash out on Tap Dance lessons only to discover that you were not that good but a pencil and a bit of paper are always available. That was either the source of the piece or resonated because I had just written it.
As to the form, I understand that it might be “Iambic heptameter with some anapestic
substitutions” but I don’t really know what that means.
I cannot sit down with a blank piece of paper and decide to write about something. The
poem just forms in my head over a few days. I then write it down and clean it up a bit. After I put it aside and continue to mull it over on a walk or in the bath before looking it
over again and, with luck, if it sounds all right, finishing it off.”

Duncan Lawrence is a retired English Teacher. Originally from the United Kingdom, he is a long-term resident in rural Japan. Here he spends an inordinate amount of time walking dogs for the local Guide Dog Association.
He has had three poems (including this one) published by Jerome Betts on his magazine Lighten Up Online.

Photo: “Who says I can’t relax?” by Ed Yourdon is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Using form: Couplets: Barbara Lydecker Crane, ‘Secret Adages’

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“Write nothing down in ink” is the secret’s first rule;
“You promise not to tell?” said the secret’s first fool.

A secret’s likely safe if entrusted to a stranger;
one who knows no English will further lessen danger.

Don’t hide a guilty secret no other person knows;
like mold behind a ceiling, a spreading fester shows.

Secrets may be sweet, too delicious not to share.
To savor them together might double tempting fare.

Revealing every secret, a link to each regret,
will drain away a soul to an empty fishing net.

“Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.”
. . . but more about the bodies, Ben Franklin never said.

*****

Barbara Lydecker Crane writes: “Sometimes when I am casting around for new ideas to write about, I browse Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.  That’s how this one got started; the rest is classified information!” (But it is known that the poem was first published in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily.)

Barbara Lydecker Crane was a finalist for two recent Rattle Poetry Prizes. She has received two Pushcart nominations and various awards from the Maria W. Faust and the Helen Schaible Sonnet Contests. Her poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Ekphrastic Review, First Things, Light, THINK, Valparaiso Literary Review, Writer’s Almanac, many others, and in several anthologies. Her fourth collection, You Will Remember Me (ekphrastic, persona sonnets) was recently published by Able Muse Press, and is available from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/You-Will-Remember-Me-Ekphrastic/dp/1773491261. Barb lives with her husband near Boston.

Photo: “The Secret” by CEBImagery.com is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.