Pedants Unite!

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Elaine Stirling, National Grammar Day, pedants, silly poems

Today is National Grammar Day,
and so I am joining my pedant
on his march, the fourth. He is
a fine pedant with six sturdy legs
and quivering antennae.
We were introduced by my
bi-ped aunt, whose not…who’s not
from New England, else she’d rhyme
with rye bread font. My pedestrian
pedant to the brim is full
of minutiae, spending his tiny hours
as headmaster of a petty school—
there are such things, honest to gosh!
—sorting who from whom with
no fewer than—or is that less?—
43…a pause…trophies for every time
his student’s don’t ill place apostrophes.

I am mostly full of glee
that Grammar Day’s but once
a year, else we all would live
in fear of overtaxing pedantry.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

The Miserabilist

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Chant Royal, Elaine Stirling, form poetry, medieval fixed verse, narrative poetry, variation on the ballade

~~ a chant royal ~~

A motley fool of one hundred and two
who freshened the moods of seventeen kings,
confounded ten queens and ne’er a sword drew,
nor suffered the pain of everyday stings,
with a purse always full, a bed always
warm, once offered to share his foolish ways.
Just five simple words, all trials will cease,
enemies vanish, your fortunes increase.
No magic potions, no frogs to be kissed,
an action so simple, it must needs please:
Don’t inhale near the miserabilist.

The miserabilist? A word no one knew
in court or in town, it swiftly took wing
& all through the realm, a strange caution grew
as folks sniffed one another for something
amiss in the way that they spent their days
or their ducats, criticized or gave praise.
And when they approached the flagrant unease
of some poor sad sot, they tried not to breathe
till they’d set his ass or his boat adrift.
Many were crowing of new-found relief.
Don’t inhale near the miserabilist.

The motley fool’s popularity grew
while the rickety king found a new spring
in his step, for his subjects who once knew
only the keys of complaint learned to sing
new refrains. Livestock grew fat on the graze;
barren wombs came to life; a pinkish haze
settled over the land; a tinkling breeze
cooled the fears of poverty and disease.
All ventures thrived; every day brought new grist,
abolished old habits of thought like fleas.
Don’t inhale near the miserabilist.

Now our motley fool was no fool. He knew
that avoidance alone can never bring
joy of the kind that eliminates blue.
Constant surveillance against anything
must eventually flood minds and by-ways
with its very nature. Streaks of dismay
were already seeping like rancid grease
through the gossip and fray, a slick decrease
of focus on five simple words. Once blissed,
now sinister was demanding release.
Don’t inhale near the miserabilist.

Fool, undeterred, he donned his cloak and blew
the air from out his lungs. He stashed the rings
and torques of gold that fortune brought and flew
by night on horseback to an untried king
with retinue who wished to learn the ways
of wealth and surplus. Endless sunny days
accompanied our fool whose mental ease,
well practiced, holds no tics. No enemies
could pierce him, no impostors grasp his gist
of life as serial simplicities.
Don’t inhale near the miserabilist.

The motley fool has never ceased to tease
the humourless within us. Still, he pleads,
let go of consequence. Give wrath a miss.
Breathe deep into the vast where love agrees.
Don’t inhale near the miserabilist!

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015
Image, “The Jester”, a woodblock by Irving Amen (1918-2011)

First Sight

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Elaine Stirling, love poem

Reading Gone Girl alone
in a downtown café
Marvin Gaye and Jim Croce
jockeying for all-time best balladeer
you could pardon a gal
for thinking it’s a cruel kind
of retro world except—
that somewhere in the middle
of a clue dropped
by the missing heroine
I look up to catch
a glimpse of your tall dark
shadow with a sweep of tartan
scarf like a thoroughbred’s mane
passing the plate
glass window
and the pale cool offering
of fiction overturns
and spills
coins of new fortune
wet and foreign
at my feet
as if the Trevi fountain
had burst a billion wishes
through some wrinkle in time
and the novel spins from a patch
of melting snow with the same arc
and grace as you turning
on a dime
and walking
back this way.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

Moving Day Dreams

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a bit of silliness, Elaine Stirling, Malayan fixed verse, pantoum, poetry for fun

