Bledsoe Island

Tags

Cretan form poetry, Elaine Stirling, mantinada

Peculiar news reached me today. They say you have returned to
Bledsoe Island. I thought you’d finally caught that chipped arrowhead

between your teeth, tumbling into the deep water well where you’d
tell me of cheating wives who worshiped you, their Tuesday love god.

On windless days, betrayal wafted from your pores in mustard
fog that smelled of nicotine and squelched all hope of poetry.

I learned from you to hold my breath and tongue. A lazy skill, it
saved me sinning forthright on my own. I wonder who I fooled.

They say that Bledsoe’s sinking—climate change and reversing tides.
This time, I won’t toss you a lifeline. We’ve both learned how to swim.

~~~

This is my second foray into the mantinada, an ancient poetry form developed on the Mediterranean island of Crete. Couplets are decapentasyllabic, fifteen syllables per line, and are not required to rhyme. There’s something about the meter that lends itself to themes of vengeance and old feuds. Not my usual dwelling place, though fun to visit now and again.

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

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Lilith and Eve Meet for Lattes

Tags

Elaine Stirling, medieval fixed verse, narrative poetry, poems for the solstice, sacred geometry, sestina, the two wives of Adam

A Sestina

In a café in Yemen, two lightly veiled women,
over foamy lattes and pistachio crescents, meet
to exchange little gifts with laughter and to dish
on the man they both know well. Every eve
of winter solstice, they come together, Lilith, first
wife and Evie, the second, illustrious mates

of the guy we call Adam, the force who mates
and regenerates without really thinking. The women
sigh. Our Adam is a lusty one, the first—
you’ve got to give him that. But how to meet
a higher love, muddled hearts are asking, Eve.
Have we perhaps overdone the dish?

Frozen to the point of tasteless is the dish
of revenge, her friend agrees. Of all that mates,
vengeance breeds the saddest spawn. Yet this eve,
we have a chance, sweet Lil, as founding women
to imagine something better. It’s foolish to meet
the same agony over and over again. But, first…

They draw their heads together, Lilith first
who says, it would only take the two of us. A dish
of Primum Mobile is simple. Tomorrow, we’ll meet
in the Garden, pick saffron and capers, mates
of great flavour. The day has arrived for women
to reclaim their artful selves and men to love the Eve

of their own disenchantment. The lovely Eve
smiles. Forbidden fruit, as I know well, at first
tastes sweet, then rots. It is the Knowing women
could have held but served instead upon a dish
to please their self-created, exiled mates.
I’ve here the list of all who now yearn to meet—

and I, says Lilith, those who, clothed in joy, meet
every day as Eden, freshening paradise, Eve,
as once we greeted Adam. You and I, perfect mates
of genesis, we perpetuate the ever-present first
with uplifting thoughts and feelings to warm the dish
of pure desire. Gloria, in excelsis to all men & women!

And thus, the everlasting meeting thrived of first
and second—Lilith, Eve—conspiring a magnificent dish
for mates proportionate to the highest in all women.

Happy Solstice!

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Alice & Morley

Tags

Alice Munro, Canadian literature, CanLit, Elaine Stirling, Ezra Pound, Morley Callaghan, narrative poetry, Nobel Prize for Literarture

Morley Callaghan
(1903-1990)

The one who’d win the Nobel Prize for Lit’-
rature once rode the clanking subway when
she spotted Morley Callaghan, alone
and looking frail. She went over to sit
by him. I’m Alice M. We meet again!
Are you quite well? Are you on your way home?
He tipped his hat. Matter of fact, the doc
is where I’m heading.—I’ll come with you then,
she said, a writer famed to one renowned.
I’ve nowhere else to be till two o-clock.
This chance to talk, she thought, won’t come again.
Here’s someone who sold poetry to Pound
and, boxing, once knocked Hemingway out cold!
He’ll think me kind, she hoped—old Morley, hah!
He looked her in the eye. You call yourself
a writer? Alice stammered, I-I’ve been told…
The feisty man of letters muttered, Bah!
Despite his aches and pains, he squared himself.
