Special Gifts

 Marilyn L. Taylor

 

 

 

A Gentle Plug for Writing Formal Poetry

By Marilyn L. Taylor

          Hello, fellow poets!  I am absolutely delighted that you're reading this piece of poetic propaganda on Sharon's Knudson's splendid Storyteller series, because it suggests you might be interested in learning more about poems in forms.

             I'll cheerfully assume that you already write poetry as often as you can-- but, outside of an occasional haiku or two, your poems nearly always hit the page as free verse.  Perhaps you're convinced, in fact, that using rhyme and meter would somehow “restrict” you-- or at the very least, limit your options for "saying what you really mean."

             I earnestly ask you to reconsider that notion.  It's my conviction that by carefully adding some so-called "traditional" elements to some of your not-quite-there-yet poems, they're likely to become more memorable, more musical, and more linguistically powerful.  They can also be used as an effective strategy for perking up those underachieving lines of free verse you've been struggling with.

             I encourage you to take a good long look at the absolutely essential books I’ve listed below.  And while you’re at it, listen to some hip-hop for at least ten minutes.  I can't help adding that this challenge will be fun, it actually works,  and it’s finally time for you to find that out for yourself.

 

Strong Measures (eds. Phillip Dacey & David Jauss)

A Formal Feeling Comes (ed. Annie. Finch)

The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks  (eds. Peter Kahn,

            Ravi Shankar and Patricia Smith),

The Penguin Book of the Sonnet (ed. Phillis Levin)

Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle (ed. Marilyn L. Taylor)

 

Here’s my formal poetry.

 

The Aging Huntress Speaks to Her Reflection

Dear old moon of a face,
you've been looking back at me
for decades now
    
always giving me your best tilt
and a little quiver of lies—
but don't I love you for it?

Don't I fix my gaze on all
your nubbins and craters,
know your geography by heart?
    
Maybe I'll take you to town tonight,
tricked out in gilt and camouflage—
see how it goes with the men.

Not the young ones, those cheerful bucks
who look at you with all their teeth
thinking:  Teapot.  Hairpin.  Marianne Moore.

It's their fathers, beery and balding,
and the loners in their silver ponytails,
heartbreakingly wistful—

they're the ones I want
to cool my heels with, feel
the warm breath of on my neck

while we knock a few back,
shoot the breeze, bathe together
in your fading borrowed light.

Reading Little Women in 1962

Of course I knew perfectly well that Alcott
wrote it ages and ages ago, when girls were
used to that kind of really dismal stuff--
But by chapter 36 it was pretty clear to me
that Beth was going to die (and really soon).
I couldn’t stand it.  “Louisa May!” I cried out
from the depths of my soul, “How could you
do this?  How could you kill her?”

And then I’d conjure up my own sister Pam
with her orange bangs and denim pedal-pushers
stretched out in a four-poster bed under a faded quilt.  
She’d be way too weak for needlework by now,
so I’d bring her tea in a china cup and bend
over her counterpane (what’s a counterpane, anyway?)
in my long, dark dress, crooning something
like “I Wanna Be Your Party Doll” and Pam
would shoot me a trembly smile and slurp some tea.

“Read me a story,” she would beg, “to guide me
to the promised land.”  So I’d take my grimy copy
of Tropic of Cancer out of my pocket and read to her
from the best parts.  She’d ask me to read some of them
again and again.  Then she’d close her eyes
and we would speak quietly of the cute new boy
who’d moved into the house next door.  His name
would be Laurie. And then she’d make me promise
that the minute she died I had to go over there
and ask him if he wanted to go to her funeral with me,
and take in a movie afterwards. Or a play, or
whatever they had in those days.  And I would nod
bravely and say yes, of course I would.  Of course.

 

 

Any Constellation
                                    
            Dear Professor, Sorry my poem is late.  I’ll be turning it in
            tomorrow, if it’s any constellation.
                                   —Note from a student

 

About that poem— will light come out of it?
And will it blaze like Ariadne’s crown,
with phosphorescent daggers hanging down?
Will galaxies recede, to make it fit?

I think I’ll go outside tonight and stare
straight up, so we can find the perfect place
for it, some pleasant cul-de-sac in space
with curb-appeal.  Adjacent to the Bear,

perhaps.  Or tucked under the outspread wings
of Pegasus, who might suspend his flight
so he can skim over your poem tonight
along with scores of goddesses and kings—

those starry listeners, silent and remote,
wheeling to the pulse of what you wrote.
 

 

Before Roe

Donna?  Terrible story.  Everybody said
she must have gone and gotten herself pregnant
after one of the high school track meets
(she always went to them, you know)—

And the boy?  Guess he stuck with her anyway
although the people who showed up for
their instant wedding said he didn’t look at her,
not even once, not even when he mumbled out his vows.

They say his dad got him a decent job, something
to do with selling appliances, but everybody knew
he really was an athlete, you know. A sprinter.
Could have won a scholarship to Penn.

We never saw them out together, but I’m told
he bought her things she didn’t even ask for,
like a brand new Dodge Dart and a fancy
washer-dryer combination from his store.

Hadn’t she heard about those places where
the Lord helps bring girls like her to term,
and the boy can still go on to college?  But no.
Miscarriage. That’s what everybody said
 
even though they found her in that very Dodge
once they unsealed the door to the garage.   

 

 

Family Picnic

Life hasn’t been easy for Betsy since she turned
thirteen—just look at her, the sniffy way
she sits all by herself, wincing with scorn
at her noisy cousins lining up to play
a pick-up softball game before the day
runs out.  Childish, she mutters from the chair
in which she lounges, tossing back her hair.

But now, two uncles and a favorite aunt
are filling in at right field and third base;
Betsy’s breathing quickens, but she can’t
stop buffing her nails, sucking in her face,
keeping her careful distance—just in case
we take her for that splendid child Betsy,
who left us only very recently. 

 

 

From a Dark Place
                
Who are you, child, still floating
in my daughter’s womb?  I didn’t know you
in my time, yet you look like me--
there is a flare to the nostril and a tinge
to the hair that is ours.

Your eyes are sealed like mine,
but your mouth opens and closes
with incipient messages—
and if I should whisper back
you would listen, spinning with delight.

Unfold your fingers, if you can—
they are waiting to grow eloquent
and strong.  They will move under mine
the first time you touch the watered silk
of an iris, or your mother’s face.

Your bed narrows, your bones
are bonding as mine fall
to powder.  Soon we will glide away
from one another-- you won’t remember
passing me in the dissolving dark.

But you have my gifts:
the chromata of our past, strung jewels
I harbored for you all my life.
Without their weight, I vanish
just as you, moon-drenched, appear.

 

Iron Man

is what the nurses named you late last night            
as your lungs kept steadily inflating,                
hesitating—then deflating, right
on cue, your heart fixated on creating

a steady backbeat for the crusty rasp
of respiration.  I saw how your hands
had interlaced themselves into the grasp
of one another—  like the sweet demands

the dying lay on those already grieving.
Then I heard your bedside amaryllis
drop a wilted bloom—a sign you’re leaving—
and found in that a cryptic kind of solace.

So keep on breathing, dear heart. We both know
it’s not quite time—not yet— for you to go.
 

 

On Learning, Late in Life, that Your Mother Was a Jew

        Methuselah something.  Somethingsomething Ezekiel.
            —Albert Goldbarth

So that explains it, you say to yourself.