God made the rainbow as a sign for post-Flood men to see. The sign says, “I am Merciful– and you better fucking agree.”
*****
According to the Book of Genesis, after God flooded the entire world He told the one surviving family: “I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.”
There are so many things to love in all this: the Noah’s Ark story, and the toys of it that delight children; the beauty of rainbows themselves; the alternative explanation that Irish leprechauns make rainbows to mark where they bury their gold; the Biblical suggestion that water droplets didn’t cause refraction of light before the Flood; the calculation that rain, to have flooded Mount Everest in 40 days, must have fallen at 29 feet per hour for that entire time… and above all the idea that God needed the rainbow to remind Him not to kill everyone whenever He gets angry.
But hey – rainbows are beautiful, at least we can all agree on that.
This poem was published in the most recent issue of Light.
“The trouble with this growing old,” he said, “You lose so much . . . and you get what instead? If you can hang a bath towel on your tool it’s wasted when you’re in an all-boys school. Time was, I’d come — as you’d expect — with just a look, a touch. Now, not so much. The only thing that gets me full erect is feeling flesh firming from kiss and grasp; so all my work is trying to make her gasp! I need her climax if I’m to get sated.” He looked at her. She looked at him. He waited.
*****
This semi-formal poem was published in the Lighthearted Verse subsection of Formal Poetry in that wonderfully rich and varied magazine, Better Than Starbucks. Where else could you find such a variety of areas of expression as BTS’ Regular Feature Pages? Free Verse Haiku Formal Poetry Poetry Translations Poetry for Children International Poetry African Poetry Experimental, Form, & Prose Poetry Poetry Unplugged Fiction Flash Fiction & Micro Fiction Better Than Fiction (creative nonfiction) The Interview Interviewee Poems … and From The Mind of Alfred Corn
And tolerant enough to put up with my verse on occasion! Unfortunately they have announced they are going on hiatus… hopefully they will be back in 2023, as they have been a truly excellent outlet for all manner of poetry and prose.
I lately lost a preposition: It hid, I thought, beneath my chair. And angrily I cried: “Perdition! Up from out of in under there!”
Correctness is my vade mecum, And straggling phrases I abhor; And yet I wondered: “What should he come Up from out of in under for?”
*****
Morris Bishop had a high regard for light verse: “The aim of poetry, or Heavy Verse, is to seek understanding in forms of beauty. The aim of light verse is to promote misunderstanding in beauty’s cast-off clothes. But even misunderstanding is a kind of understanding; it is an analysis, an observation of truth, which sneaks around truth from the rear, which uncovers the lath and plaster of beauty’s hinder parts.”
Bishop was an acknowledged master of rhyme and meter, but that doesn’t imply that he would be limited by the grammatical restrictions of the apparently well-educated. He employed and enjoyed common speech.
Now this may sound strange coming from me, someone who writes a blog dedicated to the expansion of formal verse, but many “rules of grammar” are garbage. To me, correct speech is whatever unambiguously communicates what the speaker intended. This is naturally aided by the use of predictable patterns of word usage, because we are a pattern-recognition species, and this in turn leads to “rules”; but these rules are really only “commonly used patterns”.
Similarly the forms of traditional verse are there because they are useful: rhythm guides and builds emotion; rhyme, rhythm and wordplay all create engagement and help memorisation. The forms are neither arbitrary nor sacrosanct. The formality is purely useful (and part of its use is creating fun). Grammatical rules and formal verse have that in common.
Winston Churchill is often cited as the author of a scribbled comment on someone “correcting” his grammar: “This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put.” But that joke appears to predate his involvement with the issue: there is a lengthy discussion of it here in the Quote Investigator.
English has particularly confusing and contradictory rules because of the blending of several waves of Germanic speakers (Anglo-Saxons, followed by Danish invaders and later Dutch merchants) overrunning the British (i.e. Celtic speakers with their complicated auxiliary verbs: “How did you do that?”), in turn being overrun by French-speaking conquerors supported by Latin-speaking priests. (I recommend John McWhorter’s ‘Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue‘.) It was this latest ruling class that was averse to (among other things) ending a sentence with a preposition. But that’s a natural and correct part of speech for a Dane to end with.
