Tag Archives: semi-formal verse

Excerpt, semi-formal: Matthew Arnold, ‘A Summer Night’ (2)

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And the rest, a few,
Escape their prison and depart
On the wide ocean of life anew.
There the freed prisoner, where’er his heart
Listeth, will sail;
Nor doth he know how there prevail,
Despotic on that sea,
Trade-winds which cross it from eternity.
Awhile he holds some false way, undebarred
By thwarting signs, and braves
The freshening wind and blackening waves.
And then the tempest strikes him; and between
The lightning-bursts is seen
Only a driving wreck,
And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck
With anguished face and flying hair
Grasping the rudder hard,
Still bent to make some port he knows not where,
Still standing for some false, impossible shore.
And sterner comes the roar
Of sea and wind, and through the deepening gloom
Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom,
And he too disappears, and comes no more.

*****

This fragment is the response to the previous excerpt from Matthew Arnold’s ‘A Summer Night’ that I blogged two days ago. As a teen in a well-regimented boarding school I found that previous fragment terrifying with its prospect of living as a bored wage-slave forever, and this second fragment exhilarating in its freedom despite the expectation of catastrophe. Altogether a very subversive poem, and I thank my schooling for including such works. For the next couple of decades I followed the wild path, failing to earn a degree at universities in three countries, never holding a job for more than 18 months, frequently moving. Eventually I found an occupation that was constantly changing, where Eliza and I were our own bosses, and that took us to dozens of countries to teach business seminars. So that successfully combined the wage-slave and the freed prisoner, and it all worked out.

Arnold originally ended his poem:

Is there no life, but these alone?
Madman or slave must man be one?

But ten years later he added a much more wishy-washy piece about learning from the pure heavens and seeing what a nice life you could make for yourself. I always thought he should have stopped with the original “madman or slave” view of life: much more dramatic! But his later addition was probably justified…

“Snow Storm—Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth” by hyperion327 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. (Note: the painting is by J.M.W. Turner, of course.)

Excerpt, semi-formal: Matthew Arnold, ‘A Summer Night’ (1)

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For most men in a brazen prison live,
Where, in the sun’s hot eye,
With heads bent o’er their toil, they languidly
Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give,
Dreaming of naught beyond their prison wall.
And as, year after year,
Fresh products of their barren labor fall
From their tired hands, and rest
Never yet comes more near,
Gloom settles slowly down over their breast.
And while they try to stem
The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest,
Death in their prison reaches them,
Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest.

*****

I’m very grateful to my schooling for putting Matthew Arnold on the curriculum – this subversive little passage seems designed to undermine the office and factory culture which has flourished since his time, to undermine even the student writing endless essays. Arnold was an inspector of schools as well as a poet and social critic, so we can assume he knew what he was doing. But isn’t it suggesting that a dissatisfied person should just drop out? More on that in the next post.

The other thing I like about the piece is its easy, flowing style. Every line rhymes, but without pattern. The lines are iambic, mostly pentameter, but a scattering of them are shorter. It feels very conversational, and it is certainly very easy to learn by heart (which is one of the reasons that poetry evolved in the first place). The only hiccup to natural speech are the displacement of ‘live’ and ‘give’ to the ends of their lines for the sake of the rhyme and even that, though artificial, is done conventionally enough to read smoothly. The rest of it is in normal speech. When T.S. Eliot came out with ‘Prufrock‘ some decades later, though it had a different, Imagist sensibility, the only real difference in style was in dropping the thou’s and thee’s that Arnold still clung to.

Photo: “Office workers in Executive Building Room No. 123 prior to alterations, Brisbane” by Queensland State Archives is marked with CC PDM 1.0

Steven Clayman: ‘Enmeshed In Pure Feeling’

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I spied her entwine an out-spiraling net,
each jittery stride trailing radial spans
before coming to rest
astride her last strands.
 
Still-standing and idling
then inching and sidling
till centered she sits, wind-wafted and wheeling,
unhearing, unseeing, enmeshed in pure feeling.
 
From above, a tableau of flutter and flop;
from within, she awaits the faintest pin drop.
A gnat mid-air, full stop, enstranded;
arachnid sensed where it had landed.
 
She swivels right
to eight o’clock.
One silken vibe
betrayed the spot.  

*****

Steve Clayman writes: “The poem’s content was inspired by a remarkable book on the sensory systems of animal species (An Immense World, by science journalist Ed Yong).   Reading the book gave me vertigo, the good kind that arises from being drawn into the “alien” perceptual worlds that other species inhabit.  In a chapter on tactile senses, Yong writes that many web-spinning spiders are nearly blind and deaf, but are extraordinarily sensitive to vibrations.  Thus the web is far more than a trap for prey:

It’s also a surveillance system, which extends the range of the spider’s senses well beyond the reach of its body….  It is as much a part of the creature’s sensory system as the [sensors] on its body. Most orb-weavers sit in the middle of their webs and rest their legs on the radial spokes that funnel vibrations toward them.  From this position, they can distinguish the vibrations generated by rustling wind or falling leaves from those created by struggling prey.  They can probably work out where those struggles are coming from by comparing the strength of the vibrations hitting each of their legs….  If the prey stops moving, they can find it by deliberately plucking the silk and “listening” to the return vibrational echoes. 

