Book discarded, like excess baggage shed by someone who has rapidly pushed on into uncharted regions far ahead, he sleeps in an old deck chair on the lawn. Gulls circle, skaters on an ice-blue lake, while he dreams on, oblivious, his face unshaded by a hat which, when awake, he wears with equanimity and grace. What does he dream? Is the unreal more real than those pale gulls that spiral high above? In sleep, has youth returned? No longer frail, does he relive time when impatient love was everything and all his heart desired, before life tricked him, left him old and tired?
*****
Richard Fleming writes: “I suppose Sunny Afternoon reflects my own station in life, that is, drifting steadily towards the end, with the usual collection of regrets that most of us have.”
Richard Fleming is an Irish-born poet (and humorist) currently living in Guernsey, a small island midway between Britain and France. His work has appeared in various magazines, most recently Snakeskin, Bewildering Stories, Lighten Up Online, the Taj Mahal Review and the Potcake Chapbook ‘Lost Love’, and has been broadcast on BBC radio. He has performed at several literary festivals and his latest collection of verse, Stone Witness, features the titular poem commissioned by the BBC for National Poetry Day. He writes in various genres and can be found at www.redhandwriter.blogspot.com or Facebook https://www.facebook.com/richard.fleming.92102564/
Bears are frustrated by their lack of speech, Their claws leave blackboards shrieking for repairs, And that’s why bears are seldom asked to teach And almost never get Distinguished Chairs Unless they come across one unawares Whose rich upholstery they quickly shred. Some of them have been known to have affairs With a man or woman lured into their bed— This often ends up badly with one dead, The other executed for the crime, Or given a life sentence in a zoo. Bears are familiar with existential dread, Bears put their pants on one leg at a time: The problems bears have are your problems too.
*****
Charles Martin writes: “The poem is written in a variation on the Spenserian Sonnet form, which I have been writing for several years now. In this case, I enjoy the contrast between the strictness of the form and the raucousness of its subject. As I recall, I began it on a morning walk, and I think finished it shortly after the walk ended.
“The poem will next appear in The Khayyam Suite this spring, published by The Johns Hopkin University Press, which has published my last two collections of poetry, Signs & Wonders and Future Perfect, both of which are still in print. (Future Perfect has a sonnet sequence written in the Spenserian form.) Poems have recently been published in Literary Matters, The Hudson Review, Classical Outlook, and in Best American Poetry, 2024.”
Charles Martinis a poet, translator of poetry, and essayist. The Khayyam Suite is the fifth of his eight books of poetry to appear in the Fiction and Poetry Series of the Johns Hopkins University Press. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, The Yale Review, The Hudson Review, Literary Matters, The Hopkins Review and, in numerous anthologies, including Best American Poetry, The Norton Anthology of Poetry, and War No More: Three Centuries of American Antiwar and Peace Writing. He has received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, an Ingram Merrill Grant, a Bess Hokin Award from Poetry magazine, and a Pushcart Prize. His residencies include the Djerassi Foundation and Ragdale, and he served as Poet in Residence for five years for the American Poets’ Corner at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. His translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses received the 2004 Harold Morton Landon Award from the Academy of American Poets, and he has also translated The Poems of Catullus and the Medea of Euripides. He is the author of the critical introduction to Catullus in the Hermes Book series of Yale University Press and of numerous essays on, and reviews of, classical and contemporary poetry.
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
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.
Victoria Moul writes: When I hear or read people — often though not only American “formalists” — discussing “correct” metre in English, and the supposed dominance of accentual-syllabic forms in general and the iambic pentameter in particular, I often think rather impatiently of poets like Arnold and Yeats. Arnold’s verse is musical, highly memorable and — to my ears at least — mostly very straightforward to speak correctly. But it’s often not very iambic at all and he typically uses lines of very varying syllable length. ‘Rugby Chapel’ is a good example of this — its pattern is, technically speaking, more trochaic (rugby) than iambic (endured), the trochaic pattern is established very clearly at the outset (‘Coldly, sadly descends’) and the lines have between six and nine syllables each. If you (inexplicably) wanted to spend an hour “scanning” it you’d find a complex variety of combinations of stressed and unstressed syllables. But its music is easy to hear and read, and very easy to remember, because regardless of the number of the syllables all the lines have three stresses.
