Tag Archives: iambic trimeter

Using form: Iambic trimeter: Susan McLean, ‘Danse Macabre’

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The dancers, taut as bows,
burn in their joyous fire.
They whirl, entwine, and pose
in friezes of desire.

No skeletons appear
to shock the celebration.
The dancers, bowing, hear
a rapturous ovation.

Outside, the wind blows colder.
Although she’d rather linger,
she senses on her shoulder
the tap of a light finger.

And, though she came alone
and doesn’t need a ride,
a shadow, thin as bone,
attends her, stride for stride,

then leaves her, still denied.
But the end is not in doubt.
The skeleton inside
eventually wants out.

*****

Susan McLean writes: “I wrote this poem after attending a performance of Ailey II, the junior corps of dancers in the company founded by Alvin Ailey. It was on a cold night in autumn around Halloween, and even though there was nothing sinister about the dances I witnessed, I was reminded of the medieval Dance of Death, in which skeletons appear to people in the midst of their daily routine to summon them away to death. One of the most memorable images of that theme occurs at the end of Ingmar Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal, and I have seen it portrayed also on the wooden bridge in Lucerne in Switzerland. The poem is written in three-beat lines of iambic trimeter, which reminded me of a stately waltz.”

‘Danse Macabre’ originally appeared in THINK Magazine.

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

“la danse macabre” by a magic monkey! is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Using form: iambic trimeter: Janet Kenny, ‘Stars’

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Look at the stars, she said.
Just look how cold and bright!
And most of them are dead
though brightening the night.
Time lives and dies like stars.
The past is death of now.
Impermanence that scars
our fleeting human hour.
The world inside a mind
that dies when we die too
leaves others left behind
resigned without a clue.
Forget me nots deceive
and daisy chains depend
on children who believe
our world will never end.

*****

Janet Kenny writes: “The poet is very old and has been confronted inescapably with the mortality of all things.”

Janet Kenny left New Zealand to pursue a career as an operatic and concert singer in London, then settled in Sydney, Australia, where she worked in the anti-nuclear movement and jointly compiled, wrote and edited a book about the nuclear industry, Beyond Chernobyl, published by Envirobook in 1993. Janet lived for many years in Sydney with her husband and visiting currawongs. She now lives in Hervey Bay, Queensland, with visiting butcher birds, spangled drongos, ospreys, pelicans, assorted honeyeaters and flying foxes.

Her poems have been published in printed and online journals, including Avatar, The Chimaera, Folly, 14 by 14, Iambs & Trochees, The Literary Review, Mi Poesias, The Guardian, The Spectator, The New Formalist, The Barefoot Muse, The Raintown Review, The Shit Creek Review, Snakeskin, Lavender Review, Soundz ine, Victorian Violet Press, The Susquehanna Quarterly and Umbrella. Her work is in the collections The Book of Hope and Filled With Breath: 30 sonnets by 30 poets and in the Outer Space anthology, Cambridge University Press. She shared an anthology of bird poems, Passing Through, with Jerry H. Jenkins. She has received three Pushcart nominations.

A selection of her poems, and links to her poetry collections Whistling in the Dark (2016, Kelsay Books) and This Way to the Exit (White Violet Press), are on her website https://janetkenny.netpublish.net/index.htm

Photo: “Sizzling Remains of a Dead Star” by Euclid vanderKroew is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.