Day 12 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2021

Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day prompt: “write a poem using at least three of the following six words: convict, great, play, race, season, and voice. Extra credit for using all six words. Extra extra credit for writing a sestina. It's not a race, so I won't convict anyone who can't use all six words, but it is the definitely the season to play around and share your great voice. Now!” [Did you see what he did with the six words?] Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt today is called “Past and Future,” a challenge “to write a poem using at least one word/concept/idea from each of two specialty dictionaries: Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary and the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction.” I'm working from both prompts again today, using all six of Brewer's words, the words "morphed" and "non-human" from the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, and the mythological story of Daphne from the Classical Dictionary — which you might recall from Ovid's Metamorphoses. This is a hybrid sonnet, part Petrarchan with the abba quatrains, or maybe "over-Petrarchan," since there are three of these quatrains, rather than the usual two, rounded off by a Shakespearean ending couplet. Daphne, Apollo, and Me Too Apollo, as he raced the silver sun, his great chariot, across the sky, thought it would be marvelous play to chase Daphne, a beautiful woman, though still quite an ingenue. She ran in fear but who can escape the day itself? Daphne raised her voice and prayed to her father, the river god Ladon, who morphed her into a non-human form, before Apollo could have his way with her. She became the laurel tree, an evergreen, lovely in all seasons. Today, Apollo wouldn’t get away with it. Assault, attempted rape, he’d be convicted. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Apollo and Daphne by Gian Lorenzo Bernini The tale of Daphne and Apollo (usually titled "Apollo and Daphne") was a famous story of unrequited love throughout the Renaissance, probably because of Ovid's version in Metamorphoses. The most well-known artistic rendering is Bernini's renowned sculpture of the moment when Daphne turns into a tree just as Apollo catches her. What seems incredible to me is that anyone thought this was unrequited love! This is clearly an attempted rape, not unrequited love. Click on the detail of Bernini's statue below and look at Daphne's facial expression as the sculptor portrayed it. Unrequited love? It's predation, despite Apollo's serene look! Apollo and Daphne by Bernini (detail) I try to convey this idea in the poem with my use of the word "play" and "have his way" instead of something like "love" or "yearning." And then, of course, the poem's "me too" ending. Interestingly, it's the Brewer prompt's assignment of the word "play" that brought this on, along with the sonnet requirement to rhyme with "play." The long /a/ sound dominates at the end as well, with "Today" and "get away," and especially with the word "rape" in the last line. Another interesting way that form governs sense here is my naming "Ladon" as Daphne's father (from a variant version of the myth) rather than Ovid's "Peneus," since "Ladon" is a closer rhyme to the a rhyme ("sun" and "woman") in the opening quatrain. Actually, "Peneus" would have also worked as a distant slant rhyme, but the /n/ would have been buried in the word so I opted for "Ladon" instead. Alan did both prompts as well. Here's what he said when he sent me the poem: "This one is a rough beast. 'Tantalus' from one dictionary, 'thud and blunder' from the other, all of the six words, and a sestina, to boot —" Tantalus Each year seems an interminable race between the votes to elect or convict— news cycles one melodramatic play, thud and blunder lead their party, a great and noble candidate leads ours, a voice who will sustain us through a hard season, although we always weather each season and gasp for breath. As we prep for the race to come, we hope to mute the nagging voice that questions, “Why isn’t he a convict? Is it because he represents some great nostalgic hope? What motives are at play that they could choose that candidate? The play we’ve seen for years, season after season, has changed with each director, and a great character motivation has been race and racism. Much too slow to convict the killers, states criminalize the voice that calls for justice, deny the stilled voice whose resonance continues its strong play in the nation’s conscience, “Be a convict for a cause,” it says, “good trouble, seize on a principle and act; it’s not a race alone—no one is alone. A true, great day will come.” Will Matt Gaetz think it is great? Will Marjorie Taylor Greene lend her voice? With Ted Cruz and Jim Jordan in the race, is Josh Hawley already out of play or merely out for the current season? Mired in a system that will not convict the man who deserves to be a convict, who claimed to “make America great again,” wanted most a renewed season to broadcast a bullying, empty voice that relies on Big Lies and not fair play, he insists he has won a stolen race. Should law convict him, who will be the voice of Q-Anon? Great policies at play each voting season, who will win the race? —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

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Day 19 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2020

Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day prompt: “write a poem that uses the following six words:             • bump             • embrace             • fixture             • howl             • lonely             • resolve How did I come up with this list? Actually, it’s a tie-in to our Shakespeare Week that starts today, because the Bard is actually credited with inventing all six of these words. Pretty cool, eh? For sestina fans, I kind of intentionally made it six words for a reason. So let’s get writing!” Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “Today, our optional prompt challenges you to write a poem based on a ‘walking archive.’ What’s that? Well, it’s when you go on a walk and gather up interesting things – a flower, a strange piece of bark, a rock. This then becomes your ‘walking archive’ – the physical instantiation of your walk. If you’re unable to get out of the house (as many of us now are), you can create a ‘walking archive’ by wandering around your own home and gathering knick-knacks, family photos, maybe a strange spice or kitchen gadget you never use. One you’ve finished your gathering, lay all your materials out on a tray table, like museum specimens. Now, let your group of materials inspire your poem! You can write about just one of the things you’ve gathered, or how all of them are all linked, or even what they say about you, who chose them and brought them together.” I appreciate how Alan so adeptly merges the two prompts, especially how he gets the words bump and howl to work so seamlessly. And the opening line is a hoot! Touring the House I wandered lonely as a dad between his tasks while safe at home and found the sound of “bump” came from the water drained from the main bath, and so I checked the fixture there, assured myself there is no leak, and wiped some toothpaste residue one of the kids left in the sink. I keep banged-up used copies stacked beneath the towels on a wire rack and see somebody’s reading Howl from all those books—I don’t know who. The john’s a fine and private place to read Ginsberg and wash your face. —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Alan's poem is a hybrid sonnet, mixing Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Clare: the first quatrain is a Petrarchan envelope, the second a Shakespearean alternating, and then the closing sestet is comprised of Clarean couplets, which is both a Petrarchan mode and Shakespearean with the ending couplet. The rhymes in lines 5 and 7 are fascinating: there and -due (rhymed consonantally with the related sounds th and d), but wait, there's more . . . we have enjambed rhyme as well, with there, /assured and residue! Today, from me, we have another poem in my aswang novella-in-poems. (Specifics on that project here.) This is set in early 1945, after Santiago's unit has been deployed to fight the Japanese in the Philippines. The two lovers have now had to weather two years of separation because of his military service. In terms of form, this is a sestina that uses Robert's six words in order; the poem also follows Maureen's prompt with Clara walking around her home with Santiago to gather objects that remind her of him. I was fortunate Robert had included the word "howl" because it gave me the entree into an aswang poem today. Aswang Despair Late at Night I was awakened suddenly by a bump in the night, and I turned to embrace Tiyago but he is gone for now. A fixture in my life for ten years, gone. A howl echoing far off is how I think of him. Lonely for my husband away at war, I resolved to be stronger. After all he had resolved to fight for our country — he was no bump on a log. The two of us have had two lonely years while he trained. I’ve learned to embrace this duty he must follow, but in my heart I howl at the unfairness of life. I’ve fixed your face in my mind’s eye as a bright fixture to get me through the days when my resolve slips. I wonder if, deployed now, you howl, fighting in the old country, sharp bumps of bullets and shells loud in your ears. Brace yourself, mi amor. I know you are lonely. If it helps, you should know I’m lonely too. I got out of bed, picked up your picture, hugged it to my breast, the only embrace I own now. I started walking our rooms, resolved to find things connected to you. My foot bumped the dining table you constructed, and I howled at the pain in my little toe. My small howl helped for a moment, distracting me from lonely musings. I found another photograph: my baby bump with you rubbing it jokingly as if to fix it, your smile so bright, your eyes twinkling, your resolve to be a good father so clear in your face. I embraced you that day, I recall. A long, loving embrace that almost removed the memories of you howling and me hunting pregnant women. We then resolved again to give up the aswang ways, no matter how lonely that would make us, just invisible ordinary fixtures in the world of humans. I went to Malcolm, sweet bump of ours, and embraced him. He is our brave fixture among the others, old prey. Bumped, Malcolm howled in his sleep. Instantly lonely, I feared for our resolve. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] I had a blast playing with the teleutons or end-words; it was tough to use fixture seven times! I offer a bonus poem today . . . an elegy in these times of the novel coronavirus. In Memoriam John Prine, Dead of COVID-19 Most days, we expect to hear from a famous author of songs loved by millions for decades even more of his lovely music. He was only seventy- three, John Prine, loving and loved husband and father. My daughter Amelia and I have a duo called Groovy News, and we perform a noteworthy song by Mr. Prine, “Angel from Montgomery,” about an old woman living with her old husband, their lives a desert of lost dreams. The song asks, “How the hell can a person go to work in the morning / and come home in the evening and have nothing to say?” The man told us simple, unvarnished truths. COVID-19 may have taken John Prine but in song he lives on. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] RIP, John Prine. Thanks for reading, everyone. Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. To comment, look for a red line below that starts Posted by, then click once on the word comments in that line. If you don’t find the word “comments” in that line, then look for a blue link below that says Post a comment and click it once. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

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Poems Eligible for a Rhysling (Part 3)

