Pure Verse for Christmas

Wrapping up a 26 blog posts about poetry during 2017, Writers Ink Services is presenting Pure Verse for Christmas.

Yes, we take a look at two classic Christmas poems, including "The Night Before Christmas", as well as two that should be classics.

And three video clips of classic Christmas songs and movies.

Join us!

Seduced by Pure Verse

Pure Verse:  Seduced by Rhythm and Rhyme

Over at Writers Ink Services, we're concluding a yearlong examination of poetry craft.  We've looked at "Clocks" and "Counting Stars", "Both Sides Now" and "Tapestry", "First Fig" and "Wildflowers".  We've looked at major poets and songsters who deserve the title "major poet".  And we glanced at Occasional Poems.

Christmas is the greatest occasion during the year, and poets of all sorts can't resist writing their own version of a Christmas poem.

Herewith are the dangers of Pure Verse that so many wannabies and newbies and hacks fall into while the true poets manage to avoid those pitfalls.

We finish up this blog with Sara Teasdale (true poet!) and her "Christmas Carol".  You'll like it, I know.  You may even want to make it one of your Christmas traditions.

Flip it :: click here to read this blog.

Only one more blog for the year on poetry.  On Christmas day we examine Pure Verse Old Masters and New Ones.  Join us.
~ Emily R. Dunn

As for Edie Roones:  well, life got ahead of me this year:  a major change in career, a major move entailing a house for sale and packing things into storage within a three-week time frame, and then relatives getting married, and all sorts of other good stuff.  I have the beautiful Smokies within 30 minutes of me:  the heights, the mountain laurel, the deer and elk, Cades Cove and waterfalls.  I have ideas, I have a couple of sketched drafts, I have characters developed, but I have no book.  I'm working on it.  ;)

M.A. Lee's A Game of Hearts has a new cover!

Another new cover for M.A. Lee:  this time for A Game of Hearts.

Purchase here!

Poetry : Major Methods 2B of 3, Blank Verse

Blank Verse:  Old Masters and New

Remember, we’re examining the poems using MMO:  Means, Methods, Opportunity (Aristotle’s Kairos).  This time we won’t have three different forms to analyze.  Blank Verse only has one form.

On tap we have the Old Masters, Shakespeare and Cowper, and the New Masters, Frost and Stevens.

Flip to the link below to read the blog:

http://writersinkservi.com/2017/11/25/poetry-major-met…-blank-verse-mmo/

Dream a Deadly Dream

A new book by my friend Remi Black, the second in her Enclave series.

Dream a Deadly Dream

Assassination.  A fugitive comtesse.  A lethal sleep-spell.  Wyre and wraiths.  Wizardry against sorcery.  And regicide.

In Dream a Deadly Dream, a sorcerous plot to kill the king weaves together past and present, dream and reality, to create a nightmare that can kill.

For three years Cherai, the comtesse Muirée, has hidden from the conspirators who assassinated her father.  Now, in the weeping season, a sorcerer has woven a lethal sleep-snare to entrap her.  Although she doesn’t know it, she holds the key to the conspirators’ chance to seize the throne of Vaermonde, a chance thwarted when they killed her father too quickly.  The poisoned nightmares sent by the sorcerer will compel Cherai to turn herself over to her father’s murderers.

Only a chance-met wizard can free her from the sorcerous sleep-spell.

The exiled wizard Alstera wandered into Vaermonde, seeking an opportunity to rid herself of the bindings on her power.  When she encounters Cherai, she realizes the nightmares are caused by a sorcerer.  Breaking a simple sleep-spell without any expectation of extrinsic reward should remove one of the bindings.  Selfishly, she attaches herself to Cherai.

Yet the sleep-spell is not a simple one:  it is a powerful sleep-snare, designed to kill once the conspirators have the document that Cherai’s father hid.  Alstera must use forbidden blood-magic—another crime against wizardry—to slip her powers through the binding sigils tattooed on her wrists.

After capture and escape from the king’s regiment and the betrayal by a friend who is spying secretly for an old enemy of Cherai’s father, the two women flee cross-country, heading for the Muirée estate.  There they hope to find the reason for the assassination and the identity of the conspirators who plan to kill the king.  Yet the poisoned nightmares intensify.  The sorcerer sends a wraith and a wyre to capture Cherai.  And betrayal closes the net.

