A long while back, in 02 I believe, I posted a poem in PFFA's kinder, gentler sister site, the Pink Palace. It was mostly on a lark as some of the regulars from PFFA had been horsing around in the Palace since it was brand new, under all kinds of different names. I was Bart Farden Carter. The poem I am refering to was posted in the Peacock's Paradise forum, and it was called "Epithalamium." Even as I posted the poem I was pretty certain a lot of it was nonsense, though it was nonsense that sounded pretty cool. When I first sketched the poem, in free verse quatrains, it was nonsense through and through and bore a different title. But as is my habit I was not content the leave the poem alone and began to try and force some meaning into it. It underwent some pretty significant changes, at least to the extent that I was able to give it its current title. But even as I posted it I was certain that it was still significantly composed of nonsense, or at least of things so subtly and distantly (read: weakly) connected that they would come across as nonsense.
I was lucky enough to get a crit from someone who was posting at the Palace under the name of "Lady..." something or other. I can't remember the name for the life of me, and a Google search yields nothing, as does a search of the Palace archives. The thread in question has no doubt fallen into oblivion. Anyway, no matter. The poster I am talking about turned out to be none other than Kevin Andrew Murphy, a widely published author of fantasy fiction and a poet who went on to place a poem in the mainstream and ubiquitous "Poets Against the War" anthology which recently came out, and who was actively participating at PFFA at the time though he eventually moved on to Eratosphere, most likely because there were far more people there who were actually publishing poetry rather than simply talking up a storm about it and wagging their fingers at troublesome teenagers. Not to be disrespectful to my friends at PFFA. I admire the mods there (well, most of them) and I realize that they have to deal with a lot more traffic than Erato.
Anyway, I was astonished by Kevin's crit and told him so quite frankly. We engaged in a pleasant and interesting thread, where one youngster ( I am assuming he was young) berated me for some of my word choices, like "Epithalamium", for instance. He insisted that there was no such word and accused me of making words up. Even though he was wrong in that regard he was quite correct in a few of his observations, and I complimented him on it. He got the sense that I was talking out of my ass in the poem and I was happy to tell him he was on the right track.
Kevin's analysis of my poem was remarkable because he derived contextual and connective meaning from virtually every single line of the twenty-eight line poem. It was only after reading his analysis of my poem that I realized he was spot-on. The meaning he took was there, the connections and associations were all there. Now, before someone thinks I'm suggesting there was something mystical or magical behind the authoring of the poem in question, that's not what I mean at all. I don't believe that poets are the receivers of spiritual transmissions or that they are mediums of any kind. Poems don't write themselves. Inspiration only goes so far, and anyone who wants to compose a poem needs to work hard at it. Anyone waiting with pen in hand for divine guidance will have a long wait (or at least, that's what I think...)
The poem was essentially an attempt to use certain words as exhaustively as possible, to wring as much meaning out of particular words as I possibly could, knowing that in some cases the reader would have to be relied upon to make certain associative leaps and connections which may not have been merited by the poem itself. I suppose this is a major no-no, since it's the poet's job to make his intentions clear to the reader. But it's amazing what a good reader can do, even with only a few hints from the author himself. Kevin Andrew Murphy is just such a reader. He not only followed the scant trail of crumbs I left throughout the poem, he threw down some crumbs himself, even some big old whopping chunks of bread you might say, in such a way that as I read through his initial crit I was to make a few discoveries myself which hadn't really occurred to me. Perhaps I knew of them on some sub-conscious level. I'll also concede that there were no doubt some things which were merely happy accidents:
EPITHALAMIUM
At Matins,
pause. Doves
in covens congregate, and swans
complain.
Virgins in black
beckon with palaver,
murmur, simmer
in weather's swelter.
Cracked mirrors, lost connections,
clamour in pieces,
Pride undo, that vain adorning,
unmask the treble Graces.
Goose and gander, in planes
opposing, crush
the tenuous membrane,
concoct delerium,
dismantle the matrix.
Bell's cacophonous
pulse intones
Excaliburs, stilettos,
baubles and obols.
O brazen Philomel
perched in a pristine ilex,
preen and genuflect,
perfect the conflagration
of Aurora,
Beltane's fabulous
conjunction of azures.