On Friday, I posted a list of my 2016 speculative poems that are eligible for a Rhysling Award. Of those poems, these are the ones that appeared only in print in Popcorn Press's Halloween anthology Lupine Lunes: Horror Poems & Short Stories. Available at the press and also on Amazon. This first poem has to do with the aswang: a mythical Philippine monster. The specific kind of aswang featured here is the manananggal, a woman who can sever herself at the waist: the top half grows wings so she can fly in search of prey, leaving her bottom half wherever it is standing when she transforms out of her human-appearing form. Encounter on Good Friday — Cutud Village, north of Manila, 1936 On his straw mat, his banig, under the inky susurrus of the mosquito net hung from the walls of his nipa hut, a bachelor farmer named Santiago de la Cruz lounges half asleep, half dreaming of the Easter sunrise mass day after tomorrow and of today’s penitentes flogging their own backs into bloody crosshatch, a couple crucified for a handful of long minutes. Tiyago gazes up toward the now charcoal-tinged underside of his thatched palm-leaf roof and starts at an indistinct shadow above, shaped darkly like a crucified person. What? Tiyago rolls out of the net and fixes his eyes above. Yes, there is something there in the pitch black. Wait, is it a dark brown woman with her arms outstretched, gripping the almost invisible bamboo supports of the roof? A ghost? A hallucination? Tiyago rubs his eyes and looks again. Her eyes are dark red like dying coals. He crosses himself quickly, notices a rippling behind her like a mourning-dress curtain. Susmariosep, Tiyago whispers, she got wings like a bat! He slowly realizes there is nothing below her waist but a few brackish red loops of, what, guts, torn intestines? Wait, it’s not a whole figure. She has no legs. No legs! O my Jesus, an aswang . . . putang ina, she’s a mananananggal! The aswang smiles, teeth a dingy slate gray, and from her mouth slips a dingy blood-red thing like a snake or maybe more like a thick dark earthworm that writhes wildly, closer and closer to Tiyago. It’s her tongue, a ten-foot-long tongue. Hold on, she’s trying to suck my blood, the black harpy! He clenches his arms, his fists, shuts his eyes hard. The aswang’s tongue slinks, inches, nearer to his neck. His body in the shadowy center of the room seems to sprout fur, arms and legs thinning and crackling into wolf-like limbs. Tiyago is growing taller and bulkier, T-shirt and boxers ripping apart like tissue. He growls, dark yellowish fangs flashing out of the lengthening snout of his face. Tiyago is also an aswang, a shapeshifter churning into a huge black dog, larger than a man, standing wide on hind legs. The two monsters growl and snarl at each other, a tableau carved into the dusky sweaty air of the room. Then it stops. Both of them laugh, they snicker and snort, convulse in dark shrieks and screams of black humor. The manananggal pulls in her slimy tongue, waves at Tiyago, and swoops out of the window, her pterodactyl wings sighing velvety tik-tik, wak-wak sounds. Tiyago lifts his noble black head to the heavens and howls. —  Vince Gotera, Lupine Lunes: Horror Poems & Short Stories (Popcorn Press) In this next poem, the two aswang from the last poem have fallen in love. Clara, the manananggal, has been under suspicion by her fellow villagers of being an aswang. One night, they attack — almost like in the first Frankenstein movie, when people with torches and pitchforks hunt Boris Karloff's character. Santiago, the shapeshifting farmer from the previous poem, changes into his aswang form to rescue Clara. Villagers at Clara’s House, After Dark — hay(na)ku Ay, dios ko, malaking aso! Giant black dog attacked, rabid, rending . . . Aswang! . . . jumping up toward our necks, faces. Threw our torches, bright fangs. Aswang! Swung bolos against black fur, useless. Guns, no good, too fast. Aswang! We scattered, scared for our lives. Next day, Clara was gone. Aswang! —  Vince Gotera, Lupine Lunes: Horror Poems & Short Stories (Popcorn Press) In case you weren't able to figure it out from the context, the opening sentence of the previous poem, "Ay, dios ko, malaking aso!" means, in Tagalog, "Oh my god, a huge dog!" Aswang Wedding: Early Saturday Morn The aswang lovers held each other’s hand, kneeling at the teakwood communion rail of La Iglesia de San Agustin, the simple granite-walled Spanish chapel not far from the shores of Manila Bay. Heads lowered, the humble country couple waited while the parish priest, Padre Rey, drowsy, wished he was asleep in his bed. Raising his hand he droned, In nomine Patris et Filii . . . Dawn, a faint red, kindled stained glass the deep dark shade of blood draining from a body torn and shredded. Rings, sign of the cross, yes, but Padre would later tell how his heart sank at the end: fangs glinting in the bride’s smile, the groom’s mouth. —  Vince Gotera, Lupine Lunes: Horror Poems & Short Stories (Popcorn Press) The three poems above are part of my novella-in-poems, currently in progress, telling the story of these two aswang in their attempt to live a normal life — normal if one is a human, that is. After marrying, Santiago and Clara emigrate to the US, feeling they won't be persecuted there because most Americans don't know about aswang. In this next poem, the priest is not the same priest in the wedding poem directly above. Some readers have thought they were the same person, perhaps because in Lupine Lunes, these two poems are next to each other. The Good Father The folks at St. Mary’s Church thought well of their priest, Father Joseph Paolo. Every Sunday, after each of the masses, he would stand in the narthex and greet every person, shaking their hands, while above in the tower, the church bells would sonorously ring. The parishioners often recalled, our last priest would be damned rather than greet anyone. Father Joe was at his best with weddings, so friendly, so accommodating, so gracious, and each wedding couple felt genuinely special. Yup, no one better than Father, everyone always said. But Father Joe had a secret so damning some days he could hardly believe his vocation. His secret would send him to hell, he frequently thought, to the deepest, darkest ring of the Inferno. Sometimes, unable to sleep at night, his hands would burn and sting, and he wondered how his flock’s hands couldn’t feel the hot guilt in his grip. Every week, on Wednesday evenings, he would hold Bible Study and his voice would ring with authority and wonder, but inside his soul, he’d feel farther than ever from God. And truth. Because his own truth would keep him exiled forever from heaven. His secret? He’d damned someone to hell. Not just someone, his beloved. She was damned to perdition as if he had killed her, body and soul, with his own hands. In his last year of college, Joe Paolo had fallen in love. He was just wild about Francesca. And she adored him. Often they talked about a wedding: a silver dress, champagne, a four-tiered cake. Joe even went to her father and asked for Francesca’s hand—truly old-fashioned. He bought a ring, a lovely one with three diamonds, got down on one knee, and put the ring on her finger. But Joe got scared. And ran. Ran all the way to the damn seminary. And Francesca hanged herself. Even after he became a Father, Joe never told anyone, not even during confession. He ached for her hands to give him absolution, cool water from God’s font. With every wedding he hoped for peace. Then, one evening in the church, she came. It wouldn’t be as he thought: Francesca floating above, in a silvery gown, and she would forgive him. No. She appeared as an angry ghost in the dark chancel, ringed by fire, glowing chains of molten iron holding her down, apparition wedded to blackness and stinking filth, the smoke-heavy shrieking of the damned wafting around her. Francesca was whispering. She held out flaming hands and beckoned. Come to me, come to me. He fell to his knees, the poor Father. That night Father Paolo felt the closest ever to being eternally damned: an imprint appeared up on the cross, a woman’s hand burned into the wood, sweet Francesca’s softest caress, with an unburned gap for a wedding ring. —  Vince Gotera, Lupine Lunes: Horror Poems & Short Stories (Popcorn Press) Apropos of the next poem, I hope there won't be a full moon during the upcoming Presidential inauguration. Lupine Lunes, Starring Donald Trump Donald Trump, werewolf, turns in wash of moonlight, presidential, with fangs. Donald Trump sprouts wolf fur in tailored shirt, fresh from China. Donald Trump’s canines glow like radioactive little fingers, fluorescent plastic teeth. Donald Trump’s tail wags while he whines, howls at harvest moon. Donald Trump: “I’m The most handsome werewolf ever, believe me. Handsomest!” Donald Trump’s paws fumble in the voting booth, no opposable thumbs. “Donald Trump, President. And also Wolfman, so what? Everyone loves me.”                                 "Here's Donny," Daily Mail, 16 October 2015 —  Vince Gotera, Lupine Lunes: Horror Poems & Short Stories (Popcorn Press) I got the idea for this poem from the anthology's title "Lupine Lunes," announced in the book's call for submissions of poetry and fiction. The phrase is a truly witty title by the editor, Lester Smith, founder and editor of Popcorn Press, because of course werewolves are turned by the moon — la lune in French — when full. "Lune" is also the name of a poetic form, invented by Jack Collom: a three-line stanza with three words in line 1, five words in line 2, and three words in line 3. Friends, do check out Popcorn Press. For a number of years now, Lester Smith and the press have published a Halloween anthology. Always fun. Popcorn Press has published many wonderful collections and anthologies. And pick up a copy of Lupine Lunes at the press or on Amazon. Won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. To comment, look for a red line below that starts Posted by, then click once on the word comments in that line. If you don’t find the word "comments" in that line, then look for a blue link below that says Post a comment and click it once. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ  If you got here from my list of Rhysling-eligible poems, please click here to go back to the list.   P.S. I just realized today (11 May 2017) that I left a poem off. All Zombies, Coming and Going —  a somersault abecedarian ... read first down left column and then down right column same words, new punctuation All Bury Caskets. Doom’s Exhausted. Forever Green Horrific Inside Jujubes Kissing Lips, Miniature, Never Oblique. Plan Quiet Reveries, Secure Trees. Under Visible Wound, eXit Your Zipper.                     Zipper Your eXit Wound, Visible Under Trees’ Secure Reveries, Quiet. Plan Oblique Never Miniature Lips Kissing Jujubes Inside Horrific Green. Forever Exhausted, Doom's Caskets Bury All. —  Vince Gotera, Lupine Lunes: Horror Poems & Short Stories (Popcorn Press) (Added 11 May 2017)