Repeated three-stress lines are relatively unusual in English, especially in longer poems, but the four-stress line is very common, perhaps in fact the most natural English line of all, and indeed a lot of so-called iambic pentameter has a tendency to drift towards four rather than five stresses. ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ establishes an iambic pattern at the outset (‘The trees are in their autumn beauty / The woodland paths are dry’) but is in stanzas of 4/3/4/3/5/3 stresses, with quite varied syllable length and relatively few perfectly iambic lines. Day-Lewis’ poem, by contrast, looks to the eye like it might be iambic pentameter, since the line-length hovers around 10 syllables (ranging from 9 to 12). But most of the lines are spoken naturally with four stresses, not five (‘A sunny day, with leaves just turning’; ‘Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away’), and only a handful of lines certainly have five.
As far as I know — do comment if you can think of any counter-examples — there are no really good poems about rugby itself, so the poems I discussed today were just those which came into my mind as I watched the practices. None of these English poems are obscure — all are by poets who were considered major in their own lifetime, and all three have been very well-known at some point even if they are not now — and not one of them is in iambic pentameter. In fact, not one of them is obviously in a ‘syllabic’ metre, strictly speaking, at all (as in the familiar statement that traditional English verse is ‘accentual-syllabic’, i.e. where both the number of stresses and the number of syllables are set by the metrical pattern). These poems, like a great deal of English poetry, establish and follow an accentual pattern — of a certain number of stresses in a line, though this too is open to variation — but not, or only very loosely, a syllabic one. Verse of this kind is very common in the English tradition, and the hundred years of poetry between the mid-19th and mid-20th century, even if you set aside the full-blown “modernists” completely, is particularly rich in metrical variety. It is puzzling that this is not better reflected in most discussions of English metre and form. But the best way to get a feel for the actual — rather than imagined — conventions of a literary tradition is, of course, by reading it.
*****
Editor: The passage above is excerpted with permission from a recent Substack post by Victoria Moul in her ‘Horace & friends’ – the full thing is at https://vamoul.substack.com/p/on-rugby-and-metre. In it, with thoughts inspired by watching her nine-year-old son playing rugby, she discusses Cecil Day-Lewis’ ‘Walking Away’, Yeats’ ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ and Arnold’s ‘Rugby Chapel’. The piece is engaging in several ways, but the point that stands out the most for me is this: “These poems, like a great deal of English poetry, establish and follow an accentual pattern — of a certain number of stresses in a line, though this too is open to variation — but not, or only very loosely, a syllabic one.”
This is much on my mind when I consider the forms that create formal verse. From my school days on, I have felt that analysing English grammar with Latin rules was wrong, just as straightjacketing English verse into syllabic requirements was not always useful, beautiful or appropriate. English is a Germanic language, and plays effectively by looser accentual rules: perhaps harder to define and analyse, but truer to the work of poetry which is to be word-for-word memorisable. Rhythm is one of the essential tricks of memorisation, along with rhyme, alliteration, assonance and a host of rhetorical tricks; and rhythm plays a variety of casual games. Also, accentual pattern corresponds to the continuum that I see at the root of poetry: from womb heartbeat, to dance, to music, to song, to formal verse. Formal verse is at its best when it is rhythmic and rich in musicality as well as in ideas and images and wordplay. Without the music, without the rhythm, it is prose… no matter how well expressed.
