Tag Archives: The Formalist

Sonnet: Gail White, ‘Moving’

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How difficult it is to move,
Even from simple place to place.
How hard to pack the books, to shove
The cat into its carrying case.
How hard to sit in Airportland
Through one more endless flight delay
While Trebizond or Samarkand
Wait half a universe away.
How hard to get the papers filed
That separate you from your past,
Newly and legally enisled.  
And yet, and yet my father’s last
Great journey out of self to shade –
How easily and quickly made.  

*****

Gail White writes: “I admit I love this one.  I’ve experienced all of it except the change of citizenship – the trials of moving house, the frustrations of airline travel – and my father’s easy transition, just lying down and quietly going on his way.  It turned into a sonnet before I even thought about it.”

First published in The Formalist.

Gail White lives in the Louisiana bayou country with her husband and cats. Her latest chapbook, Paper Cuts, is available on Amazon, along with her books Asperity Street and Catechism. She appears in a number of anthologies, including two Pocket Poetry chapbooks and Nasty Women Poets. She enjoys being a contributing editor to Light Poetry Magazine. Her dream is to live in Oxfordshire, but failing that, almost any place in Western Europe would do.

“EEEEEK! CHAOS.” by confidence, comely. is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

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

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The day his girlfriend’s father let him cut
The kindling was the cracking of a crust,
A heavy volume falling open at
A pleasant page. He felt the guard relax
At last: it takes some trust
To hand a man an ax.

They foraged for straight grain, which wouldn’t knot
The blade, but give hospitably, a quick
Clean breach, if he could hit the angle right.
The older man first watched, and then went in.
Alone, he chopped each stick
To almost pencil-thin,

Absorbed in seeking out that magic split,
Delicious every time that it occurred,
A touch of luck rewarding skill and sweat,
Though earned, still only half-anticipated,
Like just the sought-for word,
Or love reciprocated.

Max Gutmann writes: “I like the pattern—unique without being complex, rhyming throughout but ringingly only at the stanza ends. I hope the last simile feels both surprising and, like an ax biting a block, inevitable.”

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.

‘Kindling’ was first published in The Formalist.

maxgutmann.com

“Chopping kindling” by *Tom* is marked with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.