A Day for Reading Lorca

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Canadian poet, crown of sonnets, Elaine Stirling, Federico Garcia Lorca, sonnet redouble, Spanish poets

~~a Sonnet Redoublé~~

It’s been years since I composed one of these insanely long forms. The sonnet redoublé, also known as a crown of sonnets, consists of 14 interconnected poems, 14 lines each, concluding with a 15th, the “crown”. With all except the final sonnet, a traditional rhyme scheme is used. I chose Shakespearean (ababcdcdefefgg) because you only have to rhyme the toughest words once.

Redoublés are fun for two reasons. First, they circle round like a daisy chain. The last line of each sonnet becomes the opening line of the next, all the way to the 14th, which ends with the first line of poem #1. Then, you incorporate all the first lines to create the 15th, the crown sonnet, which hopefully makes some kind of esoteric sense. Or not.

If you’ve spent time at my blog, you’ll know I’m partial to form poetry, especially glosas. The medieval Spanish form allows me to pay homage to a poet by selecting a favourite quatrain and expanding it in a kind of mind meld to 16 lines.

To honour Federico Garcia Lorca’s life and body of work, I wanted something more intricate. This crown of sonnets, 210 lines, I dedicate to him.

I

Today’s a good day for reading Lorca.
The rivers are clogged with expectation,
and my biodegradable fork, a
feeble idea, dissolved. Tarnation
is the new black, have you heard? Eternal
cycling from, we’re all going to die, to fie,
what yonder star retweets me? Diurnal,
rusty-winged moths with double tiger eye
know better than to rub their dust on sills.
True nature leaves no trace repeatable,
and yet again is what we crave, more thrills
that shrink with every curséd syllable.
I’ve unknowns still uncounted to deploy,
surprises by the wayside to enjoy.

II

Surprises by the wayside to enjoy
fly past the inert bullet of I know.
Familiarity’s a prick, a ploy
that hardens like cement. It cannot flow
beyond itself. Sure, the satisfaction
of a sour belch is undeniable,
but does it need an audience? Action
from the gut will prove most reliable
when whispered to the heart. A bitter tongue,
first cousin to a slaver’s whip, derives
her pleasure from reduction, calling dumb
whoever disagrees and thus, survives.
The kind of thinking once called critical
has desiccated to the cynical.

III

Has desiccated to the cynical
like coconut in shreds improved our lot?
Sometimes a whinery of comical
produces half-digestible merlot,
but if I’ve tried your viewpoint thrice and spat,
your cherry nose and cardboard undertones
won’t spur me to explore your discount rack.
I’ll find a Spanish poet with good bones
and practice conjugations of to be
until I can distinguish who I am
from who I tried to be. Not hard to see
in darkened rooms I know, but where’s the glam?
Too many friends I’ve lost to hopelessness,
a most unprofitable business.

IV

A most unprofitable business
seems a peculiar thing to follow, yet
every moment spent deploring, I miss
another vital chance to grow my net.
Creation knows no negative; it flows
in one direction, forward, shucking all
that won’t keep up. To willing hearts, it shows
in fleeting increments the secret call
that all of us, devoid of guilt and blame,
do not give up at death. The Spaniard wrote:
But all must know I did not die. No shame
accompanied his hope. On this I dote.
My sonnet crown is scarce a third complete,
but I must rest. I will return, replete.

V

But I must rest. I will return, replete,
replenished. Thoreau promised, Emerson
and Franklin too, to bring new versions sweet
wherein the joyful carries on, person
after person—short lives, long, tragical
or magical, tyrannical or—wait!
Systems of belief? Problematical.
Oh, how I’d love to give it you to straight,
cite another thousand who believe—no!
I walked that serpent road to no avail,
convinced myself your interest, at first so
keen, was proof. Of what? We’re doomed to fail?
The only thing we’re doomed to is belief.
The content’s up to you, not me. Relief!

VI

The content’s up to you, not me. Relief
is like the speck at every tunnel’s end
of light, a nose above deep water. Grief
will have its way when dying kin or friend
departs, but must I make it resident?
If so, says who? Chronic anger, too,
corrodes my limbic ease. No president
or premier ever will climb up my flue.
Attention’s far too valuable to waste
on creatures, sods, and views opposed my ken.
The moral high ground is a mash of paste
& sticks & stones that hurt but never bend.
And while I miss your flash of smile and wit,
This fishy brain too many times has bit.

VII

This fishy brain too many times has bit
the barbéd hooks that hang from riverbanks.
Some worms, I must admit, give quite a hit,
though I am oft too generous with thanks.
If thus far you have traveled, friend, advice
I freely give. Who quickly notes a flaw
but never compliments is built of ice
and will not tolerate, for long, your thaw.
There is great industry in victimhood,
and martyrdom still holds a sway, but way
beyond these glaciated pools lie good
the likes of which you cannot see today.
You need not die to enter Paradise.
Behold your hand. No other holds the dice.

