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.
What, you haven’t heard of me, despite my art and stormy life? There’s much to tell of pride and bitterness, of bliss and hell— but not regret. I’ll fill my pen and write.
I was born a bastard. Maman worked, a laundress, while I’d roam Montmartre, spying through café and whorehouse doorways, trying to snitch some fruit or francs. I laughed and lurked. With lumps of coal I loved to draw on streets. Ditching convent school at puberty, I learned to earn my way. I felt free in circus work, curvaceous and petite and daring on the high trapeze, strong until I hurt my back—I fell headlong.
That set me back, but new work came along— also daring, deemed risqué—being painted, a model for men. Few were sainted . . . nor was I. I didn’t think it wrong to give a man some pleasure and to claim my own. For one artiste I posed unclad and soon became his favorite lover. I had his child, and kept my word: I didn’t name that man on papers with a ‘Father’ line and kept on working. Maman tended him, my son, Maurice Utrillo—a pseudonym so he would not be stigmatized by mine, that of the saucy urchin shedding clothes— and budding painter, watching men compose.
I watched the colors bloom as men composed. Toulouse-Lautrec’s hues, both somber and bright, would join or jar to make a mood just right. He’d talk of wealthy clients and gallery shows while I could study his techniques with paint. He studied me and loved my breasts, my hair, my thighs, my openness to him. I dared to love that rich midget with no restraint. When he refused to marry me, my feigned suicide didn’t change his mind. But what I learned while posing, I combined with my good eye, instinctive and untrained. I’d use my wits (and likely my libido) to paint in oils, with honesty my credo.
I painted nude women by my credo. When I showed Degas my work, he praised me with, “Madame, you’re one of us!” That raised my nerve; like those Montmartre men, I’d show my art—although I’d wish my name need not be printed next to ‘woman artist,’ a tag suggesting Other like a warning flag. I’m already Other in my lot as Bastard-with-a-Bastard history. Will I be known for art or just my life of scandal? I never stayed a bougeois wife, as two would always tangle into three; our pacts permitting infidelity could not prevent one partner’s jealousy.
His cryptic music vented jealousy; Eric Satie was moody, odd, hysteric— and amusing, in and out of bed. Eric and Paul Mousis loved me zealously and it was bound to chafe, our double link. Mousis was rich; Satie holed up in one squalid room. He slowly came undone without me to himself—he took to drink till drink took him. Maurice, by then eighteen, also drank. Since he was prone to rage and smashing things since an early age, Maman would feed him wine to calm such scenes. When briefly sober, it was to me he came— I treasured hearing Maman as my name.
Of course Maurice Utrillo made his name with me his mother-teacher and his Papa (I tell you now) Pierre-Auguste Renoir! Maurice was barely sane, but all the same, prolific and successful in his art. His painter colleague André, with brains and flair, had tireless desire in our affair; our turbulent trio could not live apart. With André as our agent, income flowed— I once took fifty children to the circus . . . Montmartre beggars crowded round to work us . . . we’d help out any artist friend who owed. The stream of money later dried to drought, but while it flowed I bloomed by giving out.
Too soon I knew my bloom was giving out— I missed men’s wide-eyed stares, their swiveled heads. André, still youthful, strayed to other beds; Maurice would drink or sit around and pout. We three unraveled into separate ways. Instead of painting nudes I painted flowers; they didn’t sell but brightened up the hours of living alone, inviting in malaise, till I found Gazi. This young, exotic man takes care of me and listens to my stories, roughly true—my slights, successes, glories. I’m seventy-two. I’ll end where I began, a bastard bitch whose art was bold and right. My pride and grit leave little room for spite.
*****
Here is what the judge for the 2024 Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Contest wrote: Praise for the winning sonnet crown: Among a strong group of finalists, “Roughly True” distinguished itself across the board—in form, in voice, in message, in grace. After reading these seven sonnets in the voice of French painter Suzanne Valadon, I felt as if I had just taken short courses in poetic form, meter, rhyme, and art history, all expertly and candidly delivered by the fully realized persona of an accomplished, but overshadowed figure, one exquisitely resurrected here in verse. ~Dan Albergotti, Judge
Barbara Lydecker Crane writes: “I was surprised and thrilled to win this contest, and further pleased that the judge seemed to recognize the same strength of character in Suzanne Valadon that I did. The more I researched her life and work, the more I felt I actually knew this gritty woman a bit, despite our wildly different lives. As I get older I find I am more interested in writing about others than myself. My latest book, You Will Remember Me (Able Muse), is a collection of persona poems about portrait artists and their works. I am currently writing a new series of persona poems, this time about landscape artists and their works. This time, rather than writing all sonnets, each poem takes a different form; but all (so far) are in rhyme and meter. That seems fitting both for older times and for the craft and musicality I strive for, to befit the art that I hope to see with these poems one day, perhaps in a new book. And there is something about writing in form that, to me, is exactly like framing a picture. What a difference that makes; it says “completed,” and adds its own panache to the art.”
