Tag Archives: Light Magazine

R.I.P. Edmund Conti, ‘Button, Button’

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Just ask the poet, life’s a dumb thing.
Button, button, eating, swilling.
Life isn’t much but, still, it’s something.

Existence is a rule-of-thumb thing.
Buying now with later billing.
Just ask the poet, life’s a dumb thing.

To dream, to sleep, a ho-and-hum thing.
Boring, boring, mulling, milling.
Life isn’t much but, still, it’s something.

Mum’s the word, the word’s a mum thing.
Button lips and no bean spilling.
Just ask the poet, life’s a dumb thing.

Life, of course–the known-outcome thing.
Death and taxes. God is willing.
Life isn’t much but, still, it’s something.

Life is short, a bit-of-crumb thing.
Dormouse summer, daddies grilling.
Just ask the poet, life’s a dumb thing.
Life isn’t much but, still, it’s something.

*****

In his 2021 collection ‘That Shakespeherian Rag‘, Ed Conti threads poetic references throughout (the title is from Eliot); ‘Button, Button’ appropriately begins with:

When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation),–sleep, eating and swilling, buttoning and unbuttoning–how much remains of downright existence?
– The Summer of a Dormouse, Byron’s Journals.

Much of ‘That Shakespeherian Rag’ (including Button, Button) was first published in Light. The collection is divided into 11 sections, organised from youth through adulthood to the prospect of mortality, and each prefaced with a quote from Shakespeare. The preface for the final Section reads:

Make no noise. Make no noise. Draw the curtains–
– King Lear, Act II Scene 6

There is no poem after it.

The charming, delightful, witty and tolerant Edmund Conti died on November 12th, aged 96.

Using form: Basic Me: Nicole Caruso Garcia, ‘Po-Biz Ars Poetica’

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Form is a slippery seed to be grasped.
Free verse is form with its bra hook unclasped.
Blocked is me chewing my fanciest pens.
Pun is a test of my spouse and my friends.
Drunk is the poet who’s making a pass.
Prize is a unicorn chased by an ass.
Tome is Uranus-sized ego unbound.
Deep is the grave of my darlings I’ve drowned.
Rhyme is the hill where I’m willing to die.
Meh is the mic hog who sounds like AI.
Crit is a cig from a firing squad.
Light is the thirstiest verse. Please applaud.

*****

Nicole Caruso Garcia writes: “‘Po-Biz Ars Poetica‘ came about after I stumbled upon a metrical form Mary Meriam invented called the “Basic Me.” (I will include the link to its “rules” here.) Although Meriam says, “Basically, it means ‘what are your words and how would you define them?,” here I ascribed each trait to “po-biz” rather than to myself.”

‘Po-Biz Ars Poetica‘ was first published in the Winter/Spring 2025 issue of Light, where Nicole Caruso Garcia is the Featured Poet.

Nicole Caruso Garcia’s full-length debut OXBLOOD (Able Muse Press) received the International Book Award for narrative poetry. Her work appears in Crab Orchard Review, Light, Mezzo Cammin, ONE ART, Plume, Rattle, RHINO, and elsewhere. Her poetry has received the Willow Review Award and won a 2021 Best New Poets honor. She is an associate poetry editor at Able Muse and served as an executive board member at Poetry by the Sea, an annual poetry conference in Madison, CT. Visit her at nicolecarusogarcia.com.

Photo: “ENSACT Conference Social Action in Europe, Dubrovnik 2009” by sharon.schneider is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Maryann Corbett, ‘To the Anti-Librarian’

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Small vandal, parked on your padded bum
on a cheerful rug in the Children’s Section
next to a bottom shelf,
yanking the volumes one by one
till they strew the aisle in every direction,
loudly pleased with yourself
at the way your brightly patterned havoc
obstructs the traffic,

keep to your task. Disrupting order
is evolution’s eternal purpose.
Surely it’s been your goal
from the hour two gametes burst their border
and two tame selves went wild as a circus.
Systems that once felt whole
eyeballed each other, laughed, and gambled,
and lives got scrambled.

Do your worst, then, with giggles, rage,
and all the smackdown-loud rebellion
grown-ups are now too tired for.
These sleepless two, in a golden age,
were a black-clad goth and a hard-rock hellion.
Change is the charge we’re wired for.
small changer, blessings. Though elders frown,
pull the world down.

