No one ever answers when I call

[JFN]

Brian, nothing wrong with a dentistry ode. Made me smile anyway.

Selfie with Dad is such an honest and moving piece of writing. The constant shifting of topic and the repetition of key phrases, 1971, really carries it and helps the reader feel the father's confusion, without spelling it out in any way. I also appreciate the fact that you feature very little in your own selfie. It's all about Dad and Mom and occasionally siblings. The ending is superb too, left open but very probably closed. Made me think again of my old man at the end. He went relatively quickly, mid-forties, after plenty of alchohol abuse, but at the end he switched rapidly between lucid, angry, scared and confused too. Thank you for writing and posting this.

“I’ve never said I’m Wyatt Earp,” Genius piece of rhyming. The rhyme and meter work very tidily throughout. This was good fun.

Say What? had me grinning too. You mean I shouldn't have given all those bank details to Nigerian politicians? Oops.

This Old Story is a fond remembrance of a lesson learned. The excitement of the younger N it's palpable, and as a reader I felt excited for him too.

If you filled the number gaps in Seven Simian Stanzas plus One More (and maybe made the last stanza more child friendly) I would buy it as a counting book for my children. Lovely verse.

The internal rhymes of Tin Foil Hat carry it along wonderfully.

I hope your Mum is recovering well. Family comes even before poetry, I wouldn't worry about fluff.

John

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

heya Brian - yes! a tinfoil hat poem, finally! heh. love the fun of this. super-size indeed! enjoyed.

Thanks, cookala. That one went through many iterations before it found its groove.

Brian, nothing wrong with a dentistry ode. Made me smile anyway.

Selfie with Dad is such an honest and moving piece of writing. The constant shifting of topic and the repetition of key phrases, 1971, really carries it and helps the reader feel the father's confusion, without spelling it out in any way. I also appreciate the fact that you feature very little in your own selfie. It's all about Dad and Mom and occasionally siblings. The ending is superb too, left open but very probably closed. Made me think again of my old man at the end. He went relatively quickly, mid-forties, after plenty of alchohol abuse, but at the end he switched rapidly between lucid, angry, scared and confused too. Thank you for writing and posting this.

“I’ve never said I’m Wyatt Earp,” Genius piece of rhyming. The rhyme and meter work very tidily throughout. This was good fun.

Say What? had me grinning too. You mean I shouldn't have given all those bank details to Nigerian politicians? Oops.

This Old Story is a fond remembrance of a lesson learned. The excitement of the younger N it's palpable, and as a reader I felt excited for him too.

If you filled the number gaps in Seven Simian Stanzas plus One More (and maybe made the last stanza more child friendly) I would buy it as a counting book for my children. Lovely verse.

The internal rhymes of Tin Foil Hat carry it along wonderfully.

I hope your Mum is recovering well. Family comes even before poetry, I wouldn't worry about fluff.

John

Ah, dentistry, as Keats once said:

'Dentistry is tooth, tooth dentistry,—that is all
we pull on earth, and all we need to pull.'

Your comments on Selfie are interesting. I had rather felt I had focused too much on my self, and I made sure to mention others quite consciously. Perhaps, I succeeded in avoiding an overly self-centered Selfie.

Earp seems to have a few votes.

Don't give your bank details to the Nigerians. Give them to me.

I think that this is actually the first time that I put the story in "This Old Story" in poetic form, though I have told abbreviated versions of it to friends. I used it at my father;s 70th birthday party. When my brother gave the eulogy for my father this past December, he incorporated a misremembered version of it, but close enough.

I had thought of working my way through all of the numbers with the Simians, but I ran out of time and steam. Maybe something to consider for the future.

Mom is having her ups and downs. It has been a difficult time for her for a long time.

BrianIs AtYou

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

Prodigality Play

I play at prodigality:
The nurse arrives for my mother
and I know I can spare
an hour or two.

I take what
fugitive moments I can
to pedal fervently
in the crisp spring wind,

to raise my hands
in the air, to watch
my restless shadow trace
across the lonely

blacktop: Plato's Allegory
of the Cave, playing out
on the hidden byways
of Middlesex County.