Will the poisoned nightmares kill Cherai?  Can Alstera free her from that sorcerous web before the conspirators kill the king?  Threats come from both enemies and friends, from steely blades and magickal spells.  Will Cherai be caught by the conspirators?  With her powers bound, protected only by blood-magic, can Alstera defeat the sorcerer?  Or will he kill Cherai with his sleep-snare?

Dream a Deadly Dream, a novel of 119,000 words, is the second book in the Enclave series.  Enclave 1: Weave a Wizardry Web explores Alstera’s crimes, for which she was bound and banished.  While Dream is a continuation of Alstera’s story in Web, both novels are complete and without cliff-

hangers. 

Intimidate the Intimidators

Blank Verse

Poets who want to appear “intellectual” (cue the snobbish accent) will use Blank Verse.

See, I’m already limiting my readers who are turning off because I’m using the jargon of educational poetry.

“**”

Okay, first, let me talk about “professors” and “educators” of higher content learning.  (I am using “**” here so you will know I am being sarcastic about these terms.  These people aren’t teachers.  Sorry, back to my point.)

These people run the Advanced Placement level courses in high school and many of the higher level college & university courses (for several years, as an adjunct professor, I had to bow to their strictures).  Some of these “people”—not all of them—act as if the knowledge they have is arcane, open to only the privileged few.  They want to keep their content secret.  They present the information in dribs and drabs wrapped around by multiple distractors, so that only a special few will understand it.

Grrr.  These “people” make me mad.  They made me mad when I was part of them;  they still make me mad.

For example, Math “people” hate John Harold Saxon Jr. :: Saxon biography on Wiki  For years they decried his methods.  Now that he’s dead, they’re stealing his methods.  Oh, I thought those methods were worthless.  Guess not!

Poetry

I want you to understand and enjoy poetry as more than mindless words set to music.  From January of this year to now, I have attempted to present various ideas about poetry in a challenging but not a complicated manner.  I’ve truly enjoyed several of these blogs:

• “Tigers to be Tamed” about Coldplay’s “Clocks” :: http://writersinkservi.com/2017/01/21/tigers-to-be-tam…wer-of-inference/
• “4 Requirements of Song” about Dolly Parton’s “Wildflowers” :: http://writersinkservi.com/2017/03/15/4-requirements-songs/
• “Riddling Allegories” with Carole King’s “Tapestry” :: http://writersinkservi.com/2017/03/15/4-requirements-songs/
• “Poets & the Three Unities” :: http://writersinkservi.com/2017/08/15/poets-three-unities/
• And I still love my blog about Symbolic Colors from 2016 and repeated during September :: http://writersinkservi.com/2017/09/25/using-color-symbols-writing/

My point:  Well, it’s simple.

Don’t be intimidated.

Actually, don’t let anything intimidate you.  If you’re struggling, ask for help.  If certain “people” (there’s those “**” again) won’t help, they are not worthy;  move to someone else.  If you’re not struggling, well, have fun!

And with these lessons, I won’t keep it simple, but I will tell you what you need to know.

Okay, here we go.

Blank Verse

Don’t panic.

Part One:  Blank Verse is called “blank” because it doesn’t rhyme.

See, regular poetry rhymes at the end of the line (it’s called “end rhyme”.  That’s not hard.)  Blank Verse doesn’t.

Part Two: Blank Verse has a regular beat.

What?

Regular poetry follows a regular beat:  Remember “Roses are red / Violets are blue / Sugar is sweet / And so are you.”  Hear the rocking-chair beat?

Now, I could go all “English teacher” on you and talk about pyrrhic meter or iambs and trochees or anapest and dactylic . . . but I won’t.  I will say that most people will tell you that “Blank Verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter.”  There, that’s out of the way.

All we need to know—unless we’re studying to be English teachers ~ and I worked for years with people who don’t know this and didn’t care to learn it—is that Blank Verse will usually and predominantly have 10 syllables per line.

This is how we distinguish Blank Verse from Free Verse :: Free Verse will NOT have a certain number of syllables on each line.