Humans, in any culture, seem naturally attracted to quests; often to more than one at a time, and contradictory. Maybe the universe is just a playground for questing…
A billboard seen in Toronto read Sonnet Insurance.
Dear Sonnet staff: I’m eager for your plan! I’ll want an underwriter old-school-based, Petrarchan or like Larkin in his taste: he’ll speak my terms. I’ll benefit from your man adjusting rhymes, making meter strict, assuming the risk of an errant anapest. Does your firm ensure I’ll stand time’s test? Do you pull strings to have each effort picked by a premier publication? One quick draft in the condition of a pre-existing sonnet, and the English-speaking world might dote upon it. But truth be told, my first attempts aren’t craft. Sonnet Insurance, kindly file this letter; insure me later, when it’s written better.
*****
Barbara Lydecker Crane write: “I am a shameless pun lover; seeing this billboard, though, certainly begged for some. “My Letter to Sonnet Insurance” was published a few years back in Light.“
In 2024 Barbara Lydecker Crane won the Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Crown Contest and First Prize in the Helen Schaible Contest, modern sonnet category. She has twice been a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize. Able Muse recently published her fourth collection, You Will Remember Me. She enjoys making and looking at art, travel, and her family, which includes four fast-growing grandchildren and one near-perfect husband: he does not read poetry.
Without black tea, his mornings never start. The newspaper should be upon his bed; Not finding it will make his eyes all red. As if examining a piece of art, He reads each page. Loud oohs such as ‘My heart!’, ‘Another swindle!’, or ‘So many dead!’, Are heard as if the earth’s weight’s on his head. Harrumphing, he jumps to the Cultures part. A pensioner today, back in those days, He was a banker. Now, he saunters, plays Carom with me, or spends the noontimes planting Camellias —- a work he finds enchanting. At times, he sits before some dusty files, Puts on the glasses, thumbs through them, and smiles.
Shamik Banerjee is a poet from Assam, India. Some of his recent publications include Spelt, Ink Sweat & Tears, Modern Reformation, San Antonio Review, The Society of Classical Poets, Third Wednesday, and Amethyst Review among others.
O my luve’s like a red, red rose That’s newly sprung in June: O my luve’s like the melodie That’s sweetly play’d in tune.
So fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in luve am I; And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a’ the seas gang dry.
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi’ the sun: And I will love thee still, my dear, While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only luve! And fare thee weel awhile! And I will come again, my luve, Tho’ it were ten thousand mile!
*****
January 25th being the birthday of Robert Burns (and the opportunity for a Burns Night celebration), it seems the right day to post an interesting fact that I was unfamiliar with until reading a 1964 Canadian high school poetry text book: ‘A Red, Red Rose’ was fashioned from three distinct songs that Burns had heard in the Highlands of Scotland. Part of each song was reworked by him into a single poem:
(Song 1) Her cheeks are like the roses That blossom fresh in June; O, she’s like a new-strung instrument That’s newly put in tune.
(Song 2) The seas they shall run dry, And rocks melt into sands Then I’ll love you still, my dear, When all these things are done.
(Song 3) Altho’ I go a thousand miles I vow thy face to see, Altho’ I go ten thousand miles, I’ll come again to thee, dear love, I’ll come again to thee.
Wikipedia (as often) is a good place to look for more information, and here is an extensive quotation from its article on the poem:
Sources Burns is best understood as a compiler or a redactor of “A Red, Red Rose” rather than its author. F.B. Snyder wrote that Burns could take “childish, inept” sources and turn them into magic, “The electric magnet is not more unerring in selecting iron from a pile of trash than was Burns in culling the inevitable phrase or haunting cadence from the thousands of mediocre possibilities.”
One source that is often cited for the song is a Lieutenant Hinches’ farewell to his sweetheart, which Ernest Rhys asserts is the source for the central metaphor and some of its best lines. Hinches’ poem, “O fare thee well, my dearest dear”, bears a striking similarity to Burns’s verse, notably the lines which refer to “ten thousand miles” and “Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear”.
A ballad originating from the same period entitled “The Turtle Dove” also contains similar lines, such as “Though I go ten thousand mile, my dear” and “Oh, the stars will never fall down from the sky/Nor the rocks never melt with the sun”. Of particular note is a collection of verse dating from around 1770, The Horn Fair Garland, which Burns inscribed, “Robine Burns aught this buik and no other”. A poem in this collection, “The loyal Lover’s faithful promise to his Sweet-heart on his going on a long journey” also contains similar verses such as “Althou’ I go a thousand miles” and “The day shall turn to night, dear love/And the rocks melt in the sun”.