I went round to Sarah’s flat one night: “Hi man,” she said, “Yeah, you can come in, sure,” apologising as she shut the door – “but not for too long, you know how it is – I’ve got two essays still to write and then exams start – I’m in quite a tizz.” She yawned and laughed, said “I’ve just changed Sam’s nappy, and now he’s fast asleep – at last!” she smiled – “Wow, but he keeps me busy!” “Also happy,” I put in. “Yes, but not all the while – he’s got a weak chest, coughs, cries with the pain, I get so uptight we both end in tears… his dad got sentenced, over drugs, eight years… that’s long: I guess we won’t get back again; I’ve got my Finals coming up, and then, after, who knows? I’ve hardly time for dreams: with Sam and studying, sometimes, it seems my life’s nappies and essays, nothing more.” She changed the record, sat to roll a joint, and said “First thing I do, even before I take Sam to that Nursery up the road – he’s bigger every day! He’s quite a load! But anyway, that’s not the point – first of all, I get stoned, and stay that way, or else I’d never make it through the day.”
A new cloud added to her soft rich room a further depth of blue, a silent pause.
She spoke again, her thoughts already gone back to her work: “And then, they seem such fools, dividing all Philosophy in schools. You know my option is the Indian course; I know so much of what the old books mean: things of which lecturers can’t conceive, think guff, I understand, they’re places where I’ve been… I’m always trying to turn the lecturers on: if they’d drop acid, or just smoke some stuff, they’d see so much… but they’re not brave enough. So Transcendental just remains a trendy course which their students can take if other courses can’t keep them awake. But still they try their worst,” she said, nonplussed, and read “The Bhaghavad Gita retains relevance for our century. Discuss. Christ, aren’t they boring!” she said, biro poised. I let myself out, while she found her page, and Briggs, her hamster, woken by the noise, went streaming up the rat-race in his cage.
*****
This poem dates to the time after I had dropped out of the University of Dundee, but still came back to it in the years that saw most of my 25,000 miles of hitchhiking. I feel I learned more by wandering in and out of jobs, countries, languages and religions than I would have if I’d stayed on Sarah’s path. But then, I have no idea how life worked out for her, so who knows.
The poem is semi-formal – rhymed but without a rhyme scheme, in iambic pentameter with some occasional liberties taken with metre… but those liberties are comparatively acceptable, even beneficial, in a longish poem as they break up the metrical monotony. That’s my excuse anyway, and I’m sticking with it. The poem was published decades later in Snakeskin – thanks, George Simmers!
Yellow rose, yellow rose, Emily Dickinson lived in seclusion, was never a wife; wrote of her garden most anthropocentrically, talking with God, Satan, Death, all her life.
*****
There’s an old suggestion that all of Emily Dickinson’s poetry can be sung to the tune of ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’.
I never saw a moor, I never saw the sea; Yet know I how the heather looks, And what a wave must be.
(Brave words, but I think that waves would have surprised her with their complexity and power and sensuousness.) There’s a newer suggestion that she lived so reclusively because she suffered from epilepsy, and wanted to hide it as much as possible out of a sense of shame.
Strange woman, strange life, strange little poems… but remarkably insightful, accessible, and word-for-word memorable.
How fortunate the arrogance of youth— the optimism and innumeracy, lack of experience, perspective, truth— giving hopes, visions that they’d never see if they but knew the small chance of success in major league politics, business, sports. Most fail, adopt some wage-slave form of dress that not dreams, but a family, supports.
Without those early dreams, with a clear view of stats on making it in the Big Time, they’d all give up, seeing how very few truly succeed. Then we’d miss those sublime insane few dreamers who can win their race, make the discoveries, blast into space.
*****
This Shakespearean sonnet has just been published in Shot Glass Journal – thanks, Mary-Jane Grandinetti!
