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~ because the waves and tumbles of life are only as serious as we make them.

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Tag Archives: medieval French fixed verse

Those Ever-Loving Windmills

23 Wednesday Aug 2017

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

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Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, medieval French fixed verse, social media, villanelle

~~a villanelle~~

Tilting windmills on a sunny day
with rusty swords till something breaks
seems to me a waste of play.

The cranky knight must have his way
to soothe, I suppose, his chronic aches,
tilting windmills on a sunny day.

I’m trying hard to look away,
ignore the hissy fits and fakes.
Seems to me a waste of play

to criticize. I will not sway
them anyway, for heaven’s sake!
Tilting windmills on a sunny day

reduces me, turns skies to gray.
Contempt is such a bitter cake,
seems to me a waste of play,

though who am I to judge you? Hey,
your years of practice, perfect makes!
Tilting windmills on a sunny day
seems to me a waste of play.

Thank you, Miguel de Cervantes, for the analogy that never grows old.

© Elaine Stirling, 2017

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“Sisyphus, it’s Zeus.”

21 Saturday May 2016

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, medieval French fixed verse, poetry with a sense of humour, the heroine's journey, the myth of Sisyphus, triolet

Sisyphus-Image-01C

~~three triolets~~

I

Sisyphus, it’s Zeus, your ancient cortical
connection to full power over gods.

You no longer stand so vertical,
Sisyphus. It’s Zeus, your ancient cortical

desire to dominate, toppled to diagonal.
Where wisdom finds no purchase, idiocy plods.

Sisyphys, it’s Zeus, your ancient cortical
connection to full power over gods.

II

Oh, suspicious Sisyphus, your sibilance
sprays pointlessly like toms among the spayed.

What use is your opinionated vigilance,
oh, suspicious Sisyphus? Your sibilance,

unlike my rain, is spit and spit upon. To push against
resistance steepens your already hopeless grade.

Oh, suspicious Sisyphus, your sibilance
sprays pointlessly like toms among the spayed.

III

Thanatos (Death) and I with Hermes have conferred.
You’ve pushed your rock up long enough. No more!

So what, you’re man enough to give the gods a bird?
Thanatos (Death) and I with Hermes have conferred.

It’s time you faced downhill, my friend, and heard
what sings beyond the morbid river Styx dark shore.

Thanatos (Death) and I with Hermes have conferred.
You’ve pushed your rock up long enough. No more!

~~~

Some years ago, I co-facilitated a series of goddess workshops for women, based on my adaptation of The Hero’s Journey (called The Heroine’s Journey). We rented the upstairs floor of a Starbucks convenient to us all. The name of the Starbucks manager? Zeus. You can’t make that sh*t happen.

The tight, repetitive form of the triolet seemed to lend itself nicely to poor, boulder-pushing Sisyphus. It also gives a sense of how it might feel to have the father of the gods spray-talking at you.

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

No Guilt, No Shame

29 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Canadian poet, Chant Royal, Elaine Stirling, medieval French fixed verse

condor

~~a chant royal~~

Ignis

O daughter mine, beloved son, the fires
of grim politic spit and lick, intent
on luring joy toward funeral pyres.
Singed by consuming, first hand testament,
oppressed against oppressors, human greed
the mean accelerant, an arson’s feed,
your clamour rises. We must not sit by!
Past apathies have brought us here. To die
and not have tried offends the sacred flame
that burns within, but drowns the finer cry—
Set down what condescends. No guilt, no shame.

Terra

The soil you grasped with fists before the mires
of cleanliness and godliness misspent
your jubilance, remembers and desires
that you reclaim your youthful merriment.
Sex void of love, dry acts that plant a seed
of not enough, erode the lust we need
like rain and sun to reach unfettered sky.
Comparison, the asp that bites is sly,
pretends to be your ally in this game
of changing climates while your soul weeps dry.
Set down what condescends. No guilt, no shame.

Aqua

What drought is this, you talk about? One tires
of opinions hammered and never bent.
My ears have heard you plenty. What transpires
when the current flows feels more provident
of who we are and where we’ll be. A bead
of optimism’s sweet. To mourn and bleed,
a suicide where answers come to die;
I much prefer the dew and butterfly.
A portrait Earth with ocean as her frame
displays us all, prudes, libertines, and spy.
Set down what condescends. No guilt, no shame.

Aeris

Oh, mind, how split and vast you are, with gyres
of ascending hopes, prone to accident.
You twirl on grief and rage like rubber tires
hung by rope, stalled, frustration evident.
I’m made far less of latex, more of steed,
jump easily low fences choked with weed
of disapproval. I’m a kite. I’ll fly
because I can and want to. By and by,
I’ll lose this learned capacity to blame,
give reason the respect it’s due when I
set down what condescends. No guilt, no shame.

Anima

I’ve bounced you across continents, brought liars
to our home, demanding you be silent.
Fear displaced my spirit, sowing briars
where you needed from me roses. I meant
harm at times, but regret’s a curved reed,
so all of it’s blown back to me, indeed.
Know this one thing, dear child, before I die.
I loved how long and often you did try
to heal what I had broken and inflamed.
If effort’s gold, you’ve laid great fortunes by.
Set down what condescends. No guilt, no shame.

Vale

So now the apron’s cut. Your single eye
discerns. You’ve gleaned all that you need from my
history. Don’t look back. Forget my name,
but if you must record, aim true and high.
Set down what condescends. No guilt, no shame.