“As for the poem’s form, I came up with the first line and the rest emerged organically, in the course of dealing with the possibilities of that starting point.  So the overall form was not planned, although after the first line I was determined to avoid using the word spider or web throughout the poem.”

*****

‘Enmeshed in Pure Feeling’ was first published in Lighten Up Online, edited by Jerome Betts.

Steven Clayman is professor of sociology at UCLA. He likes to think that his light verse is at least loosely related to his research specialization in conversation analysis and the study of language use in everyday life.  His scholarly work appears in linguistics, communication, and sociology journals, and in the books (co-authored with John Heritage) Talk in Action (Wiley-Blackwell) and The News Interview (Cambridge University Press).  His poems have appeared in Lighten Up Online, Philosophy Now, Better Than Starbucks, Light: A Journal of Light Verse, and Asses of Parnassus.
 

“Spider and Web” by kendoman26 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Semi-formal verse: Rachel Hadas, ‘Ides of March, MMXX’

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New York, March 2020

Nothing new,
but it feels like an end.
An end that’s new.
This end is now?
No, I said new.
But who
could hear me through my mask?
Don’t ask.
Love
wears a glove.
I want to touch my friend.
.
This fear feels new.
We’ve all forgotten how
to live with it, to live it
day by day. And each
day begins anew,
begins a new
now we do not know,
oh no,
do not yet know.

*****

Rachel Hadas writes: Mid-March 2020, as I look back, did feel like both an end and a beginning.  Any moment in time is that, of course, but one’s sense of discontinuity was certainly heightened then.  A lot of familiar features of life just stopped, and an uncharted period began.  The confusion of trying to wrap one’s mind around all this at once is echoed in the overlapping  and echoing words “no, new, knew, know…”

“Ides of March MMXX” is collected in my 2022 volume “Pandemic Almanac,” a book in which, contrary to my usual practice, I append date and place of composition to each poem.  In 2020 we were in Vermont from early April until late November; “Ides” was written before people who could began to leave New York City in large numbers.

My 2025 collection “Pastorals” groups together texts written in and about Vermont over a period of years, certainly including the years of Covid but also extending both before and after the pandemic (if indeed there is an after).  I mention “Pastorals” because in one of its pieces (they’re all prose poems), “Blue Book,” which was  written sometime later during the pandemic, I do something similar to the play  in “Ides” on “no, know,” etc:   “We were elsewhere; we travelled back and forth, here and there.  Now mostly here.  Now only here.  Now here: nowhere.”

Rachel Hadas (born November 8, 1948) is an American poet, teacher, essayist, and translator. Her most recent essay collection is Piece by Piece: Selected Prose (Paul Dry Books, 2021), and her most recent poetry collection is Ghost Guest (Ragged Sky Press, 2023). Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Ingram Merrill Foundation Grants, the O.B. Hardison Award from the Folger Shakespeare Library, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

https://www.rachelhadas.net/

Photo: “Not Available Hand Sanitizer Gloves Rubbing Alcohol Face Masks” by Duncan Rawlinson – Duncan.co is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Children’s poem: Isabel Chenot, ‘What to Take for a Walk in the Woods’

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A very sensible story full of very, very, very, very, very good advice

Always carry crumbs 
when you are wandering in the woods 
beside the waters – 
just in case 

you need to mark a trail, 
like in a fairy tale. 

And always have a piece of tape 
in case a butterfly breaks 
off its wing while fluttering, 
and always 
take a pitchfork 
just in case 
a cow 
is also 
wandering. 

And always carry
extra food
like
roasted beef
or chicken legs
for escaped
crocodiles,

because they like to gnaw on legs,

and always take a mongoose
to defeat the snakes,
and always take a violin
for when
the birds are stuttering.
And always carry
party hats
and birthday cake
for any sons and daughters
of destitute woodcutters
who might be having
lonely
birthdays,
and always carry
an umbrella
because –

you know why.
An elephant might fall out of the sky.

And always take a shovel
just in case
it rains –

so you can dig a little hovel
and stay dry,

and always take a potted plant
to brighten up that cozy space,

and always take a duck
in case
of lakes,

and always
carry otters.

*****

Isabel Chenot writes: “This was originally written and illustrated as a letter to the most magical six year old girl.”

‘What To Take For A Walk In The Woods’ was first published in Story Warren.

