Tag Archives: Max Gutmann

Max Gutmann, ‘The Princess and the Pea’

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Once a devious queen lodged just one tiny pea
Under twenty soft mattresses, wanting to see
Out of many young princesses which was the one
Who deserved to be matched with the prince, her fine son.

For she knew a true princess was dainty and fine,
And that little legume underneath the frail spine
Would prevent her enjoying the tiniest rest,
And by this all would know she had passed the queen’s test.

But you see, a true princess is also polite,
So when, bleary-eyed after a long, sleepless night,
Each was asked how she’d slept by the queen the next day,
She replied, “Very well,” and was sent on her way,

Till one morning a girl hollered, “What is this lump?
Do you call this a bed? Who can sleep in this dump?”
So the queen said okay. The prince married her straight.
And the moral is: don’t let your mom choose your mate.

*****

Max Gutmann writes: “It always frustrated me that the fairy tale couldn’t seem to see the flaw in the queen’s thinking.”

This poem was first published in Snakeskin.

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.

Illustration: ‘The Princess and the Pea’ by Edmund Dulac. Dulac illustrated several of H.C. Andersen’s fairy tales, many of which include sarcastic social commentary on pretentiousness.


Max Gutmann: Planet of Love

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Venus, our neighbor that lies toward the sun,
    Is a sultry and amorous spot;
The astrologers tell us our passion and fun
   Are engendered right there, where it’s hot.

She’s the brightest of stars yet she’s hidden in cloud,
  So her pull on our psyches is double,
An enticing enigma concealed in her shroud
  And, like all such allurements, big trouble.

To the faithfully married, the word from above
  About passionate partnership stings.
There’s a planet we’re told governs all earthly love,
   And it isn’t the one with the rings.

*****

Max Gutmann writes: “I’m afraid I can’t think of anything interesting to say about ‘Planet of Love,’ which exists to support its punchline. The joke popped into my mind, so I wrote the poem.”

‘Planet of Love’ was published in the March 2025 issue of Lighten Up Online.

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: “Venus” by katmary is licensed under CC BY 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.

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.

Photo: Used by permission of the creator, DS:
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Twitter: @DS__ART

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

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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: Sonnet: Max Gutmann, ‘How to Inspire a Sonnet – advice from the pros’

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Inspire amore first, but molto forte
If in sonetti dolci you’d be sung.
Then see that you stay bella. You’ll support a
Passione deep and long by dying young.
— Laura

If thou upon his stage the Muse’s part
Wouldst play, each act thou study’st must prolong
Thy Poet’s pain. ‘Tis pain shall prompt great Art.
Then con thy lines with style, and do him wrong.
— The Dark Lady

Stay always by her. Never for a day
Be from her cherished side. ‘Tis paramount
To share the highest love. (And, by the way,
It helps to choose a lover who can count.)
— Robert Browning

‘Tis mystery that fires the crucial spark,
So make him wait–and keep him in the dark.
— Milton’s blindness

*****

Max Gutmann writes: “A reader of Light Quarterly (the marvellous Light back in its days as a print journal) was so offended by a poem of mine ridiculing a lousy president that he cancelled his subscription. Beloved editor John Mella forwarded a copy of the note to me. It was a sonnet! I’d never thought I could inspire a sonnet. I had a ways to go before rivaling Laura or the Dark Lady, but I’d taken the first step. That inspired this poem.

“John declined the poem, so it first appeared in a journal that didn’t specialize in light verse, one highly thought of. (Digging it out now, I see that contributors to the issue the poem appeared in included, among others I admire, Updike, Espaillat, Turner, Gioia, and Hadas.) But the journal goofed. They changed sonnetti dolci to sonnetti dolce (plural noun, singular adjective). This must have been a typo, I imagined, but when I asked, the chief editor not only admitted the change had been intentional, but defended the decision. Dolce being the more familiar form, he argued, it was reasonable to make the change without consulting the writer. I never sent them anything again

“This story calls for a shout-out to Jerome Betts, who reprinted ‘How to Inspire a Sonnet’ in Lighten Up Online (LUPO). (To avoid the impression that Jerome is less than meticulous about acknowledgements–or about anything–I should make clear that I asked him not to acknowledge the earlier journal, and I didn’t name it for him.) Jerome, like most editors I’ve worked with, always asks before making changes–and his proposed changes are usually improvements, often big ones!”

