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Elaine Stirling, gnomic poetry, intelligence, la pregunta, love, meeting point of science and myth, mythic creatures, pain vs. joy, poetic debate, poetics
What are you chasing, my green-eyed friend, with your net
through these dark, deep catacombs? The gnomes who came
before you have mined all the gold, and if pleasure
be your aim, you’ll find no blooming lilies here.
Why you ask and who you are I dare not know, yet
Pythagoras warned me that angles of shame
are a cute tight squeeze, so I’ll admit the treasure
I seek is the end of pain. That much is clear.
Heigh, ho! From the ville of seven hills I come to
carve new epithets and find you two have blocked
my way. You’ve swallowed carpe diem like a fish;
how about we try instead, release the day!
Dimittam die, Horace? Full-sighted as you
ever were. ‘Tis true. Assenting to be rocked
by passion, yes, but to be squished into a niche
we none of us should wish. This gnome’s had her say.
How well you play humility, dear Kassia!
The women of my day, too much of heeding old
aunts lost their ear for nuance, drove us menfolk to
the Sophist hills, their sisters fared not well at all—
But, wait! I, Simonides, friend of Mnemosyne,
have heard from gnomes Arabian that poets
who moan and do not otherwise pay their dues will
deep into shafts of mediocrity fa-a-a-a-ll…
And so the discourse of the gnomes goes on
perpetual intelligence in epic
verse & song. Pain loves to howl in sad refrain, but
Joy is love’s true keeper of the flame.
~~~
If words were chemistry sets, I’d have blown myself to smithereens years ago. Facts, in my opinion, are a silicone polymer, and meant to be played with, like Silly Putty. So in these seven stanzas, I have pummeled, bent and stretched history, as required, to illustrate two cool poetic concepts: gnomic poetry and La Pregunta.
The Greek word gnōmē, pronounced like the fabled race of mine guardians and their ceramic equivalent, comes from the root of gignōskein, to know. A couple thousand years ago, they were short moral lessons, set to verse as mnemonic devices. Another translation of gnōmē is “opinion”, and so you might say this poem is a concourse or gathering of opinions…underground, to allow for the Nordic variety.
I’ve allotted quatrains to a few of the best known gnomic poets, including Kassia, the 6th century Byzantine and only female of the bunch, and Pythagoras, who is said to have written gnomic poetry in his formative years.
La Pregunta was a style of poetic debate practiced in the 14th and 15th century Spanish courts. Using Q & A format, a question or challenge was posed by one poet, and the second poet had to answer intelligently, matching the rhyme scheme and meter. Fumblers were expected to bow out gracefully, though given the era, more than a few probably avenged their bruised poetics outside the court walls with swords.
© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image: Catacombs of San Sebastiano, Rome, from Wikipedia
Oceantics 
A wonderful romp ensues when you cross two genres of form and a hybrid ensues. Puns you have incorporated in this exercise, such as “angles of shame
are a cute tight squeeze,” and “swallowed carpe diem like a fish;” and the ensuing release are delightful Elaine at her best (by now, I can nearly hear your giggles as these preposteries bubble to the surface and you are alert enough to snare them and present them well baked having resurrected them but retained the full flavor of their desiccation) You bit off quite a task of using the various characters and further complicating that by the demand of a rhyme scheme, lapses in which can be forgiven. It is with pleasure I read the measure of the treasures you are finding in that definitive book you seem to be studying; I envy you the time you have to do it–you are putting it to good use.
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Dos Preguntas
Words of McCoy are thus preserved: How do you so constantly
dismiss the half your heart that came from human womb
by acting always from the logic of your head
guided only by green blood, you overgrown pointy eared gnome?
Spock on record answered thus: By exercising my firm consistency
my actions are logical from my birth until I enter tomb
by acting from reason alone is how I’m bred
not tossed and pulled by blood in every fiber of my Bones.
Elaine’s disciplined words echo: I live in a north bilingual land
I speak how I want but know how to say it best to get it done
and I teach how to say and write it most effectively
so why don’t your peers think you’re gnomic or a comedian?
Poet’s words playfully reply: I live in a realm and take the stand
to testify with finely nuanced turns of phrases I’ve spun
from any willy nilly source I please quite collectively
and proudly I am a Finnish gnome although I am Canadian.
D. Russel Micnhimer 2-21-2013
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Gnomes always on the way
Gnomes always in distress
Gnoming and digging
the gold at your womb
Gnomes will make you shine
or they’ll shine on your booth…
are they green or blue?
The answer is clear
at the end of the rainbow…
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Oh my, oh my! Crawling out of the gold mine of sleep, where I was hearing naughty phrases like, “she was the oo to his cuck in the clockwork of life” and then coming to these poetic comments/critiques is to hit the motherlode.
Russel, the Princeton Book of Poetics is like The Book of Shadows to those three witches in that old TV series, Charmed. It writes new pages as I need them. That you’ve pulled up Star Trek characters to converse in La Pregunta style and bring up phrases “any willy nilly source I please” makes me laugh till I weep.
Gavriel, thank you for bringing in the team of hard-working little fellows. I can see them, so clearly, in and out of the mine, in and out…I can’t stop laughing.
I believe I am living at the end of the rainbow. I must be, to have such sweet, talented poetic friends. I’ll be enjoying the puns for days to come. Thank you. I love you guys!
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You are most welcome always! 🙂
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