Isabel Chenot‘s first poem as a little girl was about marrying her cat Tig when she grew up: she married a good man instead, but kept scribbling poems and stories. The Joseph Tree, a collection of poems, is available from Wiseblood. For a preview of West of Moonlight, East of Dawn, her retelling of an old fairy tale, visit westofmoonlight.art.

Semi-formal villanelle: Peggy Landsman, ‘Light Villanelle’

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Look at all the work the universe has done.
It makes the most of ordinary light
from new moon to full moon, from sun to setting sun.

It does the work of all the worlds rolled up into one
mind-boggling miracle of space and time and light.
Look at all the work the universe has done.

Will we ever know for certain how the universe was begun?
Will we ever learn the reason for all this lovely light
from new moon to full moon, from sun to setting sun?

Much of what we think we see, we know in fact is gone.
Stars do die out long before we catch their traveling light.
Look at all the work the universe has done.

Now look at all the works of man, the wealth of our creation.
There are still no substitutes for heat and light…
from new moon to full moon, from sun to setting sun.

I’m ready to quit my day jobs now; to leave them, one by one.
All I want is to make the most of ordinary light,
to look at all the work the universe has done
from new moon to full moon, from sun to setting sun.

***

Peggy Landsman writes: “I had been up all one long winter night with a group of friends in Buffalo, NY, in the mid-1970s. At one point, sitting around the kitchen table, I suddenly noticed daylight coming through the window. I had a moment of epiphany and blurted out: “Look at all the work the universe has just done!” After I went home and got some sleep, I started the work of writing the poem.”

“Light Villanelle” was first published in a now defunct online journal, Bringing Sonnets Back.

Peggy Landsman is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Too Much World, Not Enough Chocolate (Nightingale & Sparrow Press, 2024), and two poetry chapbooks: Our Words, Our Worlds (Kelsay Books, 2021) and To-wit To-woo (Foothills Publishing, 2008). She lives in South Florida within a short drive of a good library and a beautiful beach. A selection of her online publications is available on her website:  peggylandsman.wordpress.com

Illustration: “HAPPY NEW YEAR ~ Welcome 2014 ~ love letters from earth ~” by Cornelia Kopp is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

RHL, ‘How Sweet It Is’

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To be loved by you is like floating on my back,
falling asleep in the sea’s slack.
Sometimes. Sometimes it is more unnerving,
leaping with a wave for bodysurfing,
being swept facedown up the beach,
hair and ears full of sand.
That too is love, and grand.
Sometimes, again, I hope for more that’s out of reach –
(and you do too – don’t glower!)
and sometimes we get gifts hard to believe,
dolphins swimming with us half an hour
till mutually we and they
just turn away,
they to sea and we to shore,
and then they come back suddenly once more
and leap, so close, and leap, and leap again… and leave.

All those are in “loved by” –
the calm; the turbulent rift,
the sparkling fizz,
the sudden unexpected gift.
What can I say? I couldn’t, wouldn’t, choose to deny
how sweet it is.

*****

Thirty-five years with Eliza and still going strong. Who knew.

‘How Sweet It Is’ was published in the current Snakeskin.

“Free sea summer scenery background image” by Ajda Gregorčič is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Semi-formal: RHL, ‘Kinship’

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I feel a kinship with those, never met,
who live, uncertain and displaced
in the wrong place on planet earth and sea:
with different languages at home and school,
without a passport from the place they’re raised,
their natural faith despoiled by pointless war,
their sex uncertain, orphaned from themselves,
poets of restlessness, pilots adrift,
obscure, uncertain in their rootlessness,
chameleons of constant camouflage,
and all the little that they know deep down
forever hidden from some foreign frown.

*****

My sense of being displaced is largely one of nationality: in every country I’ve lived in, I feel the closest connection to other expats; and there is no country in which I don’t feel like an expat myself. But that also gives me a sense of commonality with all others in all forms of insecurity and displacement. And maybe it is a natural part of being human… after all, all adults have been displaced from the very different world of childhood.

‘Kinship’ was originally published in the current Shot Glass Journal.

“Stand out, don’t blend in!” by partymonstrrrr is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Long poem: Using forms: John Gallas, ‘Western Man’

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1.

Clip clop
clip clop
steady up yon stuntgrass rise, boy,
long as low and stony-brown,
slow like weeks with nothing in them:
saddle-tick,
dirt-crump,
poker-face.

Clip clop
clip clop
privy-top and anchor-wires,
church-cross, store-spike, steady boy,
up yon one-street, just more-trodden dust:
saddle-tick,
dirt-crump,
poker-face.

Clip clop
clip clop
steady, boy, through sad wood civics,
rippled in yon saloon-glass store-side,
road-end, horses maybe leaving:
saddle-tick,
dirt-crump,
poker-face.

