We hurried back, struggling to comprehend the scale of devastation and what journey’s end would mean – wondering indeed whether we still had a home to go to. Aghast, we scanned fields the dead had sown and reaped forever
transformed to lakes, then villages where cars had been tossed aside like toys, and scooped-out bars, churches, schools, where dark lines marked the height reached by the water, left as scars. There’d been no warning signs, no Noah’s ark
though those of us who’d been on higher ground could now inherit the world the tempest drowned though too few to repopulate that morning’s massive, muddy funeral mound, reminding us what might have been our fate.
The radio was silent, even if the word on the street was help would come – soon enough we heard helicopters. But the broken men who landed only muttered something blurred about how this was it till God knows when.
A black market opened – which only the rich could afford. The rest of us survived on what we’d stored in better days, skimping until re-learning the ancient ways, we could once more live off the land with long-forgotten skills.
Sometimes I look back, yet I know the past has gone for good, that no one can forecast when the day will come we’ll dare to hope the storm which killed so many was the last, and trust again illusion’s horoscope.
*****
Tom Vaughan writes: ” ‘Safe‘s working title was Sanctuary, and the poem was inspired – if that’s the word – by the sense that there is none. The form reflects the fact that it was written during one of my regular bouts of reading Larkin. I was lucky enough to visit his office in the library at Hull University in July, with a copy of The Whitsun Weddings in my backpack for the train trip back to London . . . “
Tom Vaughan is not the real name of a poet whose previous publications include a novel and three poetry pamphlets (A Sampler, 2010, and Envoy, 2013, both published by HappenStance; and Just a Minute, 2024, from Cyberwit). His poems have been published in a range of poetry magazines, including several of the Potcake Chapbooks and frequently (as with ‘Safe‘) in Snakeskin. He currently lives in Brittany. https://tomvaughan.website
Most insecure are those, the self-aware: for all their acts are pointless and they know it, scurrying like ants on an eclair… the universe, indifferent, looks askance.
This insecure mode breeds defensiveness and therefore arrogance, not least in poets who know their work especially valueless… even to other ants.
*****
I think we poets, who can be so rude about other people, need to be rude about ourselves occasionally. Not that the universe cares one way or the other.
I know you have no use for them, poems with their sly quicksilver words that won’t just speak their minds, but carom through your head like startled birds. Is that despair or longing in their cries? Their dolors make no sense. They’ll never buy you larger-screened TVs or seats at sports events.
But someday, as you watch a pair hold hands and leap from a burning tower, as you wait for test results or hear your phone ring at an unaccustomed hour, what you feel will circle wordlessly— tense, accusing, gaunt. You’ll find that you are tested and found wanting, and these are what you’ll want.
*****
Susan McLean writes: “As a professor myself and a person who once worked on writing standardized tests, I am familiar with the complaint of teachers that they are often forced to “teach to the test,” i.e., teach only the sort of knowledge and skills that students need for passing that sort of test. But as a poet, I know that we are tested in life in all sorts of ways. Most people think that they can get through life just fine without poetry. They tend to find poetry annoying and impenetrable, something that needs to be decoded, that has no practical use. Yet in tragedies, when all hope and comfort are gone, there is some comfort in hearing that others who have been in similar situations were able to put into words the feelings that you can’t. And the most memorable and condensed of those responses are often poems. This poem is rhymed and metrical, but the lines are of different lengths in unpredictable patterns, a form called “heterometric,” and the rhymes occur only every other line. That unpredictability is meant to mirror life, in which the bad news always seems to come out of nowhere. The poem originally appeared in Able Muse and later in my second poetry collection, The Whetstone Misses the Knife.”
Susan McLean has two books of poetry, The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and one book of translations of Martial, Selected Epigrams. Her poems have appeared in Light, Lighten Up Online, Measure, Able Muse, and elsewhere. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa. https://www.pw.org/content/susan_mclean
All that’s left of Ireland is her hair— bright carrot—and her milkmaid-pallid skin, her brilliant air of cavalier despair, her train of children—some conceived in sin, the others to avoid it. For nowhere is evidence of thought. Devout, pale, thin, gay, nonchalant, all radiance. So fair!
How can men look upon her and not spin like wobbly buoys churned by her skirt’s brisk air? They buy. They grope to pat her nyloned shin, to share her elevated, pale Despair … to find at last two spirits ease no one’s.
All that’s left of Ireland is the Care, her impish grin, green eyes like leprechauns’.
