Category Archives: semi-formal

Semi-formal verse: F.R. Scott, ‘Old Song’

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far voices
and fretting leaves
this music the
hillside gives

but in the deep
Laurentian river
an elemental song
for ever

a quiet calling
of no mind
out of long aeons
when dust was blind
and ice hid sound

only a moving
with no note
granite lips
a stone throat

*****

F.R. Scott (1899 – 1985) was a Canadian poet, lawyer, intellectual, and constitutional scholar. He helped found the first Canadian social democratic party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), and its successor, the New Democratic Party (NDP). Born in Quebec City, he was Dean of the Faculty of Law at McGill; UN representative in Burma (now Thailand); and a member of the Royal Commission on Biculturalism and Bilingualism. A lover of the Laurentian wilderness, he was a member of the ‘Preview’ group of Montreal poets… and… with A.J.M. Smith he co-edited The Blasted Pine: An Anthology of Satire, Invective, and Disrespectful Verse.

Photo: Simple Living – Flickr – Malcolm Carlaw.jpg, Wikimedia Commons

Semi-formal verse: Ann Drysdale, ‘Dialogue’

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He might be coming tonight, said Heart to Head.
No he won’t, Head replied, firmly. You heard what he said.
I know, said Heart, but still he didn’t exactly
turn me down flat.
Well, he wouldn’t, would he? said Head,
you know him better than that;
what he said was ‘barring a miracle’–
I thought you understood.
Granted, he did, said Heart, but he also said
he would if he could.
If he’d meant to come, said Head, he’d have mentioned trains;
he’d have confirmed the time.
So he forgot, so what? said Heart.
Since when has that been a crime?
Go on, said Head, firmly but gently. Pick up the phone,
ring and un-book the hotel.
Not yet, said Heart. But I will.
Why do you carry on playing, said Head
when there’s so little chance of winning?
Poor Head–am I ‘doing you in’? said Heart, grinning.
Death, even by a thousand cuts, said Head,
is still, ultimately, Death.
‘Hope springs eternal in the human breast’,
said Heart, under its breath.
That was unworthy of you, said Head,
it’s a cliché, and it’s ugly.
‘L’espoir luit comme un brin de paille dans l’étable‘,
said Heart, smugly.
Straw doesn’t shine in stables, said Head,
it just lies there, soaking up shit.
That’s right, said Heart. That’s it.
Face it, said Head, not unkindly; he isn’t coming tonight.
I know, said Heart. But he might.

*****

Ann Drysdale (née Corrigan), 1942 – 2024, was a celebrated poet and editor, known for her wit and humour. Her work won the Dylan Thomas Prize for poetry in performance and numerous awards in competitions including Manchester, Cardiff, Peterloo, Bridport, and the Housman Society. Born near Manchester and raised in London, Ann later lived in Birmingham, the North York Moors, and South Wales. ‘Dialogue’ comes from her 2009 collection, ‘Quaintness and Other Offences’.

Here is the bio that she chose to represent herself with: “Ann Drysdale still lives in South Wales. She has been a hill farmer, water-gypsy, newspaper columnist and single parent – not necessarily in that order. She has written all her life; stories, essays, memoir, and a newspaper column that spanned twenty years of an eventful life. Her eighth volume of poetry – Feeling Unusual – came together during the strange times of Coronavirus and celebrates, among other things, the companionship of a wise cat and an imaginary horse.”

She was a much-loved member of the world of (especially formalist) poetry, and there is a tribute (and an enormous selection of her verse) in The HyperTexts. She was a truly good person.

“head over heart” by i_gallagher is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Semi-formal: ‘Maz’ Griffiths, ‘Falling’

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In the library,
you fell over me.
You said, So sorry.
I said, Ouch.
Later you fell over me
on the couch.

Things were falling into place,
thigh to thigh and face to face.
Earth was falling
through the night
falling into birds and light.

As the sky unrolled
another day,
you kissed me,
then you walked away.

But walking,
I’m told,
is merely
falling
controlled.

*****

The always delightful Margaret Ann “Maz” Griffiths published in a huge range of voices: formal sonnets of wildlife and of the illness that finally killed her, blank verse rants against warfare or injustice, sad songs of the female loss of innocence, flippant anti-establishment sarcasm about the British Royal Family…

‘Grasshopper’, her 350-page collection of poetry (and also one of her nicknames) was assembled by fans after her death and published by Arrowhead Press in the UK and Able Muse Press in North America. It is readable and rereadable. I post the occasional poem in this blog.

Illustration: Wikimedia Commons: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alexisnyalphotography/5183318315/

Semi-formal poem: Mervyn Peake, ‘To Maeve’

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You walk unaware
Of the slender gazelle
That moves as you move
And is one with the limbs
That you have.