Day 13 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2014

Too bad today isn't a Friday for Day Thirteen. Unlike those afflicted with triskaidekaphobia, I find the idea of Friday the 13th strangely attractive. Since today is Sunday, anyone know what year we'll have a Friday the 13th in April? Comment below if you know. In the meantime, here are the two "official" prompts for this April 13. Maureen Thorson: "Our optional prompt for today is to write a poem that contains at least one kenning. Kennings were metaphorical phrases developed in Nordic sagas. At their simplest, they generally consist of two nouns joined together, which imaginatively describe or name a third thing. The phrase 'whale road,' for example, could be used instead of 'sea' or 'ocean,' and 'sky candle' could be used for 'sun.' The kennings used in Nordic sagas eventually got so complex that you basically needed a decoder-ring to figure them out. And Vikings being Vikings, there tended to be an awful lot of kennings for swords, warriors, ships, and gold. But at their best, they are suprising and evocative" (NaPoWriMo). Robert Lee Brewer: "For today’s prompt, write an animal poem. Pick a specific animal or write about your animal spirit. Maybe you'll get tricky and write about mustangs (meaning the car) or jaguars (meaning the American football team). Maybe you’ll do an acrostic, or even go crazy and write a sestina (crickets)" (Poetic Asides). Well, here we go. Pretty easy to mash-up these two prompts. And as you might know, I love dragons. I've also found a way to have fun with sestina-making today, I think. A technique borrowed from my former student Nathan Dahlhauser, who wrote a sestina sestina sestina in a poetry class a couple of years back. Thanks, Nathan! Thanks also to my girlfriend Kathy . . . I gave her a convoluted explanation today of how the end words of a sestina recycle; that got me to thinking about how the recycling could be made easier. Dragon Sestina What could be more optimal for a Dragon Sestina than using the word "dragon" as an end word? All six end words could be "dragon," in fact. That way there'd be no drag in having to sort out when you'd need "dragon" again, 'cause every time you'd put in "dragon." Yup, dragon. Then dragon. Then, uh-huh . . . dragon again. But given today's prompts, you'd have to drag in a kenning or two, right? For example, a dragon kenning might be "fire worm." But that's a familiar dragon image already, from ancient days. A new kenning for dragon might be "reptile flame-thrower." But that dragon just might be too moderne. Violating the traditional dragon mystique. You could allude to the constellation Draco by kenning "multi-double-eye snake" because Mu Draconis is a binary star in that system, along with Nu Draconis and Omicron Draconis and several others. Some Draco stars, in fact, are actually triplets. Because of the Draconids meteor shower every October, "stone-rain dragon" could be another kenning. Is it too draconian, do you think, to insist on repeating "dragon"? Are you, dear reader, getting tired of hearing "dragon" so often? Would it stretch credulity to hear "dragon" right now? For me, it isn't yet a drag, and we're still having fun, right? We're not dragging our feet yet, thinking, "Oh jeez, here comes 'dragon' again." In reference to military history, "dragoon" might give us a little break from the word "dragon." Another variation might be the name Count Dracula taken on by Vlad the Impaler when he became a Dragon, or more precisely was invested in The Order of the Dragon. The kenning then might be "blood-gulper son-of-a-dragon," the literal technical meaning of the word "Dracula," not the blood part but the bit about sons and dragons. Dragon sestina about done. Should we avoid dragging on by saying "dragon dragon dragon" now or does "dragon" need sestina'd with respect? Nah. Dragon dragon dragon. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] I'm pretty proud of getting "dragon" or some variation of the word in here 46 times — 7 more than the customary 39 occurrences of end words in a sestina. Hope you enjoyed that. And now on to Dr. Thomas Alan Holmes's poem for the day. "I attended a poetry reading today," says Alan, "sponsored by the Bristol Public Library and featuring three Appalachian poets that I know. About thirty people attended, aside from the readers and library staff, and it was pleasant to be among talented friends appreciated for their creative efforts. It was especially good, in this time of working to keep our poem-a-day vow, to hear how other people benefit from writing and sharing poetry." Sounding Suppose sometimes a prankster, desperate for one last jab, decides, his time at hand, to stand with equanimity waist deep and dies at peace, aware that everyone he knows will face interrogation; how he laughs his breath away, his dropping splash the final earthly sound he ever hears. Beneath the Gay Street Bridge, that floating man has drifted with the river current, wedged against a bridge abutment, held in place, perhaps, by detritus unseen, submerged beneath the oily, earth-toned, sluggish flow. The medical examiner will file reports, recording indications, clues, and findings. Was he robbed and killed? Who might he be? Might he have drowned? Whom do we tell? And I, of all our friends, have figured out what he has done, his “gotcha” prank, but I decide to keep the secret to myself, to keep resentment from their loving grief. If I’m complicit, I confess it here. —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes     [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Interesting to me here, Alan, how the dying man's final wish is honored, a prank piled upon a prank. Great poem! Won't you comment, friends, please? To make a comment, look for a blue link below that says Post a comment; if you don't see that, look in the red line that starts Posted by Vince and click on the word comments. Ingat, everyone.   ヅ

POEM-A-DAY 2014 • Pick a day in April: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Dragonfly (pages 18-19)

