THE WEEK
The News Briefs Are Super Brief This Week
No news briefs at all this week because I’m dealing with storm outages and damage. Although I guess that’s sort of a news brief.
Image of the Week
That’s not the current snowfall, but it is a good representation of the weather’s current mood.
POETRY WEEK: THE VILLANELLE
I didn’t see this coming, but this has turned out to be Poetry Week. I didn’t even know that Poetry Week was one of my blog variants. But here’s what happened:
A year or so ago, I explored the verse form of the Villanelle and wrote three of them to see if I could do it. The most famous Villanelle is probably “Do Not Go Gently into that Good Night” by Dylan Thomas. You should go and read it or re-read it right now.
The Villanelle is a particularly tight form, with every line ending with one of only two rhymes, and one or the other of the first and third lines of the first stanza repeated at the end of every other stanza. I realized this past week that I really like the form, and decided to attempt another one.
What follows here is my first draft (you have been warned) of this new one, along with the other three that comprise all the Villanelles that I’ve written. One of those is pretty light: it was my first attempt. Another is serious, and the third is intended to be witty. See if you can figure out which is which.
The Coffeehouse on Franklin Street
I miss that coffeehouse on Franklin Street,
Black burlap on the ceiling, cable spools
For tables. In its candlelight we’d meet
And cross our verbal swords to bongos’ beat,
We poets and philosophers, we fools,
In that dark coffeehouse on Franklin Street.
In politics and poems we’d compete
With keen-edged blades of wit and ridicule.
Our eyes then in the candlelight would meet,
And in that mist of romance and conceit
We’d mutually confirm that we were cool:
A coffeehouse of fools on Franklin Street.
But one by one we’d buy that bourgeois beat
And, muttering vague words of work or school,
Would from the guttering candlelight retreat.
Till now I take my coffee bittersweet
And wonder after all the decades who’ll
Recall that coffeehouse on Franklin Street
Where in now mislaid candlelight we’d meet.
Norton and Knopf
You won’t be invited to feed at the trough
With the short story wonders who pack 21
When you’ve been rejected by Norton and Knopf.
Like lovers who kiss you while saying kiss off
They’ll tell you “well done” while meaning “you’re done”
And no longer welcome to feed at their trough.
Their legions are legend: Naipaul, Nabokov,
Well maybe not those: anyway, you are one
Of the authors rejected by Norton and Knopf.
Like cousins with cooties or a guest with a cough
It’s nothing you’ve done, you’re just one to shun
And won’t be invited to feed at the trough.
For you, though, no fish eggs, no champagne to quaff
Are needed to celebrate not being one
Of those never rejected by Norton and Knopf
Because it’s a blessing: you’re much better off
So open a brewski, kick back, and have fun
And pity the authors who feed at the trough
Who’ve not been rejected by Norton and Knopf.
The Sidewalk Show
Behold the sidewalk show
Now rolling into sight
The food carts come and go.
The tie-dye t-shirt rows
In tented vendors’ sites
Unfold their sidewalk show.
From dawn to evening’s glow,
From morning until night,
The food carts come and go.
The windshield ragmen know
To swoop in at the light:
We know their sidewalk show.
Below this slow tableau
Mute creatures feed and fight
Where food carts come and go.
The garbage dumpster crow
Circles and alights
To wrap the sidewalk show
As food carts close and go.
The Author of This Tale
Who is the author of this tale?
Whose hand did this tangled yarn unwind?
Until you walk it there is no trail.
No encrusted falcon, no holy grail,
No purpose, plot, nor storyline:
Who is the author of this tale?
The fateful tread on a rusty nail,
The foot that crushes grapes to wine:
Until you walk it there is no trail.
This ship adrift without a sail
And left bereft of its mooring line:
Who is the author of this tale?
The flutter of a swallowtail
Can bring to ruin some grand design.
Until you walk it there is no trail.
The pen that births each new detail,
Is in your hand. It’s you, you find,
Who is the author of this tale
And till you walk it there is no trail.