You live unaware
Of the faint, the unearthly
Echo of hooves
That within your white streams
Of clear clay that I love

Are in flight as you turn,
As you stand, as you move,
As you sleep, for the slender
Gazelle never rests
In your ivory grove.

*****

‘To Maeve’ is the final poem in ‘Mervyn Peake, Selected Poems’ published by Faber. Peake and his wife Maeve Gilmore were both artists and writers – after Peake’s death in 1968, Gilmore fleshed out a fourth book for the Gormenghast Trilogy from Peake’s notes and ideas, eventually published as ‘Titus Awakes: The Lost Book of Gormenghast‘.

Isabel Chenot, ‘driving by an Orchard, late October’

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Behind repetitive, recessive rows
of almond trees, radiance stutters:
an open phoneme that won’t close.
It flickers to the west, while lateral gutters

of long shadow interrupt its strobe.
The orchard’s shadows diagraph the road and flare
across to dust and scrub.
My inarticulable thoughts are there:

fleeing, opaque, colliding with the sound of glare.

*****

Isabel Chenot writes: ” I like to let the words speak for themselves as much as possible.”

‘driving by an Orchard, late October’ was originally published in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.

Isabel Chenot has loved, memorized, and practiced poetry all her remembered life. Some of her poems are collected in The Joseph Tree, available from Wiseblood Books.

“Almond trees” by mental.masala is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Semi-formal verse: RHL, ‘Conversation with the Beast’

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“And what are you?” asked the all-seeing sightless beast
bearing me on its back through vast seascapes,
going somewhere, nowhere, ceaseless as droning plane or priest.
“Are you one of the great lizards? Or the little apes?
The winged skylords? The many-tentacled?
An ape-displacing metal monster?”
“Of those,” I said, “ ‘Ape’ has to be my answer.”

“I talk with all of you,” it said, “you’re all identical.
You are all struggling up, and lying back and down,
and all are living with some lilac crown
on heads and clothed with your purple gown
while all your world degrades to brown.
This you all do, will always do, have always done,
always, while seas seem to run,
and while I seem to carry you with seeming motion.”

“What is this sea?” I asked. “Time, that we’re moving through?”
“Why not?” it said. “There is no Time, nor Ocean.
All is more dream than stream;
I am not as I seem
and nor are you.”

*****

I’m very happy to have this in the latest edition of Cerasus – “now published and currently available to buy at a special discounted price:

In the UK: CERASUS Poetry Magazine # 6: Amazon.co.uk: Wilks, John: 9798160784458: Books

In the USA: CERASUS Poetry Magazine # 6: Wilks, John: 9798160784458: Amazon.com: Books

(For other countries, click on a link then change the .co.uk or .com in the address bar as appropriate.)”

Thanks, John Wilks.

Using form: Bill Bowler, ‘Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man’

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Most of the time I’m zonked
maybe more often than I might want
here between high and dizzy
tired of looking busy
waiting to see what comes my way
9:11 comes twice a day

Look in the mirror: what do you see
a distinguished gentleman, what’s left of me
a formerly handsome young man,
gray hair, gray beard, wrinkles, laugh lines,
crow’s feet, bags… Why go on?

Grunting, groaning, ache all over,
Moving slowly, bent and stiff
No use trying to ignore
that throbbing, shooting pain
in my elbow, in my wrist,
there it goes again
in my ankle, in my hip

I’m occupying space,
not doing much at a steady pace,
treading water, riding it out
for Now, which is all we’ve got

Most of the time
in bed at nine
reading time
conk out by ten
sleep till eight
lounge in bed
get up late
and start again

No goal, no productivity,
drinking vodka, smoking weed,
writing verses, cooking dinner
anchovies, butter, cheese and cream
garlic, capers, medium heat

I don’t expect you youngsters here
to understand, but if you can,
my bladder’s shot, the plumbing leaks
an endless stream or more a trickle
with brief pauses in between
marking out my territory
or so it seems

It’s not what you expect to hear
but never fear!
Money’s not a problem
we have plenty
our friendly neighborhood ATM provides
an unlimited supply of twenties

*****

Bill Bowler writes: “Portrait of the Artist…” is one of a long series of poems called It Never Gets Old that I’ve been working on for a while. They’re all up on Bewildering Stories. The poems all explore from one angle or another the weird sensation of one’s parts wearing out, and one’s friends and loved ones disappearing one by one. Some of the titles are: “Death can be so inconvenient”, “At day’s end, nearing sunset”, “Circling the Drain”, “The Party’s Over”, “Poopie and PeePee”, “No One Seems Alarmed”, “Into the Bubble”, etc. I find that humor goes a long way in alleviating despair. (Смех сквозь слезы – laughter through tears)

“What I try to do in my verse is to use casual idiomatic vernacular, complete with slang, i.e., natural spoken speech, but to render the lines using meter and rhyme, so that the patterns are hardly noticed, though they hold the whole structure together. It has to sound natural even if it’s rhymed trimeter, which is fun to do. I’m fine with approximate rhyme, approximate rhythm (like mixed dactyls and trochees), and approximate meaning, but it has to be smooth. One forced rhyme blows the whole thing.”

