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| Here is my Italian sonnet, written using the 14 words we generated as a class. It seems forced in several places. The line ending in "sonnet" doesn't quite work. Nor does the final line with "impress"--a tough word to end on.
A House Unhinged
October, and the lawn is turning gothic.
The leaves swirl down around the metal chair,
and crows call out alarms in vacant air.
I’ll sell my soul at midnight, and for profit,
my only chance to write this haunted sonnet.
Surely that meager price would turn out fair
although the powers of darkness cannot spare
a dime—or fourteen lines to bet upon it.
Inside the house the spirits I possess
all turn against me hoping to recover
the curses that I feel I must confess.
This is the month that all my lies undress
the secrets I have told that jealous lover
who flies at midnight merely to impress.
And here's the Shakespearean sonnet using the opening line given by Dr. Edwins. I'm not sure about the goofy ending.
Black Plums
That summer there were baskets of black plums
on porches up and down heat-buckled streets.
I walked beneath the elms where sunlight cheats
whatever shade appears and overcomes
even the milkmen on their morning rounds
who eyed those baskets and then turned away.
Those plums retained their sweetness in the way
a whip-poor-will’s lament distills earth sounds.
That was long years ago, and now I’m old.
The plums of yesterday have disappeared.
The baskets hold the emptiness I feared,
and now the days my sagging dreams enfold.
But that’s enough nonsense about the past.
At least that plump bird’s drunken song will last.
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| <>Here's the next poem for our chapbook series on guitar chords:
The Lost Chord
Last heard toward the end
of our 3rd and final
set at Apple Annie’s,
the chord hung between
the closing strains
of
“Amazing Grace” and the abrupt
opening of “Midnight Hour.”
<>
It brought tears to our eyes
and caused a sudden calm to settle
over the room that, moments
before,
was a raucous drinkfest.
It caused the lights to flicker
and dim. I grew weak in the knees
<>
even as my left hand clung tightly
to the guitar neck, not wanting
to release the strings that bound
us to that moment, which
even then I think we knew
we wouldn’t duplicate
<>
or ever understand. The lost chord
was part twang and part
stratosphere,
born of a cymbal’s tickle
and a singer’s harmonic lilt.
We came upon it unaware.
It lifted us for a heartbeat into
the league
<>
of the Stones or Mozart
or the timeless space
of the chanting monks at Cluny.
The sound wasn’t reducible
to a key or any collection of
notes
we ever imagined.
<>
It is as gone as Atlantis, lost
as the secrets of Machu
Picchu, missing
as Amelia Earhart. But not forgotten.
Even now, trying to reclaim
that moment, I feel my mouth go
dry
and my fingers tremble like
brittle leaves.
--------
I've been reading David Young's wonderful collection, The Planet on the
Desk. I'd like to think there's a little inkling of his work in the
poem above.
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| Here's a draft of the next poem in the series I've agreed to do with David Starkey. I don't think it has quite the punch of "B 7th." I'll keep working on it. Comments welcome.
G
We never tire of jokes
about the G-string. Pluck it
once and it hums all night.
She’s flat, but her G-string
is always sharp.
Still, we have nothing
but respect for the G chord,
how it’s always there waiting
while we’re out carousing.
Twanging our way from one song
to the next, our little gathering
of pickers never knows when one of us
will veer off into the wrong key
or hit an B minor just when
everyone else settles
into an ordinary C.
But when it comes time for G,
we never miss the cue.
Our left hands spread-eagled
on the neck, pinkies fretting
our high E strings just right,
we always come together.
Which after all is the point, isn’t it,
of any encounter? We slur
the melody of “Bobby McGee,”
but somewhere near Salinas
we never let that chord slip away.
The G-chord, rich
as homemade bread,
basic as a revival,
brings us back home.
It’s bluegrass,
gospel, and rock
rolled into six strings.
It asks no questions,
and brings nothing, but leaves us
knowing right where we stand.
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| My friend David Starkey, whom I used to play guitar with, wrote a poem about the D chord:
David Starkey The 2River View, 9.1 (Fall 2004) D
—for Babelle
Whether it is root
chord in a folksy
D-G-A,
subdominant
in some rockabilly
A-D-E,
or merely the major
to B minor’s
aching promise,
D seems always
there in the songs
we figure out,
bent over our boom
boxes, listening
hard to the radio.
And when we lift
our pointer finger
from the G string,
then hammer it
back down, D sounds
even better,
as though music
really was a language
and D was a word
people used often
but took entirely
for granted,
like air or water,
salt or love,
breath or bread.
I decided to write one about a different chord, a standard blues chord. Here's draft #1:
B 7th
When you reach the bottom
of the guitar neck and bunch
your fingers just right,
you get B 7th, which completes
the blues progression that starts
in E. Wailing the blues,
it takes a while to arrive
at the chord that resolves
and complicates all at once.
It’s the place you wind up
when your baby’s left you
high and dry, where you land
when you wake up
with an awful aching head.
It’s the last line of the story,
the point of no return,
the end of the line.
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| Here's a draft I've been working on. I'll try to convert it to accentual or syllabic lines below the original draft.
Zoo
Crows flock to far reaches of the zoo,
the banks of the river. The raw cries
flaunt freedom and settle over
the ones in cages
and moated enclosures.
The most treacherous
are the least comical:
sleek cats, the graceful mamba,
the polar bear with her docile face.
The others coo and chatter
in absurd bodies, proportions
all wrong: leggy flamingos,
contorted monkeys,
the sad-eyed giant tortoise.
The crows fly overhead
while I walk among the animals
eating popcorn. I pause
at the carousel where children
unamused by genuine gorillas
ride round and round aboard
plaster giraffes, mothers
steadfast beside them
as they rise and fall
in the hurdy-gurdy rhythm.
Crows flock to cry their freedom from afar.
They reach the zoo banks flaunting all their fears.
Unsettled cages spread themselves below
their comic dark cavorting in the sky.
Sleek cats, the graceful mamba, polar bears:
the grim ones seem in no way comical.
The others coo and call behind their moats,
proportions strangely wrought and all askew:
contorted monkeys, giant tortoises,
leggy flamingos standing in pink flames .
Meanwhile, the crows fly overhead
while I eat popcorn and I walk
among the sad-eyed animals that leer.
I tarry at the carousel where children
unmoved by genuine gorillas and their young
ride round and round aboard plaster giraffes,
mothers fixed beside them as they rise
and fall in the hurdy-gurdy rhythm.
Well
that was a nice experiment, but I'm not sure it's working as anything
more than an exercise. It's possible for a poem to fall hostage to its
rhythms or rhymes. True, the forced blank verse produces some fresh new
phrasing, such as "their comic dark cavorting in the sky." But there
aren't too many of those moments here. Some of the line endings seem
weak: "overhead" and "giraffes " for example.
KA
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