When I leave, I know
it is for some few hours only.
I speak to a man
on the street

about all the empty storefronts
and shadows
along Main Street.
The street is defined

by signs: “To Lease”, “For Sale”;
he shakes his head,
and he speaks
of happier times.

He has lived here
his whole life,
but my time here
is fleeting.

I am back before
the nurse is done.
My mother's wounds are dressed.
She beads her rosary.
 
There is no fatted calf.
There is a bad hip,
a broken hand, a hernia,
two holes in her abdomen.

Her body is defined by deficits.
She is a shadow of herself.
Take away the pain,
and nothing would be left.

I help her from her bed,
to crippleshuffle
across the floor
to the bathroom.

And I help her sit,
and clean, and wipe,
and rise again—
to crippleshuffle back once more.

My well-worn bicycle
leans by the door—the vehicle
by which I exercise
my prodigality.

But people often forget
that the parable
is not about the fatted calf,
or even prodigality,

but Return.

-------------------

BrianIs AtYou

[Andrea345]

There is very much to like here, Brian in "Prodigality," but I did almost slip out of it. When you get a chance to return to it, I'd look at increasing the line length. The shorter lines aren't working for me because they chop everything up and slow down the reading. That works at odds with the opening bike scene for me. s2 is a bit overwritten compared to the rest and was my least favorite until I started deleting the modifiers. I do enjoy the sparsity of the prose after that. I'd even suggest cutting the word "prodigality", maybe leave the last line at "fattened calf". This piece does a nice meander though through various analogies. Much to like here.
-a

[Featherless Biped]

Hi Brian,


"Selfie With Dad" belongs in a different category from everything else. It's one of those poems that makes me feel lucky that another human being has shared something so personal with me. (I mean, me and the rest of PFFA, but I was never a jealous person that way.) Lots of good craft here too: the moment around L4 or L5 where you realize that none of Dad's world corresponds to the real outside world; the tidbit about Hoover and the burglars; the development of Dr. Singh in which both his level of power and the reader's sympathy for him undergo surprising shifts; the ugly medical details not hiding, but not obscuring the rest of the story. This one is a keeper. (Listening conditions are not ideal now, but I will try later.)


"Prodigality Play" is another in this category. It really gets strong in the second half: "Her body is defined by deficits"; "crippleshuffle"; that "Return" on its own line.


"This Old Story" has my attention right away because my baseball skills as a kid sucked bigtime: I was good at running around the bases, but terrible at making any kind of contact with that tiny, confusing ball. And I know some people are brought up in settings where only the boys are held to any baseball standard, but where I grew up, this was definitely shameful. So the anxiety about not being able to hit feels very real to me. I really like the attitude and character of the father as they come through in this story. The ending feels a little didactic, but the basic outline of the story is good; I feel like it just needs to settle into the appropriate form. (Not convinced that it's now in the shape it wants to be in.)

"Poultricide" is good fun, and a chicken ditty to boot. "Wyatt Earp" was a great surprise as a rhyme; also "Holmes"/"homes". It reminds me of my neighbour's recent chicken intrigue: one of their roosters kicked him hard enough to draw blood and cause an infection that required a hospital visit, and so landed itself in the soup pot. I bet there's a whole world of possible chicken drama.


"Anne Frank": Ouch. I like your version better. Makes me remember how lucky I am, as an awkward, bookish Jewish person, to have been born in the US near the end of the 20th Century, and not in Europe near its beginning. The alternative history highlights the tragedy, but it's got this interesting mirror effect of showing the fragility of happiness.


"Say What" is another rollicking good time. I think the spam is interesting because of the ideas it reveals about the supposedly ideal person. Girl/pearl is pretty standard, but I still like the King of Saud and his precious and mystical pearl.


"Seven Simian Stanzas Plus One More": Very funny--particularly the gibbous gibbons and the baboons--but hasn't the last stanza got someone simian in it as well? ("Eight Apes" doesn't quite work either, because of the lemurs and spider monkeys.)


"Your Tinfoil Hat": S2 is the real standout here. It's got that wonderful, gross-out, "great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts" feel to it. I've been watching a lot of X Files (motto: "We have no budget for a dramaturge"); this is in the right spirit.

[romac1]

Some good stuff here. Intimate poems with parents when well and ill, combined with crazy rhyming poems featuring tinfoil hats. I appreciated the prodigality poem a lot - well done on that.