Bill Bowler was born in New York City in 1950. He graduated from Columbia University in 1972 and received a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages & Literatures from the University of Michigan in 1981. He has a wry biography at https://www.bewilderingstories.com/bios/bowler_bio.html#biblio, with links to his poems and stories.

Photo: “KELLYS IN KCMO” by roberthuffstutter is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Short poem: RHL, ‘Planet Earth’

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Like an obsequious waiter
runs the attendant Equator
round the fat gut of our obscenely glutted world.
This great gobbed globe of God’s glory,
spat by Him into space
and spinning in spirals and falling forever further
from Faith’s Face.

*****

A religious poem? I don’t know, I like the sound of it though. Anyway, the continuing and global nature of the drift away from Faith suggests it is all part of God’s plan…

First published in Bewildering Stories #1148 – thanks, Don Webb!

“Satellite Sees Two Tropical Cyclones Chase Tropical Storm Daniel” by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Excerpt, semi-formal: Matthew Arnold, ‘A Summer Night’ (2)

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And the rest, a few,
Escape their prison and depart
On the wide ocean of life anew.
There the freed prisoner, where’er his heart
Listeth, will sail;
Nor doth he know how there prevail,
Despotic on that sea,
Trade-winds which cross it from eternity.
Awhile he holds some false way, undebarred
By thwarting signs, and braves
The freshening wind and blackening waves.
And then the tempest strikes him; and between
The lightning-bursts is seen
Only a driving wreck,
And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck
With anguished face and flying hair
Grasping the rudder hard,
Still bent to make some port he knows not where,
Still standing for some false, impossible shore.
And sterner comes the roar
Of sea and wind, and through the deepening gloom
Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom,
And he too disappears, and comes no more.

*****

This fragment is the response to the previous excerpt from Matthew Arnold’s ‘A Summer Night’ that I blogged two days ago. As a teen in a well-regimented boarding school I found that previous fragment terrifying with its prospect of living as a bored wage-slave forever, and this second fragment exhilarating in its freedom despite the expectation of catastrophe. Altogether a very subversive poem, and I thank my schooling for including such works. For the next couple of decades I followed the wild path, failing to earn a degree at universities in three countries, never holding a job for more than 18 months, frequently moving. Eventually I found an occupation that was constantly changing, where Eliza and I were our own bosses, and that took us to dozens of countries to teach business seminars. So that successfully combined the wage-slave and the freed prisoner, and it all worked out.

Arnold originally ended his poem:

Is there no life, but these alone?
Madman or slave must man be one?

But ten years later he added a much more wishy-washy piece about learning from the pure heavens and seeing what a nice life you could make for yourself. I always thought he should have stopped with the original “madman or slave” view of life: much more dramatic! But his later addition was probably justified…

“Snow Storm—Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth” by hyperion327 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. (Note: the painting is by J.M.W. Turner, of course.)

Excerpt, semi-formal: Matthew Arnold, ‘A Summer Night’ (1)

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For most men in a brazen prison live,
Where, in the sun’s hot eye,
With heads bent o’er their toil, they languidly
Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give,
Dreaming of naught beyond their prison wall.
And as, year after year,
Fresh products of their barren labor fall
From their tired hands, and rest
Never yet comes more near,
Gloom settles slowly down over their breast.
And while they try to stem
The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest,
Death in their prison reaches them,
Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest.

*****

I’m very grateful to my schooling for putting Matthew Arnold on the curriculum – this subversive little passage seems designed to undermine the office and factory culture which has flourished since his time, to undermine even the student writing endless essays. Arnold was an inspector of schools as well as a poet and social critic, so we can assume he knew what he was doing. But isn’t it suggesting that a dissatisfied person should just drop out? More on that in the next post.

The other thing I like about the piece is its easy, flowing style. Every line rhymes, but without pattern. The lines are iambic, mostly pentameter, but a scattering of them are shorter. It feels very conversational, and it is certainly very easy to learn by heart (which is one of the reasons that poetry evolved in the first place). The only hiccup to natural speech are the displacement of ‘live’ and ‘give’ to the ends of their lines for the sake of the rhyme and even that, though artificial, is done conventionally enough to read smoothly. The rest of it is in normal speech. When T.S. Eliot came out with ‘Prufrock‘ some decades later, though it had a different, Imagist sensibility, the only real difference in style was in dropping the thou’s and thee’s that Arnold still clung to.

Photo: “Office workers in Executive Building Room No. 123 prior to alterations, Brisbane” by Queensland State Archives is marked with CC PDM 1.0