Honest scrap meme

(tagged by Enbrethiliel: the idea is to post "ten honest facts about yourself")

1. I've never worked harder, or enjoyed anything more, than when I was sixteen and learning to write verse in slant-rhymed iambics, basically by imitating the Welsh poet whose praenomen I have taken as a pseudonym.

2. I sometimes think I would like to be a monk. But some monastic orders don't eat meat! And all monastic orders, I think, require their postulants to be a bit more virtuous, or intent on virtue, than my peccant self.

3. I like being clean-shaven, but do not enjoy shaving.

4. I, too (see Enbrethiliel's post), like the Carpenters. Am generally oddly nostalgic for a lot of '70s music. America : "A Horse with No Name." Van Morrison! "Moondance."

5. This is no revelation to anyone who's read this blog for a long time, but it is an honest fact: I love autumn. And I love the first snow of the year.

6. I weigh (it sounds better in the British measure) nineteen stone.

7. I get nervous going over the Tobin Bridge.

8. I once voted Libertarian in a Presidential election (1996, when the major parties were represented by Bill Clinton and Bob Dole).

8a. Despite the fact that her politics and her husband's politics are anathema, I don't dislike Michelle Obama.

9. I spend a half hour each morning writing. And more than a half hour drinking coffee.

10. I have a memory that retains the birthdays of people I haven't seen in twenty years.

Now, I'm supposed to tag people, but I know that most of the people who I'm inclined to tag don't enjoy being tagged as much as I do. So let's just say, whoever wants to join the fun, go ahead!

Mertoniana

A poem by Spencer Reece, from this month's Poetry magazine : At Thomas Merton's Grave.

O where are you going

by W. H. Auden (1907-73)

'O where are you going?' said reader to rider,
'That valley is fatal where furnaces burn,
Yonder's the midden whose odours will madden,
That gap is the grave where the tall return.'

'O do you imagine,' said fearer to farer,
'That dusk will delay on your path to the pass,
Your diligent looking discover the lacking
Your footsteps feel from granite to grass?'

'O what was that bird,' said horror to hearer,
'Did you see that shape in the twisted trees?
Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,
The spot on your skin is a shocking disease?'

'Out of this house' -- said rider to reader,
'Yours never will' -- said farer to fearer,
'They're looking for you' -- said hearer to horror,
As he left them there, as he left them there.

five in the morning

I dream of shining fish in a murky river. Of collages in the radical magazines.

I dream of slender mysterious poems whose meanings are not found in the back of the book.

I dream of the face of God on the number 80 bus.

I dream of cool Septembers on the last day of August.

I dream of significant anniversaries and lavish expenditures.

I dream of poverty and unstinting charity.

I dream of waking up to a dark and quiet apartment. I dream of Adam's ale and the matutinal cup o' joe.

I dream of mirthful commonwealths where ebullience never ceases. I dream of distant sisters who learned how to rhyme with April.

I dream of vehement activists. I dream of civilization.

I dream of an eternal reward of hurtfully curative mercy.

fourteen fragments

1
Stenographers, exult! The wind blows cold.

2
Forty degrees somewhere north of here.

3
Summer pollutes the mind, winter makes clean.

4
Inspirational rhymes next to the box scores.

5
Dire vocals of the mirthless folk singer.

6
When gluttons try to fast, the will flinches.

7
Paradise and solitude, the red den.

8
Space for the harbingers of hope, selah.

9
A precious metaphysical conceit!

10
Excelling chant of monks, my true love's voice.

11
Minute particulars, news of the day.

12
Who is this bozo on the pitcher's mound?

13
Fragments of brilliance, lost in lassitude.

14
An urban prelude, regal demoiselle.

When will dylan resume blogging?

Soon. Probably not today!

Snow and Stars

by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

The grackles sing avant the spring
Most spiss -- oh! Yes, most spissantly.
They sing right puissantly.

This robe of snow and winter stars,
The devil take it, wear it, too.
It might become his hole of blue.

Let him move it to his regions,
White and star-furred for his legions,
And make much bing, high bing.

It would be ransom for the willow
And fill the hill and fill it full
Of ding, ding, dong.

Quotation

The Lord forgives many things,
so I have heard.

Mary Oliver, "More Beautiful than the Honey Locust Tree Are the Words of the Lord," from Thirst (Beacon Press, 2006), p. 31

The Proclaimers

"Throw the 'R' Away" (1987-ish?), a slightly abridged version, missing the lines

Some days I stand
On your green and pleasant land
How dare I show face
When my diction is such a disgrace

An anthology of verse

Amaryllis is made of vers libre.

The senator begins his epic
In the rhythm of The Song of Hiawatha.

Sestinas dance in Davis Square,
While sonnets snore on waterbeds.

Quatrains eat scrambled eggs for breakfast,
Heroic couplets cold cereal.

The lawyer left her housekeys
Beside the terza rima.

Refreshed by slant-rhymed villanelles,
Beachgoers lie beneath humongous parasols.

Johnny finds a hole in his pantoum
The size of a Sacagawea dollar coin.

Olivia's cinquain
Makes a noise like a dripping faucet.

Oh, for the unity of blank verse!
For the hope and change of anapests!

Winter's ballad makes the nose run,
Summer's ballade burns fair skin.

St Lawrence went to the gridiron, we are told,
Taunting his executioners
In Catullan hendecasyllabics.

Bellies

Progressive bellies are chubby.
Conservative bellies are lean.

Catholic bellies sit primly
Above legs that genuflect
Before a monstrance or a tabernacle.

Protestant bellies
Thunder the Scriptures
In the King James Version,
And often in a Southern accent.

The poet sips his fourth, maybe fifth, beer
And waxes poetic about his Chestertonian girth.

The teacher's belly is covered in chalkdust
From September to June.

A reminder

Am also blogging here.