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Monthly Archives: January 2013

Family Sketches

29 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

divining for water, Elaine Stirling, family history, grandfather, Hannes Kaskela, painting, poetry, reminiscence, Sudbury Ontario

Johannes F. Kaskela, my grandfather, painting Jesus for St. Matthew's Finnish Lutheran Church, 1950

Johannes F. Kaskela, my grandfather, painting Jesus for St. Matthew’s Finnish Lutheran Church, 1950

Last night I dreamed
of the forked stick that
my grandfather cut from
the Connecticut woods to
divine the perfect spot
for a well for the new
home he was building of
stone to help leave behind
the crushing death of their son,
twenty-one, in a smelter
of Canadian nickel.

This morning I remembered
the portraits, near life-size,
that he painted of Jesus when
he wasn’t painting houses
or tending to the chickens
whose eggs my grandmother
sorted and sold, that

when it came time
to paint Christ’s face,
he always walked in
the woods, alone.

I don’t know what he gathered
among the pines and juniper,
but he always got the faces
right and the water from
our well still flows.

~~~

With special thanks to my sister, Lisa Bobechko, the family archivist, without whom these photographic treasures would no longer exist.

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

The House of Flattery

27 Sunday Jan 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Form Poetry

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Tags

allegory, Elaine Stirling, false humility, flattery, form poetry, healthy ego, lightness of being, self-acceptance, septime

The Punishment of Flatterers by Gustave Dore, illustrating Dante's The Divine Comedy

The Punishment of Flatterers by Gustave Dore, illustrating Dante’s The Divine Comedy

The sign read Chez Blandissement: The House of Flattery,
in smaller print, By Consignment. Serious offers only.
A bell choir version of “Honey, Honey” announced me
to a somber man in black. I have some—he cut in: Outgoing
or incoming?—Pardon me?—Flattery to others or coming
in?—Oh. Coming in.—He sighed. Why am I not surprised?
He donned silk gloves. Place them over there with the rest.

In assessing my goods, his eyes and hands did not rest.
Allurements, oxgoads, speciosities—if these were outgoing,
you’d earn a fair penny. Whoa! He paused. Now I am surprised.
He held up, “You’re no dummy.” You don’t seem the type, only…
Only what? He flung the damned-with-faint-praise aside. Flattery,
he said, is an ancient artform. If I’d known you were coming—
he rummaged through drawers. Now where’d they go, dear me!

Ah, well, I’ll gather new ones. Afflatus was the divine outgoing
wind of the gods, from which we have inherited both flattery
and flatulence. He smiled, arranging his gloved fingers to rest
on his belly. I’d heard rumours that afflatus might be coming
into vogue again, charmers of otherworldly mien returning, only
you seem so . . . uncharming. Why, may I ask, did you come to me?
I googled. You’re the only flattery shop. Why are you surprised?

He brushed off my retort to say, flatterers, these days, are coming
to a precipice. They serve only themselves—what’s in it for me?
They manage, on the surface, to appear relaxed and outgoing,
while underneath they quake with terror. You might be surprised
at how many of your Fortune 500’s, film stars and all the rest
reached their lofty pinnacles of wealth and celebrity only
because they were fleeing the delicious absorption of flattery.

He peered deep into my eyes. So have you come here only
to offload all the kind things people have said that surprised
you? Or is it that you know they’re true and you condemn flattery
as a way to condemn yourself? Our inner judge will never rest
in his efforts to disqualify our beauty, wit, intelligence. A sad me
feels at home in a sad society, while the joyful and outgoing
risk rejection to stay focused on the more joy that’s coming.

I had simply wanted more inner space, so I was surprised
that getting rid of old compliments would create such unrest.
People I’d thought were friends were falling away; coming
in their place a serenity that every day surrounded me
with kaleidoscopic delights. Why aren’t we all outgoing?
I watched good people recoil from the simplest flattery
and then topple like dead trees into obvious traps, only…

The merchant of Chez Blandissement handed me
a few coins. That’s all? He shrugged. The incoming,
like I said, there’s no market. You want to hear only
good things about yourself, expect depreciation. Flattery
is like soft cheese. It doesn’t keep. Don’t be surprised,
though, if more and more fine things come to rest
at your door, now you’ve more room for the outgoing.

That night I rested like a baby and was surprised
coming to work by an outgoing message copied to me:
Only light travelers make the best uses of flattery.