Okay, so there was a two-year gap between the previous Dragonfly post and the one before that. And then from that last post to now, a nine-month gap. Has any project ever hung fire so much? It's been so long, in fact, there may be readers who have never seen a Dragonfly post. To those friends, let me explain: I'm blogging my first poetry collection page by page, or rather, poem by poem with commentary on craft or the circumstances surrounding the composition of the poem, etc. At the bottom of each post, you'll see a little box at bottom right that will help you navigate to the initial Dragonfly post (from late 2008), the table of contents, and so on. This next poem in the book is thematically related to the previous poem since both deal with gambling. Uncle Ray Shoots Craps with Elvis It was Christmas 1963, and my mother's youngest brother, Ray, was hitting all the tables at Harrah's: blackjack, roulette, craps and baccarat — the exotic Monte Carlo import into Vegas. In a trés chic hotel room, stories above the glitter of games, another man was suiting up in silver lamé and rhinestones — Elvis Presley, ready for whatever — rock-n-roll's unruly King. And so they met, two sovereigns, my uncle whose name means king and the honey-throated emperor of the silver screen. Uncle Ray, in a white shirt and gray sport coat, sat down across from Elvis under the dusty yellow light wafting down on the green and red craps table. The shooter, a platinum blonde who was new to the game, giggled as she fondled the dice, peeking at Elvis the Pelvis through Vegas showgirl lashes. Neither the blonde nor Elvis paid the vaguest attention to my uncle. Elvis ordered glass after glass, first "The King of Beers," then later Johnnie Walker, Southern Comfort. The game went on: Platinum giggled and threw, giggled and threw. Uncle Ray bet with the table, and Elvis bet against. In front of my uncle, a crop of red and blue chips blossomed and grew. Again and again, Elvis called for a new stack of chips. The table wavered in front of Elvis's eyes: was he ready to wager his diamond ring, his sequined vest, his Vegas Caddy, the keys to the city of Memphis, his entire tobacco and cotton crop in Tennessee? Who was this little man who dared challenge the King? Did Elvis squint into the smoky glare, trying to focus on Uncle Ray? Maybe he looked just like a favorite servant, the grounds- and game- keeper at the Tennessee farm: Juanito from Cuba, who raised game cocks and racing greyhounds for the betting pleasure of Elvis and his retinue. On the other side of the table, Uncle Ray peered through his own lowered eyelashes at the King of Vegas and saw a brash young man, cruelly handsome but no King. Drunk as a skunk, he would later tell us kids. At that craps Page 18 table, Elvis was just another foul-mouth holligan. "Crap" was the gentlest cuss word he said that night. As the game went on, I noticed a bulge under his coat. It was the king of handguns, a Colt .45 — the more he lost, the more Elvis stroked its pearl handle. Then he bet all his chips and the "Vegas Equalizer," as he called the gun. I thought to myself, This is it, Ray, do or die. The dice flew. Elvis got up real shaky: he'd crapped out: "Life's a game," he said. "Now you're King." "Just call me Ray," I told him. Then he and the blonde staggered out into the streets of Vegas. Page 19 This is based on a true story. Though I've made up everything. My cousin Monica (Uncle Ray's daughter) once told me at a family gathering, "Hey, did I ever tell you how my dad shot craps with Elvis?" I said something like, "Nicky, don't tell me another thing. I want to write about it without knowing the details." This poem may also be connected to my MFA professor David Wojahn's assignment to write a poem in which a family member meets a celebrity. I didn't write this until several years after I was David's student, but there it is. Some of you may know of that famous Wojahn assignment, which has been published here and there. What else can I say? It's a sestina. Google that word or click on the word "sestina" in the labels below. I wrote a decent blog post on the sestina in March 2009. Let's see . . . that picture of Elvis above is from a Sun Records promotional photo when he was 19. I tried to find an image of Presley that's not well known. I borrowed it from Wikipedia; click on it for more info. The picture's in the public domain. There's a small anecdote connected to this poem for me. I was a visiting writer at the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences, at UMass Boston during the '90s, and I performed this poem, among others, at a reading. During the Q&A, a well-known scholar and historian of the Vietnam war called me out for sexism, citing the portrayal of the character of the showgirl as evidence. I felt bad about that for quite a long while, but really, if one were to write from the point of view of a mass murderer, does that make one a mass murderer? The showgirl is, admittedly, a static, undeveloped character who is shown only as silly arm candy for Elvis. But her purpose in the poem, as an image, as a device, is to characterize Elvis's womanizing and to oppose his character to that of Uncle Ray. I'd love to hear some thoughts about this question, if you wouldn't mind posting a comment about it below. Oh, one other thing, the phrase "cruelly handsome" above was originally "brutally handsome" in the book. I think, though, that I unconsciously lifted that from the Eagles. Hence the alteration. Okay, that's all for now. Comment below, won't you? About anything, please. Thanks. Ingat. Added 5/8/2012: Yesterday, I mentioned that the Wojahn assignment had been published. Here's the scoop: "The Night Aunt Dottie Caught Elvis's Handerchief When He Tossed It from the Stage of the Sands in Vegas," a poetry-writing exercise by David Wojahn, from The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises From Poets Who Teach, edited by Robin Behn and Chase Twichell. Lots of great exercises in this book . . . worth picking up. DRAGONFLY FIRST CONTENTS PREVIOUS NEXT LAST

Nathan D and the Sestina Family

A couple of years ago, you may remember, I blogged about the sestina, an intricate medieval poetic form, in a post on my poem "Vietnam Era Vet." Well, it probably won't surprise you that I assign my poetry-writing students at the University of Northern Iowa to write sestinas. And for the most part (at least so I always thought) the students are okay with the form. This semester, in my Beginning Poetry Writing course, it didn't work out quite that way. Several people had quite a tough battle with the sestina. Here's a poem by my student Nathan that deals with that issue in simply hilarious ways.   My Love of the Sestina                 by Nathan Dahlhauser   Over-structuring is the heart of the sestina.   I suppose to say that I hate sestinas   may be a tad harsh, but the thing with a sestina   is that, for one, they are so damned repetitive. Sestinas   may be seen as "classical," to some, but let's be honest. A sestina   is just a sestina. I say, "Fuck the sestina!"   You may ask of me, "Sir, why are you so angry? Sestinas   are just another form of poetry. What did the sestina   ever do to you?" First off, sestinas   use the same words over and over again. I'm using the word "sestina"   to illustrate how annoying this can be. Here comes another. SESTINA.   Would you like me to use a different word? Nope, I'm now bound to use "sestina."   Second, there is very little room to convey emotion or meaning in a sestina   because it is the same words being used. Even in the times where sestinas   do get a message across, the word choices feel so forced. Sestina.   See, I had to end that line with the word "sestina"   because I set myself up for it in the first stanza. All the sestina   does is constrict a poem's motion, much like a tiny room sestina   that resembles a sub-stair broom closet. Sure, I'm being childish and sestina   poking fun at the fat kid in second grade, but I'm not the only one, sestina   NO ONE LIKES HIM! He’s a big FAT fart face! That is the sestina   for you, in a nutshell. Are you as tired of this sestina   as I am? Jesus! Buddha! Allah! By the beard of Zeus! Sestinas   make me curse their maker and their maker's maker by sestina   association. Thank my lucky stars I'm nearly finished with this damned poem!   Shit, did I just slip there and use "damned poem" rather than "sestina"?   Fuck it, it works regardless. "Damned poem," "stupid form of poetry,"   they are both synonyms for that single word. Sestina.   I'm just about done. This here is the last stanza of the ONLY sestina   I will write in my lifetime. What? One MORE stanza!? Fucking poem!   That'll work as well, I suppose. Forgive me if I make this sestina   even more cynical. I've had about enough of the aforementioned word.   Much like Jan speaking of Marcia, I just want to scream to anyone saying sestina, "Sestina,   Sestina,   Sestina!"   I hate Sestina’s family. I hate its sister, Sestina. I hate its brother, also named Sestina.   I hate its parents. Who names three children ALL Sestina?   Fuck you, Sestina! I hope you go to hell and burn with Satan’s sister, Sestina. Brilliant, don't you think? And you might quite easily feel the same as Nathan if you had looked up sestina in Wikipedia, say, and learned what the word-cycling pattern is called: retrogradatio cruciata. Doesn't that remind you of the Cruciatus Curse in Harry Potter, which "inflicts unbearable pain on the recipient of the curse" (Wikipedia)? Unbearable pain, indeed! Nathan's genius touch here is in his repetons (the technical name of the repeated words . . . sorry). Instead of choosing six words, he uses only one. Wow. And how he uses them, that's brilliant too. I was asking all the wrong questions: Was he punning on the word "stanza" (Italian for room) at the end of the third stanza? In the second line of the fourth stanza, was "sestina" standing in for the word "because"? Nope, Nathan said. Just throwing in the word "sestina." 'Cause he had to. Comic genius. Okay, that's it for today. Hope you learned some schtuff about poetic craft. Like the rich consonance at the end of Nathan's poem: the instances of s, t, and n sounds in "Satan's sister, Sestina." Meh. I hope, even better, you had a good laugh. Word. No. Sestina.