~~~

Chant royals—or are they chants royal?—were all the rage in 14th century northern France, while courts in southern France entertained sestinas. I’ve gone into detail on their form and rhyme elsewhere in Oceantics. What makes these 60 to 62-line poems a rare bird in my experience is the challenge of finding a final line that I can tolerate repeating six times. They are, after all, chants, not rants, with an expectation of dignity, given the audience for whom they were composed.

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

Carnaval de la Vie

20 Saturday Feb 2016

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, Honore de Balzac, medieval French fixed verse, sestina

carnival

As you behold the carousel of players
in this glorious carnival called life,
take heed, approve, withhold your faith
in how and why they rise and fall
around you might consider, for a lark,
the forces light and dark, centripetal

and centrifugal, yes? For every petal
that descends without some player’s
tutting interference, there’s a lark
eager to jubilate, sing sweet of life
with all her many seasons. Fall
into razored traps of loss of faith,

you slit your wings. A jailer’s faith
in his assignment to destroy hope’s tender petal
ere it bursts forth from the bud will fall
like iron bars around him. As players
we are born, purveyors of a singular life
created thought by thought, a vulture or a lark.

Deplored by toilers and long-sufferers, the lark
receives through song and flit the faith
of mighty gods and thereby thrives at life.
Her passing flight uplifts the petal
of the hyacinth and rose. We players
are the axis of each season’s spring and fall.

Lamentives and depressors, I watch you fall,
entangled deep within your nets devoid of lark,
your favourite recitation, “Woe!” Jolly players
once, by circumstance & choice, you’ve dug of faith
a quicksand pit, too dense for seed and petal
to emerge until death frees you to some future life.

Circling each other is the stuff of life,
both unicorn and sabre tooth survived their fall;
the pot pourri, now bagged, recalls her petal
days, and as we humans sigh, the mother lark
sings to her eggs. We need not claim a faith,
for we are made of it, sublime and sacred players.

O, carnival of life and ash, may lark
and lyre’s melodies fall true around my faith,
the force centripetal, that draws to me eternal players.

~~~

It’s been a while since I posted a sestina. This one was doubly inspired by my current reading of Honoré de Balzac (the French title, in homage to him) and the opportunity to sit across from a father and his two young children in a coffee shop this morning. The father’s predominant words to his gorgeous kids were “No, no, no…” and “Don’t!” The children, like Balzac, stayed true to their axis of merriment, mighty forces both.

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

Missing: Poet

19 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Elaine Stirling, medieval French fixed verse, poetry, Roberto Bolano, triolet

roberto bolano

for R.B.

I

The poet has boarded up his lonely streets.
Do not seek him there

where ink dilutes on flapping sheets.
The poet has boarded up his lonely streets,

learned all he could from lazy cheats,
his knuckles chafed, cold schemes laid bare.

The poet has boarded up his lonely streets;
do not seek him there.

II

They whisper him in the Academy
where Góngora was once reviled.

On silver trays, the fear of poverty
is served on ice to huddles of society.

Meanwhile, his poetry, cross-referenced, A to Z,
feeds the unemployed, the homeless child.

They whisper him in the Academy
where Góngora was once reviled.

III

A fresher word for victory is enough,
the poet laughs, of blood and pointless grief.

The artist unafraid to call his bluff
will find the world is built of finer stuff.

Inspiration is best eaten off the cuff—
a squeeze of rhyme, a lick of sweet relief.

A fresher word for victory is enough,
the poet laughs, of blood and pointless grief.

~~~

The triolet is an 8-line fixed verse form that was popular in the courts of medieval France. The image of Roberto Bolaño comes from http://www.fanpix.famouspix.com.

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

The Village in my Mother’s Head

04 Sunday Jan 2015

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Elaine Stirling, Fernando Pessoa, heteronyms, medieval French fixed verse, poetry, villanelle

761

A Villanelle

The village in my mother’s head
controlled her heartstrings and her purse,
withheld approval, dispensed dread.

Anyone who looked ahead
risked their wrath and learned to curse
the village in my mother’s head.

Mannequins of silk and lead,
obsessed with piety, perverse,
withheld approval, dispensed dread.

God rest her soul, my mother’s dead.
With all her errors now reversed,
the village in my mother’s head

sees her loved ones clothed and fed,
inspires every joyful, silly, complex verse.
Withheld approval, dispensed dread,

kaput! Edicts from a clearer head
encourage me, “Be plural like the universe!”*
The village in my mother’s head
withheld approval, dispensed dread.