*****

Maryann Corbett writes: “Like many poems, this one (first published in LIGHT) is part memory and part pure fiction. “Anti-librarian” was our joke term for our daughter as an infant when (long years ago) she sat on her tush next to the bookshelves and pulled the books off just because she could. The image of young parents as reformed characters is imaginary. The hope that the young will change the world seems to be eternal.”

Maryann Corbett earned a doctorate in English from the University of Minnesota in 1981 and expected to be teaching Beowulf and Chaucer and the history of the English language. Instead, she spent almost thirty-five years working for the Office of the Revisor of Statutes of the Minnesota Legislature, helping attorneys to write in plain English and coordinating the creation of finding aids for the law. She returned to writing poetry after thirty years away from the craft in 2005 and is now the author of two chapbooks and six full-length collections, most recently The O in the Air (Franciscan U. Press, 2023). Her work has won the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize and the Richard Wilbur Award, has appeared in many journals on both sides of the Atlantic, and is included in anthologies like Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters and The Best American Poetry.

Picture: ‘Anti-Librarian’ by RHL and ChatGPT.

RHL, ‘On a Modern “Poem”’

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The thoughts are fresh, the images are good;
the style is clean, the tone both wise and terse;
the whole thing would be memorable, it would…
if only it had been expressed in verse.

*****

I’m always embarrassed if I have an idea for a poem, and I fail to find an expression of it in rhyme as well as rhythm. That’s because, of the hundreds of poems or pieces of poems in my head, all but a tiny handful are remembered because they are expressed in verse. You can remember the gist of an idea on the strength of the idea; but if you want to remember its exact expression, word for word, it’s far easier if it’s in verse. For this purpose, blank verse is better than prose; but rhymed verse is superior.

You may have lots of partial memories of Winnie the Pooh from childhood – the Hundred Acre Wood, Eeyore’s moans and groans – but actual word-for-word memory is likely to attach to the few snippets of verse in the book, such as:
Isn’t it funny
How a bear likes honey.
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
I wonder why he does?

My little gripe above was originally published in Light earlier this year.

Photo: “Al declaims” by jovike is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Brooke Clark, ‘Letter from an Unknown Writer’

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We met one night at a book launch,
we drank, we talked, we laughed,
I said, “I’m writing a novel,”
and you said, “Send me a draft.”

So I sent it to your address
hoping a well-placed word
from you would get me started;
I waited, but never heard.

Now you’ve published your latest
and the critics fellate you in print,
it’s a runaway bestseller
and Hollywood’s taken the hint.

I read it myself last weekend
and my entrails turned to stone—
my book, but so badly rewritten
you’d almost made it your own.

*****

Brooke Clark writes: “This two-liner by Martial (Epigrams I.38) is the basis of my poem:
quem recitas meus est, o Fidentine, libellus:
sed male cum recitas, incipit esse tuus.
(The book you’re reciting is mine, Fidentinus; but when you recite it badly, it begins to be yours.)
Originally read in Wheelock’s Latin, I think, when I was learning the language, this was one of the first versions of Martial I did that I was happy with. I obviously expanded it greatly (I hadn’t learned to appreciate Martial’s concision) but I liked the swingy rhythm and the treatment of it as a mini-narrative that I landed on. Also one of the first epigrams I published, in Light, which gave me some confidence that the project of turning ancient epigrams into contemporary poems might be worth pursuing.”

Brooke Clark is the author of the poetry collection Urbanities and has published work in Arion, Literary Imagination, THINK, The Walrus, LA Review of Books, and other places. He is also the editor of the online epigrams journal The Asses of Parnassus and the book reviews editor at Able Muse.
Twitter: @thatbrookeclark
Bluesky: @brookeclark.bsky.social

Photo: “Treasures of Ushaw Book Launch in Westminster” by Catholic Church (England and Wales) is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Max Gutmann, ‘Spring Villanelle’

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Sandro Botticelli. (Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi) 1444-1510.Florence. La Naissance de V?nus. Florence. Le Printemps. 1480. Florence. Mus?e des Offices.

Plants flower, swallows sing, and bunnies boff.
All nature gleams with joy. But time’s a sprinter.
When spring arrives, can winter be far off?

Take care. The festive glass from which you quaff–
at least half empty–soon will freeze and splinter,
though tulips bloom, swifts fly, and bunnies boff.

I glance away, then clear my throat and cough
to see you celebrating spring, that minter
of tender babes whose end is not far off.

You’ll soon require that heavy coat you doff,
eyes glinting so. Each year I see that glint err
as pansies flare, doves coo, and bunnies boff.

