Tag Archives: Don Juan

Using form: Ottava Rima: Max Gutmann, ‘Conscious Agents’ (from Don Juan Finish’d)

2 Replies

You sages aren’t surpris’d to learn that cowardice
Is courage. Truths illumine and conceal.
The dulcet affirmation and the sour diss
Can equally be true. That’s no big deal.
The world is full of paradox — and now word is
That even space and time may not be real.
We only think we see and smell and touch things.
The “world” is like, say, Donkey Kong and such things.

It’s all just icons on an interface:
The sound of rain, that contract you just sign’d,
The microbe on a slide, the feel of lace,
The smell of skunks, the corner you were fined
For parking at, your arm, the very space
You (think you) move through — products of your mind.
And even little quarks, atomic particles,
Are not, as thought, the fundamental articles.

No, “conscious agents” are what’s fundamental.
The theory says it’s they and they alone
We’re sure of. Space? Time? Objects? Incidental.
They hint at some reality unknown.
The dawn, the dung, the breeze, the brain, the lentil:
In all of these, our faith is overblown.
Those conscious agents compass us and we
Create those things — though not, um, consciously.

*****

Max Gutmann writes: “Don Juan Finish’d fancifully completes Lord Byron’s unfinished comic epic. Excerpts have been contributed to Light, Lighten Up Online, Orbis, Slant, Think, the website of the Byron Society, and Pulsebeat, where ‘Conscious Agents’ is among the excerpts to have appeared. Formalverse has also reprinted another excerpt. ‘Conscious Agents’ is part of a digression from the plot, digression being an aspect of Byron’s epic mimicked in Don Juan Finish’d.”

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

Photo: “Consciousness Awakening on Vimeo by Ralph Buckley” by Ralph Buckley is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Using form: Ottava Rima: Max Gutmann, ‘Life, That Hack!’ (from Don Juan Finish’d)

1 Reply

If we could but instill in Life–that hack!–
The element’ry rules of composition,
Prevent the crude and sloppy maniac
From spoiling every scene with his tradition
Of shouting in our faces like a pack
Of drunken sailors wailing their rendition
Of “Captown Races” or “My Drawlin’ Clementime,”
Their rhythmic belching almost keeping them in time.

For Life to utilize the art of Art
Could help in many ways that we could mention.
Some structure and suspense would be a start.
To get us upright in our seats, fists clenchin’,
A little rising action would be smart
(Or something that would help us pay attention,
Instead of simply zoning out a lot
And missing half the details of the plot).

But Life, I fear, shall never learn to craft
A decent tale. (It hasn’t that ambition.)
It uses characters extremely daft,
And wastes far too much time in exposition.
It never bothers to revise a draft,
Too taken with its own first thoughts. Perdition!
Each aspect of the story is a shame–
And worst, the ending’s always just the same.

Max Gutmann writes: “Don Juan Finish’d fancifully completes Lord Byron’s unfinished comic epic. Excerpts have been contributed to Light, Lighten Up Online, Orbis, Slant, Think, the website of the Byron Society, and Pulsebeat, where ‘Life, That Hack!’ is among the excerpts to have appeared. The complete poem is still unpublished, though I privately printed some copies to share with friends and colleagues.
Like Byron’s poem, Don Juan Finish’d is often philosophical, at times facetiously, as here.”

Editor’s note: As with Byron’s original, Gutmann’s Don Juan Finish’d is written in ottava rima: eight-line stanzas in iambic pentameter rhyming ABABABCC, with the final line or two typically used to humorously deflate whatever more high-sounding statements were made earlier in the stanza.

Max Gutmann has worked as, among other things, a stage manager, a journalist, a teacher, an editor, a clerk, a factory worker, a community service officer, the business manager of an improv troupe, and a performer in a Daffy Duck costume. Occasionally, he has even earned money writing plays and poems.

Photo: “comedy/tragedy masks, waterfall” by milagroswaid is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.