Editor’s note: This poem suggests what might be appropriate ways to inspire sonnets, according to the subjects of sonnets: Petrarch’s Laura, Shakespeare’s Dark Lady, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Robert and Milton’s blindness. Self-referentially, the poem is itself a Shakespearean sonnet, written in response to being the subject of a sonnet. Gutmann is therefore both sonneteer and sonnetee, and has the credentials to write a “How to –“

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: “IMG_0323C Frans Wouters. 1612-1659. Antwerp. The rural concert. 1654. Dole” by jean louis mazieres is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Max Gutmann, “Ozymandias” Meets “Casey at the Bat”

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The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Sandville One that day.
The boundless, barren, lone, and level sands stretched far away.
The traveler who’d tell the tale now gazed on it alone.
A king’s cracked visage lay beside vast, trunkless legs of stone.

His name was Ozymandias, a name of great renown;
Upon his monumental visage glared a potent frown;
A wrinkle curled his lip; he wore a sneer of cold command,
Asserting the calm certainty that he would always stand.

Oh, somewhere in this antique land the sun is shining fair;
Great Works that tower somewhere cause the Mighty to despair;
And somewhere there is more than pedestals and sand about;
But the King of Kings is joyless—mighty Ozy has struck out.

*****

Max Gutmann writes: “This was part of a series of comic pieces crossing famous poems with each other, not a particularly unique idea, as proven by The Spectator, which ran a contest on a similar premise a few months after I wrote the first of the batch. One of the early ones appeared in that Spectator issue. This one appeared in Light.”

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.

Graphic: “The Pharaoh Ozymandias at bat”, Robin Helweg-Larsen and DALL-E.

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

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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.

Max Gutmann, ‘A Letter Home’

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One flat fall evening, as an undergrad,
I left the library to mail a letter
and at the mailbox had
a stirring–-I don’t know what else to call it,
but I felt certain, drifting back
on brittle leaves, surrounded by the gray,
this was my life–-a feeling new,
whole, deeply and vibratingly unstrange.

Back at the carrel, where my books still lay,
I sat some time immersed there in that moment:
me, having walked away
from books for some slight, distant human contact,
returning through the coming winter
to my small space. It struck me as both sad
and right; young as I was, I knew
it wasn’t something I would ever change.

*****

Max Gutmann writes: “Though it takes the perspective of an older man looking back, ‘A Letter Home‘ was written shortly after the experience it shares, years before I wrote any other verse (aside from some limericks); the drive to record the experience as a poem had nothing to do with habit. I couldn’t have anticipated that the “distant human contact” in my life would come to include a community of writers with whom I’ve only ever exchanged words on a screen (a community you do a lot to nourish, Robin. Thank you.)”

‘A Letter Home‘ was first published in the Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.

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: “McAllen mailbox” by Drpoulette is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Max Gutmann, ‘Raindroppings’

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Can anyone make out
The quality inherent
In being with an umbrella, that makes people without
Completely transparent?

On the rainiest days,
In the hardest of showers,
People with umbrellas courteously step out of other umbrella’d people’s ways
Right into ours.

Or, if as it starts
To really pour, ya
Dash for the shelter of a little awning, sure as rain’s wet someone with an umbrella darts
Under it before ya.

And you look at the fella
As you stand in the steady
Downpour, but he ain’t gonna budge, ’cause, as any one-eyed idiot could plainly see, his umbrella
Is wet enough already.

Beyond disputation,
We already hear a lot
About the many forms of indiscriminate discrimination
Our world has got.

Still, I wish some teller’d
Deign to tell us
The reasons for the way the umbrellered
Treat the umbrell’less.

Max Gutmann writes: “In ‘Raindroppings,’ a line of OgdenNashian length is part of each otherwise regularly metered quatrain. These lines get longer and longer, and then shorter and shorter. I hope this helps the poem feel both sillily loose, and formally structured: the topic, though it may sound invented, is an actual aspect of human nature, trivial in itself but reflective of more serious attitudes.”

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.

link: maxgutmann.com

‘Raindroppings’ was first published in Light Quarterly

Photo: “Downpour” by roeyahram is marked with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.