Archive for the 'Poetry' Category

CXVII

Don August 24th, 2010

CXVII

 

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

 

Playing with Alliterative Meter enables one to use alliteration effectively in the iambic pentameter line, as in the following.  Some people might think it is too much.  Wimps!

The Marriage Supper of the Lamb:

An Anticipation

Sonnet XXXVI

Let sound the sackbuts, come, cornettoes, call

The folk to feast and joyous revelry.

Already lute and lyre fill the hall

With sweetest sound of merry minstrelsy.

The Lord beneath his royal canopy

Himself shall sit as host, for he abounds

In kingly kindliness and courtesy.

Hold back for no unworthiness!  He frowns

On base ingratitude, but loves the sounds

Of Joy unearned, unearnable, delights

To honor those who come.  The call resounds,

For one last moment echoes in the heights.

Surely you’re coming with us?  Do not doubt!

The door that closes shuts forever out.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

CXVI

Don August 12th, 2010

CXVI

 

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

 

Combining Alliterative Meter (here loosely conceived) with rhyme produces results that just sound so cool that one wonders why we don’t do it more.  But maybe the product is just so rich that it is kind of like pecan pie—too rich for our daily diet.

Commentary, 1 Tim. 3:16

Great is the mystery of godliness, given

To men, in Man’s very flesh manifested:

Deftly the wing of Dove descending

On Voice from vaulted Heaven riven

Vouched for His virtue, tried and tested;

Many a mighty messenger wending

Far from the hallowed halls of Heaven

Watched the saints from Satan wrested;

Soon the Sword, asunder rending

Flesh and spirit, flashed, driven

Into joint and marrow, bested

Unbelief and evil, ending

Devil’s darkness.  Dare the frame

Of mortal man, albeit mending,

Stand before the fearsome Name

Of Glory given to Him who came?

                                                            He came befriending.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

 

CXV

Don July 29th, 2010

CXV

 

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

 

It is now 1981-82, my second and last year as Temporary Lecturer in English at the University of Georgia, teaching a full load of Freshman Composition while writing my dissertation.  The dissertation was on Edmund Spenser.  Can you tell?  Dr. Ewbank was my faculty adviser for my undergraduate degree in English.

On Spenserian Stanza

For Two Teachers: Edmund Spenser and Frances Ewbank.

When Spenser wrote The Faerie Queene, he made

A brand new stanza up in which to frame

The glorious knights and ladies he portrayed

Triumphant over villains full of shame.

Ever different, yet still the same,

It had to hold up through the spacious land

Of Faerie from end to end, and flame

More bright with virtue there than e’er the hand

Of author had achieved, in verses quaint or grand.

Ottava Rima had the flow he needed,

But seemed in live a lady far too light

To shadow forth the gallant knights who heeded

The Code of Maidenheed and served the bright

And gracious Gloriana truly.  Might

A pensive sonnet cycle then avail?

But that would never serve to show the flight

Of narrative events in time.  The tale,

It seemed, must then be dight in wholly different mail.

Yet if the two could somehow be combined—

Could move with supple dignity, but yet

Be not in short, concise quatrains confined

Nor have its forward movement always let,

Caught in the closing couplet’s double net;

And yet still pause for needed contemplation—

With light impediment, enough to whet

The reader’s appetite for exploration—

Now that would truly be a gallant innovation!

Suppose we take Ottava Rima, add,

To slow its headlong plunge, a single line,

Rhyming with the last, but subtly clad

With just one extra foot to be a sign

Of need to sip with care such heady wine—

So came The Fairie Queene.  And there has been

No poem in which the Glory seemed to shine

More brightly since the storied epoch when

The Sweet Singer of Israel wielded the sword and the pen.

And thou, doctor mihi carissima,

Who showed me how to look with eyes undim

Upon the bright, the ars dulcissima

Of sacred Poesy, and thence to skim

Cream, not of just aesthesis, nor of whim,

But of the Truth well imaged forth, displayed,

Filling the cup of wisdom to the brim;

If worthily I now wield Spenser’s blade,

The praise is thine, who long hast labored, taught, and prayed.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

CXIV

Don June 5th, 2010

CXIV

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

This poem was once rejected by a major literary journal (which shall remain nameless) on the grounds that the editor did not see any reason why the subject demanded a sonnet.  Let us just say that fourteen lines do not a sonnet make.  So much for the supposed expertise of our cultural gatekeepers.  But why shouldn’t the poem have been a sonnet if it had wanted to?  So much for the alleged wisdom of those gatekeepers.  Wordsworth or Keats would have known better!  While this fourteen line poem is not a sonnet of any kind, I do think it has an intriguingly intricate rhyme scheme.