A peak makes more acute the coming trough.
Life’s script is not by Disney; it’s by Pinter:
one knows a heavy pause is not far off.

This bitter wisdom’s scorned, but, though you scoff,
each spring remains a harbinger of winter.
The primrose shines, wrens chirp, and bunnies boff,
all certain signs that winter’s not far off.

*****

Max Gutmann writes: “In this one, I tried to balance newness and repetition, like spring.”

‘Spring Villanelle’ was originally published in Light.

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

Photo: “IMG_6269A Sandro Botticelli. (Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi) 1444-1510.Florence.” by jean louis mazieres is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Using form: Ballade variant: Barbara K. Loots, ‘Opera: a Ballade’

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Sometimes the heroine is just a girl,
an innocent set up to be betrayed.
Whether she loves a hero or a churl,
she’ll face a three- or four-hour escapade
in which her feelings and her fate are swayed
by charm, by force, deception, or disguise
she’s helpless to resist or to evade.
And then she dies.

Sometimes around the heroine unfurl
fate’s sinister entrapments. Undismayed,
she feels the storm of accusation swirl
and knows the price of honor must be paid.
Beset by Powers That Must Be Obeyed,
she suffers while the chorus vilifies.
Her hopes of justice and redemption fade.
And then she dies.

Sometimes the heroine, a perfect pearl,
whether a princess or a village maid,
regardless of her protest or demurral,
becomes the object of an evil trade,
a bloody game, a sinister charade,
with hidden motives and transparent lies,
with clash of insult and with flashing blade.
And then she dies.

Through every lamentation and tirade,
each heroine embraces her demise
despite how fervently she might have prayed.
And then…

*****

First published in Light with the note “After watching 33 free streamed operas from the MET during quarantine.” Barbara Loots writes: “Watching those gorgeous productions from the MET day after day during COVID confinement was a saving grace. I have a journal with a complete list, where I starred the ones I liked best for future reference. Kansas City’s excellent Lyric Opera recording of the brand new opera “The Shining” (yes, based on the horror story by Stephen King) recently won a Grammy.”

Barbara Loots resides with her husband, Bill Dickinson, and their boss Bob the Cat in the historic Hyde Park neighborhood of Kansas City, Missouri. Her poems have appeared in literary magazines, anthologies, and textbooks since the 1970s. She is a frequent contributor to Light. Her three collections are Road Trip (2014), Windshift (2018), and The Beekeeper and other love poems (2020), at Kelsay Books or Amazon. More bio and blog at barbaraloots.com

Photo: “This picture makes me happy” by James Jordan is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

Max Gutmann, ‘Villaintine’s Day’

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It’s horrible and rather stupid
To hold each year a day for Cupid
Whose claim to fame is shooting folks,
Aggression none of them provokes.
Is this behavior to condone?
We have no day for Al Capone.
No holidays are lavished on
John Dillinger or Genghis Khan.
We don’t exalt the memories
Of vicious monsters such as these.
Would we have changed our attitude
If they had been in flight and nude?

*****

Max Gutmann writes: “Since this was written, we’ve found other ways of celebrating villains.”

The poem was originally published in Light.

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

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Barbara Lydecker Crane, ‘My Letter to Sonnet Insurance’

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    A billboard seen in Toronto read Sonnet Insurance.

Dear Sonnet staff: I’m eager for your plan!
I’ll want an underwriter old-school-based,
Petrarchan or like Larkin in his taste:
he’ll speak my terms. I’ll benefit from your man
adjusting rhymes, making meter strict,
assuming the risk of an errant anapest.
Does your firm ensure I’ll stand time’s test?
Do you pull strings to have each effort picked
by a premier publication? One quick draft
in the condition of a pre-existing sonnet,
and the English-speaking world might dote upon it.
But truth be told, my first attempts aren’t craft.
Sonnet Insurance, kindly file this letter;
insure me later, when it’s written better.

*****

Barbara Lydecker Crane write: “I am a shameless pun lover; seeing this billboard, though, certainly begged for some.  “My Letter to Sonnet Insurance” was published a few years back in Light.“

In 2024 Barbara Lydecker Crane won the Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Crown Contest and First Prize in the Helen Schaible Contest, modern sonnet category. She has twice been a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize. Able Muse recently published her fourth collection, You Will Remember Me. She enjoys making and looking at art, travel, and her family, which includes four fast-growing grandchildren and one near-perfect husband: he does not read poetry.