VIII

Behold your hand. No other holds the dice.
A guidebook with the odds you’ll get at birth:
polarities of DNA and vice,
exposure to the best of life or worst;
but life is not a sentence, it’s a poem
not a crap shoot but a house that favours
you within a vast hemispheric dome
like Hagia Sophia of flavours,
scents & friendships for your select choosing.
What hems me in are not the rules. My thoughts
can soar beyond what is to cruising
heights and imagine floating garden plots.
Like the ancients did in Xochimilco,
I will see the best and let my will go.

IX

I will see the best and let my will go
deep or sideways, lose myself in crowds or
stand on stage alone and feel the lights blow
out, like at the Globe. If I’m wanting more,
then more is right. It’s all so simple when
I surrender belief that there’s a pie
with slices growing skinnier. A pen
well wrought can grind to crumbs the fattest lie.
I am no child of adverse circumstance,
nor are you. I will not lord my pity
over equals. I’d rather learn their dance
and feel the broken tiles of their city.
I see the witty brightness in your eyes,
assured that tragedy’s a thin disguise.

X

Assured that tragedy’s a thin disguise,
I’m tempted toward Shakespearean or rock
bands from the 70s. Oh, how life flies
in the face of stubbornness! So much schlock
around debates and conversations. You,
dear Lorca, walked into the worst of them.
Did they who pulled the triggers first review
their stance on right humanity? We hem,
rebut, we haw; the loudest of us seem
to win, step up to podiums and grin,
behold the size of me! A nasty dream,
it is upon us. How else to begin
this day? This day. There is no other way.
Such past as merits keeps the worst at bay.

XI

Such past as merits keeps the worst at bay,
so do not scratch it up again. A bored
and empty mind will crave its dimshit say.
God knows, Facebook posts work like a toy sword.
I love the meme: is it true? Is it kind?
Is it necessary? Two out of three
IS bad, sour belcher! Are you mean—or blind?
Restraint, like all good things, is also free.
Enough of me. Poetic roads run long
sometimes, and tedium gets in the way.
Ennui creeps into clockworks with a bong
upside the head and does not go away—
or so it seems. I want the wildest dreams
and will not cease my poking at new schemes.

XII

And will not cease my poking at new schemes.
Like all good children everywhere, I want
and want the better and the more it seems
I let them in, they come. No need to haunt
the hollow halls of other people’s fears.
Projection is a curious thing. Doc Jung,
he knew the value of a shadow. Weres
and vampires, real or not, know how to bung
a body electric. Does one suck it
up, the stupid arrogance of power-
hungry maniacs, or take the full bit
in one’s mouth? Horse feathers! I’ll seize this hour
and ride it how I like—slow walk, canter,
maybe gallop for the thrill. Such banter…

XIII

Maybe gallop for the thrill, such banter,
self-indulgence, long live the metaphor!
Will this crown of fucking sonnets ever
find a door?! I’m crawling, Rico! This floor
of azulejo tiles reverberates
with the music of your plays and poems.
Where’er you fell, you are not there; the gaits
of Andalusian lovers are your home.
With varieties of tongue, you’re jambing
truths to anyone with ears, belly, heart.
Dactyls, trochees, or Anglo iambing,
you do it all with verve. You help me start
with duende and from there it’s anywhere;
I feel your words like raindrops in my hair.

XIV

I feel your words like raindrops in my hair
of fabled storylands that flow through blood.
Uncorking bottles stored in caves and lairs.
I want to hold a fistful of the mud
tramped down by boots marching to a bugle
played by a black-haired youth whose eye you caught,
and catch the lust that is never frugal,
for what is passion but a sweet onslaught
of atomic dance, unseeable to
all but lover and beloved who trust
and won’t adhere to webs of reason’s glue?
I shall begin. This moment, here, I must.
Diving new depths like a mother orca,
today’s a good day for reading Lorca.

XV – The Crown

Today’s a good day for reading Lorca
surprises by the wayside. To enjoy
has desiccated to the cynical,
a most unprofitable business,
but I must rest. I will return, replete.
The content’s up to you, not me. Relief,
this fishy brain too many times has bit.
Behold your hand. No other holds the dice.
I will see the best and let my will go,
assured that tragedy’s a thin disguise.
Such past as merits keeps the worst at bay
and will not cease my poking at new schemes.
Maybe gallop for the thrill, such banter—
I feel your words like raindrops in my hair.