~~~
“House of Flattery” is a septime, a contemporary form poem with one line more than the medieval six-line sestina. The seven end words are repeated, not in a spiraling fashion, as with its predecessor, but a fixed order that appears random. The three-line envoi, or “setting forth”, repeats the end words 1-7 from the first stanza, in reverse, 7-1.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

La Maniobra

26 Saturday Jan 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

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Tags

arcana, Elaine Stirling, feminine crafts, intuitive, mythology, nagual, poetry, right brain, the sorcerer's maneuver

image of Pesto Braid Bread from goodfoodnotmuchtime.com

image of Pesto Braid Bread from goodfoodnotmuchtime.com

La maniobra is the handiwork
maneuver dedicated to the weave
of leave and coming back, the setting
free by pressing down with studied
grace that to the eye unpracticed seems
like nothing much and to the sordid
ear is mere fantastical; maneuver
leads like meteors, she sings the whale
song in harmony with needle crush
of rosemary atop the braid of Tuscan
bread. La maniobra is resistance ‘neath
the wings of dragonfly, your dreams;
though friction-free, she’ll slam you
like the shock waves of the bomb
should you attempt to stand, tin soldier-
like, between desires and the miracles
she sends to answer them.

La maniobra has no quarrel
with the rational, no mother chides
her infant son because he cannot
walk or speak, and neither will she take
your toys of fear away, of foolish games
she knows you’ll one day tire—but should
you choose to beckon the maneuver and
to wear her cloak, then do so as the man
before the burning bush, with awe; and
when you set upon the road, take care
that every step you take you leave
behind, and every word you utter’s
kneaded thrice before it leaves your
mouth by fingers of the maniobra.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

Nursing Homes for the Muse of Grievance

25 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Form Poetry

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Tags

Arabic form poetry, astonishment, Elaine Stirling, ghazal, labels, Persian poets, Robert Bly, seeing for oneself, stereotyping

Image from blogspot Crazy Little Thing Called Life

Image from blogspot Crazy Little Thing Called Life

The following collection of three-line verses is called a ghazal. Wikipedia defines this 6th century Arabic form as “a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain.” The rules of meter and rhyme, depending on the century and the culture (ghazals are popular in Persian, Turkish, and many Indian languages, as well) are stringent and, to my western tin ear, beyond all hope of comprehension and attempt.