[Arlene]

'Selfie with Dad' was the last of your wonderful poems I'd read till now, so imagine my delight on reading 'Poultricide,' and skip on for a moment to 'Seven Simians,' 'Say What?' and 'Your Tin-Foil Hat,' not-quite nonsense storytelling, Edward Lear-like balladic narrative poems, with wonderful complicated rhyme schemes, smiling as I read, interlaced with seriously poignant dramatic poems like 'Anne Frank in Hollywood,' yes, she would have been a woman with lovely memories of secret childhood dreams had it not been for the Holocaust, though i do think she would have dreamed more of writing for Hollywood...and then the great father son baseball story poem...and then the fragile 'Broken,' and the very painful but beautifully detailed 'Prodigal' about caring for your mom. 'Crippleshuffle' is a heartbreaker of a neologism. All in all, great stuff.

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

There is very much to like here, Brian in "Prodigality," but I did almost slip out of it. When you get a chance to return to it, I'd look at increasing the line length. The shorter lines aren't working for me because they chop everything up and slow down the reading. That works at odds with the opening bike scene for me. s2 is a bit overwritten compared to the rest and was my least favorite until I started deleting the modifiers. I do enjoy the sparsity of the prose after that. I'd even suggest cutting the word "prodigality", maybe leave the last line at "fattened calf". This piece does a nice meander though through various analogies. Much to like here.
-a

Thanks, Andrea. Prodigality emerged from a longer notes-in-progress-for-a-poem in which I reference 3 or 4 other parables, and which had become unwieldy. I used the decreased line length as a discipline to exorcise some of the extraneous material, and to focus certain things, but it is not a fixed unchangeable element of the final product. I can certainly still see room for improvement.

With regard to the effect of the line length slowing down the reading for you, I wonder about whether the effect of slowing down the reading is good or not. The first part of the poem might not (superficially ) seem to relate to the overall theme--the early part of the poem is digressive, and seems to meander--this is prodigality of form. There are some things which may be superfluous or repetitive, and this may need extra scrutiny in any future revision.

There are parallels throughout--an outward journey (followed by a return), shadows, deficits--but these are not made manifest at first, nor is the thematic direction really clear until the final section--this is prodigality of theme.

I am concerned that cutting "prodigality" at the end would leave the primary tension insufficiently resolved, leaving "the fatted calf" in too prominent a position of place thematically.

Hi Brian,


"Selfie With Dad" belongs in a different category from everything else. It's one of those poems that makes me feel lucky that another human being has shared something so personal with me. (I mean, me and the rest of PFFA, but I was never a jealous person that way.) Lots of good craft here too: the moment around L4 or L5 where you realize that none of Dad's world corresponds to the real outside world; the tidbit about Hoover and the burglars; the development of Dr. Singh in which both his level of power and the reader's sympathy for him undergo surprising shifts; the ugly medical details not hiding, but not obscuring the rest of the story. This one is a keeper. (Listening conditions are not ideal now, but I will try later.)

Thanks for the encouraging words. Hope you get a chance to listen. The performance is a "cold reading". I have never read it for an audience yet, but my "inner narrator" felt that it was a half-decent first attempt, though I sound a little nasal in the first part. The audio was recorded on my iPhone, and then isolated and merged with a slideshow of jpegs I made of the stanzas.

"Prodigality Play" is another in this category. It really gets strong in the second half: "Her body is defined by deficits"; "crippleshuffle"; that "Return" on its own line.

Thanks again. The bits you noted were bits that I felt were strong on their own.

"This Old Story" has my attention right away because my baseball skills as a kid sucked bigtime: I was good at running around the bases, but terrible at making any kind of contact with that tiny, confusing ball. And I know some people are brought up in settings where only the boys are held to any baseball standard, but where I grew up, this was definitely shameful. So the anxiety about not being able to hit feels very real to me. I really like the attitude and character of the father as they come through in this story. The ending feels a little didactic, but the basic outline of the story is good; I feel like it just needs to settle into the appropriate form. (Not convinced that it's now in the shape it wants to be in.)