© Elaine Stirling, 2018

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The Hermetic Poetic Guide to Sustainable Thriving

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alchemy, as above so below, brave new business leadership, crown of sonnets, culminations, departures and arrivals, Egyptian mythology, Elaine Stirling, Emerald Tablets, esoterica, Hermes Trismegistus, interpretation, Law of Attraction, Mercury, nagual, Renaissance form poetry, sonnet redouble, The Corporate Storyteller, Thoth, transmutational processes

I – In Truth Lies Fiction Fact

If words like powerless should lurk within
your day’s vocabulary, if life feels
like a three-penny opera that no
one wants to pay to see—the jerks! and win
equates to loss, you hate your boss, the deals
you thought were watertight fall through, I’ll show
you something different, a map that moves
you over grooves, a slam without the damn
that dynasties who knew a thing or two
about prosperity hooked onto. Clues
have always lain around like desert sand;
agendas sinister have strewn them few
and far between. Well, here’s the all of All—
the gig, no bites, the rise without the fall.

II – Above Below, You Are the Envelope

The gig, no bites, the rise without the fall,
she’s already happening, the higher
you expands toward ever more perfection;
it’s the puny mind that falls behind, all
caught up in the past with proof! The flyer
of the gods, great Hermes, with pure gumption
set it up. You are hermetic, sealed, an
envelope with higher thoughts and lower,
and these cannot for long fly separate ways.
The skank can’t run from diplomat; to ban
the coward from the bro disempowers
both. And by the way, you’re on full display—
the best, the worst—which may initially
strike you as far beyond reality.

III – From Inside the Insidest

Strike, you, as far beyond reality
as possible! This is the stretch that’s asked
by Infinitely Smart, your future best
that calls to you from Love’s supremacy
where every answer brings the question, tasked
to fire up your passions and interest—
listen up!—then brings you strange new people,
some are cute, some acutely scary. They,
with fine detail, arrive to pave your road
with all you’ve stored nucleically—feeble
or forthright, it’s your clay and mortar. Say
what you like, friend, but blaming will corrode
pipes and dreams. Seeing mostly failure, then
you would be right, the worlds of crime and sin.

IV – Adapt: Dilute or Strengthen

You would be right. The worlds of crime and sin
will never let you reach the bottom where
the body lies, though they’ll happily let
you chase those paths of misery in
ratios of your choosing—where is the care,
the love? And finding disappointment yet
again. Ta-da! So look the other way.
Everyone’s well-meaning, doing their best;
their means may not accord with yours, but it’s
not your mess to straighten. My inner ray
of hope shines just as bright as yours. The test
is each to see and find our own; our wits
mirror belief, no more. Let’s overhaul,
for once, forgive, forget, for what!?—are all.

V – The Great Big Inside Family

For once, forgive, forget, for what!?—are all
the beads that loop you through the string of life
and leave no residue. The addict’s pull—
I want it now!—the thoughtless, inner brawl
contains the speed, but unaware, brings strife.
Your multitudes, when leaderless, are fools,
an arrow with no head, bandwagoneers.
Throw off your fears, and penetrate those thoughts!
Allow no whine to perpetrate, for once,
and then again, a third, and persevere
until you feel the loosening of knots.
This is forgive, and it’s for getting! Fronts
of old resistance will march through, you’ll see,
designed to offer upward lift, to free.

VI – Nothing Till it Hits the Earth

Designed to offer upward lift, to free,
the density of conflict is the cold
that rises heat, the solar you. Avoid
the trollish need to join the fray, the fee
is too high. Frogs trapped in a well grow old
and croak, stay sadly until death, unbuoyed.
Until you can fulfil the rise, the fall
is mere excuse, a laziness—here’s why
I can’t. Or won’t. Oh my, the litanies!
Poetic rants, a stomping folderol
when lunar cool, STFU, would dry
the swamp to peat & fuel; then hopeful breeze
must spark the flame that rises you and me,
and not enslave you to conformity.

VII – Be Fussy Who You Play With

And not enslave you to conformity,
Uriah Heepfulness, a sickish kind
of helpfulness, so terrified of debts
that fawn and scrape replace true amity,
your word becomes a roadside stall defined
by crappy goods. No need for these regrets!
Receive friends with real appreciation—
first done by being one. Priceless worth comes
from me esteeming me, then you, rising
through my eyes, we reap, no deviation,
bounty of the flooded banks, mighty sums
together. Ahead would be surprising
in the ways of gain, taint-free wealth, not lack,
if you would just drop tit for tat, leave back.

VIII – Winged Heels and Free Fall

If you would just drop tit for tat, leave back
in cluttered halls what you’ve been taught about
longevity and her twisted sister,
growing old, ride in Mercury’s backpack,
you would see the multi-lie turned inside out,
for growing ever young is the twister,
pathway of the gods and giant ages,
way beyond paltry strains of villainy,
the plod of sacrifice, lives mounting joy.
No one deprives you! Cells know all stages,
and what you like to think is tyranny
reduces thought to loss, a sad deploy.
Our body-mind remembers, so leave stealth
behind, go only forth. You’d find the wealth.