Would you like to know what I don’t much like
about your little stories? And Alice,
good Canadian, said, yes, please, thank you.
And thus, two writers known for wit and bite,
came to know each other better sans malice,
gifting us this story, I’m sure is true!

Alice Munro, winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature

This wonderful anecdote about two of Canada’s pillars of literature was the first reason I had to buy Douglas Gibson’s book, Stories About Storytellers. It features a new introduction by our very own Alice Munro, since she won the Nobel Prize in 2013. At the time of the subway incident, sometime in the mid ‘80s, she’d already won the Governor General’s Award three times.

Morley Callaghan, though, had been a legend way longer. A novelist, short story writer, playwright, TV and radio personality, he’d been part of the great gathering of writers in Paris in 1929. A member of the Order of Canada, he had won every book award our country had to offer. His spirit, I hope, you can glean from the poem. I love that, for Morley—and for Alice, too—it’s all about the craft.

There’s another happy piece to this tale. Three generations on, Callaghans still carry the torch of literature for Canada and the world as publishers of Exile: The Literary Quarterly, thriving since 1972. The first Exile magazine had only four issues in the late 1920s. These included two poems by a then unknown 25-year-old Canadian named Morley Callaghan. The publisher was Ezra Pound.

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Ten Soldiers

Tags

Armistice Day, Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, family history, internment of Italian-Canadians, narrative poetry, November 11, Remembrance Day, sonnet, Veteran's Day, WWII

For my uncle, Johannes Paavo (“Call me J.P.”) Kaskela (1923-1985)

I

Ten soldiers stand upon a hill, not quite
at ease, a row in shadow, uniformed.
Arms across each other’s shoulders, rifles
lie in heaps upon the ground, I wonder
if that is a crime. Something feels not right,
as though somebody has been misinformed.

A bugle plays a distant taps, stifles,
though not quite, the scratch of match. I blunder
forward toward the light; I recognize that
face, though he is younger now, and blond. Come
closer, says the soldier in the center.

Meet my friends, Giuseppe, Klaus, and Lom Sat,
over here, Vasily, Che, Wonder Bun—
we call him that cuz his dad’s a baker.

II

My uncle stops me halfway up, though I
can see the soldiers clear enough, ten guys
just barely men in khaki, olive, brown,
black. From all the fronts, they are enemies.
Welcome, kid, to the Hill of Do or Die.
As you can see, it’s not much of a prize.

Why are you there? I ask. The muddy ground
sucks at my feet. Flags hang from leafless trees:
rising sun; Union Jack; the red, white, green
of Italy. To keep the shame away,
he says, from those who still remember us.

I’m not ashamed! I’m proud of all you’ve been
through, what you’ve done!—Then, we’re winning. Today,
we’re gonna show you what’s more dangerous.

III

The ten soldiers leave their weapons behind
and lead me to barracks of cold red brick.
They joke and shove as brothers do, until
we step inside. On every ragged cot,
entire families huddle, heads down—blind
to us, civilians, they look thin and sick.

Worse, all mouths are gagged, every voice made still.
How do they eat? I ask.—They don’t. You’re not
seeing people. This is love of country,
everyone’s birthright, turned Prisoner of War,
choked by labels of coward and treason.

I was Giuseppe’s guard; Lom Sat, sentry
to Neville and the Aussies. Ask what for,
and they take you out back, end of season.

IV

You’ll hear lots today about sacrifice,
the men, the boys and gals who bravely died.
I tell you now, the ones who lived, we had
it worse. Wonder Bun and me were neighbours
till the war. We tipped outhouses, stole ice,
but his last name was Capelli—fate fried.

People think vets don’t talk because war’s bad.
That’s only part of it. What sticks like burrs
is how we’re trained to shut our hearts, pretend
our orders aren’t stupid, wrong, and then
get bits of ribbon pinned—for what? Silence?

Go now to the cenotaph. My dead friends
will thank you, but remember what we ten
have shown you today. None of war makes sense.