Fortunately, my introduction to ghazals came by way of the Minnesotan poet of Scandinavian stock, Robert Bly, who like several of his American contemporaries has no fear of poetic pioneering, of inhabiting a form and then calling it his own. Bly’s ghazals, as in his collection, My Sentence was a Thousand Years of Joy, are three-line, free verse narratives, connected by an emotional theme. His are six stanzas long, a length that works for me too. I tend to write ghazals when the build-up of astonishment at the behaviour of my fellow humans reaches critical point. They function, one might say, as looseners of the pressure valves in the boiler room of my soul.

~~~

The Wild Life Preservation Society invited me to be their keynote speaker,
which surprised me because I have almost no working knowledge of narwhals
or pandas. Even when she told me, we’re mostly cougars, I still didn’t get it.

Stirring up new hubble and bubble from scratch isn’t easy, but it may be your
best bet in dealing with fairy god boyfriends who show up out of nowhere with
messages like, you should write a book, be a model, start your own planet.

I wanted to ask the woman who wore her hair tight like Evita Peron’s if she
too found the notion of preserving one’s wildness oxymoronic, but then I grew
distracted by the way she doled punch from a ladle like a Rolex river wheel.

Years ago, I attended a reception for writers of romance where the servers
were half naked men, buffed and oiled and willing to pose. That half the women
threw snitty fits considering they prosed sex for a living, I never understood.

A boatman in Kurdestan who may have been a Sufi told me that women in the
harems of the Ottoman Empire loved their jobs for the security, the benefits
and the low demands. I asked him if that was why we call raisins sultanas.

Whoever convinced men and women that we must be sources of boredom
and strife, one to the other, was a pickler by trade—had to be. Loosening jars
from the inside isn’t hard, and all the virgin forests have grown in again.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

It is my pleasure to introduce…Alain C. Dexter

25 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by elainestirling in A Few Small Words

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Tags

Alain C. Dexter, Dead Edit Redo, Dead to Rights, Elaine Stiring, Fernando Pessoa, form poetry, glosas, Greyhart Press, heteronym, humour, poetic conceits

Alain C. Dexter. You have your own author page, congratulations! After all you’ve been through, dear friend, could you have ever imagined this revival? Probably not.

Photo by Kara Bobechko, 2012

Photo by Kara Bobechko, 2012

Some things…maybe most things–heck, probably all things are imagined before they turn real. Even better, we can re-imagine reality anytime we land into a brand new moment.

“Internal unity promotes trade.” Some wise guy in one of your short stories said that once, and I kept it tacked to my wall for pretty much the entire time I was battling a strange (to me) new craft. They call it poetry. You led me to some actual poets in your inscrutable way who have become friends, and I’ve learned invaluable lessons in mob control. Seriously, though, the publication of our twin books is an honour, and I’m counting the days until I hold your Dead to Rights: A Circularity of Glosas alongside my novella of horror and good medicine, Dead Edit Redo in these humbled hands.

Much love of self to you and others, bro!

Pas de Deux with “The Prince”

24 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

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Tags

Elaine Stirling, heart, inheritance, integrity, poetry, power, rethinking Machiavelli, strategy

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), author of "The Prince"

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), author of “The Prince”

Entrée

It seldom happens
…although it does
that men rise from low
..outside of our making
conditions to high rank
..where fate becomes mastery
without employing either
…of salt-encrusted habits,
force or fraud, unless
…self-pity we abjure
that rank should be
…a natural extension
attained either by
…appreciation and grace
gift or inheritance.

Adagio

Some might wonder how
Alexander the Great became
master of Asia in a few years

I fear the numbers are too few
among us who would wonder how,
so keen we are on tearing power down

though he died whilst it was scarcely
settled, nonetheless his successors

learning from his mastery, from
memory and hard lessons drawn

maintained themselves, meeting no
impediments but those that rose
from their own ambitions.

Perhaps they could advise us now
on how to weave ambition into tensile
strength with cord of noble hearts.

Two Variations

There’s too much talk of arms, dear Prince,
defending states that are but of the mind
disquiets our good neighbourhood.

Learn well the mercenary soul who blames
his rank on agencies external. He’ll take
your pay, then charge you for his bleeding.

While rising then, of whom may I be
well assured, or must I, like so many, spy
a foe ‘neath every bush and knoll?

As prince en route, you have no foe; make
peace with reputation; those who squandered
their own gifts you need not recompense.

Coda

Fortune being changeful
…they say she is a woman
if one seeks the higher realms
…who demands that we let go
of all that one has learned
…no more, the rigid course
only the impetuous can guide
…growing younger every day
the foot that knows not where
…trusting through resourcefulness
its step will land, four-square
…forevermore, and thus,
my Prince, we use no force
…but strength of pas de deux
to reach the highest ranks
…by means of our inheritance.

~~~
Pas de deux is a ballet dance for two, with a classic sequence of entrée, adagio, two variations and a coda. In this poetic version, the female role is italicized, while the prose of Niccoló Machiavelli takes the male lead.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

Metaphors & aphorisms, shamelessly mixed

21 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Fun and Silly Rhyming Verse

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

alignment, being yourself, confidence, creativity, Elaine Stirling, humor, non-conformity, poetry

image from digestingthefat.blogspot.ca

image from digestingthefat.blogspot.ca

Attempt to be the cup of tea
for he and she and me and thee
& soon you’ll find your head will drag
you’ll be a soggy tasteless bag
before you’ve had a chance to brew
and that would be a waste of you.

The good news is, it’s ne’er too late
to plug the tendency to wait
on every Harry, Sam and Sue
and gravitate instead to you.
Your self knows better why you’re here,
the rest is just a donkey’s ear!

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

Lament of “La Pantera Negra”

21 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Narrative poetry

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Tags

authenticity, Elaine Stirling, feminine servitude, machismo, Meso-American myth, nagual, poetry

image from fanpop.com

image of black panther from fanpop.com

In the state of Michoacán, Mexico, stories abound of a cantina in the foothills called La Pantera Negra, in honour of the cats that used to travel freely between the Sierra Madres Occidentales and the Andes mountains to the south. The owner of the cantina was a woman; some say she herself was panther, capable of shifting from human to feline and back again in the time it would take you to reach for your centavos—or, foolishly, your pistol.

