Weekly challenge: April. Fool.

[Epmd607]

these three posts determined my write in the end

Yer a carpenter(like Jesus?)

 

[butters]

Yer a but have never had any reason to attempt. carpenter(like Jesus?)

hehehe

my great great grandfather was a master cabinet maker.

i am a jack of all trades, master of none.
as for carpentry, i can measure, saw, and bang in nails or glue. i even know 'in theory' about dovetailing joints etc but have never had any reason to attempt them.

i used my saw and a nail gun for this bugger

 

[champagne1982]

hehehe

my great great grandfather was a master cabinet maker.

i am a jack of all trades, master of none.
as for carpentry, i can measure, saw, and bang in nails or glue. i even know 'in theory' about dovetailing joints etc but have never had any reason to attempt them.

i used my saw and a nail gun for this bugger

Measure with a micrometer and cut with a chainsaw?

 

[Tzara]

i sincerely hope stuff gets better asap for you, Tzara

Things are basically fine with me, m'dear. I am histrionic and prone to languishing in little fits of gloom. I just need to crawl my amphibious way out of the primordial slime of my personality and get on with my commentationings.

Which will take a while, anyway, since I want to think about each poem somewhat.





Speaking of commentatories, first up is UnderYourSpell, since she posted her poem first.

This is, I think, a pantoum, with the added complication of abab bcbc rhyme. The poem is generally iambic, though the lines vary in the number of feet (between four and six, as I read it). This is OK, of course, as a pantoum has no intrinsic metrical requirements as best I can tell.

Generally, the poem reads quite well. The rhyme is not overly intrusive, at least to my ear, and the opening

They shook their heads and called him fool
but his was not the way of simple men,​

sounds particularly well to me, with the switch from tetrameter to pentameter covered by the swifter reading speed for the second line (I had to count the beats to tell the lines were different lengths). I also liked the contrast between the fool and the simple men, as "fool" is sometimes used as a term for someone who is "simple" (i.e., mentally deficient).

The main problem for me with this poem is that I'm unsure as to what it's actually about—what the poet is trying to say. It isn't clear to me. (Which could be, and likely is, my problem.)

Here's how I read it:

There's an unusual guy, presumably around the neighborhood, who even those in the community who are a bit flexible about vision and attitude find strange. In fact, they dislike him ("With frowning brows and hearts so cold"). This guy is not wealth-oriented ("he decried the selfish seeking only gold").

And then I kind of get lost. This line: saw not the loving heart becoming still confuses me. Is the guy dying? Becoming one with the universe? Just being quietly contemplative while commerce rattles busily, dopily around him?

I'm not saying this is a bad line, just that I lost the thread of the poem at this point and never recovered it.​

Anyway, this poem is certainly a worthy effort and I enjoyed reading it and thinking about it. Thank you, UYS, for participating in the challenge!

 

[butters]

Measure with a micrometer and cut with a chainsaw?

kinda sorta yeah

Things are basically fine with me, m'dear. I am histrionic and prone to languishing in little fits of gloom. I just need to crawl my amphibious way out of the primordial slime of my personality and get on with my commentationings.

Which will take a while, anyway, since I want to think about each poem somewhat.

bloody poets, right? that crawl can prove exhausting, so make sure you're clear of the slime before gulping your first deep breath. choking on gloop never looks pretty.

 

[Tzara]

Next up, greenmountaineer's The Pope of Fools.

Anybody who has been paying attention to my likes and dislikes here should know that I am something of a greenmountaineer fanboy. So, yeah, I liked this poem.

My first reaction was wow. My second reaction was wow. My third reaction was, oh, wait a minute, I need to be critical.

'S how we start these things, o' course.

First off, for anyone who doesn't know, GM's poem is about the novel Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo, better known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. (Or perhaps it's about one of the various film adaptations—that isn't clear to me. I don't think that matters, though.) Quasimodo, the bell-ringer, is named "the Pope of Fools," which is where his title comes from. None of that detail matters, except to match poem with novel (or film).

So yeah, yeah, yeah, GM cribs the novel/film. The point is, how does his poem work as poem?

Pretty well, I think, though as I said, I'm biased to like his work. I like his straightforwardness, his directness.