Dragonfly (page 14) ... Ferdinand Marcos

Another installment of Dragonfly. This time, a sonnetina in the voice of Ferdinand Marcos. More on the sonnetina form below, but first some background on Marcos . . . his fame in the US, the fodder of front-page headlines in the late 1980s and early 1990s, has greatly deteriorated of late. Ferdinand Marcos, a self-proclaimed guerrilla war hero from WWII, was elected first a Congressman and then a Senator and eventually President of the Philippines in 1965. He is most well-known for his martial-law declaration in 1972 that eventually led to his being nominally a president but effectively a dictator, with the support of the US government, until 1986. The People Power Revolution of that year resulted in the end of the Marcos regime, with the ousted president and his wife Imelda Marcos going into exile in Hawaii. By the time they left the Philippines, the Marcos family had amassed a fortune said to be in the hundreds of billions. In 1988, Mrs. Marcos was indicted and arraigned by the US, accused of embezzlement. Two real-life incidents are referred to in the poem: first, the news release of a video in which the gravely ill Marcos showed himself shadowboxing in front of a full-length mirror (to prove his continued manliness despite his kidney disease), and second, Mrs. Marcos showing up for her US arraignment wearing ballroom attire. Marcos died less than a year after that video appeared in the news, and Mrs. Marcos was acquitted of the embezzlement charges in 1990, eventually returning to the Philippines in 1991. More on that in the next post. When the poem's Marcos character refers to "that lemon housewife" he is speaking of President Cory Aquino, Marcos's successor, who ran for office wearing yellow as her signature color (as did her campaigners and supporters). "Malacañang" is the White House equivalent of the Philippines, where the president resides; when the Marcoses left the Philippines in 1986, Mrs. Marcos left some 3,000 pairs of shoes in Malacañang Palace. The shoe thing — for which Imelda is primarily well-known, I think — is also referred to in the poem. Ferdinand Marcos at His Mirror, on the Occasion of His Wife Imelda's Arraignment in New York City, November 1988, Where She Wore a Ballroom Gown — A sonnetina, after Michael Heffernan Here I am again, the Great Brown Hope: Jab, jab, fake, roundhouse from the right, Knockout. I can take anything that lemon housewife Sends me from Malacañang. I'm Ferdinand Marcos, After all. And now they're after the Marcos Millions. The goddamn U.S.A. is hoping For billions, but Imelda's got more brains in her right Shoe than any federal judge — let the wife Show them. "Wear the blue terno, my darling wife," I told her. "Give them the famous Meldy Marcos Style." Knockout. We'll be King next time, I hope. Head fake, left jab, shuffle, then shoot them the right. They better all hope they don’t come up against this right. Because I've got a gorgeous wife — and I am Marcos. Page 14 I couldn't find Marcos's shadowboxing video on the internet; I thought for sure it would be on YouTube. However, here's something else that will dramatize Marcos's cult of personality. During his presidency, Marcos commissioned a Mt. Rushmore-style statue of himself. On the left below I've included a wide shot of this 99-foot tall concrete sculpture on a mountainside to give you a sense of the magnitude of the thing. The statue was bombed in 2002 and the picture on the right shows how it looks today, compared to its appearance during Marcos's regime in the center picture. This situation reminds me of Percy Bysshe Shelley's famous sonnet "Ozymandias," which focuses on the decline of the fame of great leaders who thought their reputations immortal during their own lives. Certainly Marcos felt that way, and I hope the poem demonstrates how Marcos felt about himself, his fame, and particularly his manhood. On the sonnetina form: in the early 1980s the poet Michael Heffernan invented a sonnet variation that melded the sestina and the sonnet. I am almost certain he called his new form a "sonnetina" but I can't seem to confirm that on the internet at present. Nonetheless, when my poem was originally published in the journal Asian America, I used the epigraph shown above claiming the poem to be a Heffernan-style sonnetina. The most commonly cited example of this form is Heffernan's poem "A Colloquy of Silences" from his collection To the Wreakers of Havoc (mistakenly cited by Amazon.com as "Wreckers"). In his hybrid of the sonnet and the sestina, Heffernan used a sestina-style recycling of repetons or repeated words: bottom, top, next to the bottom, next to the top, etc. (For a review of the sestina, see my blog post on it.) This pattern of repetition results in the third repeton always ending up in the third slot; to correct this problem, I've used a different pattern: instead of the last repeton in a quatrain becoming the first repeton in the following quatrain, then the first repeton in the earlier quatrain becoming the second repeton in the following quatrain — that is, 4-1-3-2 — my pattern is 4-1-2-3. (The sestina's equivalent pattern is 6-1-5-2-4-3.) This might be clearer with this visual matrix, the repetons color-coded.        Quatrain 1........ Hope  right  housewife  Marcos  Quatrain 2........ Marcos  hope  right  wife  Quatrain 3........ wife  Marcos  hope  right  Envoi hope right  wife Marcos  One difference between the sestina and the sonnetina is that the sestina has six repetons and six sestets, whereas the sonnetina has four repetons but only three quatrains . . . Heffernan left out the fourth quatrain to constrain the form overall to the sonnet's 14 lines. I think my explanation of the sonnetina here may be the first time that the "rules" of the Heffernan sonnetina have been explained on the internet. I hope this is useful to poets overall. And that my correction of Heffernan's pattern will also see wide use. This Ferdinand Marcos sonnetina is part of a three-sonnetina sequence: the second one features Imelda Marcos (the next poem in Dragonfly) and the third one (a more recent poem) stars Bongbong Marcos, Ferdinand and Imelda's son. This third sonnetina is forthcoming in an anthology currently in press in the Philippines; that should be done quite soon, I understand. I'll let you know when that poem and book appear. NOTE: The pictures shown above came from the Artificial Owl website, which showcases abandoned human-made structures around the world. Many thanks! DRAGONFLY FIRST CONTENTS PREVIOUS NEXT LAST