On One of the Functions of Morning

When the first fingers of light steal through the grass,

Angling down through spaces between the limbs

Of trees, greeting the ground-fog as they pass,

The separate the darkness into shadows

That stretch out lengthwise clear across the meadows.

I have been up a time or two, on whims,

Early enough to see it come to pass.

For it is shy, this light that flits and skims

And touches everything so very lightly.

As imperceptibly as starlight dims

It fades to greater brightness, slips away

Before the bolder light that’s merely day,

And leaves the lucky ones it touches slightly

More inclined to follow after whims.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

CXIII

Don May 17th, 2010

CXIII

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

One of Luther’s most serious disciples was Johan Sebastian Bach, the greatest contrapuntist (some would say the greatest composer) who ever lived.  This is the first of a number of attempts to get something of the quality of Bach’s music down in words—a task not ever to be completely achieved!  How do you express the idea of, not just one note interacting with other notes to form the harmony, but whole melodies interacting with each other?  The acrostic, among other things, tries to capture something of the multilayered nature of Bach’s work.

Bach

Joining word to pitch and pitch to time,

Sounds line up to flow into the air.

Bach could make whole lines with lines to rhyme

And flow in streams of thought beyond compare.

Christ gave him this grace, to let us hear

His angels’ songs with (now!) the fleshly ear.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

cxii

Don May 6th, 2010

CXII

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

Even people who do not agree with him admire Protestant Reformer Martin Luther for standing up for his convictions.  What many people do not understand is that his famous “Here I stand!” was not simply a bold assertion of modern individualism but sprang from much serious agonizing over what Scripture was telling him.  It was faithfulness to God’s truth as he understood it, not rebellion against church authority, that drove him.

Martin Luther

Sonnet XXXV

Can one lone monk be right, and all the rest

Of Christendom for near a thousand years

Be wrong?  The question brought him close to tears

And troubled Luther sorely, he confessed.

But other problems had to be addressed,

Like, shall the Gospel reach the waiting ears

Of people whose good works were in arrears

And had no chance but Grace to pass the test?

He meant by that just simply every man,

And thought of men who’d lived by faith before—

And doubted then his Gospel’s truth no more:

With Athanasius contra mundum, and

With John the lone disciple at the Cross,

He clung to Christ and viewed all else as loss.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

CXI

Don April 23rd, 2010

CXI

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

This poem marks a couple of momentous moments.  One was the loss of our dog, who had gotten out of her yard and disappeared only to be found later dead on the road.  The other is the composition of my first villanelle.  The villanelle is one of the most challenging verse forms in the language: six triplets in iambic pentameter rhyming ABA, etc., until the last stanza adds an extra A line to end in a couplet.  The catch is that lines one and three have to be substantially repeated as the final lines of the following triplets, alternating until they come together in the last stanza as the final couplet.  In one way it’s easy.  When you finished three lines, you already have a third of the rest written!  But the trick is to make the repeated lines sound like they would completely naturally have been there anyway.  Now that is hard!

The advantage is that if you do it well, there is an intensity bound by rigid limits that lends itself to containing otherwise uncontrollable emotion.  The best example of this use is Dylan Thomas’s famous villanelle on the death of his father, “Do not go gentle into that good night.”  This one is not lacking in a certain similarity to that one.

Farewell to Snoopie: A Villanelle

(No. 1)

The once lithe body lay too large, too long:

The proportions were off, the head’s angle strange;

Something about it certainly was wrong.

Something about the way the limp legs hung

Boded less wandering, a shrunken range.

The once lithe body lay too large, too long.

Never before had I seen her without a song

Of bugle-haunted greeting in glad refrains;

Something about it certainly was wrong.

The silk ears once in gay abandon flung

Were still, and their position did not change:

The once lithe body lay too large, too long.

A fly crawled slowly undisturbed along

The nose; fur rose in wind foreboding rains.

Something about it certainly was wrong.

And standing there, I felt no longer young

And thought age no great bargain in exchange.

