ink throbbing my temples, each vertebra
straining for her fingers. She trusses up
words, lines, as a corset disciplines flesh.
Without her, I’m nothing but without me
she’s tense, uptight, rigid as a full stop.
Kate Clanchy (b. 1965)
War Poetry2
The class has dropped its books. The janitor’s
disturbed some wasps, broomed the nest
straight off the roof. It lies outside, exotic
as a fallen planet, a burst city of the poor;
its newsprint halls, its ashen, tiny rooms
all open to the air. The insects’ buzz
is low-key as a smart machine. They group,
regroup, in stacks and coils, advance
and cross like pulsing points on radar screens.
And though the boys have shaven heads
and football strips, and would, they swear,
enlist at once, given half a chance,
march down Owen’s darkening lanes
to join the lads and stuff the Boche—
they don’t rush out to pike the nest,
or lap the yard with grapeshot faces.
They watch the wasps through glass,
silently, abashed, the way we all watch war.
David Berman (b. 1967)
Snow1
Walking through a field with my little brother Seth
I pointed to a place
where kids had made angels in the snow.
For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels
had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground.
He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer.
Then we were on the roof of the lake.
The ice looked like a photograph of water.
Why he asked. Why did he shoot them.
I didn’t know where I was going with this.
They were on his property, I said.
When it’s snowing, the outdoors seem like a room.
Today I traded hellos with my neighbor.
Our voices hung close in the new acoustics.
A room with the walls blasted to shreds and falling.
We returned to our shoveling,
working side by side in silence.
But why were they on his property, he asked.
Jackleen Holton (b. 1969)
American History1
First semester of my senior year,
Mr. Severin, American History teacher,
would wave his giant arthritic hands—
fingers unmoving—as he spoke of past
presidents and foreign wars.
Oftentimes he’d sketch himself
into these lectures, remembering
how a dark theatre fell silent
as the newsreel delivered the wreckage,
the death toll at Pearl Harbor.
His wife, a sweet-faced brunette,
had been a hard catch until the night
he showed up at the soda fountain
with the girl who had a reputation.
Against a backdrop of black-and-white
war footage, their courtship endured.
They had two sons, one under Eisenhower,
the other the day Kennedy was shot.
Just after Vietnam, cancer took
her far too soon.
He looked around the silent classroom.
He told us: “Every life that has breathed
has had its tragedy.” It was 1986.
Many of the cars in the student parking lot
were new. We had two more years of Reagan.
“Something will be taken from each of you.”
I could tell nobody believed him.
He raised his painful hands in the air.
His eyes searched the room, then locked
down on mine. In almost a whisper
he said—how I remember this—
“You will not be spared.”
Free1
Behold the next-door neighbor’s
Frigidaire, faithful servant
of fifteen years, now standing
at the foot of the driveway, facing
the street, a handwritten sign carelessly
taped to its freezer compartment
and fluttering in the breeze:
“Free!”
Then think of the thousands of couches
and loveseats left in the front yards
of their former houses, sometimes bearing
similar signs, otherwise their status
is implied. Evidence their worn fabrics,
outdated patterns and styles, the fact
that they’ve been carted outside.
They’re free.
But the dumbfounded home furnishings,
the pardoned kitchen appliances
can do nothing but stand Quiet vigil
outside like abandoned children
or aging, divorced wives, the downsized,
the suddenly homeless, the disenfranchised—
now free.
“Your services are no longer needed,”
their former masters have informed them
with these one-word Dear John letters
to the coffee table or the washing machine
“You can leave anytime you’d like.
You’re free.”
Jane Flanders (b. 1984)
The House that Fear Built: Warsaw, 19431
The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just
one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors….
—Czeslaw Milosz, “Ars Poetica”
I am the boy with his hands raised over his head
in Warsaw.
I am the soldier whose rifle is trained
on the boy with his hands raised over his head
in Warsaw.
I am the woman with lowered gaze
who fears the soldier whose rifle is trained
on the boy with his hands raised over his head
in Warsaw.
I am the man in the overcoat
who loves the woman with lowered gaze
who fears the soldier whose rifle is trained
on the boy with his hands raised over his head
in Warsaw.
I am the stranger who photographs
the man in the overcoat
who loves the woman with lowered gaze
who fears the soldier whose rifle is trained
on the boy with his hands raised over his head
in Warsaw.
The crowd, of which I am each part, moves on
beneath my window, for I am the crone too
who shakes her sheets
over every street in the world
muttering
What’s this? What’s this?
Appendix A
Notes on Meter
Metered verse consists of stanzas, lines, feet, and syllables. Stanzas are optional collections of lines into the equivalent of paragraphs. Metered verse is more likely to use regular stanzas (same number of lines in each stanza) than free verse, although this is certainly not a requirement. Lines are collections of feet. In metered verse, the number of feet per line is either consistent (e.g., always 3, 4, 5, etc.) or varies in a regular pattern (e.g., 4-3-4-3). Feet are collections of syllables. Note that I haven’t mentioned words. Word boundaries are irrelevant when dealing with meter.
Feet are broken down based on the accents.
da DUM is called an iamb (emphasis on the DUM part)
DUM da is called a trochee
da da DUM is called an anapest
Here are some examples:
iambs:
the right
abate
trochees:
have a
acted
anapest:
in the snow
violin
When poets write metered verse, they write
it as iambic, trochaic, or
anapestic. Each line should have more feet of the selected pattern than other types of feet. Iambic verse is the most versatile and natural. It is used for just about any subject matter. Trochaic is kind of hammering, similar to marching music. It might be used for military or forceful types of topics. Anapestic is sing-song, and works well for children’s verse and funny poems. Of course, there are always exceptions to these general rules.