****
A sequence of eight sonnets I wrote recently, called "Aster" (to be posted eventually on my other blog, "Thriftshop Tophat") were written in much the same spirit as the poem I talked about above, except with a bit more focus. I consider them experimental since one of the things I have wanted to do for some time now is incorporate all or most of my current favorite words in a single poem, or a sequence of poems. The first time I tried this was with a poem called "Veils", which was a long piece written in Tennyson's In Memoriam stanza (abba iambic tet). In that poem I was more interested in echoing the Master's pristine cadence (ha!!) and utilizing particularly strong words to increase the overall sonic effect, and to do this I placed most of the best words at the end of the line (edited in 8/6/06: no, I didn't, in fact) where they would be strengthened by their position in the poem as well as by the fact that they were rhymed. The poem was written in six sections which were initially intended as separate entities, but they wound up all strung together, which I suppose I knew would happen all along. To call yet more attention to certain words I made use of the very old custom of capitalizing most of the stronger or somehow-more-important ones:
VEILS
When by the Night in blighted Parks
Our Pride is measured one and all
We shall be ripened for the Fall
And dinghies altered into Arks
When Woods are rife with Seamen's bones
That hang upon the boughs like Nails
There will be Nothing that avails
To wash the Salt from sodden Stones
And ever more like Tree and Leaf
Time tumbles downward like a knell
And summons every broken Belle
To cry her Coronach of Grief
That sings of Blood upon the rocks
And lets the ding of Death be tolled
Though every Lass may be consoled
And courted at the Equinox
Beyond the Pale and further out
Where Kingdoms come and Gadflies go
There lives the everlasting No
That floods the rills with noisome Trout
Though yet some pray Minerva save
A plenitude of Golden Grain
For Silver Veil and glimmering Train
Brush Pillar now and Architrave
Forever though the Stars grow dim
And all the Seas become the Dust
Forever shining in the rust
The Madmen and the Teraphim
We count our Coins by lanternslides
And tote our Pauper's purse along
A slender breath of Evensong
From lips that never leaned to Brides
We rue the never faring Seeds
The Trillions the Apostles saved
The Husbandry of the Depraved
Who fill the furrows up with Weeds
Who scatter idly in the Earth
And shiver in the throes of Brutes
Who curse and beat their tender Shoots
And bring a Slouching Beast to birth
I saw him in a Public House
Appeasing an undying itch
He often scratched and struck it rich
Between his fingertips a Louse
I saw him underneath a Sign
His cap pulled down to cloak his eyes
In sleeping he was almost wise
His hunger very near Divine
For he was lean and stubble-chinned
Of Worldly Things so Dispossessed
We almost thought of him as Blest
A puff-ball in a Holy Wind
Blown here and there without a Thought
Nor by his Conscience nor his Will
Yet we may spare some Pity still
Though it will surely come to Nought
The Dragon crouched and set aflame
A Village and the Woods about
And even put the Priests to rout
Who cried and called a Sacred Name
And clutched in whited hands a Charm
With that thin Hanging Man embossed
Whose Stars were evidently Crossed
Who could not save himself from harm
And some could only watch in Awe
The houses with their roofs ablaze
And could not turn away their gaze
Because the gorgeous Bird they saw
Go rising on a Stair of Gold
Was greater than the Beast whose breath
Could only bring Despair and Death
And far away the Thunder rolled
It was some poet put me here,
Some prattling fool whose gift for Words
Scattered my idle thoughts like Birds
Without a Road or rooftop near
In land as long and flat as Death
I wander in the knee high grass
Accoutred with a Looking Glass
And with a hitch in every Breath
I sweep the far Horizon's line
And hum to keep me Company
Though not a thing will comfort me
Until the Night begins to shine
And overhead Orion aims
His cold Eternal Arrow by
The barren place I fix my Eye
To look for stars that have no names.
What I realized while composing this poem was that the abba iambic tetrameter stanza was one form which seemed to demand absolute fealty to the dictates of the form. In other words, absolutely no metrical substitutions would be allowed. I don't believe that I even allowed myself the use of a trochaic first foot, which is something I do all the time. I could be wrong, though, and will go through and check when I am done with this. I also denied myself the liberty of using slant rhymes, which is another thing I do almost habitually and which I find pleasing most of the time. Tennyson's famous poem made use of metrical substitutions as well as slant rhymes, but my honest feeling is that unless one is a master, like Tennyson, one is best advised to avoid tampering with the In Memoriam stanza. I decided early on that the best way to enforce this rule on myself was to eschew the use of puncuation thoughout. In this way I was forced to make use of the natural pause at the end of the line and to avoid enjambment wherever and whenever possible. Each line should stand out as a separate unit, even if not strictly technically or grammatically, the meter should be exact, and the rhymes should be perfect. As an aside, I know of comparatively few poems which use the In Memoriam stanza. In fact only two come readily to mind: one is by Laurie Lee, and the other is by a notable Spherian, Richard Wakefield.