The once lithe body lay too large, too long;

Something about it certainly was wrong.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

CX

Don April 7th, 2010

CX

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

I was really on a blank-verse jag that year for some reason.  More rhyme is coming soon; I promise.  I don’t even remember where this landscape was, but it reminds me of some parts of Wyoming, or of the Salisbury Plain near Stonehenge (though I had never seen it at that time, nor was I in Wyoming that year).  It also brings to mind Tolkien’s barrow downs.  Clearly it was somewhere not in the Appalachians seen by someone whose way of relating to landscapes is defined by places that are.   The specific location is forgotten, but not the feel of it.  That is where poetry is valuable.

Apocalypse

It was a bare place, despite the vegetation.

There was grass on the rounded hills, the long slopes,

A few trees standing, just enough

To make you notice that there were not more.

They were dark evergreens, stooped with age.

They did not stand in bunches, but alone,

Spread out like silent sentinels to watch

The years and keep a record of their doings.

There was wind in the grass and the twisted limbs.  There was

Too little between a man and the horizon.

You ought to have to climb awhile before

The sky can open up and leave you standing

Emptied out of everything but wonder.

You ought to have to go past dripping ferns,

Cool with water seeping from the rocks.

The graceful arms of trees should pull back slowly

To open in an unexpected meadow,

Then fold together again to receive you back.

It ought to be a thing you have to seek,

Perhaps unconsciously, and then return from,

Weakened and yet stronger for the journey.

It is not always so, for there was grass

On rounded hills, and wind was in the grass,

And the sky was all around you, all around you,

And lonely trees told tales that had no words.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

CIX

Don March 23rd, 2010

CIX

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

There is an old recording of Flannery O’Connor giving an interview on Wise Blood for an early television program.  If you haven’t had the privilege of seeing it, you can read the poem it inspired.  If you have, you can judge how well I captured it in another medium.  The poem was published in New Oxford Review, March, 1982, p. 24.

For Flannery

The body was alive.  The evidence

Is that her fingers for pure nervousness

Caressed the chair’s arm, and that was enough;

The rest was calm, the eyes demure.  The voice

Was slow and hesitant, but when it had

A chance to build momentum it could carry

The burden of a thought or two and drive them

Directly, if gently, toward the heart of things.

(The eyes would look up then as if to follow

The words and make sure they were going straight.)

The body was alive; there is no doubt.

A fifteen-minute strip of celluloid

Is proof, and there are other witnesses

Whose bodies are still living, and will be,

I reckon, for another couple decades.

The body is cold dust and brittle bone

And blind as Hazel Motes.  But take the cold,

Thin strip of plastic, add electric light,

A motor, and some other gadgetry,

It will be warm and soft again, or seem so.

We most of us belong to Hazel’s church:

Our lame don’t walk, our blind don’t see, our dead

Stay put, our Jesus has no blood to spare,

Despite what we recite on Sunday mornings.

The body stalks from tree to tree behind us.

Its hands fidget in embarrassment;

Its eyes occasionally look up.  (Be sure

That’s only in the mind.  The body still

Lies quiet—even now the bones are cumbling.)

Be sure you do not look into the eyes.

If once you do, you are forever lost,

Your well-adjusted modern life in shambles.

Jesus, striding through the point of light

Behind the pupils, will lay hold of you.

“The prophet that I raise up from her words

Will burn your eyes clean!”   There will be no way

To keep out even resurrections then,

Or Jesus’ blood.  And you will see the body

Living, and it will not be on film.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

CVIII

Don March 22nd, 2010

CVIII

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

Enough blank verse!  Now for something completely different.

Oh Sight beyond all Seeing

(Christmas, 1980)

Oh Sight beyond all seeing,

Light in the dark of the sun,

Fact behind the face of Being,

Second of Three in the One:

What motive could have moved you hither thus?

The Life that was ever begotten, never begun,

Began to be born, to mourn.  For us

The daring deed was done.

Burned by angel-light,

The shepherds’ eyes were blind

To everything except the sight

That they went forth to find.

It was a Baby wrapped in swaddling clothes,

Laid in a manger: such had been the sign.

The sign they saw by then still shows

The perilous paths that wind

Between the Tree and the Tree

This much the sign makes clear:

The Light invisible we see,

The silent Word we hear.

What motive could have moved Him hither thus?

We hear pegs pounded, see the thrusted spear,

We hear, “Forgive them!”  Now for us

The day of doom draws near.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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