La Pantera was known also for her laments: poems set to music in the traditions of the great Tarascan Empire whose heights eclipsed the Aztecs, long before the arrival of the Europeans. What follows is an excerpt of a lament said to be composed by La Pantera in her feline state and brought back for guitar and vocals. My Spanish isn’t fluent enough to provide the entire song in its original rhythms, so I’ll give you the first stanza in its optimal language; the same again and carried on in English.

Lugar es el espacio, congelado;
ocasión, el tiempo. ¿Que temes,
cobarde, de hacernos un evento?

Place is space, congealed;
occasion, time. What fear have you,
coward, of making an event of us?

Or is it that your greater skill
these days is one of making memories,
nothing permanent—for certain,
nothing good, and you’re less
adept than you were in those
days impulsive of forgetting?

I watch your lapping tongue,
I know how you reserve your
sweetest language for the ones
you most despise, have seen you
swipe with lazy paw and crunch
between your teeth the hearts
who beat for you in hopes,
I watch them follow you,
slow dying of a thirst
you lead them to believe
you’ll quench.

But now, black panther,
language, it is turning;
no longer will the tongue
of our great nation serve
you as a concubine.

Your silence makes
the mountains weep
the wombs of brides
they dry like cuttlefish
we salt and hang
from poles

O, space and time, erase
this coward from our midst,
and bring to me the one who
can forget and has no fear
of making an event of us!

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

Becoming Prime

20 Sunday Jan 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Narrative poetry

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

breaking mirror of self-reflection, Elaine Stirling, indivisibility, integration, major arcana, metaphysics, poetry, prime numbers, tarot

The Fool from the Gilded Tarot

The Fool from the Gilded Tarot deck

A weary queen sent for her fool quite late.
I dreamed last night of visitations eight;
today I cannot eat or tolerate
the sight of starving souls and empty plates.

You’ve proved yourself adept at augury,
I pray you now to loan your skills to me.
The king is off preparing for a war;
my knight has mangled these affairs before.

Fool:

Your Majesty, I’m but a lowly fool,
my joking and lame mimicry poor tools,
the looking glass I use to predicate
fell off its shelf amidst a rainy spate.

Queen:

Then gather up the shatters, dearest clown,
together, we shall pare this addled crown;
and if the shards unmerciful should prove,
then yield we shall to learning from above.

2

The first of prime is second in the line
of numbers indivisible through time;
by self and one no more divides and yet,
more couples fall apart than gladly set.

I dreamed a long succession of the two
evolving with each consequence anew;
expansion in the night a regal pair
disinterest in the tyrant’s meager fare.

Fool:

Your Majesty, you’ve wed your share of kings;
you’ve known the pain that disenchantment brings;
Behold these shards that fit together here,
you’ll see the image that approaches clear.

That indivisibility of two
upholds your every act and statement true.
Allow no wav’ring coward to impede
your certainty these efforts now succeed.

3

Queen:

A woman of great influence appeared
her emerald cape a symbol I revered;
twelve houses in a circle carried she,
it’s time you learned the primacy of three.

Our Hermes Trismegistus bids you well;
he’s basking on a Grecian caravel.
your current explorations are on course,
we see no call for cautionary force.

Fool:

That you’ve been closely watched is no surprise,
though from this fragment, Madame, I surmise
that influences mutable may cause
your heart to give unnecessary pause.

The hecklers and inhibitors are gone;
those fearful of their shadows useless pawn.
Though fixed it would appear your solar sign,
you glide with ease through cardinal design.

5

Queen:

The pentacle arrived in mitered hat;
of mothballs did he smell, he had a rat
from whom he took in messages, it seemed.

I thought I knew the elements of five:
earth, fire, water, air and spirit thrive,
but something felt amiss. I may have screamed.

Fool:

The dispossessed of independent mind
will gather for protection every time.
There’s nothing more the bishopric can do;
Druidic three-line stanzas see you through

this mirrored hall whose smoky trails will lead
you past the regimented and decreed.
Your off-rhyme and diagonal are means
to distinguish who are real from figurines.

7

[Queen, then Fool, you know the gig, dear Reader.]