~~~

My uncle served in WWII at the Canadian Armed Forces base in Petawawa, Ontario, as a guard to Allied prisoners of war. All these years, we assumed, because no one talked about it, that the POWs were captured German soldiers. Thanks to my sister’s research, we have since learned that the prisoners were Italian-Canadian civilians, interned as enemy aliens, just as Japanese-Canadians were interned in western Canada.

Our uncle was the gentlest soul imaginable. He was an artist, a comic, an all-round fun guy who had no quarrel with anyone. I can only imagine how he felt as a soldier, being forced to treat his own countrymen as enemies. On this Day of Remembrance, I think if Uncle Paavo were here, he would say something like, “Call nobody a coward. Call no one a traitor. We do things because we think we have no choice. Everyone deserves to love his country. I loved mine.”

Here is a painting by my uncle of the outside of the Petawawa camp.

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Multi-tsking: A Seasonal Horror Poem

Tags

Elaine Stirling, Halloween, humourous verse, narrative poetry

I’ve been told by my psychiatrist
I tsk too much, I scold and crow,
take on too many problems.
I disagree, of course, while texting
to my friends the sins of sodium
and artificial sweeteners. What does
a shrink know of the drug wars
in Frambodia or the poisons
they inject in wheat?

I argue justifiably for dolphins
and the glaciers and the son
of some Eurasian activist
imprisoned for the gun he used
in self-defense against the
government inside his head.

I plead the cause of mental
health and donate to the poor.
I preach to the religionists
who knock upon my door.
I blog against hypocrisy.
To thine own self, be true,
I tell my friends, click Like
but only partially when they
support some angle that I’ve
read somewhere suppresses
or oppresses.

I examine every argument—
the noisy ones I love the best—
to find myself a niche. I protest
against poverty and soundly
curse the riche.

Re. cruelty to children, beasts,
and women, well, my outrage
knows no bounds. I post at every
opportunity full-colour clips
of tragedies that could have
been prevented if more people
cared and thought like me.

I raise awareness of injustices
that with a single rewrite of
the country’s constitution would
guarantee equality just like our
founding patriarchs—er, fathers…
um, leaders—once decreed.

I align with all minorities
against the large, the many,
much. Democracy for Everyone!
I cry with others of my tribe,
though tribalism troubles
me, as such—oh, no…

They’re coming in with
tear gas, do you see them?
Riot cops with shields…

When will this end?
…it will not end. Pick up!
…your placard. Join!
…the march, I must!

I try to raise my arm
against the billy club
but I’ve been strapped
to this hard bed. I cannot
turn my head. The light
they’re shining in my
eye’s too bright.

Hello, my name is Dr. Hammersmith.
I am your new neurologist, referred
by your psychiatrist. I must agree
with Dr. Lee: excessive multi-tsking,
disapproving, clucking, many terms
we have for fussing over things
when you could just as easily
exemplify solutions, has caused
a hostile take-over by cortisol,
adrenalin, and other caustic
stress hormones of your once
balanced brain. They’ve pitted
holes the size of Normandy—
I say this, ha ha, metaphorically—
into your hippocampus, hypothalamus,
those precious limbic organs, while
dopamines, endorphins, all the
pleasure drugs your body used
to make when beauty, joy, and
eagerness came naturally have
canceled their production.
Happily, we have a treatment.

It’s still in early research stages,
but I’m sure we’ll be approved
once we’ve cured the likes of
you ten thousand times, or so.

Hammersmith released my eyelid
and produced a hypodermic
with a six-inch silver needle
which he squirted to release
a pinkish liquid.

The pineal gland in humans,
he explained, while lowering the
needle to a spot between my eyes,
has been shrinking for millennia.
We are, today, more civilized
and rational. We have no need
to see what isn’t there—utopias,
perfection, love that never ends
and such. The downside is,
de-pinealized, we make too much
of the unfortunate, see offences
everywhere, and hence, this
multi-tsking epidemic that
prevents the spread of
true intelligence.

But I protest!
Or course, you do.
That’s all you do.

Relax, this will not hurt
a bit. I promise, when you’ve
wakened, you will never
wish to tsk again.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

They Tried to Burn My King Today: Part III

Tags

#bringingbacktheglosa, Elaine Stirling, glosa, King Croesus, medieval Spanish fixed verse, narrative poetry, revisiting mythology

The first two parts may be read here and here.

Book Three

To be as rich as Croesus, or to live without
a care? These matching oars, once mastered
by our helmsmen, twin plowshares that rode easy
in a tiller’s hands, the world has split to either/or.
Your name, dear king—a mockery by tyrants
and vintners of the sour grape—I call
in secret, and you never fail to come. I do not ask
permission of the domed or steepled lot. I let them
plot and scratch. Your pillow talk I still recall:
break loose your trim ship’s hawsers, haul

the baggage of your past and toss it to the dolphins!
History is not, you loved to say, the purview of
the winners but the ones afraid of what comes next.
Your counsel to Great Cyrus could not penetrate
the circles of disdain and scorn that mottled
his fine spirit, though a few did understand.
Freed men and widows, wealthy now beyond imagining,
you’ll find them on no Senate floor or king’s list,
but they’re teaching younger generations well to hand
the anchor from its harbor nest, and stand

among the growing mass who knows there is no
victimhood, only the choice of each to limit or allow.
Your tolerance of wealth, my beloved Croesus,
knows no boundaries. Your opting to ascend
to legend frees us both. Today, I am no concubine.
Nameless as I ever was, you’ll find no grand
or mawkish monuments to one of thousands who
adored you, but I know what we achieved, and why
you set me on that boat, with Apollo’s helping hand,
up into the trade winds off the headland.