An even earlier source is the broadside ballad “The Wanton Wife of Castle-Gate: Or, The Boat-mans Delight”, which dates to the 1690s. Midway through the ballad, Burns’ first stanza can be found almost verbatim: “Her Cheeks are like the Roses, that blossoms fresh in June; O shes like some new-strung Instrument thats newly put in tune.” The provenance for such a song is likely medieval.
Would someone kindly tell me please Where the Roman, Flora, went? And where is Alcibiades, Her cousin? In what continent? And Echo, singing merriment… Speak up now, someone, if you know, Is Echo’s lovely timbre spent? And where did last year’s snowflakes go?
And where on earth is Heloise Whose lover’s private parts were rent, The subject of such cruelties Brought down in such a foul descent? And where’s the Queen whose heart was bent Against young Buridan so low She drowned him in the Seine, poor gent? And where did last year’s snowflakes go?
And Blanche, the Queen, who sang with ease, And Siren-like made men content? And Big Foot Bertha, Beatrice? And Arembourg, Maine’s resident? And Joan, who still would not relent Although the flames attacked her so? Virgin, my poor ears are bent! And where did last year’s snowflakes go?
Prince, don’t ask me to invent Responses that seem apropos. In this refrain my answer’s pent: And where did last year’s snowflakes go?
*****
Ballade des dames du temps jadis
Dictes moy où, n’en quel pays, Est Flora, la belle Romaine ; Archipiada, ne Thaïs, Qui fut sa cousine germaine; Echo, parlant quand bruyt on maine Dessus rivière ou sus estan, Qui beauté eut trop plus qu’humaine? Mais où sont les neiges d’antan!
Où est la très sage Heloïs, Pour qui fut chastré et puis moyne Pierre Esbaillart à Sainct-Denys? Pour son amour eut cest essoyne. Semblablement, où est la royne Qui commanda que Buridan Fust jetté en ung sac en Seine? Mais où sont les neiges d’antan!
La royne Blanche comme ung lys, Qui chantoit à voix de sereine; Berthe au grand pied, Bietris, Allys; Harembourges qui tint le Mayne, Et Jehanne, la bonne Lorraine, Qu’Anglois bruslerent à Rouen; Où sont-ilz, Vierge souveraine ? Mais où sont les neiges d’antan!
Prince, n’enquerez de sepmaine Où elles sont, ne de cest an, Qu’à ce refrain ne vous remaine: Mais où sont les neiges d’antan!
*****
Robert Schechter writes: “I wrote this translation of François Villon‘s Ballade several years ago and I don’t remember a whole lot about the process, other than there was a thread at Eratosphere where many people were trying their hand at a translation, and this was my own go at it. I tried to take a breezy tone, almost but not quite humorous, and to my amazement the rhymes I started with didn’t peter out before the ending.”
The poem is published in the current issue of Eclectica.
Robert Schechter is a past winner of the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize and the X.J. Kennedy Parody Award. His book of children’s poems, The Red Ear Blows Its Nose: Poems for Children and Others, was named one of the best books of 2023 by School Library Journal and Bank Street College, after receiving starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, and School Library Journal. His poems have appeared in The Washington Post, The Spectator, Highlights for Children, Cricket, Spider, Ladybug, The Caterpillar, The School Magazine, The Paris Review Online, Poetry East, Measure, Snakeskin, The Evansville Review, and Light, where he also appeared as a featured poet, as well as in several anthologies such as the Everyman’s Library Villanelles and The National Geographic Book of Nature Poetry.
Two friends diverged in a yelling mood And sorry I could not keep them both And still maintain one attitude, I scrolled down through one’s page, and viewed Some green and gold of writing growth.
Then saw the other was just as good, With maybe even a better claim Because so well misunderstood Within the writing neighborhood, Though as for that they’re much the same.
And each that morning equally laid The blame upon the other’s back. I had no way to tell who’d made The first or worst move; I’m afraid I have no feel for clique or claque.
Online I have too many friends To keep good track, so, nothing loath To making enemies or ends Where there are no real dividends, I shook my head – and blocked them both.
*****
Marcus Bales writes: “Most of the fraught relationships online are due to people not being able to write very well on one end, or read very well on the other. Stuff that in in-person conversation would go completely unnoticed is taken up as deliberate slighting. Mostly its merely awkward phrasing, or one interlocutor is already two comments past when the reply to the third interaction scrolls by and it’s misinterpreted as an instant response to the most recent reply when it was really intended to answer something two or three comments back.