But, hey. Enough fawning blather. The poem is, I think, more or less free verse, though the meter seems to cluster around iambic tetrameter, with no obvious rhyme scheme (at least to me). The first two lines are clean iambic tetrameter, but deteriorate after that (elided unstressed beginning the third line, added unstressed ending the fourth line).

One of the problems I have with the poem (and this is me, being anal, probably) is the two pentameter lines smacked into the middle of what is otherwise a pretty cleanly tetrameter poem:

On the Feast of Fools, jeered at him
As did the rabble in La Place de Grève​

(my count, of course). These throw me off the beat of the poem, a bit. Oddly, the trimeter lines

Who broke his vow to God,​

and

Sway now from the gallows.​

seem somehow to mesh better for me into the larger work.

But enough about meter. Pretty darn good, basically.

There are some really good lines and images. This

Merely toyed with Esmeralda
Whose naked feet all men could see
Sway now from the gallows.​

for example, or this

The diggers found them in the pit
When they to had excavate
Because it smelled and needed lime.​

Both very visual and immediate, I think.

Anywho, a poem I really liked. Bravo, greenmountaineer! And thank you for your contribution to my dopey thread.

 

[Tzara]

I know. I'm awfully slow in getting through everyone's poems. Sorry.

But, hey! It's Tess's first one (thank you fer two, yer loveliness ), and one that's actually pretty easy to comment on.

It's good.

Oh. What I mean by that is that it is straightforward, and well executed within the boundaries that it has set for itself. The poem comments, ironically, on a BBC April Fool joke, so straightforward, right?

What makes this work as poem, is the language--how fountain pens unsheathed / for the battle to come / and sleeves rolled up in case / of physicality.

Fer example, anyway, as I read it.

A fun poem, not trying to be too deep. (Sorry, Tessie, if you meant it as your De Profundis.)

Having traveled to England, and loved it, the opening (This is the BBC
and you are tuned to Radio 4) makes me nostalgic.

Thanks, Tess, for your (first!) contribution to my challenge.

 

[The_Fool]

I'm late

But life hasn't liked me very much lately...

Old Fool

Strange how the mirror ripples
ripples when I touch it.
Strange how my face triples
in the pain.
Wait. That should be pane.
Weary in the night.
Teary in the night.
No tears were shed
in making my mind up.
Turning my bed down.
Turning my life upside down.
Reaching to the right
for that pillow
that hit the floor.
Too late, to catch it
Too late, to catch her.
Sound of silence
rather than breathing
except my own
and someone crying.

What passes for dreams,
dreams of schemes
and sorrows,
borrowing sorrow and sight
from her eyes,
wondering what she sees.

Doesn’t matter the day.
Two converse in silence,
if at all.
Either finishing each other’s sentences
or not hearing a word
spoken. Heated frame of reference
limited to a hot kitchen stove,
Sunday dinner with smiles,
especially during holidays.
But after that excuse,
all is quiet.
Arid emotion and sensible shoes.

I dreamed of sex last night
in summer fields and pools
of water and blue eyes.
“Trust me,” they said,
“and love me always.”
So what if blue turns green or gray?

Foolish pride and forgetting to ask
for directions.
Losing the way or lost along the way.
Needing to stop and forgetting
where I put the brake.
I have forgotten where I put a lot of things.
Others I know where they are,
but a day becomes a week
becomes a year.
And still I forget to take them out.
But I haven’t forgotten how to say,
“I love you.”
Sometimes I think I have forgotten
when to say it.
Other times, I wonder if anyone cares
if I say it.
I must,
just be a fool,
because I still remember why I say it.

 

[Tzara]

But life hasn't liked me very much lately...

Old Fool

Welcome, Fool, and many thanks for joining my dopey challenge.

Life has not liked me much lately, either. Not that that should make you feel any better.

Sorry.

Apologies about this comment thing; I'm, like, really slow. Like glacially so. Back before global warming when we were talking about millimeters per year.

& now they're, like, receding. Glaciers. Oops.

I will get to your poem, honest. It might be in September, though. Or January 2011.

But thanks, again. 'Cuz you rock, bud.

And you're a gentleman. Which I, fer sure, am not.

Dammit.



You know, O Foolish One, you should write poems more often, for many of us poor poemies appreciate them.

This is an addendum after I have actually, well, read yer poem. Quite good (comments to follow, eventually), but you never seem to understand your own talent.

