Partimens are such sweet sorrow: the dialogues

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copla de arte mayor, Dead Edit Redo, dialogue verse, Elaine Stirling, medieval fixed verse, narrative form poetry, octavo, partimen, the Court of Love, The Third Place

The prologue to this piece can be found here.

Round One

From firm amen to firmament, so be it, she
began the discourse known as partimen,
but do not think I shall be ladylike and see
with batty and forgiving eyes the truths you bend
to fabricate and lubricate dumbstruck women.
I was one, I know. The ground is pocked with hidey
holes of those who wish that life could be more tidy,
while secretly they hope you will happen again.

Touché! I thought you’d give me too much credit. Not
enough is better—keeps me hungry, slightly mad
and vengeful. Hidey holes are fine, but not a lot
of fun once scars have healed. For you to think me bad
is easier than to maintain a Galahad.
I like my women small, pretending helplessness,
but only so that I can put off happiness
and float, a former prince, upon this lilypad.

You make me want to croak, said she. What happened to
the fearless knave, enchanting minds and broken hearts?
If not for you, I never would have wandered through
these catacombs to echoes of assembled starts
that went nowhere but could. I would have missed the arts
of time, of rhyme and pulse, the sciences of grace.
Tributes to you are heaped and crammed in every space,
while thieves are making off with who you were in carts.

Round Two

The poet from a slowly moving eddy watched
the poetess and waited for the impulse that
would stir to words that either remedied or botched.
I know I have done both to you, knocked hard and flat
the tenderness you offered. I’m a heartless brat,
but for all that, we are together still. What yearned
in you for me is gone; I see what I have burned.
Why is it hot in here? Who turned the thermostat?

The poetess who always had too much to say
felt planks of certainty break loose and start to drift.
Get back here, you! A partimen, once started, may
not lie unfinished. Someone had to drag and lift
what constancy remained; she could not lose this gift
or him! To no one in particular, she said,
I don’t recall what ejected you from my bed.
My rhythm’s off. I can’t iamb. What is this shift?

The poet wept, but not so that his former love
could see or know what kept them, while embodied, bound.
Fleshless, boneless, he had nothing now left to prove.
I’m here, he said, for what it’s worth. The hallowed ground
you sought I could not be, and what I thought I found
in you seemed easily replaceable. The chase
was all I knew. Outrunning you became the race.
They may find traces of us in some burial mound.

The Arbiter

She walks along the shore, a pocketful of spheres
and dreams that spin above her head in tubular
and spiral shapes. When beauty’s crushed, nothing adheres,
some plaintive voice is telling her in angular
profusions. What we two achieved was jugular
and cruel. Not so, she says. Your ballast holds me here
in this new place where sound precurses poetry
of dialogue from two to three, spectacular!

~~~

This partimen in the 8-line, 12-syllable style of “copla mayor” is dedicated to L.F., glosera.

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

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What I Do is Me: For That I Came

Tags

#bringingbacktheglosa, A Circularity of Glosas, Alain C. Dexter, Dead Edit Redo, Dead to Rights, Elaine Stirling, form poetry, Gavriel Navarro, Gavriel's Muse, Greyhart Press, Law of Attraction, medieval Spanish poetry, PK (Patricia) Page, Tim C. Taylor, vibrational reality

First up, confession. I did not create the title of this blog. It is the ninth line of a famous poem by 19th century English poet and Jesuit priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins. Four more lines can be found below in my tribute to the Anglo-Canadian

PK Page, Canadian poet (1916-2010) whose book of glosas, Hologram, sat quietly on my shelf, brewing mischief.

campaign—with a few other countries swiftly joining—to #bringingbacktheglosa.

You can learn more about this bold resurrection of medieval verse at Greyhart Press and Gavriel’s Muse. At both of these sites, you can also read exceedingly kind words about Dead Edit Redo, my newly published novella of horror and good medicine, and Alain C. Dexter’s accompanying Dead to Rights: A Circularity of Glosas. These books are now available through Amazon and Smashwords, print and e-format.

Alain and I could think of no better way to celebrate the release of our new books than to collaborate on a new glosa. Such affairs are never solitary, and this one is no exception. Once you’ve read our books, you’ll understand how truly I mean that, and why I’ve posted a photograph of our beautiful Canadian poet, PK Page.

And now, without further ado, the glosa.

What I Do is Me: For That I Came

Bow swung finds to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells.

“As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame”
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

~~~

When from the center of the flame I see my
name writ large by candle stroke too quick
to read, I turn from clarity to glance behind
where daimon paternoster with the googly
eyes to whom I’ve learned to genuflect
reflects his fleshy disapproval—what a game!
To think the back can read the front, or past
my future tell; to seek from others lost
in gloom a match for me, I must disclaim.
Bow swung finds to fling out broad its name.

The epoxy that we’ve learned to call
intelligence is swift to set; thus glued,
we cannot move toward bright and brighter
still. Instead, we dim with every misperception
of a sun that seems to disappear. We’re balls
of light, smooth casters, not one of us to blame.
But if you clank against me like a tinman with
no heart, I’ll roar, and I’d expect no less from
you if, thoughtless, I should cause you shame.
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same.

Selfish is as selfish does, the best of me
arrived intact in search of touch and taste
and feel to know what more of All There Is
I want. Obstructions have their place, but other
words that start with O have more appeal, like
octopus and org…an grinder, so if you, my bells
don’t ring, don’t call. I am no altar offering. I burnt
the book of martyrs at a barbecue, which gave
the ribs, I’m sad to say, a taste of sulphury hells.
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells

in his or her own pocketry of what feels good,
and this is good—might even be, it’s God! He/
She did not make of us a bleacher crowd of images
computerized, we are dynamic flow, so let the
process of success into your blood and bones
before you croak, which like the bullfrog tells
us from his pad will never be the last. I’m here
for me, for that I came, and you the same, for
you. Take happiness down from those high shelves!
Selves—goes itself, myself it speaks and spells.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

It is my pleasure to introduce…Alain C. Dexter

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

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!