bringing home the bakin'

D, here is my villanelle on baking. It's a bit awkward.



Cause, try effect for size:
as you sow so shall you reap
and what you knead will rise.

The final shapes always surprise
but come from first beginning's deep.
Cause, try effect for size.

The gentle steady sweet reprise
of pounding dough like counting sheep -
and what you knead will rise.

The wheat knows not family ties
nor past nor future, nor does it keep
cause. Try effect for size.

The swarm of yeast holds anarchies
of growth in dessicated sleep
and what? You knead, will rise.

Fire of oven - potential flies
and lasting form will end its leap.
Cause, try effect for size,
and what you knead will rise.

Dis Sonnet

The actual rule for this one was that it was to be a sonnet in the style of Flavor Flav but it turned into more of a thing dissing wack poets (see previous comments about Ouyang Yu, among others) with occasional Flavish overtones and lines I just plain bit from him and other rappers. It's pretty cheap, but here it is:

I say to lesser bards with verse unversed,
and dis/junked words, no rhythm, rhyme or such:
although when worse comes worst my peeps come first
you need some telling that you don't mean much.
Now don't get arty for your right to write.
You read some e. e. cummings, were misled
(or was it Pound, or Eliot? Some light
on this perhaps it's best that we don't shed.)

O man you should have checked yourself before
you wrecked yourself. Your homeboys bit and halved
inferior styles. Back in the day when law
was firm and justice stood, wack poets starved.

You know I've tried to help you all I can.
You know I can't do nothing for you, man.

Yay for David

My own feeble attempt at this assignment is below, on the topic of "an hour^*:"

Go on, I insist. Take a slice
of time an hour long, as wide
as the universe. Look thrice
(at least twice) from the side.

This tangled web of noodle is
a school of fish, this single
strand a spoil poodle with
his mistress on a walk to mingle.

That straightest line of all?
An apple, unready yet to fall.

^*I have discovered that the basic image of this poem (i.e. looking at a block of time as a solid thing through which objects trace paths) is not as clear as I might have hoped to people who are not physics nerds. If you're curious you might want to look at Flatland, Edwin A. Abbott's classic in the small genre of literature concerned with non-standard numbers of dimensions, or there is a demonstration of the idea over here, or alternatively just think of the blobs coming out of people's chests in Donnie Darko.

A Window's Life Is A Thankless Life

So I've gone back to uni then - so far I've had a poetry seminar and a lecture and tute in Creative Writing 1A. My first assignment is to present a review of a book of poems by Ouyang Yu, a Chinese-Australian poet who I think says some good things - there are a lot of good lines in the book but only rarely is there a whole good poem. His work, like most of the stuff we have read in class, has annoyed me because although it might have some nice images and a good idea behind it, none of it goes (also he only uses punctuation in order to inter/rupt wo(r)ds). My example of a poem that does go would be Gerard Manley Hopkins' The Windhover, which starts

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
  dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
  Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
  As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
  Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

If you read this out loud you'll see what I mean. I looked it up, and it turns out that the metre of this poem is called a "Falling paeonic rhythm, sprung and outriding." I don't know what this means as yet, but I like it. So my plan of attack is to bone up on my iambs and trochees and do some metrical analysis on Ouyang Yu and see if I can put my problems with his poems into fancy old Greek words so as to convince my teacher that I haven't just been listening to too much hiphop.

Speaking of which, I've been thinking of illustrating my talk with examples from raps that go (I really need to find a better word than go) particularly well, but I'm not sure that it will be well received (unless of course I find big enough Greek words). No-one else in my class seems to have a problem with chunks of text without much in the way of rhythm (and what about rhyme? is rhyming so very, very wrong?) that don't really sound much good.

Also I've written my very first officially sanctioned poem. We had to write something from the point of view of an inanimate object in the room (this followed on from reading Craig Raine's A Martian Sends A Postcard Home [this one started a lot of talk about "seeing with the eyes of a 'child'" in which it was never noted that we stop being children for a reason] and Sylvia Plath's (really rather wonderful) Mushrooms) so here it is in all its not-very-good glory:

I am a flat between two volumes:
In the dark I'll show your face;
Sunlight will pass through me;
The wind, I'll keep out there.

My emptiness speaks volumes
Like all mirrors that you'll face
Still everyone looks through me
As if I wasn't there.

This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.

-Walter Benjamin, Theses On The Philosophy Of History

Fucken A.

An office with a sign on the door reading DO NOT ENTER. MONKEY SORTING IN PROGRESS. Enter ME, a monkey. Enter a well-groomed, faux-English accented CHIMPANZEE.

Chimpanzee:
Hi.

Me:
Hi

Chimpanzee:
The ape can’t see you just yet, but if you’ll read through and fill in these forms he’ll be with you in a moment. Help yourself to a banana.

Me:
Very good.

Time passes. ME reads forms and writes on forms and gets bored and wishes there was a crossword on the back of any of the forms and considers looking under the desk in search of crosswords. More time passes. Enter a paunchy APE.

Ape:
Hi.

Me:
Hi.

Ape:
So, you want a shitty job in a call centre.

Me:
Yes.

Ape:
Why is that? You don’t look like you’re dumber than the average monkey.

Me:
I have recently moved into the village of Lower Expectation and as I am now a beggar I am no longer a chooser.

Ape:
Very good. So, would you like to work full time or part time?

Me:
Part time.

Ape:
Why is that? Oops, I already used that one didn’t I? For what reason is that?

