Tag Archives: formal verse

Short NSFW poem: RHL, ‘The Fig Tree’

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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.

Photo: “Ripe Fig at Dawn” by zeevveez is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Joe Biden’s favourite poem: Seamus Heaney, ‘The Cure of Troy’

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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.

Melissa Balmain, ‘No Ifs, Ands, Or Bots’

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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.

Photo: “could she cook” by aprilskiver is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Short poem: RHL, ‘I Started Out Alone’

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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.

Photo: “Baby face” by matsuyuki is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Weekend read: Using form: Nonce form: Benjamin Cannicott Shavitz, ‘The Subway 2023’

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“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:

  1. The entire poem is in iambs. 
  2. Every line rhymes with at least one other line.
  3. In the first four stanzas, the rhyme scheme is ABCDABCD repeated twice. 
  4. 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. 
  5. In the last stanza, the rhyme scheme is AAABBCC. 
  6. In the last stanza, the line lengths are as follows: lines 1-5: five feet each, lines 6-7: four feet each. 
  7. 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. 

Photo: “Homeless in the subway” by phrenologist is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Weekend read: Michael Murry, ‘Inconspicuous Conclusions’

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A play’s last scene has often served as trope,
where theater, as metaphoric scheme,
enables authors to compose a dream
of Life as it exhausts its mortal scope.
The actors in our own Life’s play, we “hope”
and “love;” some “challenge fate;” some “sob” and “scream,”
but all personify Forever’s theme:
that with its ending, Life must simply cope.
I cannot speak for others in the cast,
but my bit-part as extra in The Show —
as son and father, husband to the last —
gave me such joy as any man could know.
I’ve lived a lucky life. Of this I’m certain.
So when my last scene ends, ring down the curtain.

*****

Michael Murry writes: “The background concerns the passing away of my 48-year-old son, Stuart Langston Murry, in a freak accident while visiting his mother in northern Taiwan. As part of the grieving process, I turned to reading some of my favorite poets – especially Edna St. Vincent Millay’s ‘Dirge Without Music’ – before composing an elegy for my son’s funeral: ‘A Song for Stuart’ published as a Memoir in Bewildering Stories Issue 1032, followed by a companion sonnet ‘Anticipating Anonymity’ published in Bewildering Stories Issue 1042. So much for the composition’s background. ‘Inconspicuous Conclusions’ was published in Bewildering Stories Issue 1043.

As for the formal sonnet structure of the composition, I chose to use as a model John Donne’s Holy Sonnet (VI) with its opening “This is my play’s last scene” for metaphorical theme. The sonnet’s 14 lines consist of iambic pentameter (5 stress accents and 10 syllables) lines: 12 with masculine endings and 2 lines for the closing couplet’s feminine endings (5 stress accents and 11 syllables): ABBAABBACDCDee.

For relevant biographical information, see my website:  http://themisfortuneteller.com/  with my verse compositions under the “Poetic License” menu tab. Consider me a 76-year-old Vietnam Veteran Against The War – the one that never seems to end – retired and living in Taiwan for the last two decades. I started writing formal verse compositions in 2004 as a sort of DIY bibliotherapy for Delayed Vietnam Reaction. I haven’t stopped yet and see no reason why I should. You and your audience may find my work too polemical for most refined poetic tastes, so if you choose not to quote any of my verses, I will certainly understand. As you please . . .”

Photo: Michael Murry at Advance Tactical Support Base ‘Solid Anchor’, Vietnam, early 1970s.

Light verse: Melissa Balmain, ‘Lament’

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Mama never horsewhipped me
or shoved things up my fanny.
She wasn’t hooked on PCP
and didn’t bump off Granny.
Daddy never climbed in bed
to open my pyjamas.
He read me Charlotte’s Web instead;
the bed he shared was Mama’s.
In college, I did not turn tricks
or date warped literati.
I haven’t starved myself to sticks,
joined cults, or loved John Gotti.
The guy I married doesn’t drink,
or French-kiss other fellers.
It really makes me sad to think
I’ll never write best sellers.

*****

From Walking in on People © Melissa Balmain, 2014. Used by permission of Able Muse Press.

Melissa Balmain writes: “This is the first poem I ever published outside of a school journal–in Light, then known as Light Quarterly. Thanks in no small part to the encouragement of Founding Editor John Mella, I never looked back.”

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.

Photo: “Sad child” by Lejon2008 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

SF Poem: RHL, ‘Out Of Many…’

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Two hundred million sperm
in one ejaculation;
and we are standing firm
and spouting with elation,
though but a single germ
survives to incarnation.

And much in nature throws
vast clouds into the ocean,
where myriad embryos
become a magic potion
consumed by all that goes
with food its only notion;

yet one or two survive
to adulthood and, later,
will make the species thrive
and serve up like a waiter
new young crowds that arrive
like cargo crammed on freighter.

This is how nature lives;
we should not think it foolish
eight billion of us gives
but forty fierce and mulish
posthuman narratives,
godlike as much as ghoulish,

in retrospect appearing nature’s plan
for how we cross to Nietzsche’s Superman.

*****

This poem was originally published in the Amsterdam Quarterly, although without the final couplet. I usually allow editors to make changes if they suggest them, and often the changes are an improvement that I retain. But in this case I’m afraid the science fiction speculation may be lost without those last lines: the idea that the present billions of us are on the point of being superseded by the first handful among us who achieve a godlike state of posthumanity… and that this ratio of 200,000,000 seeds being sacrificed to achieve one mature adult in the next generation is not unusual in nature.

Photo: “Stinging nettle stem with +/-15 billion seeds” by esagor is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

RHL, ‘The Sun is Always Setting’

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The sun is always setting, always setting on your day;
you sense the dark approaching, wish that it would stay away.
Do you want a life unchanging? Wish to still be a newborn?
Don’t you know life’s not a rosebud, but has root and leaf and thorn?

The sun is always setting and the black drapes are unfurled;
but notice that the sun sets on your world, not on the world:
it’s rolling into brightness in another’s happy land,
and the dark is evanescent and the brightening is grand.

The sun is always setting on the dinosaurs, but birds
are flocking into being, as are Serengeti herds;
and the sun that lights humanity? Of course it’s going to set,
and elsewhere light new tales of which we’ll just be a vignette.

The sun is always setting, but that view is just your choice;
I say the world is turning and evolving; I rejoice.

*****

Sometimes I’m told that my poetry is too bleak. But I think that’s only so if you want everything to stay as it is now. If, on the other hand, you expect change, and that change will ultimately provide more benefit than loss to the universe as a whole, then <shrug>… so it goes.

This poem has 14 lines but is hardly a sonnet. It was recently published in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal. Thanks, David Stephenson!

Photo: “Sunset Sadness” by BaboMike is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Using form: alliteration: RHL, ‘How Brashly Brave’

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How brashly brave, embroiled in this brief life,
we chance our challenge to the unchanging gods!
Strike poses, strut the strident stage of strife,
take optimistic oaths against all odds.

Fearless of foes, false friends, futility,
we wrack our reason to reach, undestroyed—
though usually of no utility—
a burst of brightness bettering the void.

*****

Although I prefer to maintain an unobtrusive persona myself, I subscribe to this philosophy of bravado existentialism. The florid alliteration suits the message.

This poem is published in the current issue of Light – thanks, Melissa Balmain and all.

Photo: “Flamboyant Emperor of the United States” by PeterThoeny is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.