I don't know how the poem would be received by most readers. PFFA would probably tear it apart, and with good reason. I wonder how Eratosphere would take it? Probably not so well, either.
****
In the sonnet sequence I mentioned I was not doing the same thing metrically, in fact the meter is quite relaxed. Nor are the rhymes exact: in fact they are loose and even reckless. I missed a rhyme in one of them. Some would say I missed a lot of rhymes. My main objective is to marry my Ashberyan tendencies with my love of rhyme and meter, and to make use of as many really strong words as I possibly can. What I mean by Ashberyian is simply the practice of making broad leaps and bounds in the process of writing, leaps and bounds which are totally vain and unjustifiable and which no reader ought to be expected to follow. Why do this, though? Well, because a part of me is decidedly suicidal and self-destructive. In fact, it's these destructive and suicidal tendencies which are the actual subject of the poems so far, though they could very possibly veer into new territory with absolutely no notice and completely without artistic integrity or conscience.
For the initial idea I owe a debt to William Stafford and his poem about an animal who ate up sound. In my poem the animal is some obscene monster who eats up poetry, and this monster turned out to be Time, which was sort of a let down for me if you really want to know. This brought me to the subject of monsters, which gave me the chance to use one of my favorite words, "basilisk" (and again, as I mentioned above, one of the primary reasons I am writing these sonnets is to put some truly great words to use). So then I had to tie the subject of monsters and poets together, which reminded me of Umberto Eco's novels, for various reasons, and subterranean secret societies a la Eco's Foucault's Pendulum and Lawrence Norfolk's Lempriere's Dictionary. This in turn led to visions of Dante and all sorts of ideas of Hell as well as tons of medieval religious imagery, and then of course to that poor drunk, Edgar Poe.
So where am I at now? As I write this I want to discuss the possibility that the ideas of hell and damnation spring partly from the self-destructive and suicidal dark areas of man's nature rather than from ideas of punishment for immorality or divine justice: in other words: aren't the notions of Original Sin and the Fall of Man really self-damning? Don't they really spring from a deep-rooted self-contempt? And am I really free from this feeling, like I pretend to be? If I am, why do I wind myself down into darkness, down to the ghouls in the shadows, almost everytime I fall asleep? Why do I never climb upwards to some virtuous height? At this point it would be dead wrong not to mention Lovecraft. He has a hand in much of this.
Not that I think anyone is interested. I realize I'm talking to myself. But this will help the poem to unfold, hopefully. If not, then no great loss.
I was lucky enough to get a crit from someone who was posting at the Palace under the name of "Lady..." something or other. I can't remember the name for the life of me, and a Google search yields nothing, as does a search of the Palace archives. The thread in question has no doubt fallen into oblivion. Anyway, no matter. The poster I am talking about turned out to be none other than Kevin Andrew Murphy, a widely published author of fantasy fiction and a poet who went on to place a poem in the mainstream and ubiquitous "Poets Against the War" anthology which recently came out, and who was actively participating at PFFA at the time though he eventually moved on to Eratosphere, most likely because there were far more people there who were actually publishing poetry rather than simply talking up a storm about it and wagging their fingers at troublesome teenagers. Not to be disrespectful to my friends at PFFA. I admire the mods there (well, most of them) and I realize that they have to deal with a lot more traffic than Erato.
Anyway, I was astonished by Kevin's crit and told him so quite frankly. We engaged in a pleasant and interesting thread, where one youngster ( I am assuming he was young) berated me for some of my word choices, like "Epithalamium", for instance. He insisted that there was no such word and accused me of making words up. Even though he was wrong in that regard he was quite correct in a few of his observations, and I complimented him on it. He got the sense that I was talking out of my ass in the poem and I was happy to tell him he was on the right track.
Kevin's analysis of my poem was remarkable because he derived contextual and connective meaning from virtually every single line of the twenty-eight line poem. It was only after reading his analysis of my poem that I realized he was spot-on. The meaning he took was there, the connections and associations were all there. Now, before someone thinks I'm suggesting there was something mystical or magical behind the authoring of the poem in question, that's not what I mean at all. I don't believe that poets are the receivers of spiritual transmissions or that they are mediums of any kind. Poems don't write themselves. Inspiration only goes so far, and anyone who wants to compose a poem needs to work hard at it. Anyone waiting with pen in hand for divine guidance will have a long wait (or at least, that's what I think...)