*****
Michael R. Burch writes: “My poem is set in the present and really has nothing to do with poverty. All that’s left of Ireland of yore is the young mother’s red hair, fair skin, a tendency toward melancholy (“despair), and her train of children. She’s a practicing Catholic except for a few affairs. Otherwise she’s a modern woman, drinking and flirting in a pub. I was trying to capture a bit of Ireland in a young mother, very loosely inspired by one of my Irish cousins who was a bit of a “wild child” in her youth.”
(Editor’s aside: My bad for thinking that “All that’s left” implied poverty, which was not in Michael R. Burch’s mind at all. True, Ireland goes through enormous swings of fortune, but the Ireland of even some years ago no longer matches the fabulously rich Ireland of today – the people are 50% richer than Americans or Norwegians…
… putting the UAE and Switzerland in the shade as well.)
Michael R. Burch’s poems have been published by hundreds of literary journals, taught in high schools and colleges, translated into 22 languages, incorporated into three plays and four operas, and set to music, from swamp blues to classical, 61 times by 32 composers. He is also the founder and editor-in-chief of The HyperTexts.
Rita is in her summer dress. She’s got the mixer out and she is hard at work perfecting home-made mousse au chocolat. I for my part am typing like a clerk
at my computer. Rita’s got cacao and mascarpone and banana, all to form her own concoction. And just now, she brings a spoon to sample it. You’d call
her labor sui generis – you won’t turn up this recipe. And yet, the tongue delights – the eyes close – as the do or don’t of custom pales. The mousse is made. I’ve sung
my wife in her blue dress with its red spots, I’ve sung the kitchen where she takes her ease – the house’s heart, with all its pans and pots. I’ve sung the afternoon. Bring more of these.
*****
John Claiborne Isbell writes: ” ‘Mousse au chocolat’ is a true story inspired by my wife Rita’s taste for improvisation when cooking. The results are invariably delicious. As for the form, it’s just four quatrains of iambic pentameter. My volume Allegrois light verse; I ought really to write more of it.”
‘Mousse au chocolat’ was published in Snakeskin 321, October 2024.
John Claiborne Isbell is a writer and now-retired professor currently living in Paris with his wife Margarita. Their son Aibek lives in California with his wife Stephanie. John’s first book of poetry was Allegro (2018), with a cello on the cover and available on Amazon; he also publishes literary criticism, for instance An Outline of Romanticism in the West (2022) and Destins de femmes: Thirty French Writers, 1750-1850 (2023) both available free online. John spent thirty-five years playing Ultimate Frisbee, representing France in the European Championships in 1991, and finds it difficult not to dive for catches any more.
With walls of work that never wear away my house is halfway hilled above a plain; ghosts of unwritten books moan and complain; I step out on to scree, sloping and grey. I’ve tried for thirty years to build up high, raising five kids free of smog, vice and town; the treacherous slope of scree slips, I fall down, am shown – kids grown and gone – more work’s a lie.
Now I’m spreadeagled on the eager shale, not daring move, gripping at slipping fears of sliding down to sneered-at country vale where poor folk pick, don’t buy, fresh fruit from trees and I could go, unknown, to known warm seas, run barefoot on the beach of my ideas.
They know well when I clock out. Sharp At five, on K.G. Street, They welcome me with every tooth And lead me to their seat.
Five friends—senescent, pyknic, bald, In Khakis—ironed, clean, With brand-new autorickshaws that Are painted taupe and green.
One masticates areca nuts. The shortest one takes khaini. The other two smoke beedis by A tall Mahogany.
They fall in with a mental pact That tells them not to seek To win me, for each one’s assigned A fixed day of the week
To drive me home. “Today’s my turn,” One says and bids me in. While driving he tells stories that Block off the traffic’s din:
The student loan he’s willing to Take for his only daughter; The municipal board has swelled The price of urban water.
Arrived, I ask about the fare. “Ah! Saab“, he shyly says. I take a fifty rupee note— A glow upon his face.
*****
Shamik Banerjee gives the following word meanings: “Khaki: A type of cloth. Khaini: A type of chewable tobacco Beedi: Indian cigarette Saab: Sir K.G. stands for Kasturba Gandhi, the wife of Mahatma Gandhi. Most streets/ lanes/ roads in India are named after famous personalities, especially those who fought for our freedom.” ‘The Auto Drivers of K.G. Street’ was first published by Willow Review.
Shamik Banerjee is a poet from Assam, India, where he resides with his parents. His poems have been published by Sparks of Calliope, The Hypertexts, Snakeskin, Ink Sweat & Tears, Autumn Sky Daily, Ekstasis, among others. He secured second position in the Southern Shakespeare Company Sonnet Contest, 2024.