IX – Keeps the Bedbugs Away

Behind, go only forth, you’d find the wealth;
fly life out like a kite string, hand over
hand, obedient to currents outside
thinking’s limitation. Inherent health
resides at the cleft of thought. See clover
or dung, bloom or decay; in both reside
potential joy. Resentment brings the rash,
unpleasant itch, with as much misery
as the shrinking heart can hold. Are you bold
enough to make peace with power and cash?
Can you swim through the greater mystery
straight to success, accept its blessings, fold
its curves into yourself, become the lea
of kings and true democracies, a sea?

X – No Such Thing as Solid

Of kings and true democracies, a sea
divides the potencies to islands of
precise individuality. That’s
you, my dear, and me, and everybody
limpid, clear as glass, composed of pure love,
and from this heightened state the former flats
of sadness show their ephemeral selves
as mere topography, lines carved in sand,
no need to trip, much less to grieve, that sleeve
where sits your heart, little tailoring elves
wait eagerly to stitch the rips, your hand
is firmly held by all above, believe
till you can see us in our anti-black
of pure prosperity, goodbye to lack.

XI – All of This, my Doing

Of pure prosperity, goodbye to lack,
hello to glorious states of wonder,
no heavy lids, all wide-eyed here, doing
what we came to do—create new worlds. Back
there, we all made fun; today, stand under
majesty’s umbrella, Tree of Being
in full bloom and giving fruit, forbid to
none. At times, you are the bark that scratches,
I, the root, that digs around until you
bite. The games of chase go on, your catches
love the being caught, and you’ve stopped dropping
them at my door. We know each other’s hue
from blinding floods before the rainbow’s wealth,
that crazy stressful enemy of health.

XII – Wondrous Continuous

That crazy stressful enemy of health,
that scourging, false humility who wails,
I am not worthy, yes I am, but you’re
not, to compost has been turned, death blow dealt;
the body-mind precisely tuned regales
in nothing less than plenitude, well-shored
by evidence of pure design and form,
from which above-below can spin the whole
of you to match the Heaven scent of Earth.
This is the dance of Love, the Court reborn
and effortless the steps, a caracol
whose speed like stillness feels, painless rebirth.
To have, to hold becomes I know, I’ve got.
Pick up your bed and rise alive, why not?

XIII – Three in One, I’ve Won

Pick up your bed and rise alive, why not?
Let possums who play dead attract their own.
Three-fold Trismegistus has arrived, winged
feet in every word, now and then, a spot
of silence to absorb the beauty grown
within and out, serenity, her ringed
magnificence the banner that uplifts
medieval to full good arrived intact,
of ever after happily, the truth
we sought is here, my dear, we won the gifts
that fairy tale and myth sustained, our pact
with joy all colours of our spectral youth
we may employ the love we freely sought
for fun is why we came, to thrive, our lot.

XIV – The Solar Truth & Nothing But

For fun is why we came, to thrive, our lot,
and this is all of Thoth I’ve come to say.
My lunar friends, the twilit souls, you are
as I am, where you choose to be for now.
Our residence is change, movement the plot
of every tale, and now this peacock’s play
is done, I fold my tail. You will allow
some small affection to remain, I hope,
though I shall not come back this way again.
The spiral road does not repeat, we climb,
we soar and drop, but what we’ve done to cope
before is born afresh, and what this pen
sets down cannot be chased. Some other time
we have already laughed and would begin,
if words like powerless should lurk within.

XV – This Crown, Forever Yours

If words like powerless should lurk within
the gig, no bites, the rise without the fall
strike you as far beyond reality,
you would be right. The worlds of crime and sin—
for once, forgive, forget, for what!?—are all
designed to offer upward lift, to free
and not enslave you to conformity.
If you would just drop tit for tat, leave back
behind, go only forth, you’d find the wealth
of kings and true democracies, a sea
of pure prosperity, goodbye to lack,
that crazy stressful enemy of health.
Pick up your bed and rise alive, why not?
For fun is why we came, to thrive, our lot.

~~~

Author’s Note: This 15-stanza poem is a Crown of Sonnets, also known as Sonnet Redoublé. Constructing such a piece is great fun, for you get the chance to travel a theme with 14 opening lines that fold up to conclude with the 15th, crowning stanza. The theme I borrowed and interpreted is the Emerald Tablet of Hermes, which has been translated into 13 or 14 tenets—perfect shape for this form. I’ve used the rhyme scheme ABCABCDEFDEFGG, for its combing effect. I am grateful to John Donne and various poetic academies, now lost to time, who conceived the form and left for us an invigorating challenge.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image of Hermes Thrismegistus from various websites,
original artist unknown