*The quotation, “Be plural like the universe,” comes from one of my favourite poets, Fernando Pessoa, who wrote under dozens of heteronyms, which are pseudonyms with their own lives and identities. Whitman declared himself to contain multitudes. Buoyed by their audacity, I pulled Alain C. Dexter from my own village to be a protagonist and author.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Photograph by author

Putting Out the Fire: A Villanelle

04 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by elainestirling in Form Poetry

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

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

bonfire_Wiki

Putting out the fire that makes you
think and create is a trick of the light.
Follow the wick, and you’ll burn too.

Ashes have plenty to say that is true,
but not to the flame that guards the night.
Putting out the fire, that makes you

employed if you work with a crew
and a hose, heroes always a welcome sight.
Follow the wick, and you’ll burn too.

What enflames you has nothing to do
with me. I gave up the ridiculous fight,
putting out the fire that makes you.

No one is fashioned of wax, string or glue.
Cling-wrapping a candle is never right.
Follow the wick and you’ll burn too.

The eternal flame measures two by two:
one inside, one out, both dazzling bright.
Putting out the fire that makes you
follow the wick, and you’ll burn too.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

These Fruitful Years

11 Friday Apr 2014

Posted by elainestirling in Form Poetry

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Tags

Elaine Stirling, form poetry, medieval French fixed verse, rondeau redouble

fruit basket

A Rondeau Redoublé

These fruitful years that lie ahead
are lapping at my feet in waves;
with sweet detail my dreams are led
to more than what the most-of-me now craves.

Perceiving only good around me saves
infinities of drear and dread
from creeping in, and paves
these fruitful years that lie ahead.

To you who say I could be dead
tomorrow, yes! So what? Grave’s
a lead-lined attitude. Levities, well-fed,
are lapping at my feet in waves.

I tell you, friend, that worry shaves
the zest from life, not time; the bread
you taste by day, the shadow saves
with sweet detail, my dreams are led.

Of tragedy we’ve all been bled
and told, tut-tut, she misbehaves!
I turn my cheek to Paradise instead,
to more than what the most-of-me now craves.

Farewell, ye dis-imaginers and slaves
to methodologies that cramp the head
and bruise the heart. Your enclaves
fall behind the proofs that rise and spread
these fruitful years.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Punic Threads: An Alexandrine Fantasy

27 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by elainestirling in Form Poetry

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

alexandrine, Carthage, Elaine Stirling, fantasy, form poetry, medieval French fixed verse, metered verse, Phoenicia, Punic

IMG_0810

Beauty caught me by the wrist and tied against my
will a thin blue cord she had severed from a loom.
A blade curved like a smile slipped deep into her sleeve.
Leave, she hissed, while you still can. I will distract them.

Who? Do not look back, our leader warned. Catch their eye
and they will steal our space. There is no greater doom
than to be hammered into place by those who seethe,
no room to breathe. You are still but a fragile stem.

Of what? We rode by caravan at night, a dry
and brittle wind our only company. The gloom
of blinding day confused. What all I once believed
evaporated. From the glare stepped forth—ahem…

Shaded form, he rocked from side to side. Your guide I
am, allied with formidable forces. Phlox bloomed
around his words. He snapped the thin blue cord. Achieve!
My will spilled out and from it fell a diadem.

~~~

This set of quatrains is metered in alexandrine, a medieval French line composed of twelve countable vowels. I’m not well versed enough yet to comprehend the masculine and feminine versions of alexandrines, nor the 6-6 hemistichs. All in good time, or not. Punic refers to Phoenician, those great and ancient mariners of the Mediterranean who, led by Queen Dido (Elissa), founded Carthage.

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Image of remains of a Carthaginian wall, Tunis,
by author

Differently Christmased: A Villanelle

23 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Form Poetry

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#icestorm2013, Christmas verse, Elaine Stirling, form poetry, medieval French fixed verse, villanelle

IMG_0691

The corkscrew willow bends, a tiny bead
of ice falls to my palm, an ornament
of frozen grass, this season’s only need.

Some choose these days to slip away. Our greed
protests, deprived of habits of slow torment;
the corkscrew willow bends, a tiny bead.

Some bake and fuss according to a creed
passed down from bishoprics; a government
of frozen grass, this season’s only need.

Shoots of kindness rise beyond the screed
of incivilities that would resent
the corkscrew willow bends, a tiny bead.

What nation, church or temple has agreed
to soften and uphold heart’s parliament
of frozen grass, this season’s only need?

Let us, this once, adhere to Nature’s speed
of gratitude, good will, and merriment.
The corkscrew willow bends a tiny bead
of frozen grass, this season’s only need.

~~~

This poem is dedicated to the southern Ontario ice storm of 2013.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

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