My OperaPoet Laureat of My Humble Home
Monday, November 19, 2007 10:49:19 PM
Welcome to my Literary blog! Before we get started, a few definitions are in order:
Among my favorite efforts are the ones in the 'cinquain' and 'clerihew' form.
The 'cinquain' is a type of poem developed by Adelaide Crapsey [1878-1914] around 1910-11. A close friend of author Jean Webster ['Daddy Long Legs'], her version consists of a short, unrhymed poem of twenty-two syllables in five lines: 2,4,6,8,2 syllables respectively.
A fine example from Adelaide herself:
These be
Three silent things:
The falling snow... the hour
Before the dawn... the mouth of one
Just dead.
According to Answers.com: "Cinqku, lanterne, tetractys, and quintiles are examples of variations of the Cinquain type of five-line image form. Other quintain forms can be in the style of English quintets, individual French cinquains, individual Quintillas, five line blank or free verse."
Adelaide Crapsey is perhaps the most well-known poet of the American cinquain form [Topaz is working hard to catch her!], though, it must be said, she wrote other acclaimed poetry. Her work was collected in, 'Verse', published posthumously by Claude Bragdon in 1915, with revisions and additions in 1922 and again in 1934. It contains her cinquains along with other types of poems.
Miss Crapsey "also formulated the established epigram into a new form couplet , a poem of two rhyming lines of ten syllables with an integral title." In 1918 renowned poet, Carl Sandburg remembered her in his poem: 'Adelaide Crapsey': His book 'Cornhuskers', poem 26:
ADELAIDE CRAPSEY
AMONG the bumble-bees in red-top hay, a freckled field of brown-eyed Susans dripping yellow leaves in July,
I read your heart in a book.
And your mouth of blue pansy—I know somewhere I have seen it rain-shattered.
And I have seen a woman with her head flung between her naked knees, and her head held there listening to the sea, the great naked sea shouldering a load of salt.
And the blue pansy mouth sang to the sea:
Mother of God, I’m so little a thing,
Let me sing longer,
Only a little longer.
And the sea shouldered its salt in long gray combers hauling new shapes on the beach sand.
***
My poems consist of cinquains, longer poems of several cinquain verses, clerihews, and spur-of-the-moment forms. I'll also be posting some of my essays and short stories.
A cinquain example from Topaz:
C88 - NOVEMBER
Decry
Guy Fawkes to start;
Pure chill begins; flurries
Fly; winter signs in; giving thanks
For all.
***
A 'Clerihew' is a very specific kind of short humorous biographical verse, developed by Edmund Clerihew Bentley [1875-1956]---an English political and literary journalist.
The Clerihew is four lines long with a rhyme scheme of AABB. The first line is the subject's name, with the second line a rhyme to it. The thoughts can get somewhat ridiculous in the final, rhyming lines based on fact. At the age of sixteen, the bored student, Bentley, wrote his first clerihew:
Sir Humphrey Davy
Detested gravy
He lived in the Odium
Of having discovered Sodium.
G. K. Chesterton, a lifelong friend of Bentley and fellow clerihew writer, left us a particularly human portrait of the man: "It was a poetic delight to see him walking down the street, a bit pompously, and then suddenly climb a lamp post with the alleged intention of lighting a cigarette and then drop down and resume his walk with an unchanged expression of serenity."
Bentley published his clerihews in three small volumes: 'Biography for Beginners' [1897,] 'More Biography' [1899,] and Baseless Biography [1903.]
Bentley also published an omnibus volume, 'Clerihews Complete,' with the following, introductory effort:
The art of Biography
Is different from Geography
Geography is about Maps.
But biography is about Chaps.
His best known work is the clerihew on Sir Christopher Wren [a 17th century English designer, astronomer, geometer, and architect, who designed 53 London churches, including St Paul’s Cathedral in London.]
Sir Christopher Wren said,
"I'm going out to dine with some men"
"If anyone calls,"
"Say I'm designing the St Paul's."
And Christopher Columbus:
"I quite realised," said Columbus
"That the earth is not a Rhombus"
"But I'm a little annoyed,"
"To find it an oblate spheroid."
Personally, I don't think those two examples are so hot. They aren't as pointedly humorous as one would expect, and some of the lines feel uncomfortable off the tongue.
Better examples from 'Biography for Beginners' [1897]:
What I like about Clive
Is that he is no longer alive.
There is a great deal to be said
For being dead.
Edward the Confessor
Slept under the dresser.
When that began to pall,
He slept in the hall.
***
An example by Topaz:
Edith Wharton American author; wrote the novel “Ethan Frome.”