I remember you some mornings in the midst of getting dressed Surprised that I recall exactly when I wore you last
The paisley patterns spilling over sleeves The Nehru collars nobody believes … were popular The turtlenecks no turtle ever wore Those V-neck disco shirts that dance no more … Spectacular!
Are you lurking in the closet among other clothes I own? I gently touch your shoulder—a brief flash, then you’re gone
The concert souvenir shirts we outgrew The obligation gifts we always knew … were wrapped in haste Thick cotton plaids lost lumberjacks would covet That college T tossed out, but how we loved it … still, such a waste
You promised transformation, but what else did you require The full ensemble led us toward transcendence or desire (Attire of another age, accessories all the rage)
Bell-bottom flares that took flight as we walked Embroidered jeans so tight that people talked … of nothing else Those bomber jackets earthbound boomers froze in Those leather wristlets grunge guitar gods posed in … with death’s head belts
You folded in your fabric everyone I used to be Now that you’re gone, I realize I’m left with only me But if I run across you in some thrift shop bargain rack Or rummaging recycling bins, what else would you bring back? Who else will you bring back?
Some nights I see you in my dreams of places far away I’m wearing you as if I haven’t aged a single day Shirts of the distant past, shirts of the distant past
*****
Ned Balbo writes in Rattle #85, Fall 2024 (where you can hear the song performed): “I’ve played guitar since I was 5, keyboards since I was 13, and ukulele since I was 42, but my time as a ‘professional’ musician—someone paid to play—is scattershot and humble. Ice rinks, a Knights of Columbus Hall, a campers’ convention in Yaphank, a crowd of disco-loving retirees at Montauk’s Atlantic Terrace Motel, company picnics, school dances, private parties, and more—these were where I played guitar, sang, and devised versions of the Beatles, Bowie, et al. in two Long Island cover bands. The Crows’ Nest or Tiffany’s Wine-and-Cheese Café hosted noise-filled solo acoustic gigs, with more receptive listeners for original songs and covers of Elvis Costello or Eno at my undergrad college’s coffeehouse. More recently, I’ve written lyrics to Mark Osteen’s preexisting jazz scores (look for the Cold Spring Jazz Quartet on Spotify, Amazon, CDBaby, and elsewhere) and returned to solo songwriting and recording with ‘ned’s demos’ at Bandcamp. As a relic from the age when lyrics were sometimes scrutinized with poetry’s intensity, I listen closely to the sonics of language, whether sung or spoken, and look up to lyricists whose words come alive both aloud and on the page.”
Balbo: Robin, thanks for posting ‘Shirts from the Distant Past’, my little song-poem hybrid. I’ll be happy to answer any questions you have.
Editor: For myself, I see a continuum from womb heartbeat to dance to music to song to formal verse. I would love to have any additional comments on the subject in general, or on the creation of this poem in particular, related to these elements.
Balbo: I love what you’re saying about womb, heartbeat, and dance. A formative text for me is Donald Hall’s essay on poetic form’s psychic origins, ‘Goatfoot, Milktongue, Twinbird‘. You probably know it. Hall proposes three metaphors for poetry’s deepest sources: Goatfoot, the impulse toward dance, rhythm, movement; Milktongue, the pure pleasure of language, the texture of words when spoken; and Twinbird, our desire for form, symmetry, wholeness, which is complicated and energized by the contradictions it contains and reconciles. To me, Hall’s terms just sound like different ways of envisioning exactly what you’re talking about. They apply as much to song as they do to verse. The meter varies by stanza or section: iambic heptameter (seven iambs) in the couplet verses—not so different, after all, from the tetrameter to trimeter shifts we find in many ballads. The “shirts” title refrain, which doesn’t appear in print till the last line, are two trimeter phrases. It was fun to find surprising rhymes to hold the whole song together.
Editor: Regarding ‘Shirts’, quite apart from the charming idea, I like the work that has gone into the metre, rhyme, idiosyncratic structure.
Balbo: Thank you. I wrote and sung ‘Shirts’ as a poetic song lyric—one that could be read and enjoyed but, ideally, would be heard. I view its structure as that of a call-and-response song in traditional format. (In rock, for example, I think of George Harrison’s ‘Taxman’ with John and Paul harmonizing “Taxman, Mr. Wilson, Taxman, Mr. Heath” in answer George’s lead vocal.) In ‘Shirts’, the call-and-response comes from using the title as a refrain: it explains who the “you” is in each verse (when you hear it, anyway—I cut it from the visual text for fear it would seem repetitious without the music). Sometimes the title refrain answers a statement in the verse: “I gently touch your shoulder—a brief flash, then you’re gone” sounds like I might be talking (or singing) about a person, but it turns out to be those long-lost shirts—a playful fake-out.