Caveat:  Shakespeare liked to mess with his syllables to prevent that rocking-chair beat of “Roses are red”.  I don’t blame him.  He was writing some serious stuff, there.  You have to avoid a rocking chair when you’re writing philosophy.

So, Blank Verse is different from Pure Verse because it doesn’t rhyme AND it is different from Free Verse because it will have 10 syllables per line.

Blank Verse in Practice

Now, old-timey poets working in English (they come after Shakespeare, not the decrepit ones before him, ya know) liked to use Blank Verse to give their poetry an “intellectual snobbery”.  And they wound up all their words to sound “intellectual”, too.

Here’s an example:  “Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant.

If you can make it through the first 72 lines, good for you.  You don’t have to.  Basically, drop over to this link and count the syllables per line on the first ten or so lines, and you’ll see that the majority of lines run about 10 syllables per :: poetry of intimidation

You can take my word for it, if you want to.  With students, we count the syllables out for a bit to prove the point.  Invariably, one will go on looking for more or less syllables than 10 to prove me wrong and wind up proving me right.

Here’s how WCBryant is intellectual:  He says “Thanatopsis” so only a few will know what he’s talking about.  Thanatos is the Greek god of Death;  he’s the one you didn’t want touching you.  (Hades ruled the Land of the Dead;  he wasn’t Death.)  “Opsis” means “looking/seeing”.  So the poem is about looking at death.

The whole first 72 lines basically say

1. everybody is afraid of death,
2. we don’t need to be afraid of death,
3. our bodies are simply manure for plants and everything that comes after us,
4. everybody is going to wind up the same way:  dead, and
5. Dead will look just like Life, with people of all ages and professions and economics.

It’s the last stanza that’s important, and I used to have my students memorize it:  "So live that when thy summons ..."  Well, it's this:  Live your life in such a way that you are not afraid to die.  Cuz you’re going to, okay?  Okay.

Bryant takes 81 lines to say all of that ~ 5 bullet points and a sentence.  This classic of American literature is the reason high school students hate poetry.  It’s the reason adults look back at high school English classes and say, “I don’t understand poetry.”

Well, geez, slaving through things like WCB’s “Thanatopsis”, none of us understand anything.

I Got Your Back

Not all Blank Verse is like WCBryant, thank God.

Here’s one by Robert Frost, “For Once then, Something” about looking into a deep well, trying to see beyond literally and figuratively, and being mocked for doing so but still trying: Frost and a well

And one really recent, political and accusatory, by Terrence Hayes: His title uses "assassins".

And from Seamus Heaney, “Storm on an Island,” which speaks to all of us about the elementals of life that dwarf us and give us fear but which we still bow our heads and walk into.  This link provides annotations which provide an interpretation:  No intimidation

Sources

If you go looking for modern blank verse, avoid Poetry Foundation.  They have misidentified pure blank verse, and you’ll find a lot of poems that don’t fit.  PF is usually very good, but they let us down here.

And I stumbled upon a review of a book that I would like to put in my ToBeRead stack, which never seems to go down: a book examining our topic, past and present

Next blog, some Old and New Masters of the Blank Verse form.  Shakespeare, of course.  Who else?  Well, join us on the 25^th and be surprised.

Discover M.A. Lee

Try this: click!

New covers mean looking at how people can find books. M.A. Lee surveys a major e-retailer's listings for her books and list some Indie Writer difficulties.

Free Verse: Jazz on Steroids

Free Verse is like Jazz on Steroids.

What is Jazz?  Well, here's a sample of the best:  Ella Fitzgerald riffing with "Blue Skies"

The key to jazz is to present the melody then go everywhere else in play.  Like Dave Brubeck's "Take Fire", giving each musician an opportunity:  Equal Opportunity Music

Free Verse does that.  It presumes the reader is familiar with regular poetry (Pure Verse), so it begins its riff immediately.

I like Free Verse more than the other two methods:  Pure and Blank.  The best (think e.e.cummings) is highly experimental and an intellectual challenge to work out.

It's Pure Verse that we encounter most often.  You know, those songs that rhyme.  Rhyme helps us remember.