So, now I turn to you, dear reader, impatient
in your search for all that’s new. I see the scimitars
of doubt you try to hide; I hid them too, until I met
the richest king who’d ever lived and walked
broad streets absent of poverty, no crime,
and all deaths natural, in their time. The trails
we left are narrow, yes, but clean as an arrow’s arc.
If you would just give up concern; the king was never
burned! Your golden talent’s limitless. Forget travails,
your woven, patched, and thrice stitched sails.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

If you’ve been reading Oceantics for awhile, glosas will be nothing new to you. One of my goals is to restore this glorious Spanish medieval form to appreciative modern audiences. My novella of horror and good medicine, Dead Edit Redo, creeps into the darkest mysteries of the glosa. My compatriot of sorts, Alain C. Dexter, published a whole book of them called Dead to Rights. And while we’re on the topic of self promotion, please take a peek at my newest novel of mystery and magical realism, Daughters of Babylon.

Now I should like to give credit to two other poets, without whom this glosa could not have been written. Antipater of Sidon lived in Greece in the 2nd century. His poem, “The Bidding of the Harbor God”, forms the tenth line of every stanza and drives the glosa’s rhyme scheme. The masterful translation is by Sherod Santos, an American poet and author of Greek Lyric Poetry: A New Translation. I’ve included Antipater’s full poem here, Santos’s translation, so you, too, can appreciate the talent of both poets.

The Bidding of the Harbor God

Take your thwarts, oarsmen, it’s time to carve
new sea-lanes through the breasting swells.
Wild gales no longer avalanche the shoals
or harrow the rigging of a sail’s nerve,

and already out of mud and clay, swallows
build their jug-nests underneath your eaves.
So quickly now, before the gulled moon leaves
its slumberous lightweight in the meadows,

break loose your trim ship’s hawsers, haul
the anchor from its harbor nest, and stand
up into the trade winds off the headland
your woven, patched, and thrice stitched sails.

—Antipater of Sidon, circa 150 BCE
Translation by Sherod Santos, © 2005

They Tried to Burn My King Today: Part II

Tags

#bringingbacktheglosa, Elaine Stirling, glosa, King Croesus, medieval Spanish fixed verse, mythology revisited, narrative poetry, poetry

Part One can be read here.

Book Two

Apollo, source of flame and light, you responded
as you always do to rapture by accelerating
vortices, this time, from my brave king whose body
writhed upon his pyre and the bobble-headed foe
embroiled by injustices, taxations, denominators
low and common. From these ebbs and flows,
the god whose logic cringes from the brine of
lazy minds assigned a coolness to the fire,
shot killing sparks from kindling yarrows;
and already out of mud and clay, swallows

plunged at eyes and ears of executioners
as if upon a field of rye, while from the pyre
roars of carefree laughter poured. The commoners,
my king’s beloved, cried and pointed out, “Behold
our Majesty, he thrives!” The fire hissed and cooled
to blue; ‘twas even said, the golden, gathered sheaves
of harvest threw out seeds ten times their weight
and burnt the skin of the invaders. My sister concubines
set out in cheery droves to fill their skirts and sleeves,
build their jug-nests underneath your eaves.

Oh, my sweet king, how richly you display
unfailing prowess of abundance. Tales reached me
here in exile of the frantic reconsiderings of Cyrus
when he learned his greatest rival would not burn.
The officers not blinded disassembled cedar barely
scorched. They wrapped you in a poultice made of leaves
of laurel, and to Persia they dispatched you as high
counsel to the emperor. Our vaults of gold, I’m told,
have all been plundered. While the citizenry grieves,
so quickly now, before the gulled moon leaves,

I recreate ten times what you and I amassed in Lydia.
The means, I came to know by heart, thought, womb,
and though I’d rather have you by my side and
in my bed, I know your task of disempowering
the easily dispirited provides the ballast that
we need, so I consent to sleeping only with those
whose appetites o’erride the miserly and jealous.
Such men are rare but worth the ecstasy. The grid
of our economy refreshed now swiftly grows
its slumberous lightweight in the meadows.

to be concluded…

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

If you’ve been reading Oceantics for awhile, glosas will be nothing new to you. One of my goals is to restore this glorious Spanish medieval form to appreciative modern audiences. My novella of horror and good medicine, Dead Edit Redo, creeps into the darkest mysteries of the glosa. My compatriot of sorts, Alain C. Dexter, published a whole book of them called Dead to Rights. And while we’re on the topic of self promotion, please take a peek at my newest novel of mystery and magical realism, Daughters of Babylon.