Then there are the brief call-and-responses of the bridge sections which comment on the previous line or complete an unfinished thought: “Those V-neck disco shirts that dance no more…spectacular!” or “Embroidered jeans so tight that people talked…of nothing else.” They’re in iambic pentameter, with the second and fourth changing to heptameter if we count the two extra beats (set off on their own line) answering them.
The so-called “middle 8” (usually eight bars used to break up the verse-chorus/verse-chorus model) is delayed till just before the end: “You folded in your fabric everyone I used to be, etc.” That’s meant to set up the payoff: it’s not the shirts but our lost selves— along with loved ones, lost ones, everyone—we’re missing or mourning. But writing or singing about shirts—clothing that shapes and defines us—makes the lyric less depressing, leavens it with wit (I hope) so that what’s more poignant comes at the very end where more dramatic music can counterbalance the mood—the contradictions reconciled, as Donald Hall might have put it.
Of course, the very end is quieter – wistful again.
As I mentioned in Rattle (thanks again to Tim Green for giving both words and music a home), I grew up in the era when lyrics were often analyzed as seriously as poetry (and not just by undergraduates in long-ago dorm rooms under black light posters). Whether I’m writing poetry or songs, I listen closely to the different ways words sound—what works when sung doesn’t always work as well when spoken or encountered on the page—so when I do write lyrics, I try to make them both readable and singable.
Poems and song lyrics operate differently, but there’s lots of overlap between them. I wanted ‘Shirts’ to operate on both levels, even if it tilts more toward song lyric than poem.
*****
Ned Balbo’s six books include The Cylburn Touch-Me-Nots (New Criterion Prize), 3 Nights of the Perseids (Richard Wilbur Award), Lives of the Sleepers (Ernest Sandeen Prize), and The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems (Donald Justice Prize and the Poets’ Prize). He’s received grants or fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (translation), the Maryland Arts Council, and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. Balbo has taught at Iowa State University’s MFA program in creative writing and environment and, recently, the Frost Farm and West Chester University poetry conferences. His work appears in Contemporary Catholic Poetry (Paraclete Press), with new poems out or forthcoming in Able Muse, The Common, Interim, Notre Dame Review, and elsewhere. He is married to poet and essayist Jane Satterfield.
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.
From under low clouds spreading from the south The red sun drops slow to night’s waiting mouth. Rush lamps are lit; the guards changed on the walls; Supper will not be served in the Great Halls With Arthur still away. Each in their room, The members of the Court leave books or loom To say their Vespers in the encroaching gloom.
Lancelot, up in his tower, Sees the sunset storm clouds glower, Feels his blood’s full tidal power, Knows he has to go. In her bower, Gwenivere Puts a ruby to her ear, Brushes firelight through her hair, Feels her heartbeat grow.
Guard, guard, watch well: For the daylight thickens And the low cloud blackens And the hot heart quickens To rebel.
From his tower, caring not For consequences, Lancelot Crosses courts of Camelot, Pitying his King. In her bower, Gwenivere Feels his presence coming near, Waits for footfalls on the stair, Lets her will take wing.
Guard, guard, watch well: If attention slackens When the deep bond beckons, Evil knows Pendragon’s In its spell.
And as the storm clouds, rubbing out the stars, Deafened the castle and carved lightning scars, Drenched Arthur rode for flash-lit Camelot Where he, by Queen and Knight, was all forgot.
*****
‘Camelot at Dusk’ was originally published by Candelabrum, a now-defunct poetry magazine in the UK which appeared twice-yearly from April 1970 to October 2010. Candelabrum provided what was, in the 1970s, a very rare platform for British poets working in metrical and rhymed verse.
Technically, the poem uses a variety of forms. The opening and closing passages use iambic pentameter with simple sequential rhyme for a level of detachment (and the only times Arthur is mentioned by name). The passages with Lancelot and Gwenivere use shorter trochaic lines with denser rhymes for more intensity. The passages of warnings to the guards… well, they have a shifting but repeating structure all their own.
Because of the bracketing of the more emotional passages by the more detached opening and closing, the piece feels very complete. As a whole, it is a nonce form. Whether I can ever repeat it successfully, I don’t know. I have tried, but not been satisfied with the result.
Form in Formless Times 