Blank Verse is the most "intellectual" (said with rounded snobbish tones).

Free Verse is experimental.

People have a tendency to think Free Verse is simple;  it's not.  Believe me, it is certainly FAR from easy.  It's actually harder than Pure Verse.

Click this link to read works from Free Verse masters Old and New: MMO of Free Verse in Action

Poetry: Sound before Sight

We're hosting Emily Dunn of Writers Ink Services as she works through a yearlong series of blogs on Poetry!

Even though people spend time with poetry everyday, they have a tendency to view poetry as something intimidating.  I fault Language Arts teachers for this, especially middle school and high school teachers.  Poetry in school becomes a matter of analyzing and picking out things rather than simply enjoying what the poet has to say.

How do we spend time with poetry everyday?  Poetry is song.  The music you have words for :: that's poetry.  We don't look at it that way.  We should.

We sing the catchy little tunes along with our favorite singers, we soar out with the power ballads from great movies, we cry at lost loves, we're motivated by the choruses we sing along with our congregations.

Handle Me with Care:  Traveling Wilburys

My Heart Will Go On: Celine Dion's greatest power ballad

That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be:  Carly Simon

Our God: Chris Tomlin

These songs are poetry.

Now, let me get Language Arts technical (I know, I know.  Calm down!).

Poetry has three methods:  Free Verse, Blank Verse, and Pure Verse.

It's Pure Verse that we encounter most often.  You know, those songs that rhyme.  Rhyme helps us remember.

Blank Verse is the most "intellectual" (said with rounded snobbish tones).

Free Verse is experimental.

We'll look at Free Verse in October, Blank in November, and Pure in December.

Click this link to read the first blog on Free Verse:  Free Bird Verse

New Cover for a Book

Why do writers change great covers for books?  M.A. Lee presents the reason behind her change of the first three covers for her Hearts in Hazards romantic suspense series set in Regency England.

Come over here to check it out: click

The 2015 cover

The new cover for 2017

Using Symbolic Colors in Writing

Over at Writers Ink Services, it's vacation time.

During summer vacation, WIS is repeating blogs that originally published in July 2016.  After all, reruns are totally watchable again.

Click on over to read the blog on Symbolic Colors in Writing:

http://writersinkservi.com/2017/09/25/using-color-symbols-writing/

Remember, we're on the 5ths.

Using Symbolic Numbers in Writing

Over at Writers Ink Services, it's vacation time.

During summer vacation, WIS is repeating blogs that originally published in July 2016.  After all, reruns are totally watchable again.

Click on over to read the blog on Symbolic Numbers in Writing:

http://writersinkservi.com/2017/09/15/using-number-symbols-writing/

Remember, we're on the 5ths.

Creating Emphasis ~ More than Subject Position

Originally this blog post published June 2016 on the Writers Ink Books website.  As Writers Ink Services takes a vacation, we repeat three of the WIB blogs in the summer of 2016.  After all, reruns are totally watchable again.

Creating Emphasis ~ More than the Subject Position

Fun with words?
Yes, it's possible.  And practical.  Especially practicable when we want to create emphasis.

Easiest is simple repetition:

"And the highwayman came riding--riding--riding / Up to the old inn-door." (Noyes, "The Highwayman")

Pick a key word, and it becomes the key element.

Be careful, though, for repetition becomes a key gimmick, as we know from reading "The Highwayman":  "A red-coat troop came marching--marching--marching".  From mid-point on, the repetition is too much.

Play with Incremental Repetition:

An increment is a small amount.  Incremental Repetition is a small change at the next repeat of the word or phrase.

Again, from "The Highwayman":  "And they shot him down on the highway / Down like a dog on the highway."

The slight change miraculously adds strength.

For a clever version of incremental repetition, check out Judy Collins' version of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now": 

Incremental Repetition: click here

Grow for Emphasis:

Once we get to working with changes in repetition, we run into a clever Greek word auxesis, which means "growth" or "increase", but is really a fancy way to say climactic ordering.

In Robinson Jeffers' translation of Euripides' Medea, our main character contemplates the murders of those who have wronged her: "Grind. Crush. Burn."  She, of course, chooses the last method, the one most painful and enduring.  No quick deaths for Medea.