Now I should like to give credit to two other poets, without whom this glosa could not have been written. Antipater of Sidon lived in Greece in the 2nd century. His poem, “The Bidding of the Harbor God”, forms the tenth line of every stanza and drives the glosa’s rhyme scheme. The beautiful translation of his poem is by Sherod Santos, an American poet and author of Greek Lyric Poetry: A New Translation. Thank you, both!

They Tried to Burn My King Today: a Glosa in 3 Parts

Tags

#bringingbacktheglosa, Anatolian legend, Elaine Stirling, glosa, King Croesus of Lydia, mythology revisited, narrative poetry, Spanish medieval fixed verse

They tried to burn my king today.
They built the pyre thrice the height
of men, in mockery of his grand station.
With care, they spaced the costly cedar
cords, marched disloyal factions of our court
to desert cells to interrogate and starve.
The conquerors, for all their nubile spies
and numbers, could not see the flaming twists
of wind their actions stirred along the wharf.
Take your thwarts, oarsmen, it’s time to carve…

To threads of silk, my heart is torn.
Our bed of down, by now, will grace
some harem’s chamber, stripped of gold
perhaps, the jewels pried, replaced
with paste. What need have shallow bowls
for authenticity? With a single toll of bells,
entire populations roll like hungry dogs
for bone. My king and I spoke often
with the harbour god of this, who spells
new sea-lanes through the breasting swells.

We lay in wait, the crew and refugees
inside a cove until the smoke rose high
and black in coils across unguarded sky.
All eyes would now be turned to watch
the immolation of the world’s richest,
most contented man. Their hearts like coals
were shriveling, throats envy-choked. Our captain
gave the sign: unfurl the sails. We slipped like
eels to open sea, rode easily the tides and folds.
Wild gales no longer avalanche the shoals.

An inky strip of cloud informed my soul
that naked flame had reached my lover’s
back. A pair of black-capped terns swooped
low to tell me he’d cried out. I echoed him.
I know that sound! The captain saw my tears.
A kindly man, he from his steering swerved
to comfort me, and this I took with grace
to hide the joy beneath my sorrow. No one
could know my sweet king’s verve
or harrow the rigging of a sailor’s nerve.

to be continued…

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Image of Croesus on the Pyre, Attican amphora, from Wikipedia

If you’ve been reading Oceantics for awhile, glosas will be nothing new to you. One of my goals is to restore this glorious Spanish medieval form to appreciative modern audiences. My novella of horror and good medicine, Dead Edit Redo, creeps into the darkest mysteries of the glosa. My compatriot of sorts, Alain C. Dexter, published a whole book of them called Dead to Rights. And while we’re on the topic of self promotion, please take a peek at my newest novel of mystery and magical realism, Daughters of Babylon.

Now I should like to give credit to two other poets, without whom this glosa could not have been written. Antipater of Sidon lived in Greece in the 2nd century. His poem, “The Bidding of the Harbor God”, forms the tenth line of every stanza and drives the glosa’s rhyme scheme. The beautiful translation of his poem is by Sherod Santos, an American poet and author of Greek Lyric Poetry: A New Translation. Thank you, both!

The Closest Coin

Tags

brave new business leadership, Chant Royal, Elaine Stirling, medieval fixed verse, narrative poetry, The Corporate Storyteller

A Chant Royal

The mongering in misery is brisk today.
A pint of pain for three quarts of sting,
fragments of dead love affairs, whaddya say?
I’ll even throw in the nasty, helpful thing
I said to a friend a few minutes ago.
I’m quick to bring the spirits of everybody low.
There’s no greater trafficker in grief than me,
with expertise in creeping, gnawing jealousy.
You got nothing to gain, everything to lose—
may as well put your trust in me.
The closest coin is yours to choose.

Wish I knew how I’d managed to stray
into this ville of shops that can only bring
me wriggling anxiety and disarray.
This poison pit stop has me wondering:
I have a fine purse that’s just below
half full, no earthly need for me to blow
it here, where a disengaged economy
deflates and battles for supremacy.
Who was it said, I’m quick to bruise?
You cling too much to skewéd memory.
The closest coin is yours to choose.