The Cutlass Supreme Tour ... Shaindel Beers - A Brief History of Time

<< PREVIOUS NEXT >>           Hello, friends! This is the seventh stop — the middle one — in Shaindel Beers's 13-stage tour of the blogosphere in celebration of her 2009 book A Brief History of Time. Come "downstairs" (that is, scroll down) and join us; Shaindel and I are discussing forms, specifically sestinas, in her brilliant new collection. I've included, directly below, the main poem we will address, titled "Why It Almost Never Ends with Stripping." Enjoy the interview! And do respond with comments below, please.  —VG Why It Almost Never Ends with Stripping You start out doing it for the bucks — more than you'd ever imagined, enough, at first, to make up for the rest of the shit that comes along with the job — the groping despite the "No Touching" sign, the bastards who bring in straight girls to con- vince them they're bi, the girls nervous and con- tinously fidgeting, while cash — sweat-stained tens — shake in their hands, signaling   you over to dance while they imagine themselves anywhere but there. "It's a job," you tell yourself, you’ll just hold out the rest of the summer. But you realize the rest of the girls said the same thing, and they've con- templated quitting for years, give blowjobs in the back for fucking crazy money. You don’t want to be them but imagine living the way they do, see them signing five-figure checks on shopping sprees, signing feature dancer contracts at clubs. You wrest with the fact that girls who have the image of putting out make ten times more. Buy con- doms. Keep them on you just in case. The sugar's pouring in — you're only giving handjobs. You hear what you can make at outside jobs doing bachelor parties, you're signing on for three most weekends, making it hand over fist, stripping at clubs the rest of the week. The girl who dances as Con- suela Cummings says she can imagine you being “the next big thing. Imagine your picture on boxes — Not just a job, a career!” You read over the contract — mark Xs for things you'll do, or not, sign on the line — $5k if you check the rest — anal, gangbang, scat bring in the greenbacks. These days you don’t read contracts, you just sign to compete with the rest of the gravy- starved girls who try to imagine it's just a job. VG: Shaindel, as I was reading A Brief History of Time, I became interested in your use of traditional forms — the villanelle, sonnet, ghazal, sestina. To start off, could you very briefly define the sestina for readers who may not know the form? Then, could you please define your take on what a sestina is and can be for a poet? What opportunities does it offer the writer to connect with readers that other forms, including free verse, may not? SB: It's funny that you're the one asking me this because every time I've ever written a sestina, I've had your Craft of Poetry website open in front of me. The sestina is a 39-line poem, which consists of six six-line stanzas (called sestets) and a three-line envoi. Where the fun comes in is that the six stanzas all have the same end words, which are repeated in a mathematical order. The end words, which we will call 1 2 3 4 5 6 in the first stanza, keep repeating in the order 6 1 5 2 4 3 in each subsequent stanza. Each stanza takes the end words from the stanza before in that 6 1 5 2 4 3 order, so that the sixth end word in the second stanza becomes the first end word in the third stanza, and so on. The three-line envoi must have three of the end words in the middle of each line and three at the end, so that all six end words appear in the envoi. And last, but certainly not least, the sestina really should be written in iambic pentameter. VG: Wow, that's really interesting. I'm glad that little website has been a help to poets. To be honest, though, when I write a sestina, I don't really do that iambic pentameter thing. You know, maybe I never did, ha ha. SB: I think the sestina is a fabulous form. It sounds impossible at first, but it's really a great challenge. When I sit down to write a sestina, I actually feel an adrenaline rush. It's something about the "problem-solving" aspect of it. I write out the end-words in order on my paper beforehand (though now I've discovered an online form that does it for you), and I get to work with those six end words just waiting for me all down the page. I think I've always written the first stanza before deciding on the end words to make sure it's going to work. I'm sure I could write a sestina with random end words, but I like feeling like I'm on the right path to start with. And I'm not ashamed to admit, I count the iambic pentameter on my fingers. So, if you see me in a bar or coffeeshop with a notebook, counting on my fingers, now you know I'm up to composing a form poem. VG: No shame there. Doesn't everyone count meter on their fingers? Or tap it out on the table? SB: What I like about the sestina is the reassurance of those six end words. You have a frame to build something on. I also like the obsessiveness of the end words; some poems need to be a sestina — for instance, Anthony Hecht's "Sestina d'Inverno," in which two of the end words are "Rochester" and "snow." Anyone who knows Rochester, New York, knows how those two words go together and deserve the repetition throughout this poem. My poem "Moonlight Sestina" describes new love, and one of the end words is "infatuation," which, I thought, worked nicely because what is infatuation but to keep coming back to thoughts of that person again and again and again? VG: Thanks. How did this particular sestina get started (as a sestina, that is)? Is this the same for all your sestinas? Do you start off saying, "I'm going to write a sestina about _______?" Or do you start off with a character or image or scene or topic and then find out as you're writing that the poem wants to be a sestina? SB: I think this particular sestina got started as me wanting to write a sestina about what seemed like the least likely topic for me to write a sestina about, and I came up with the adult entertainment industry. But then I realized the cyclic nature of the industry and how people get into it and can't get out of it, and it seemed the most perfect form to write the poem in. I think some poems seem to come to me wanting to be sestinas. Even the title, "Why It Almost Never Ends with Stripping" is in pentameter. It was meant to be. VG: Wow, you're serious about that pentameter thing. Good for you. SB: I think I have one unfinished sestina that I need to get back to, and I think that it went unfinished just because I had too many other things going on, and I couldn't (or didn't) give it the attention it deserved. VG: The world waits for that sestina! Okay, moving on. In terms of craft, how does this sestina work? How did you choose the words? (For example, what led you to that genius "con-" repeton?) What innovations are you making on the form here? I did notice you often do something hip and new at the ends of your form poems: your 14+1 tailed sonnet, your ghazal with the nonstandard ending, the sestina where in the envoi you change a repeton to plural to both hide the word and expand the meaning — fun stuff. SB: To be honest, this was a much more standard sestina originally. I mean, I've always played with form — I had the syllable "con" because I wanted to play with enjambment and other elements like that and open the form up a bit. I think it's important to look at things the New Formalists did to make form more interesting. I think we've all seen some pretty wretched form poetry from the past — which was really beautiful for what they were writing then, but no one outside of a boy band needs to rhyme words like "love" and "above" or whatnot today. The big change that opened