Thanks for the kind words. You are right about the didactic nature of the ending, and it might be helpful for me to look at the ending as a stub or placeholder for the planned ending-to-be. Likewise with the comment on whether it is currently in its "appropriate form". I was having some difficulty initially with reining the piece in, so I ended up choosing to write it as a syllabic, something which I doubt most people would even take note of. In each strophe lines 1 and 3 are 12 syllables (possibly stretching to 13 if there is a feminine ending), and line 2 is 10 syllables, while line 4 is 8. Completely arbitrary, but it forced me to think about word choices and fitting things in to a set of rules. This got me over my difficulties with reining the piece in, since I could just tell myself "these are the rules for the poem" when I started to lose control. (Note, however, that within those constraints, there are some small compromises, as in S2L4, where, in my reading, "favorite" is scanned as "fav'rite", as I tend to swallow the "o" [a phenomenon which Howard elsewhere has noted is common in modern times with three-syllable words with "or" in the second syllable, as in "memory", which is often spoken as "mem'ry" or the name "Deborah", which has diminished in modern times to "Deb'rah", often being spelled as "Debra" now to reflect the pronunciation change.])

"Poultricide" is good fun, and a chicken ditty to boot. "Wyatt Earp" was a great surprise as a rhyme; also "Holmes"/"homes". It reminds me of my neighbour's recent chicken intrigue: one of their roosters kicked him hard enough to draw blood and cause an infection that required a hospital visit, and so landed itself in the soup pot. I bet there's a whole world of possible chicken drama.

Thanks. I felt that getting the chicken ditty done was a deed that I had a duty to do. Earp and Holmes appear to be hits.

"Anne Frank": Ouch. I like your version better. Makes me remember how lucky I am, as an awkward, bookish Jewish person, to have been born in the US near the end of the 20th Century, and not in Europe near its beginning. The alternative history highlights the tragedy, but it's got this interesting mirror effect of showing the fragility of happiness.

Thanks, this piece had a great deal of meaning for me. I have thought sometimes about people in my own life, and the tragedies that have happened to them, and how could things be changed. This is true in particular with my Mother, of whom I wrote in "Prodigality Play", whose medical history is punctuated by a series of mishaps that have left her in a state of great pain and difficulty. And I think of my sister, who was diagnosed with cancer while PFFA was doing its first NAPO back in 2005. I was hit with that in the middle of the month, and I was not sure that I could go on with it, but I did. She died after 5 years of struggle, and I wrote some good poems about her struggle and her ultimate death, and my feelings on the matter, but I would give them all up to have her back, alive.

"Say What" is another rollicking good time. I think the spam is interesting because of the ideas it reveals about the supposedly ideal person. Girl/pearl is pretty standard, but I still like the King of Saud and his precious and mystical pearl.

Thanks. For me, "Say What" was a bit of fluff and fun, and has a similar turn to last year's "I've Much Better Use for Your Money than You", and the idea of the turn was modeled on that. I like to have some fluff and fun.

"Seven Simian Stanzas Plus One More": Very funny--particularly the gibbous gibbons and the baboons--but hasn't the last stanza got someone simian in it as well? ("Eight Apes" doesn't quite work either, because of the lemurs and spider monkeys.)

I discussed this above in a response to an earlier poster. Some more fluff and fun, and a chance to play with rhyme and loose meter.

"Your Tinfoil Hat": S2 is the real standout here. It's got that wonderful, gross-out, "great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts" feel to it. I've been watching a lot of X Files (motto: "We have no budget for a dramaturge"); this is in the right spirit.

You are right, I think, with S2 being the standout. It took many rewrites to get this piece where it is. It, too, is fluff and fun, but it was a lot more work than the other two.

Some good stuff here. Intimate poems with parents when well and ill, combined with crazy rhyming poems featuring tinfoil hats. I appreciated the prodigality poem a lot - well done on that.

Thanks, Rob. Glad to see you like some things here. I've been trying to mix it up with a variety, and you seem to have made note of that.

BrianIs AtYou

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

Those who have been around for a while might remember that my NaPo efforts in 2011 centered on the ukiyo-e print series "Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, by Hokusai" (or they might not). However, due to there being only 30 days for NaPo, time constraints did not allow me to do poems for the whole series of prints (of which there are actually 46, despite the name of the print series).