The passion of the seven came in waves
led by chariots of sphinxes from their graves;
A queen in royal purple did preside;
she seemed relaxed, indifferent to her pride.

You know me from that morn, the coffee shop,
when all who saw you felt obliged to stop;
and in that glosa’d gift shop in Amman,
you learned what still remained to be undone.

***

The fool, he scratched his jingle-belléd crown.
Some weird new archetype is going down;
it’s fragmenting our time and space, perchance,
iambic rearranging in my pants.

Oh, Queen, I did not mean to speak so crude,
Though you’ve a lively pleasure for the lewd.
Fear not, dear fool, itinerary means
are flying in through fascinating streams!

11

Eleven, one by one, it marched in next;
blindfolded, seeking justice was my guess.
Correct you are, I am the courtly prime,
intensity of action over time.

Discernment is the proper way to live;
let go the false enticement to forgive.
Let emptiness revive your rigid heart;
give only to the ones who do their part.

The sharpest piece of mirror do I see,
Reserved for judgment’s sensibility.
There is no danger in our being judged;
Your Majesty has learned, it’s all a fudge.

What skulks away in shame returns in pride;
Low valences can rise to telluride.
You’ve learned that right and wrong are dubious;
they’re measurements of true that come from us.

13

A ghostly pallor came upon the Queen;
I don’t know how to say what came between
the dreamer and the dreaméd at thirteen:
A coldness in a swirling aubergine.

I am the one who steers your silver boat
and calculates, he said, your depth and float.
Some know me as the reaper, fair enough;
my scythe is sharp, for some, the transit’s rough.

Your ally, death, stands guard at every turn;
he burns the chaff of all that you have learned.
This solid piece of mirror shows him well;
he’s quite a dapper fellow, can you tell?

The trick with death is, let him do his job;
he streams away the past, unsightly gob
that doesn’t help the present anyway
yet glorifies the future’s golden ray.

17

Well, here we are, the eve of seventeen;
the morning star gives off a silver sheen.
The seventh of eight guests poured me a drink
and said there’d be new ways for me to think.

The drink it proved to be a little strong;
I crashed into a wall in mighty song.
He said I could expect delirium
without the side effects of Cuban rum.

The fool he flipped and did a somersault;
I get it now, the cause of this assault.
You know you are no ordinary queen
to speak with those well-versed in golden mean.

DaVinci and your brother, king of France,
mayhap conspired, who knows? This lucky chance
depends on how you managed your last guest.
A fool like me could never pass the test.

19

The scorching fireball gave off no heat
yet melted castle walls to waxen peat.
I am the last arcana of the prime;
through twenty-two, we weave the course of time.

I am the sun of Lucifer’s domain,
Apollo and the Sol of Roman fame.
Your time to leave us draws well nigh,
my chariot awaits in eastern sky.

The fool upon the queen did softly smile.
What you’ve survived, I’ll think on for awhile.
The sun, he’s known to burn to blackened crisp
pretenders to the world of primal bliss.

But you, Madame, have mastered solitude,
the state of sunness forged from gratitude.
Our court will travel now in latitudes
of genial and comic attitudes.

(23)

And so the Queen embraced her loving fool
who through his broken mirror shone the rules
for living and becoming twenty-three,
an independent prime, her destiny.

The greater truth that all of us will see;
there is no king, no court, no gallantry
except through loving movement of the heart
while you and I play our eternal part.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

What connects Edgar Allan Poe, John Milton, Herman Melville, and Gavriel Navarro?

17 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

I have always loved riddles–and even more, I love dot to dots, as in this dot-to-dotty question posed by Tim C. Taylor of Greyhart Press. To find the answer, simply click on the link below…but first I owe an apology to my elusive collaborating madman, Alain C. Dexter, who wrote his own back cover blurb for Dead to Rights, as if he had the…well, you know, right!

He wrote it, as he does most things, in a blinding whirl, and though I’d had more than my free say in the bare-all novella that features Alain, Dead Edit Redo, I wanted to rein him in. Slow the spin down. Now that I see the artwork and deep care given by the Greyhart team, with whom he clicked from the get-go, I can only say, tighten those goggles, ACD!

What connects Edgar Allan Poe, John Milton, Herman Melville, and Gavriel Navarro?.

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