The poem was essentially an attempt to use certain words as exhaustively as possible, to wring as much meaning out of particular words as I possibly could, knowing that in some cases the reader would have to be relied upon to make certain associative leaps and connections which may not have been merited by the poem itself. I suppose this is a major no-no, since it's the poet's job to make his intentions clear to the reader. But it's amazing what a good reader can do, even with only a few hints from the author himself. Kevin Andrew Murphy is just such a reader. He not only followed the scant trail of crumbs I left throughout the poem, he threw down some crumbs himself, even some big old whopping chunks of bread you might say, in such a way that as I read through his initial crit I was to make a few discoveries myself which hadn't really occurred to me. Perhaps I knew of them on some sub-conscious level. I'll also concede that there were no doubt some things which were merely happy accidents:
EPITHALAMIUM
At Matins,
pause. Doves
in covens congregate, and swans
complain.
Virgins in black
beckon with palaver,
murmur, simmer
in weather's swelter.
Cracked mirrors, lost connections,
clamour in pieces,
Pride undo, that vain adorning,
unmask the treble Graces.
Goose and gander, in planes
opposing, crush
the tenuous membrane,
concoct delerium,
dismantle the matrix.
Bell's cacophonous
pulse intones
Excaliburs, stilettos,
baubles and obols.
O brazen Philomel
perched in a pristine ilex,
preen and genuflect,
perfect the conflagration
of Aurora,
Beltane's fabulous
conjunction of azures.
****
A sequence of eight sonnets I wrote recently, called "Aster" (to be posted eventually on my other blog, "Thriftshop Tophat") were written in much the same spirit as the poem I talked about above, except with a bit more focus. I consider them experimental since one of the things I have wanted to do for some time now is incorporate all or most of my current favorite words in a single poem, or a sequence of poems. The first time I tried this was with a poem called "Veils", which was a long piece written in Tennyson's In Memoriam stanza (abba iambic tet). In that poem I was more interested in echoing the Master's pristine cadence (ha!!) and utilizing particularly strong words to increase the overall sonic effect, and to do this I placed most of the best words at the end of the line (edited in 8/6/06: no, I didn't, in fact) where they would be strengthened by their position in the poem as well as by the fact that they were rhymed. The poem was written in six sections which were initially intended as separate entities, but they wound up all strung together, which I suppose I knew would happen all along. To call yet more attention to certain words I made use of the very old custom of capitalizing most of the stronger or somehow-more-important ones:
VEILS
When by the Night in blighted Parks
Our Pride is measured one and all
We shall be ripened for the Fall
And dinghies altered into Arks
When Woods are rife with Seamen's bones
That hang upon the boughs like Nails
There will be Nothing that avails
To wash the Salt from sodden Stones
And ever more like Tree and Leaf
Time tumbles downward like a knell
And summons every broken Belle
To cry her Coronach of Grief
That sings of Blood upon the rocks
And lets the ding of Death be tolled
Though every Lass may be consoled
And courted at the Equinox
Beyond the Pale and further out
Where Kingdoms come and Gadflies go
There lives the everlasting No
That floods the rills with noisome Trout
Though yet some pray Minerva save
A plenitude of Golden Grain
For Silver Veil and glimmering Train
Brush Pillar now and Architrave
Forever though the Stars grow dim
And all the Seas become the Dust
Forever shining in the rust
The Madmen and the Teraphim
We count our Coins by lanternslides
And tote our Pauper's purse along
A slender breath of Evensong
From lips that never leaned to Brides
We rue the never faring Seeds
The Trillions the Apostles saved
The Husbandry of the Depraved
Who fill the furrows up with Weeds
Who scatter idly in the Earth
And shiver in the throes of Brutes
Who curse and beat their tender Shoots
And bring a Slouching Beast to birth
I saw him in a Public House
Appeasing an undying itch
He often scratched and struck it rich
Between his fingertips a Louse
I saw him underneath a Sign
His cap pulled down to cloak his eyes
In sleeping he was almost wise
His hunger very near Divine
For he was lean and stubble-chinned
Of Worldly Things so Dispossessed
We almost thought of him as Blest
A puff-ball in a Holy Wind
Blown here and there without a Thought
Nor by his Conscience nor his Will
Yet we may spare some Pity still
Though it will surely come to Nought
The Dragon crouched and set aflame
A Village and the Woods about
And even put the Priests to rout
Who cried and called a Sacred Name
And clutched in whited hands a Charm
With that thin Hanging Man embossed
Whose Stars were evidently Crossed
Who could not save himself from harm
And some could only watch in Awe
The houses with their roofs ablaze
And could not turn away their gaze
Because the gorgeous Bird they saw
Go rising on a Stair of Gold
Was greater than the Beast whose breath
Could only bring Despair and Death
And far away the Thunder rolled
It was some poet put me here,
Some prattling fool whose gift for Words
Scattered my idle thoughts like Birds
Without a Road or rooftop near
In land as long and flat as Death
I wander in the knee high grass
Accoutred with a Looking Glass
And with a hitch in every Breath
I sweep the far Horizon's line
And hum to keep me Company
Though not a thing will comfort me
Until the Night begins to shine
And overhead Orion aims
His cold Eternal Arrow by
The barren place I fix my Eye
To look for stars that have no names.