I did some more in 7/7 and elsewhere, but there were still a small number of prints needing poems. I have returned to that here.

Climbing on Mount Fuji



No view of the great
mountain is complete without
the view from its core.
One can wear traditional
white robes—can one wear Fuji?

Inside the grottoes,
one can’t see the snowy peak—
white, as if Fuji
itself wears traditional
white robes. Can one wear Fuji

down? Inside the caves,
one becomes part of Fuji.
One wears the snow white
summit as a communal
garment. Can one, where Fuji

reaches horizon
to horizon, not be awed
into silence? "Mu"
precedes all words. One seeks to
whisper—can one? Where Fuji

is omnipresent,
one need no longer seek words
or robes, or wooden
staves: bodily illusions.
Chant: nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

The red volcanic
rocks presage the coming red
of dawn—red Fuji.
Devote oneself to Buddha.
Chant: nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

No view of the great
mountain is complete. Without,
one can wear white robes—
but within? The mystic law,
the lotus flower, Fuji.

----------------------

BrianIs AtYou

[Donner]

(Aside post: I forgot to tell you how much I like your little welcome acrostics. Fun and something so Brian.

And I remember your print series. I'll be bock.)

[Steven]

Hi, Brian, much enjoyed reading this. The repetitions and tiny modulations of meaning ('wear, where') produce an impressive effect whilst reading. This reads as if it has been put together very carefully by a craftsman. Well done.

[5th column]

Hey Brian, I admired the last for what seemed to be the ease with which you play with the words and the form. It has a simplicity that suits the subject.

This: take away the pain / and nothing would be left. Is just beautiful, as is the poem.

I I think you may have peaked early with your father poem. Hard to follow that.

[GreaterMandalaofUselessness]

Hi Brian,

I really enjoyed repetition and shifiting meaning of "wear Fuji" variations, in fact, it reminded me of -- dare I say it -- a ghazal! Wasn't completely sure about having the pattern dropped for the final three, but I like the shift more towards Buddhist themes, and the way the end calls back to the beginning with, "one can wear white robes—
but within?" I also liked that they are chanting the Lotus Sutra. I'm guessing that "mu" reference is to the opening koan from the Gateless Gate collection, making me think they are Zen monks / adherents. I enjoyed being taken to another time and place for a while, and returned refreshed.

- Matt

-Matt

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

'Selfie with Dad' was the last of your wonderful poems I'd read till now, so imagine my delight on reading 'Poultricide,' and skip on for a moment to 'Seven Simians,' 'Say What?' and 'Your Tin-Foil Hat,' not-quite nonsense storytelling, Edward Lear-like balladic narrative poems, with wonderful complicated rhyme schemes, smiling as I read, interlaced with seriously poignant dramatic poems like 'Anne Frank in Hollywood,' yes, she would have been a woman with lovely memories of secret childhood dreams had it not been for the Holocaust, though i do think she would have dreamed more of writing for Hollywood...and then the great father son baseball story poem...and then the fragile 'Broken,' and the very painful but beautifully detailed 'Prodigal' about caring for your mom. 'Crippleshuffle' is a heartbreaker of a neologism. All in all, great stuff.

Arlene, Thanks for the many kind words. And sorry missing you last time around.

Glad you like the nonsense-storytelling. Those kinds of poems are great fun to warm up an audience, and then punch 'em in the gut with the more serious stuff.

(Aside post: I forgot to tell you how much I like your little welcome acrostics. Fun and something so Brian.

And I remember your print series. I'll be bock.)

Thanks, Donner. The acrostics were helpful in waking up my muse. With regard to the print series, I may try to see if I can finish out the rest of the missing prints over the rest of NaPo. It depends on inspiration. I had a lovely lady friend who happens to be a Nichiren Buddhist and does the Lotus Sutra chant (nam-myoho-renge-kyo) to help inspire me for this one.

Hi, Brian, much enjoyed reading this. The repetitions and tiny modulations of meaning ('wear, where') produce an impressive effect whilst reading. This reads as if it has been put together very carefully by a craftsman. Well done.