Aah, yes, the great philosopher, Duprés!
I’ve read him too. Brilliant how he’ll wing
you out of sunny skies to sullen gray,
two seconds flat. But here, ooh! The bling
and crap, I guarantee, will make you feel so
fabulous, you’ll want to stay to grow
your business here in toiling perpetuity
by investing in how alike and sad we
are. Consciousness rising, that’s the cruise
you wanna book, right here, see?
The closest coin is yours to choose.

The monger’s got me in a power play.
I feel my will and joints slow stiffening.
The sign I couldn’t read well yesterday
above his wares and oily grinning
head says, Come on, baby, just let go!
Rigor mortis of the mind will show
you, an impulsive shopping spree
cures all. We throw in guilt for free!
How ‘bout it? Cheaper than booze,
a slow, lazy drag to the cemetery!
The closest coin is yours to choose.

I look him straight in the mug. You play
dirty. I play differently. I love ca-ching
as much as anyone, but you, you bray
the same old donkey chords of suffering.
I thought at first I saw a special glow
in you—still do, too bad. I have to go.
You’ve built yourself a match stick society
that flames to ashes every night. The fee
you charge for feeling good, your dos
and don’ts, all sorted, they don’t interest me.
The closest coin is yours to choose,

and I am spending mine most happily. Be
well, my friend. I hope you’ll one day see
resentment held is counterfeit and strews
more prolonged misery for you, not me.
The closest coin is yours to choose.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Why Poets Think (erroneously) They are Unread, Pt. IV

Tags

Elaine Stirling, ennead, fixed verse, narrative poetry

I

Spy, thief, beggar, and the merchants of
grief meet in the halls of great relief,
to receive instruction from above.

The poet we’ve tested for belief
has vanished into a thorny wood,
but the trees protect her with their leaf

and root. Pursuing her now, no good
would come. She knows your scent and taste too
well. It’s time you all removed your hoods.

II

The sunny god watched his shadowed crew
disrobe, disarm their twilight disguise,
while his tidal mate cold ashes blew

into a flame, revealing high shelves
where all the selves of one book of life
lay scrolled in a chrysalis of cells.

Instructions we will leave, good wife,
in the purveying of great relief,
joyful and wealthy, absent of strife.

III

In every endeavour, three is chief.
Ask with trust. Relax, allow. Receive.
A looping pair, delight and mischief

are the cursive pen of Logos, word,
the poet’s ink, the poet’s gold, met
halfway if not more by our great lord

of commerce, quick-silvered, wings of jet;
his flash outruns, outshines the copper
coins and bits of markets that don’t let.

IV

Though mulish still, she is well trained. Her
ear is glued to all we’re saying. She’ll
steal us blind; we’ll come around to better

sight and so on, both deeply and well
the poet is heard. She knows that we
never left nor ceased to toll her bell.

Here ends our treatise, friends, that will free
any poet who wishes to see
abundance wed with infinity.

***
The priestess gathers her I / you / we
and sails off to meet her destiny.

Finis

~~~

Post Script: A Recap on Poetic Form

If you’ve been reading Oceantics for a while, you’ll know that I enjoy playing with the fixed verse forms handed down to us from medieval troubadours. Those fabulous men and women were not only composers of music and verse, they were storytellers. They developed wit and wisdom that informed, entertained, and, no doubt, inflamed. The best of them, I suspect, held no expectations of a long life span.

For this narrative series, I employed four forms beginning with the sestina. Part II is a septime, for which I can provide no Wiki link, as I developed the form myself. It’s basically the seven version of the six-based sestina, with a more chaotic end word sequence.

In Part III, the 8-syllable, 8-line ottava rima (octave) gave me the dramatic tightening I wanted for that most unhappy setting.The concluding episode I’m calling an ennead, the Greek term for a set of nine. 9-syllable, 9-line poems, apparently, are rare. Research brings up the word nonet, which sounds to me like a hair stiffening product for the food industry.

An ennead, on the other hand, will navigate you through the 3-tiered deities of ancient Egypt, as perceived by the Greeks. I used the terza rima rhyme scheme for its delightful tractor-like pull.

So, in brief, my form choices were 6, 7, 8, 9. If you’re an aficionado of Near East mysticism, you’ll have no trouble identifying the thorny tree. Thank you for reading!

© Elaine Stirling, 2014