Clip clop
clip clop
rise, boy, steady, way ahead,
purple-white mountains, nothing in them
maybe, like weeks maybe:
saddle-tick,
dirt-crump,
poker-face.

2.

My brother’s name was Crazy Sean.
They shot him in the head.
He rattled through the summer corn
and turned the green shucks red.

I laid him in the willowbrake.
I couldn’t stand to pray.
I kissed his cheek for pity’s sake,
and then I rode away.

The plains are full of buffalo.
The woods are red and gold.
The mountaintops are white with snow.
His memory keeps me cold.

I’ve rode through Hope and Whisky Creek.
I’ve rode through Faith and Love.
I’ve laid in Hate and Hide-and-Seek,
and run from God-Above.

The prairie shines, the buckdeer cry.
The hawks hang in the heat.
Clipclop clipclop, the world rolls by.
They say revenge is sweet.

3.

Somewhere still, stark as an afternoon;
Ached in long planks of sunshine;
Like a gambler’s card dropped on an empty land;
Vauntsquare, the nailed-up main street creaks
Against the air. Clipclop – hotel, laundry, saddles,
Telegraph, clap-houses, guns. The horse stops.
Into this hollow spine of fellowship blows a slow
O of wind. Three men clatter at a boardwalk:
Nacarat boots, sharktooth mojos – oh my brother.

4.

I shot one on the shithouse board. His head
smashed like a squash and sprayed the backboards red.
He pissed his boots and died. The stinking hole
spit up a fat, black fly, which was his soul.
I shot one in the barbershop. The chair
caught fire, and ate his o-colonied hair.
He fell out like a slice of spitroast meat.
The duster wrapped him in its winding-sheet.
I shot one in the cornfield. Larks of blood
flew off his skull and twittered in the mud.
He rattled through the stalks. His mashy head
threw up its brain and turned the green shucks red.
I took a bath and threw away my gun.
I rode away wherever. I was done.

5.

drizzle pops on his hatbrim,
cord and wool and steam-sodden,
saddleticks like an empty stomach.

windpump wires and tin-dump,
like horizon-drowning, horse, then man,
hat, gone, clipclop, dusk drips in.

paraffin lamplight pricks the town,
glo-worms, night hunched above,
coyotes carry their eyes like stars.

6.

reckoning
done
how will he ever be warm

purpose
gone
how will he outrun the storm

bearings
none
how will he find another

riding
alone
how will he tell his brother

*****

John Gallas writes: “‘Western Man’ is a weird one: I have a quite spooky love of Westerns, jogging as they do some very deep links with Old En Zed, remnants (many remnants!) of which I grew up with and in. Those old wooden towns, the dim General Stores, the slightly grim and mostly silent (mostly) men, the cheek-by-jowlness of town and bush. It means quite a lot to me. I find the end of most Clint Eastwood films, and especially ‘Once Upon A Time in the West’, as the hero says ‘I gotta go now’, and rides away into lonliness after some bloody vengeance or other, inexpressibly moving.”

(“Old En Zed” = old New Zealand. – RHL)

‘Western Man’ is collected in ‘Star City‘.

John Gallas, Aotearoa/NZ poet, published mostly by Carcanet. Saxonship Poet (see http://www.saxonship.org), Fellow of the English Association, St Magnus Festival Orkney Poet, librettist, translator and biker. Presently living in Markfield, Leicestershire. Website is www.johngallaspoetry.co.uk which has a featured Poem of the Month, complete book list, links and news.

Photo: “lone cowboy” by GarrettRiffal is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Semi-formal verse: RHL, ‘False Analogies’

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The Universe is made of false analogies –
flawed observations, secondhand “I see”s,
discarded dreams.
Nothing is truly as it seems.
We build our intellectual shelter from life’s gales
from scraps of lumber and found nails,
anything within reach,
rope washed up on a beach,
a sliding glass door, still intact,
used as a wall. And all because
the Universe we sense has flaws,
disobeys its own laws,
is just a framework for the Mind That Plays,
a sketch, hypothesis; a tract, not fact;
a work in process, changing with the days.
Dig deeper, and find fresh discrepancies.
Our shelter, in fair weather, keeps us warm,
can stand up to a breeze…
will be no shelter in the coming storm.

*****

I marvel at the impossibilities of the quantum mechanisms of the universe being revealed. I enjoy Nick Bostrom’s speculations on everything being a simulation. I wonder at the powerful who are jockeying for development and control of AI, at our Nietzschean will to power, at our eternal quest for immortality. I am aware that nature constantly sacrifices billions in the process of advancing a few. I wonder if we are in that process now. I am not bothered that I have no answers.

This poem was first published in the current edition of Pulsebeat. Thanks, David Stephenson!

Photo: “wc west avl homeless gathering spot” by zen is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.