What I realized while composing this poem was that the abba iambic tetrameter stanza was one form which seemed to demand absolute fealty to the dictates of the form. In other words, absolutely no metrical substitutions would be allowed. I don't believe that I even allowed myself the use of a trochaic first foot, which is something I do all the time. I could be wrong, though, and will go through and check when I am done with this. I also denied myself the liberty of using slant rhymes, which is another thing I do almost habitually and which I find pleasing most of the time. Tennyson's famous poem made use of metrical substitutions as well as slant rhymes, but my honest feeling is that unless one is a master, like Tennyson, one is best advised to avoid tampering with the In Memoriam stanza. I decided early on that the best way to enforce this rule on myself was to eschew the use of puncuation thoughout. In this way I was forced to make use of the natural pause at the end of the line and to avoid enjambment wherever and whenever possible. Each line should stand out as a separate unit, even if not strictly technically or grammatically, the meter should be exact, and the rhymes should be perfect. As an aside, I know of comparatively few poems which use the In Memoriam stanza. In fact only two come readily to mind: one is by Laurie Lee, and the other is by a notable Spherian, Richard Wakefield.
I don't know how the poem would be received by most readers. PFFA would probably tear it apart, and with good reason. I wonder how Eratosphere would take it? Probably not so well, either.
****
In the sonnet sequence I mentioned I was not doing the same thing metrically, in fact the meter is quite relaxed. Nor are the rhymes exact: in fact they are loose and even reckless. I missed a rhyme in one of them. Some would say I missed a lot of rhymes. My main objective is to marry my Ashberyan tendencies with my love of rhyme and meter, and to make use of as many really strong words as I possibly can. What I mean by Ashberyian is simply the practice of making broad leaps and bounds in the process of writing, leaps and bounds which are totally vain and unjustifiable and which no reader ought to be expected to follow. Why do this, though? Well, because a part of me is decidedly suicidal and self-destructive. In fact, it's these destructive and suicidal tendencies which are the actual subject of the poems so far, though they could very possibly veer into new territory with absolutely no notice and completely without artistic integrity or conscience.
For the initial idea I owe a debt to William Stafford and his poem about an animal who ate up sound. In my poem the animal is some obscene monster who eats up poetry, and this monster turned out to be Time, which was sort of a let down for me if you really want to know. This brought me to the subject of monsters, which gave me the chance to use one of my favorite words, "basilisk" (and again, as I mentioned above, one of the primary reasons I am writing these sonnets is to put some truly great words to use). So then I had to tie the subject of monsters and poets together, which reminded me of Umberto Eco's novels, for various reasons, and subterranean secret societies a la Eco's Foucault's Pendulum and Lawrence Norfolk's Lempriere's Dictionary. This in turn led to visions of Dante and all sorts of ideas of Hell as well as tons of medieval religious imagery, and then of course to that poor drunk, Edgar Poe.
So where am I at now? As I write this I want to discuss the possibility that the ideas of hell and damnation spring partly from the self-destructive and suicidal dark areas of man's nature rather than from ideas of punishment for immorality or divine justice: in other words: aren't the notions of Original Sin and the Fall of Man really self-damning? Don't they really spring from a deep-rooted self-contempt? And am I really free from this feeling, like I pretend to be? If I am, why do I wind myself down into darkness, down to the ghouls in the shadows, almost everytime I fall asleep? Why do I never climb upwards to some virtuous height? At this point it would be dead wrong not to mention Lovecraft. He has a hand in much of this.
Not that I think anyone is interested. I realize I'm talking to myself. But this will help the poem to unfold, hopefully. If not, then no great loss.