When your flesh freshly and your face flushly Face the imperatives of flesh, I find your mind now unleashed lusty-lushly… Must we not then enmesh?
*****
This little poem was triggered by pondering the nearness to each other of the words fresh, flesh and flush, and jamming them all together. The result was coherent enough for publication in (naturally) ‘Rat’s Ass Review‘ – thanks, Rick Bates!
City! Oh City! – poems on the light and dark of urban life. Thirteen of the best contemporary English-language poets present their wildly differing takes on the glamour and squalor, the joy and heartbreak, the varied people and the hidden wildlife of our modern cities.
Five of the poets are new to the Potcake Chapbook series, and I’m delighted to be adding Kate Bingham of England, Francis O’Hare of Northern Ireland, Pino Coluccio of Canada, and Quincy R. Lehr and J.D. Smith of the US. They join eight returning poets. Amit Majmudar and Maryann Corbett deserve special mention for their brilliant use of form to capture contradictory situations: Majmudar’s static street scene which suddenly changes pace to a hectic chase, Corbett’s interwoven Baroque chamber ensemble and homeless encampment with their separate realities in a shared evening in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In addition: Michael R. Burch, Jerome Betts, Terese Coe, Marcus Bales, Martin Elster and myself; everyone contributes to this memorable capture of the complexity of the modern city.
Bios, photos and links to read more of their work can all be found on the Sampson Low site’s Potcake Poets page, while all the chapbooks in the series, showing which poets are in which, are here. Each of the 12 chapbooks is profusely illustrated (of course) by Alban Low, and can be yours (or sent as an intriguing gift) for the price of a coffee.
Some fling away Some stay and cling— Each their own Way To do their own thing.
Sacrifice meaning For love of the rhyme; Know that in dreaming You make up the time.
Sacrifice meaning— When thought becomes sight Your soul from its mole-hole Blinks into life-light.
*****
An early poem, from when I was searching for meaning and questioning the various Meanings that were presented. Decades later, I feel the answer to the meaning of everything is best expressed by Leonard Cohen at the end of Tower of Song. That, and by John Cleese in the photo’s poster, and Douglas Adams’ “42”. Do your own thing, indeed; and keep dreaming and rhyming.
‘Some Fling Away’ was first published in ‘Metverse Muse‘ in India.
Thou noble, purest British race! Thy children we, Inheriting thy every trace; From thy straight back, unmoving face, We learn the truest social grace, Pomposity.
To thee the new is never good, ’Tis duty shirked. Thou’dst never think, and much less brood; Thou duty-bound eatst wooden food; Thou ever ramrod-straight hast stood, And never worked.
Britain! Served on a silver tray Thine Empire’s tea – Respectfully we beg to say We praise thee, but we cannot stay, We have our duty far away, Escaping thee.
*****
This is the third of the poems recently published by Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, and I’m pleased at how different the three of them are. ‘Ultimate Control’ is a Science Fiction sonnet, ‘Ticking Away’ is a meditation on time, life and death, and this one was written almost 50 years ago in reaction against (some aspects of) being sent to boarding school in England.
A little personal context: I was raised as an expat in the Bahamas by my Danish father and English mother. After five years of Church of England primary boarding school in Jamaica (when at least I came home three times a year) I went to England for five more years of boarding school, and came home rarely. The countryside setting of Stowe was delightful, and I got a good education with a lot of poetry, and I learned sarcasm. It all uprooted me from being fully Bahamian, but failed to make me fully English. In the 1970s the Bahamas didn’t want me and I didn’t want England. So… Denmark, then Canada, then the US, and finally the Bahamas again as a foreign resident. I have been an expat all my life – and frequently sarcastic about it.
The poem is a nonce form – I used to produce them easily in my 20s, I wish I still did. It’s in iambics rhyming ABAAAB, with four feet to the A lines and only two to the B lines – the last line of each verse being a punch line and the shortness of the line helping strengthen that effect.
Form in Formless Times 