So rap and spoken word are inherently more poetic because more memorisable than 99% of what has been published as ‘poetry’ in the past 50 or 60 years. All songwriters are of course genuine poets – not all are good ones, but Bob Dylan certainly deserves his Nobel Prize (and I wish it could have been shared with Leonard Cohen).
Another point is that French too, and other Romance languages, are more accentual than professors often claim. When Françoise Hardy sang Tous les garçons et les filles de mon âge Se promènent dans la rue deux par deux she was following the accentual beat, not giving every syllable equal weight, and completely skipping a couple of unstressed syllables. (Are French professors still teaching that all syllables have equal weight in French verse? Surely not! I hope that died out some time last century…)
Not all poetry is singable – but at its best it has a musicality that both creates enjoyment and enhances its ease of memorisation.
The fig leaf symbol’s one of History’s greats As, inter alia, It hides, discloses and exaggerates Male genitalia. The fruit itself suggests the female form — Dripping with honey The little hole breaks open, pink and warm… The Bible’s funny.
First published in The Asses of Parnassus, this poem was republished in Better Than Starbucks, which earned a “Kudos on your brilliant ‘The Fig Tree'” from Melissa Balmain, editor of Light. And it has now been added by Michael R. Burch to my page in The HyperTexts. That’s a wonderful set of editorial acceptances – it makes me proud, and I have to erase my lingering suspicion that the poem would be thought too rude for publication. Now I rate the poem more highly, as being not just a personal favourite but also acceptable to a wider audience.
It sometimes feels that all I write is iambic pentameter. It is always reassuring when a poem presents itself with half the lines being something else, and the result is a lighter, less sonorous verse. The rhymes are good; the poem’s succinct and easy to memorise. I’m happy with it.
Human beings suffer They torture one another, They get hurt and get hard. No poem or play or song Can fully right a wrong Inflicted and endured.
The innocent in gaols Beat on their bars together. A hunger-striker’s father Stands in the graveyard dumb. The police widow in veils Faints at the funeral home.
History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave… But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change On the far side of revenge. Believe that a further shore Is reachable from here. Believe in miracles And cures and healing wells.
Call miracle self-healing: The utter, self-revealing Double-take of feeling. If there’s fire on the mountain Or lightning and storm And a god speaks from the sky
That means someone is hearing The outcry and the birth-cry Of new life at its term. It means once in a lifetime That justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme.
*****
US President Joe Biden frequently quotes poets: Yeats and, especially, Heaney; often with the disclaimer that he doesn’t quote Irish poets because of his Irish heritage, but because Ireland has the best poets. And from the poem above, the verse that particularly resonates with him is: History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave… But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme. Joe Biden may not be perfect, but it is reassuring to have an American President with at least some commitment to Justice… and the sensibility of reinforcing it through the memorisation of poetry.
Photo: Joe Biden’s White House Facebook post for St. Patrick’s Day 2022.
Tradwife? No, thanks. I’m not the type you’ll find exclaiming “Yippee!” “Yesiree!” or “YOLO!” at thoughts of chores I might be doing solo – especially the old-school kitchen kind. Churn butter? Grow a sill of herbs? You’re kidding. Give me boxed broth and Hellman’s mayonnaise and sourdough I didn’t have to raise. Give me technology that does my bidding.
Yet how I love to cook up verse from scratch: to handpick thoughts I planted as a kernel within the fertile pages of a journal, add rhymes (a meaty or a salty batch), then whip them into something that – although it may stink at times – tastes vastly fresher than the glop inside an algorithmic can because you know it comes from me, Tradpoet.
*****
This poem was the lead poem in the latest Lighten Up Online (“LUPO”). Melissa Balmain writes: “Ironically, in the weeks since I wrote this poem, a health condition has forced me to do a lot more tradwifely stuff in the kitchen–making low-acid salad dressing, say. But I still refuse to churn butter.”