this poem up (to me) was that Hunger Mountain was doing an issue on "appropriated form," and I sent in tons of poems, and I didn't know how much the form needed to be "played with" in order for the poem to be considered an "appropriated" form poem. Roger Weingarten emailed and asked if I would consider changing the end word "money" to a synonym in each stanza, and it worked beautifully. Something about that one end word changing makes the obsession with money seem even more real — like, no matter what you call it, it's all the same thing, and you can fall into a trap of doing almost anything to get more of it. I later learned that the syllable "con" is French slang for "prick," which I thought worked well, considering the nature of the poem and that the sestina is originally a French form. That was one of the "happy accidents" involved in this poem. VG: You know usually I don't cotton to that synonym-as-repeton device. I'm pretty insistent about alterations happening with rich consonance. And I'm talking here as both a teacher and an editor. I would very rarely publish a sestina in the North American Review that relied on synonyms for repeton change. But I would certainly have published yours hand down if you had submitted it to the NAR. Okay, Shaindel. So far my questions have been craft-oriented. Let's try something a bit more personal. Could you tell me what this particular poem means? Also, what do you envision this poem "doing" out in the big bad world? SB: This poem is really important to me because I think it's one of the first poems I wrote that I wanted to "do something." I mean, we all want our poems to connect with people, but I wanted this poem to change one particular person's life and, on various levels, to inspire social change. I had a friend who I met when she was in law school and I was an adjunct college instructor, and she started doing what many young women do — stripping to work her way through school, but what was shocking to me was how quickly everything in her life deteriorated. She went into this downward spiral of drugs, pornography, and prostitution, and it seemed to come out of nowhere to the point that it was unbelievable. I'm sure that many, many people's lives don't fall apart this way, but hers did. And I'm aware that she had factors in her life that may have predisposed her to this kind of meltdown (in case anyone tries to say that I'm generalizing and emails me with their testimonial of their perfectly happy life in adult entertainment). But I came to know friends of hers who had the same sort of life. One of the girls contacted me after a roommate of theirs was found dead from a drug overdose in their apartment, and I told her, "You have to get out of there," meaning that crowd, that whole lifestyle. I really felt like that was the path a lot of these young women were on. One of them was raped in the VIP/private party room of a club, some of them were set up by police officers who tried to bust them on drug charges but were really trying to extort sex from them — all kinds of horrible things happened to them. And no one seemed to care. And they seemed to know that no one would believe them; they just looked at some of these things as the way it was. I'm not in contact any more with the original friend who was in law school because things spiraled out of control in ways that made me feel I had to cut contact with her. I did hear from a cousin of hers who thanked me for writing the poem and told me the poem had kept her from following in her cousin's footsteps. One of the girls told me she reads the poem whenever she thinks of going back. And I completely understand the temptation. It's hard for me to imagine someone calling me and offering to fly me in to a club and pay me a few thousand dollars for a weekend of work and me turning that down, but that's what my one friend has been doing, and I'm so proud of her. She's staying in school and working as a server at a restaurant and sticking with it all so that she doesn't lose control again. I don't know if I would have that kind of strength, if I had had all of that money available to me, to leave it behind. I think this poem has done a lot of good already, and I hope it keeps doing more. Whether or not it helps more girls decide to get out of that lifestyle or keeps others from going in, I hope it makes people think. I hope it makes people be less judgmental toward adult entertainers, and I hope it makes people who are consumers of adult entertainment think of the women in it as people, not objects. It's definitely one of my most "talked about" poems; I know that Carolyne Wright teaches it at Seattle University and other college instructors have contacted me to tell me that they're teaching it in various classes. In another interview, I mentioned that I wanted to write poems that are "important, not just good," and I feel like this is one of those. VG: I'll be teaching it too, Shaindel. May many more poems like this one come to you. Brava. Now my last question. Though actually "each" of my questions above has been made up 2, 3, or more questions, huh. Sorry about that! Okay, here goes. What is your "personal relationship" to form (other than free verse, of course). Will you continue, do you think, to work with rhyme, meter, and inherited forms? Why? Or why not? SB: I think being able to write well in form is an important skill. There's something to what Frost said comparing free verse poetry to playing tennis without a net. I write more free verse than anything else, but I think that form is part of the tradition. Even if we don't use it every day, it's nice as poets to have it at our disposal. Why would you turn down having more tools in your toolbox? I hope to continue working with form because I feel like it works a different part of my brain; it's almost mathematical. Sometimes, getting the right number of syllables or the right end word is just like solving for x. I want to get better at villanelles. I don't think I've written a successful one yet (though there is one in my book). I want to try a double sestina (though I still need to look up exactly what that is). I've never even tried a pantoum or terzanelle. There's definitely still a lot out there to try. Why not just go for it? VG: I haven't been brave enough to try a double sestina. Instead of six words, you have twelve. So twelve 12-line stanzas and a 6-line envoi, blah blah. Denise Duhamel wrote a great one called "Incest Taboo" that's just tremendous. It's in her book Two by Two. In an interview she says something like, when she first learned about double sestinas, she wrote six or seven in a row. Good God. I'd be lucky to finish one in my whole life! Shaindel, thanks for such a lovely interview. I hope this sells lots and lots of copies of A Brief History of Time. It was a lot of fun! SB: You're welcome. It's a pleasure to finally "meet" the developer of the Craft of Poetry website, which made all of my sestinas possible, and to have such an in-depth discussion on form. Take care! Friends, thanks for joining us. Do purchase your own copy of A Brief History of Time, either direct from Salt Publishing or from Amazon. Would you also please leave a comment down below? Thanks. Oh, about the fetching "country girl" picture above, which I snagged off her Facebook, Shaindel said: "I'm fishing for steelhead in the Deschutes River in Oregon, and I'm wearing a Where the Coho Flash Silver concert shirt from Tom Rawson, the folksinger. If you catch a fish wearing one of his shirts, he puts you on his website. My husband Lee took this picture, totally candid. He called my name, and I looked back, and he snapped it." Simply lovely, don't you think? Clearly a woman who's enchanted with her cameraman. Happy Earth Day, everyone!