Me:
Because otherwise the vital juices would be squished from my soul and I would become an empty husk. This will happen anyway, but if it’s part-time I can preserve my illusions.

Ape:
You are aware that the contract you just signed means that you technically no longer have ownership of the soul?

Me:
Yes, I read it during the half hour you left me waiting in the front office while you were talking to other monkeys.

Ape:
Good. Glad to have that straight. What is it that attracted you to this particular job?

Me:
Masochism brought on by the feeling that I have perpetually to atone for some unspecified sin or sins. This job looked like it was worse than most of the others. Also poverty.

Ape:
Monkeys like you make excellent employees.

Me:
Thank you.

Ape:
I may not see you again before you leave, as I am very busy sorting monkeys, but I wish you all the best. One of my chimpanzees will conduct you through the tests.

Exit the APE, enter another CHIMPANZEE, this one smaller, blonder and with more authentic intonation than the first. The CHIMPANZEE conducts ME through a range of quizzes, ordeals, and trials by fire and toad, epitomised by the question below.

Chimpanzee:
Which of the following best describes your philosophy of customer service? Remember there is no right answer.

a) Manhattan keep on making it, Brooklyn keep on taking it.
b) Life is cheap, bananas are expensive.
c) Remember there is no right answer.

Me:
Let me tell you instead about a time when I delivered excellent customer service and exceeded customer expectations. Also I will tell you about the time I made a nun cry.

Chimpanzee:
That was not the right answer. Can you peel and reassemble a banana in under 45 seconds, wearing a blindfold? And do it so well that the banana’s own mother wouldn’t know a thing had happened?

Me:
Yes.

Chimpanzee:
Show me.

Me:
I just did. You were blinking.

Chimpanzee:
Very impressive. I will now shake you by the hand to convey a feeling of fellow-primateness and conduct you off the premises. Kind regards, Chimp.

Exeunt omnes. The lights come down, the curtain closes.

earlier this evening a green serpent crawled up from the base of my spine and through my chest, sinking its fangs into my heart and infusing my blood with the pure venom of rage.

that is all

Villanelles

so while reading Neil Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors I ran across a rondel^* which reminded me that I'd been meaning to find out the 411 on a similar(ish) kind of poem called a villanelle.

it turns out that the villanelle is a French form imported into English and consists of 19 lines arranged into five triplets and a closing quatrain. the line lengths and meters and rhythms are entirely a matter of personal choice, but the line endings must rhyme like dis:

aba aba aba aba aba abaa.

yes: there are only two rhymes allowed. it gets worse, though: the first line of the first stanza must also be the last line of the second and fourth stanzas, and the last line of the first stanza must be the last line of the third and fifth stanzas. these two repeated lines must then also be the last two lines of the final stanza.

to illustrate: probably the most famous example of a villanelle (or at least the one I'm most familiar with) is Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night which on rereading is not nearly as great as it was when I was a teenager, but still good (with repeated lines bolded and italicized for the edification and education of the reader):

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night,

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night,

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 
  
a few more examples: Oscar Wilde's Theocritus; Roethke's The Waking; Sylvia Plath's Admonitions; and an unexpected Entropic Villanelle from Thomas M. Disch.

(note: all of the above shamelessly cribbed from Vince Gotera's excellent Craft of Poetry and Emily Lloyd's Villanelle Central.)

^* "Reading the Entrails: A Rondel", Neil Gaiman
 
They’ll call it chance, or luck, or call it Fate -
The cards and stars that tumble as they will.
Tomorrow manifests and brings the bill
For every kiss and kill, the small and great.
You want to know the future, love? Then wait:
I’ll answer your impatient questions. Still -
They’ll call it chance, or luck, or call it Fate,
The cards and stars that tumble as they will.

I’ll come to you tonight, dear, when it’s late,
You will not see me; you may feel a chill.
I’ll wait until you sleep, then take my fill,
And that will be your future on a plate.
They’ll call it chance, or luck, or call it Fate.


(it's mainly the way there's the repetition of lines that reminded me)

could all images for this blog go under /images/write please?
write on maestro

let it begin.

I’m not quite certain what we’ll do with this, but it’s going to be all about the writing. I’m sure you know how much I love to read. There are few people who have escaped my acquaintance without suffering at least one rant about how just completely fucking brilliant some book or other is, and you’ve been lucky if it was just the one (and to those who’re into the triple figures by now, my sincere apologies.) But loving books so and spending all your time reading them is dangerous in the same way that hanging out with other people’s babies is: sooner or later you want one of your own.
mmYou know that it’s different when you’re not just visiting for awhile. You know you’ll need to take on extra responsibilities and wake up in the middle of the night when the fucker needs you and actually make a commitment to something other that’s not just for Christmas and maybe stop being a child yourself. There will be nappies to change and vomit to clean up. You’re aware of overpopulation, and the gratuitousness of the act, but but but - to sprain the analogy, the biological clock is ticking and you’re getting broody like a hen.
mmThis is the situation I’ve been in for a long time. Unlike a child, however, which any fools can (and often do) make by a moment’s thoughtlessness, a book requires a sustained act of thoughtfulness. Hell, even writing this has been the longest I’ve concentrated on anything bar a crossword or my own misery since I finished uni. There are problems to be overcome: the problem of what to write; the problem of why we write; the problems of how, where and when; the problem of the terror that gnaws my innards at the thought of being read; a thousand others. 
mmFortunately for us, we are not solitary genii scribbling consumptively in garrets. We are friends, and when put together may constitute a whole functioning person. 
mmOnwards.