CW 96
Edith Wharton
Packed a carton;
Then went home
With Ethan Frome.
***
Until the next time.
Among my favorite efforts are the ones in the 'cinquain' and 'clerihew' form.
The 'cinquain' is a type of poem developed by Adelaide Crapsey [1878-1914] around 1910-11. A close friend of author Jean Webster ['Daddy Long Legs'], her version consists of a short, unrhymed poem of twenty-two syllables in five lines: 2,4,6,8,2 syllables respectively.
A fine example from Adelaide herself:
These be
Three silent things:
The falling snow... the hour
Before the dawn... the mouth of one
Just dead.
According to Answers.com: "Cinqku, lanterne, tetractys, and quintiles are examples of variations of the Cinquain type of five-line image form. Other quintain forms can be in the style of English quintets, individual French cinquains, individual Quintillas, five line blank or free verse."
Adelaide Crapsey is perhaps the most well-known poet of the American cinquain form [Topaz is working hard to catch her!], though, it must be said, she wrote other acclaimed poetry. Her work was collected in, 'Verse', published posthumously by Claude Bragdon in 1915, with revisions and additions in 1922 and again in 1934. It contains her cinquains along with other types of poems.
Miss Crapsey "also formulated the established epigram into a new form couplet , a poem of two rhyming lines of ten syllables with an integral title." In 1918 renowned poet, Carl Sandburg remembered her in his poem: 'Adelaide Crapsey': His book 'Cornhuskers', poem 26:
ADELAIDE CRAPSEY
AMONG the bumble-bees in red-top hay, a freckled field of brown-eyed Susans dripping yellow leaves in July,
I read your heart in a book.
And your mouth of blue pansy—I know somewhere I have seen it rain-shattered.
And I have seen a woman with her head flung between her naked knees, and her head held there listening to the sea, the great naked sea shouldering a load of salt.
And the blue pansy mouth sang to the sea:
Mother of God, I’m so little a thing,
Let me sing longer,
Only a little longer.
And the sea shouldered its salt in long gray combers hauling new shapes on the beach sand.
***
My poems consist of cinquains, longer poems of several cinquain verses, clerihews, and spur-of-the-moment forms. I'll also be posting some of my essays and short stories.
A cinquain example from Topaz:
C88 - NOVEMBER
Decry
Guy Fawkes to start;
Pure chill begins; flurries
Fly; winter signs in; giving thanks
For all.
***
A 'Clerihew' is a very specific kind of short humorous biographical verse, developed by Edmund Clerihew Bentley [1875-1956]---an English political and literary journalist.
The Clerihew is four lines long with a rhyme scheme of AABB. The first line is the subject's name, with the second line a rhyme to it. The thoughts can get somewhat ridiculous in the final, rhyming lines based on fact. At the age of sixteen, the bored student, Bentley, wrote his first clerihew:
Sir Humphrey Davy
Detested gravy
He lived in the Odium
Of having discovered Sodium.
G. K. Chesterton, a lifelong friend of Bentley and fellow clerihew writer, left us a particularly human portrait of the man: "It was a poetic delight to see him walking down the street, a bit pompously, and then suddenly climb a lamp post with the alleged intention of lighting a cigarette and then drop down and resume his walk with an unchanged expression of serenity."
Bentley published his clerihews in three small volumes: 'Biography for Beginners' [1897,] 'More Biography' [1899,] and Baseless Biography [1903.]
Bentley also published an omnibus volume, 'Clerihews Complete,' with the following, introductory effort:
The art of Biography
Is different from Geography
Geography is about Maps.
But biography is about Chaps.
His best known work is the clerihew on Sir Christopher Wren [a 17th century English designer, astronomer, geometer, and architect, who designed 53 London churches, including St Paul’s Cathedral in London.]
Sir Christopher Wren said,
"I'm going out to dine with some men"
"If anyone calls,"
"Say I'm designing the St Paul's."
And Christopher Columbus:
"I quite realised," said Columbus
"That the earth is not a Rhombus"
"But I'm a little annoyed,"
"To find it an oblate spheroid."
Personally, I don't think those two examples are so hot. They aren't as pointedly humorous as one would expect, and some of the lines feel uncomfortable off the tongue.
Better examples from 'Biography for Beginners' [1897]:
What I like about Clive
Is that he is no longer alive.
There is a great deal to be said
For being dead.
Edward the Confessor
Slept under the dresser.
When that began to pall,
He slept in the hall.
***
An example by Topaz:
Edith Wharton American author; wrote the novel “Ethan Frome.”
CW 96
Edith Wharton
Packed a carton;
Then went home
With Ethan Frome.
***
Until the next time.