Thanks, Steven. The facility with which I wrote this is due to having written over 40 poems in this form (or related forms) over the last 4 years (actually further. I think the first Hokusai poem was in 2009 or so, when I was doing the double sevenling sonnets for NaPo. The first was "Hodogaya on the Tokaido Road" written in the double sevenling sonnet form, but was later modified in 2011 in 7/7 following NaPo, when I was doing the full Hokusai Fuji series).

Hey Brian, I admired the last for what seemed to be the ease with which you play with the words and the form. It has a simplicity that suits the subject.

This: take away the pain / and nothing would be left. Is just beautiful, as is the poem.

I I think you may have peaked early with your father poem. Hard to follow that.

Thanks, 5th. As I noted above, I've done over 40 over these over the years. Learning to write in this form with facility was something that involved a great deal of struggle.

Thanks on the comments on "Prodigality". It is a paradox that pain can lead to beauty.

As for the last comment, on possibly having "peaked early", it does not worry me. There are different kinds of challenges, not all of them are as grandiose, but some of the simpler things, like the rhyming poems, are of great use when performing at an open mic, so I like to write them alongside the "big idea" poems. Plus, I would rather not be required to write "big" poems if it also required suffering of the kind that preceded this one (even though I know that suffering is inevitable).

Hi Brian,

I really enjoyed repetition and shifiting meaning of "wear Fuji" variations, in fact, it reminded me of -- dare I say it -- a ghazal! Wasn't completely sure about having the pattern dropped for the final three, but I like the shift more towards Buddhist themes, and the way the end calls back to the beginning with, "one can wear white robes—
but within?" I also liked that they are chanting the Lotus Sutra. I'm guessing that "mu" reference is to the opening koan from the Gateless Gate collection, making me think they are Zen monks / adherents. I enjoyed being taken to another time and place for a while, and returned refreshed.

- Matt

-Matt

Thanks, Matt. Superficially, the repetition could remind one of a ghazal (or any number of poems which are designed with repetition in mind). But the ghazal has less room to breathe, and has more of a tattooing effect.

There is a pattern to the diminution of pattern. The Fuji endings repeat 4 times, with minor variations, a thing in flux, perhaps, between being and non-being. The chant repeats twice with no variations. And then the final stanza ends with a singlet--a repetition of one, which symbolically incorporates both. "wear/where Fuji" becomes "(flo)wer, Fuji" and the Lotus Sutra chant (nam-myoho-renge-kyo) becomes "Lotus Flower". The two are intertwined.

"Mu" is indeed from the Gateless Gate collection.

Hokusai himself (the artist) was a devotee of Nichiren Buddhism.

Japanese Buddhism is fairly syncretic, despite a number of conflicts, such as Nichiren's debate with Benjo of the Pure Land school, and his criticisms of Dogen, who espoused "Zazen" or "shikantaza", which involved the use of "silence" related to "silent illumination" which originated in China. "Silence" is referred to here in the poem before "mu".

Consequently, these devotees could be of any number of sects or a mix, all making the pilgrimage. Keep in mind, also, that I am not an expert on Buddhism. I had a class in Eastern religion in University, and I read extensively on Chinese Philosophy, including Buddhism. I also have a Japanese sister-in-law, who comes from a Shinto/Buddhist background--again, the integration of Shinto and Buddhist ideas is an example of Japanese syncretism.

In an earlier poem in the series, "Fuji Viewed from Rice Fields in Owari Province", I reference Amida, recognizing another chanting practice, in an effort to be cognizant of the diversity of practice and experience.

BrianIs AtYou

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

All I’ve Got

I sit here in my poet's nook,
with pen in hand, an empty book.
The page is blank; my mind is too:
I have to think my verses through.

I think aloud: "Why do I write?
Approval—or money? Love—or spite?
But, in the end, it matters not,
these eight short lines are all I've got.

----------

BrianIs AtYou

ps

I sit here in my poet's nook, (bathroom/loo/water closet/you name it)
with pen in hand, an empty book. (iPhone)
The page is blank; my mind is too: (true enough)
I have to think my verses through. (because I like to waste time)

I think aloud: "Why do I write? (don't pay attention to the crazy man on the toilet)
Approval—or money? Love—or spite? (money would be good)
But, in the end, it matters not, (nope, not at all)
these eight short lines are all I've got. (suck it, NaPo)