"Both Sides Now" uses auxesis to present ascending significance.  The first stanzas discuss clouds (innocent, childlike naivete), the next discuss love (the focus of our teens and twenties), the last discuss life (maturity in considering our world).

We can take power away by descending in importance.  Remember the lesson of the trolls?  Removing power can be a useful technique.

Work in Threes:

Once is not remarkable.  Twice seems coincidence.  Thrice is serendipity.

Set the Right Pace:

We can slow down the speed of our repetition and auxesis by adding conjunctions: "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day" (Macbeth's famous speech by Shakespeare).  This is called a polysyndeton.

We speed up by removing conjunctions:  "Out, out, brief candle" is the asyndeton
from the same speech by Macbeth.

Front and Back:

Repetition can occur at the beginning of a series of sentences, which creates an anaphora:
From Winston Churchill's June 1940 speech:  "We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight . . . in the air, we shall defend our island . . . we shall fight on the beaches . . . we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills;  we shall never surrender."

Learn Latin as an honor and Greek as a Treat

Opposite to the anaphora is the epistrophe.

From Sam'l Beckett: "Where now? Who now? When now?" (The Unnamable)

From Shakespeare's J.Caesar: "Who is here so base that would be a bondman?  If any, speak; for him have I offended.  Who is here so rude that would not be a Roman?  If any, speak; for him have I offended.  Who is here so vile that will not love his country?  If any, speak; for him have I offended." (Brutus)

This example comes from Jeffers' Medea:  "They were full of cold pride, they ruled all this country--they are down in the ashes, crying like dogs, cowering in the ashes, in their own ashes."

Keep a light touch:

Don't overwork it.  With a light touch, the simple occurrence of repetition creates power on the page.

Use it to remind of elements of character.

Use it to develop setting with a quick glance or a lingering view.

Crime scene images.  Events in a mano-y-mano battle.  Workings of a spell.  Effects of a kiss.


Repetition creates emphasis.

Poets and the Law of Three Unities

Sprawling roots, seen and unseen, support the central Tree.

For poetry lovers, we have a series of blogs, Poetry Lessons, guest-hosted by Emily R. Dunn of Writers Ink Books.  Visit our page on every 5^th  (5th, 15th, and 25th) to see which poem has inspired a lesson in thinking and writing.  We'll also intersperse news about Writers Ink publications. ~~ M. Lee Madder

Three Unities.

Action.

Time.

Place.

Writing can sprawl into unnecessary digressions.

The struggle for writers is to keep that sprawl focused so that every element seeds ideas relevant to the theme.

When relating the story of father killing daughter, wife killing husband in revenge, and son killing mother to restore a balance, any writer might be tempted to stray away from the central storyline.  Aeschylus managed to stay focused for his trilogy The Oresteia, and he didn’t have the Three Unities to guide him.

I am tempted, just from that previous sentence, to comment that The Oresteia wiped out every family relation or that killing doesn’t restore balance to the scales of justice, even in Greek myth with its differences between revenge and justice and its taboo on kin-killing.  See?  It’s hard to let things go.  Orestes had to argue with the Furies to get them to leave him alone for re-balancing the scales of justice.  And Aeschylus took three dramas to tell that one story.

Action. Time. Place.

Aristotle laid down the law about the Three Unities.  These three “laws” help structure any writer’s work.

To create the law of Three Unities, Aristotle looked at the most impressive dramas (tragedy and comedy) and classified the reasons for their success.

The story should focus on one action occurring over a tightly controlled time frame within a closely bounded place.  For ancient dramas, this meant one conflict occurring during one day and situated in one place, such as the front steps to a palace.

The law of the Three Unities, however, is not limited to ancient Greek dramas.

Novelists are similar enough to dramatists that no persuasive evidence is necessary.  Short stories maintain a tighter control on all three elements while novels might address one single conflict (with subplots) over several days yet still in a closely-bounded culture.

The James Bond sagas focus on one antagonist to be defeated with a close-monitored ticking clock within the culture of the British spy game.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Ring saga seems to sprawl all across Middle Earth [place] as the Fellowship gathers allies in order to defeat Sauron [action] before he becomes too powerful [time].