“Now in the case of political disagreements where the polarized sides are already firmly established and one side or the other or both are determined to fight that’s a whole other thing. There it’s got nothing to do with how well or ill something is read or written and everything to do with the sport of online woofing.
“It’s one of those things where over the years people block and get blocked and complain to their friends about either end of it and then it all goes away pretty fast as the opportunity to be triggered — again at either end — fades with the blocking.”
(The original poem on which this parody is based, for those not familiar with it, is Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken‘. – RHL)
Not much is known about Marcus Bales except that he lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio, and that his work has not been published in Poetry or The New Yorker. However his ‘51 Poems‘ is available from Amazon. He has been published in several of the Potcake Chapbooks (‘Form in Formless Times’).
What ends with me? A set of genes, The notion that my slender means Might turn into a son’s estate, The hope that, at some distant date, Beside my grave, my line convenes
To recollect my days’ routines, My counsels, and the vanished scenes Whose witnesses would recreate What ends with me:
The consciousness that struts and preens In holding that its passing means An altering of our species’ fate, My thought possessed of untold weight. Yet, on that thought, the question leans– What ends with me?
*****
J.D. Smith writes: “After reaching a certain age and making certain commitments, I found myself coming to grips with never being a parent. As in other instances of following form, the repetitions of the rondeau gave me a way to enclose and develop my response to the situation.”
J.D. Smith has published six books of poetry, most recently the light verse collection Catalogs for Food Lovers, and he has received a Fellowship in Poetry from the United States National Endowment for the Arts. This poem is from The Killing Tree (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Smith’s first fiction collection, Transit, was published in December 2022. His other books include the essay collection Dowsing and Science, and his seventh collection, The Place That Is Coming to Us, will be published by Broadstone Books in 2025. Smith works in Washington, DC, where he lives with his wife Paula Van Lare and their rescue animals. X: @Smitroverse
It starts with lightning, tinder, and a gust. Smoke-jumper teams, at this stage, may contain it— clad in Nomex, ‘chuting down to dust they rip along the fireline like a bayonet, swinging pulaskis, cleaving to clearings and creeks, drip-torching back-fires, containing each hot spot with counter-tides of flame. They know physiques honed to sprint with gear may still be caught by racing fronts and panic, so they pack a thin aluminum drape, a fire-shelter. A flare-up—now they cannot reach the black by racing through the flame-wall, helter-skelter, so they deploy before the terra torch and bake like foiled potatoes in its scorch.
The fire expands. Its roaring conflagration finds ladder fuels and candles standing trees. The incident commander starts to station resources round the burn’s peripheries— machinery and hotshot crews assemble in camps and helibases. Like mirages, infernos rise to ridgelines, flare, and tremble. As faller teams and swampers check barrages of lowland flame, a bucket-swinging Bell lathers long control-lines with retardant. The Super Huey heli-crews rappel; Sikorsky sky-cranes suck and buzz like ardent mosquitoes, but combustion’s alchemies still plate the skies with gold. A rising breeze…
The crowning flames become a firestorm as fires’ heads combine. Convection columns shoot limbs and embers upwards where they form flak for tanker-crews. Smoke overwhelms visibility. They drop a Mars and lift great lumps of lake, on every mission seven thousand gallons salving scars from summer’s branding-iron. Sudden fission caused by sap expanding inside trunks sends frissons of crackling sparks across the blaze as fire-cracker trees explode. The thunks of falling tops spook ground-crews. Flames find ways to lope the overstorey under cover of smoke while dozers doze and choppers hover.
Although we fight it, such spontaneous heat kindles inner duff. Like Icarus we’re drawn to flame as if it could complete combustion of some smoldering in us, a splendor in the trees. With rolls and dips, like waxwings, flying wax wings to the sun, we soar. .. And then, as if a flash eclipse confronts us with the dark side of the moon, the aftermath appears: black devastation, burnt poles which yesterday were foliaged. Cracked pods already seed reforestation and years will heal what fire so quickly aged but now, devoid of even twigs and slash, this moonscape marks where sunlight fell as ash.
*****
John Beaton writes: “I wrote this one around 2009 not long after Joyce and I had run the gauntlet on a west-east highway through the coast mountains of Northern California. A major fire complex was burning and the road was opened for only a few hours, but we got through. Burning embers lined the roadside and there was smoke and flame on both sides. Each stanza is in Shakespearean sonnet form.”
John Beaton’s metrical poetry has been widely published and has won numerous awards. He recites from memory as a spoken word performer and is author of Leaving Camustianavaig published by Word Galaxy Press. Raised in the Scottish Highlands, John lives in Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island. https://www.john-beaton.com/
Form in Formless Times 