Though if I remember correctly, you live some place that is very flat, and determining what rises above normal might take a laser pointer and quite some miles of I-35 or 70 to ensure that that surface drift was not just rounding error.

Thanks, anyway.

 

[Tzara]

Damn. Where was I?

Oh, yeah, reviewing poems. Well, next up is bflagsst, where I am back on (kinda) comfortable ground.

I mean, itza parody! Of Eliot! Thom S.!

And I love parodies, especially of Eliot! And this one is foolishly appropriate: silly, funny, and (well) good.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Think critical. Hmmmm.

Well, I think this one might be better, but only because I really love that section of The Waste Land. Anyway. Whatever.

Good. Yah.

Oh, & thank yew.

 

[darkerdreamer]

But life hasn't liked me very much lately...

Old Fool

Strange how the mirror ripples
ripples when I touch it.
Strange how my face triples
in the pain.
Wait. That should be pane.
Weary in the night.
Teary in the night.
No tears were shed
in making my mind up.
Turning my bed down.
Turning my life upside down.
Reaching to the right
for that pillow
that hit the floor.
Too late, to catch it
Too late, to catch her.
Sound of silence
rather than breathing
except my own
and someone crying.

What passes for dreams,
dreams of schemes
and sorrows,
borrowing sorrow and sight
from her eyes,
wondering what she sees.

Doesn’t matter the day.
Two converse in silence,
if at all.
Either finishing each other’s sentences
or not hearing a word
spoken. Heated frame of reference
limited to a hot kitchen stove,
Sunday dinner with smiles,
especially during holidays.
But after that excuse,
all is quiet.
Arid emotion and sensible shoes.

I dreamed of sex last night
in summer fields and pools
of water and blue eyes.
“Trust me,” they said,
“and love me always.”
So what if blue turns green or gray?

Foolish pride and forgetting to ask
for directions.
Losing the way or lost along the way.
Needing to stop and forgetting
where I put the brake.
I have forgotten where I put a lot of things.
Others I know where they are,
but a day becomes a week
becomes a year.
And still I forget to take them out.
But I haven’t forgotten how to say,
“I love you.”
Sometimes I think I have forgotten
when to say it.
Other times, I wonder if anyone cares
if I say it.
I must,
just be a fool,
because I still remember why I say it.

That hits me upside the head like two bricks taped together, liked it and loved it. Sometimes when life hates you creativity peaks, other times it crashes like everything else around you, and sometimes you can ride that crash like a pro-surfer.

 

[The_Fool]

Thanks for the kind words, Tzara and darkerdreamer.

Had another funfilled week, so haven't been as diligent in reading the threads once again.

I need to get back to writing smut.

Thanks again.

 

[Tzara]

Stop, darling and look away from clouds
of confusion in your sky. I hear your bells
a-tinkle like a leper's tail and even so
the crowds toss alms your way, delighting
in your innocent smile even as their words
bounce adrift. It's bad luck to harm nature's
mad child and far be it for us to step
in your path and keep your stroll
from turning to a leap. Walk on, walk on.

Late, late, late. I know. (Me, not you.) Get over it. I am getting to these wonderful poems as fast as I incompetently can.

Well, frankly, not exactly even that fast.

Whatever.

I think, I think, that Champie's poem is basically descriptive of Tarot Arcana Zero: The Fool.

If so, well done. If not, well, I'm an even bigger idiot than I thought I was.

It's in some ways a kind of curious poem in that the end words want to rush you to the next line, which gives it a kind of breathless effect, which I think works for it.

And then there's that probably unintentional, though very Canadian, end: Walk on, walk on.

Liked it. Liked it.



I mean, NY's Canadian, ain't he?

Fuck. Think so. Think so.

Double.

 

[Plinth]

You made me come again, my lord; I did:
You saw the pleasure shining in these eyes;
And there was your delight flecking my thighs;
As your submissive pet I'd never kid
You into thinking I'm not satisfied
By all the lusty moments on this day,
When others tease and taunt and, in their play,
Ensure that happy smiles are supplied;
For who am I, but one here to be used?
Throughout a morning others use to fool;
And afternoons that exist to explain
The cleverness completed, that's amused;
While my contrivances support the rule
Of one who'd have me come again in vain.

Smiles

Sweet O.

I love the line about 'your delight flecking my thighs'. So tender and specific and filthy.