Melissa Balmain’s third poetry collection, Satan Talks to His Therapist, is available from Paul Dry Books (and from all the usual retail empires). Balmain is the editor-in-chief of Light, America’s longest-running journal of light verse, and has been a member of the University of Rochester’s English Department since 2010. She is a recovering mime.
I started out alone, No numbers and no words. The people gave me food and clothes. I loved the sun and birds.
And when I reach the end Numbers and words all done, Have to be fed and dressed again, I’ll love the birds and sun.
*****
This is one of my favourite poems, for several reasons: First, it extols the combination of curiosity, enjoyment and acceptance that I believe is appropriate for this thing called life. Second, it is simple in expression: simple words, simple rhythm, in iambics with simple full and slant rhymes. And third (and perhaps most importantly) it is easy to memorise: it has lodged itself in my brain without any effort or even intent on my part and, as this blog frequently claims, that is the essence of poetry.
‘I Started Out Alone’ was originally published in Bewildering Stories in 2019. More recently it was included in a batch of my poems that Michael R. Burch spotlighted in The Hypertexts for August 2024.
“I just need help,” the homeless man announces to the train And, somehow, to himself as well. And everybody cares, Though no one makes a move.
“I just need help.” He mumble-shouts again his one refrain. And everybody sees his hell, Despite our downward stares. But how can we improve
His plight when I still can’t afford both surgery and food, And you live drowned in college debt And she just froze her eggs For when the rent hikes stop?
“I just need help,” he tries once more. Our eyes stay navel-glued. We want to fill his need and yet Just what’s the help he begs For? Should we call a cop?
We know the way that that has gone before. We know he’d simply suffer even more. We know he’s not what cops are really for. We hope we’re wrong, but we just see no choice, Except to steel our ears against his voice And, staidly silent, mourn inside As though he had already died.
*****
‘The Subway 2023’ was first published in The Lyric. Benjamin Cannnicott Shavitz writes:
The entire poem is in iambs.
Every line rhymes with at least one other line.
In the first four stanzas, the rhyme scheme is ABCDABCD repeated twice.
In each of the first four stanzas, the line lengths are as follows: line 1: seven feet; line 2: four feet; line 3: three feet; line 4: three feet.
In the last stanza, the rhyme scheme is AAABBCC.
In the last stanza, the line lengths are as follows: lines 1-5: five feet each, lines 6-7: four feet each.
Points (3)-(6) create a pattern in which any lines that rhyme are of the same length as each other.
“Some background about my approach to form: I received my PhD in linguistics last year and I have been using my knowledge of language structure and the math background I have from my undergraduate engineering studies to innovate and sometimes re-conceptualize form in poetry. As I’m sure you know, the past century has seen a massive decline in knowledge of how form works in general. What you may be less aware of is that that same period has seen major developments in linguistics that can be brought in to expand our understanding of form. Most people know nothing about form anymore and the few people who do are working with an understanding that, while based on a lot of sound information, would benefit from being updated by the last century’s developments in linguistics research. There is an expansive future for formal verse ahead of us if we not only revive interest in form but also recognize that we are still learning about it. Form is not just tradition. It is an aspect of nature and there is a lot more we haven’t done with it yet. There is an essay in the back of two of my books that deals with the way formal verse and its history have been mischaracterized by proponents of free verse, I have developed a short course for teaching formal verse writing from a linguistically informed perspective, and I hope to use my academic knowledge (and credentials) to provide further support for the revival and expansion of formal verse in the future.”
Benjamin Cannicott Shavitz is a writer and linguistics scholar whose studies in language have led him to a great enthusiasm for formal poetry. He lives in Manhattan, New York City and received his PhD in linguistics from the Graduate Center at The City University of New York. He has published two collections of his own poetry (Levities and Gravities), as well as an anthology of poems by New York City poets from throughout history (Songs of Excelsior). His work has also been published in The Lyric, The Fib Review, and the journal of The Society of Classical Poets. See www.kingsfieldendeavors.com/writing for links to his writing.
Form in Formless Times 