I’m pretty sure I dreamed of a palm tree plantation
hand in hand with Merwin or maybe Gauguin
where words swell on trees like ripening citrus
rhyming lolls in hammocks with white cardboard fans

hand in hand with Merwin or maybe Gauguin
a giant yellow cat with eyes like Branwell Brontë
rhyming lolls in hammocks with white cardboard fans
warns me not to set fire to his bed again

a giant yellow cat with eyes like Branwell Brontë
knowing how much I’ve already discarded
warns me not to set fire to his bed again
I assure him that caves are too wet to burn

knowing how much I’ve already discarded
where words swell on trees like ripening citrus
I assure him that caves are too wet to burn
I’m pretty sure I dreamed of a palm tree plantation

~~~

with thanks to JC for the inspiration

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

Spring Breakthrough

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Elaine Stirling, poetry, sonnet

“The fountains of my great deep are broken up.”
—Mark Twain in a letter to his boyhood friend, Will Bowen

Fountains of my great deep are broken up
and churning to an eager froth blueprints
of an empire somebody believed in with
such passion they begat the likes of me.

The currents that alarmed me as a pup
I thrashed against for years. It makes me wince
to think that happiness derives from stiff
unyielding lips sealed for sake of loyalty.

Every laundered past must one day disrupt
as eggs will hatch and thin-skinned fears evince
their bloodlessness. I blow a quiet kiss
to ossified, outdated tyranny.

The geyser of my frozen deep now flows
through limbs revived in lovers’ sweet repose.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

Hearth: A Word Etude

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Elaine Stirling, poetry for fun, Valentine's Day

Bledsoe Island

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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

Wear Your Power Lightly, Child

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Elaine Stirling, form poetry, triolet

i

wear your power lightly, child
what you see distressing you is density

it’s not your home, your source or style
wear your power lightly, child

like vapour pass through mayhem, wild,
unencumbered—nothing less is mastery!

wear your power lightly, child
what you see distressing you is density

ii

adore the angles of a perfect fit
enjoy the heathered slope, the wind-blessed sea

the best do what they do for fun of it
enjoy the heathered slope, the wind-blessed sea

trace avenues of gold and chocolate
only you can shape your destiny

adore the angles of a perfect fit
enjoy the heathered slope, the wind-blessed sea

iii

when the silence comes to call
make room for him, your dearest friend

push come to shove can only fall
when the silence comes to call

reminding you the great enthrall
is what creates and knows no end

when the silence comes to call
make room for him, your dearest friend

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015
The painting is by Polish Art Deco artist Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980).
What a life she lived! It’s worth checking out her bio.

I Do Myself a Petty Crime

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Elaine Stirling, form poetry, French medieval fixed verse, villanelle

A Villanelle

If I should find myself relying on the line
I have no time, pushing you and everyone away
in self defense, I do myself a petty crime.

An act of theft, a small deceit for which time
has little tolerance accumulates throughout the day.
If I should find myself relying on the line

instead of seeing easily and clearly that I’m
closing doors to something more. By fearing play
in self defense, I do myself a petty crime.

I’ve stored too much inside this cluttered mind
so lacking space, my spirit yearns to stray.
If I should find myself relying on the line

I have no time, I could instead admit that I am
dreading some great boot to squash me into clay
in self defense, I do myself a petty crime

for greater opportunity surrounds me all the time
I wed the truth of this to everything I think and say;
if I should find myself relying on the line
in self defense, I do myself a petty crime.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015
Image of grandfather clock face comes from Widimedia Commons

The Influence of Serious

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ballade, Elaine Stirling, French medieval fixed verse, poetry, the dog star, W.H. Auden

How will you look and what will you do when the basalt
tombs of the sorcerers shatter…?
—W.H. Auden, “Under Sirius”

She had a fear of hooligans
hid money in her bra
always took her vitamins
and loved to talk about the scar
from where they took some organ out. The jar
of her remains was sledged and pressed
to inlaid script on a walnut bar:
I am chased by the state of immediate yes.

Every day he calculates the gains
and losses of his stock. He knows the law
of averages and watches for the evidence
of fraud and computer error. In his craw
resides a rattle, born the day he saw
that awful film about a lottery. In his chest
gather minions of a tumulus star.
I am chased by the state of immediate yes.

Beware, says the astral guide, when choosing religion
or cursing it, for what you think is never far
from what will prove to be. The jinns
of your experience work hard to bar
the opposite of what you want. They war
eternally against the lies of no and less.
In the arriving of life, there is no disallow.
I am chased by the state of immediate yes.

The lines I sketch, the cards I draw
hold steady to my vision’s best,
expanding whatever I think I saw.
I am chased by the state of immediate yes.

~~~

The ballade (not to be confused with the musical ballad) is a fixed form from medieval and Renaissance France. It contains three eight-line stanzas and a four line envoi with a refrain at the end of each.

The rhythm of the final line had been rattling in my head for days and finally came to rest when I found Auden’s poem. I love the galloping urgency he conveys in only seventeen words.

© Elaine Stirling, 2015