Here are some examples:
iambic:
The slow are dead, however just and right.
trochaic
Slowly hitting with a baseball bat I …
anapestic
On the night before Christmas throughout the big house.
Once you’ve identified the pattern of feet in the lines, and the type of meter, then you should find that each line of the verse will have that number of feet and more of that type of foot than any other foot. For example, if the poem is written in iambic pentameter (iambic, 5 feet per line) then each line will have five feet and at least 3 of those five feet will be iambs. Using something other than iambs for the other two feet is called substitution, and it’s what keeps the verse from getting monotonous.
Now, let’s look at some exceptions to the simplified rules above:
DUM DUM is called a spondee. In iambic and trochaic verse, think of it as a wild card. In iambic verse it counts as an iamb. In trochaic verse, it counts as a trochee.
da da is called a pyrrhic, but you never have this. However, you might have a pyrrhic and a spondee, which is called a double iamb. It counts as two iambs. So da da DUM DUM is a double iamb, or two iambs.
Here are some examples:
spondee:
big gun
red-hot
double iamb
in the big top
it’s an abstract
If you have a DUM as the first thing on a line, it might be the beginning of a trochee or spondee, or it can be what’s called a headless iamb. In other words, an iamb without the initial da counts just like any other iamb. The author of the poem gets to pick if they want it used as a headless iamb or not, but then needs to make sure everything else in that line works out to the correct number of feet based on that assumption. One more rule: In iambic verse you shouldn’t find a headless iamb on the first line. In other words, the reader needs to get into the swing of iambic reading before the poet throws a headless iamb at them.
Here are some examples:
headless iamb
making currents, rivers, rapids, then
Initial trochee
needing, then not, though each approach
If you have a da DUM da at the end of a line, you can count the da DUM as an iamb and “throw away” the trailing da, which is called a feminine ending.
Here’s an example, starting with a headless iamb and ending with a feminine ending:
scream and grab that flung me sparkling skyward
Finally, the “rule of three” says that anytime you have three of something in a row (e.g., da da da or DUM DUM DUM) the middle one gets promoted or demoted. However, it’s considered bad for the poet to require that you promote (or demote) something that strongly does not want to be promoted or demoted. For example, promoting a little word like “a” with the rule of three to a stress would be a blunder.
In this example, “grandkids” could be ambiguous in its stress, but the rule of three tells us that “grand” is stressed and “kids” is weak.
Today the kids and grandkids tempt me slowly up
Whew, that’s a lot to think about. It’s probably more interesting to you if you like the metered verse and you’d like to try your hand at writing some metered verse yourself.
Index by Author
Agbabi, Patience
Transformatrix
666
Akhmatova, Anna
ReQuiem — Instead Of A Preface
426
Alegria, Claribel
Documentary
621
Ali, Agha Shahid
Dacca Gauzes, The
613
Anonymous
Anvil-God’s Word, The
434
From The Longbeards’ Saga
35
Ishtar
31
Arbiter, Petronius
Doing, A Filthy Pleasure Is, And Short
35
Archilochos,
Will, Lost In A Sea Of Trouble
32
Atwood, Margaret
Manet’s Olympia
533
Miss July Grows Older
534
Variations On The Word Sleep
536
You Fit Into Me
537
Auden, W.H.
Dichtung And Wahrheit - Part XXXIII
437
From Selected Shorts
437
Marginalia (Extracts)
437
Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Amiri
Wise I
516
Baudelaire, Charles
Carrion, A
218
Flask, The
224
From Fuses I - On Art
221
From Fuses I - On God
221
From Fuses I - On Love
220
Ghostly Visitant, The
226
Heautontimoroumenos
221
Metamorphoses Of The Vampire
222
Murderer’s Wine, The
226
Pit, The
228
Spleen
223
Vampire, The
229
Berman, David
Snow
667
Bernstein, Charles
Of Time And The Line
624
Bible, The
Address Of Ruth To Naomi
32
Bishop, Elizabeth
Armadillo, The
446
Filling Station
439
In The Waiting Room
440
One Art
443
Sestina
444
Blaga, Lucian
I Will Not Crush The World’s
Corolla Of Wonders
431
Blake, William
Garden Of Love, The
62
Sick Rose, The
63
Tiger, The
63
To See A World In A Grain Of Sand
64
Bogan, Louise
From Beginning And End - Knowledge
432
Bronte, Emily
I Am The Only Being Whose Doom
206
Brooke, Rupert
Soldier, The
415
Brooks, Gwendolyn
Boy Died In My Alley, The
456
Song In The Front Yard, A
456
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
Sonnets From The Portuguese – 1
145
Sonnets From The Portuguese – XIV
146
Sonnets From The Portuguese – XX
146
Sonnets From The Portuguese – XLIII
147
Browning, Robert
Confessional, The
193
Meeting At Night
188
My Last Duchess
188
Never The Time And The Place
190
Pied Piper Of Hamelin, The
196
Porphyria’s Lover
191
Toccata Of Galuppi’s, A
185
Bryan, Sharon
Beyond Recall
595
Bryant, William Cullen
Hurricane, The
111
Murdered Traveler, The
112<
br />
Mutation
108
Poet, The
114
Presentiment, A
107
Strange Lady, The
115
Thanatopsis
109
To A Waterfowl
118
Budbill, David
Dilemma
542
Three Goals, The
542
Burns, Robert
Epitaph For James Smith
64
Epitaph On A Henpecked SQuire
65
Epitaph On William Muir
65
Inconstancy In Love
65
To A Louse
66
To A Mountain Daisy
68
The Giant Book of Poetry Page 52