When poets work with the Three Unities, something unexpected and extraordinary occurs.

Frost and the Three Unities

Robert Frost’s “Once by the Pacific” presents Aristotle’s Three Unities.

Action:  God considers re-making the world as he did with the Deluge.

Place: The great ocean crashes on to a shoreline saved only because it is “lucky in being backed by continent”.

Time: “A night of dark intent / Was coming”, and it could be that the dark night might turn into an age of destruction.

The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God's last Put out the light was spoken.

SEVERAL OF FROST’S POEMS USE THE THREE UNITIES TO CONTROL THEIR MEANING.

• “Acquainted with the Night” and “Design” are examples of two sonnets controlled by Action, Time, and Place.
• His narrative poem “Home Burial” reads like an ancient Greek drama. Husband and wife have lost their future together since the day (Time) she watched him bury their child in the family cemetery (Place).  He cannot express his emotions;  she cannot control hers. (Action)
• Frost’s found poem “Out, Out—” is a Greek tragedy of futility and unexpected disaster. The son is cutting wood while the sister stands close by (Place).  Since the boy does not keep close watch on what he is doing (classic hubris:  challenging Fate), the chainsaw leaps out to take his hand (Action).  His death at the end of the day (Time) with the understated line of “little – less - nothing” has all the inexplicable mystery of Doom.
• “My November Guest” reports the Action as a conversation between a man and his love: “My Sorrow when she’s here with me, / Thinks these dark days of autumn rain / Are beautiful as days can be . . . She talks, and I am fain to list”.  The Time is the unexpected beauty of November, and the setting is the simple beauty of the land:  “the bare, the withered trees” and “silver now with clinging mist”.
• “Mending Wall” is another unexpected use. Two neighbors are in unexpressed disagreement over the wall between their properties:  one is instinct, delighting in the fairy shifts to the rock wall, while the other is plodding logic that dislikes sudden changes.  They meet on an appointed day (Time) and repair the wall (Place & Action).

Millay and the Three Unities

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sonnet “Time Does Not Bring Relief” covers all Three Unities.

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide

There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with his memory they brim
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him!

The conflict to resolve begins the poem:  her love is gone, and she must go about forgetting him so she can move on.

Time ~ Her entire existence is taken up with remembering him and their love.  Every day of her past year she has tried to forget him only to have her grief renewed:  the rainy season, last autumn, and winter have passed, yet her heartbreak remains acute.

Place ~ Typical romantic places have also served as reminders of him, therefore increasing her loss:  the oceanside, the mountains, country lanes.  We can assume the city from the “weeping of the rain.”

Left unmentioned is Action.  Since time and place have not eased her pain, the Bohemian Millay may move on to action to bring her relief.

MORE OF MILLAY'S STRUCTURAL TECHNIQUES

A Petrarchan sonnet without the stiff formality of the 19^th century and earlier, Millay presents her mastery of the sonnet by providing rhyme we barely notice.  Only occasionally do we slow to read her meter-based lines, which lesser poets must twist to create.

Three coupled images tighten up her structure:  “I miss him / I want him” and “Last year’s leaves / Last year’s bitter loving” and “So with his memory / So remembering him”.  The first two sets are coupled together;  the last set is separated, for the couple is broken apart.

Wrapping Up

Millay constructs her poetry more tightly than Frost does, but both are masters of the poetic line reading like conversation.  With Aristotle’s Three Unities, we can see a bit of their approaches to writing.

The Three Unities become a device for writing.  Skillfully used, the audience doesn’t notice the framework for the poetic lines.

For novelists and dramatists, those Three Unities should also fade into the structure to become unnoticed.

Rhyme and rhythm help structure Pure Verse.  Rhetorical devices from Classical Antiquity structure Free Verse.

Join us August 25 for a reminder of unexpected devices that poets use to structure their works.

In the business of promotion: Fantasy by a Friend

Fantasy Set In A Renaissance World

Weave A Wizardry Web by Remi Black

Least becomes great.  Greatest becomes least.

Two wizards travel sharp-bladed roads in Weave a Wizardry Web.

Wizard against sorcerer.

Fae against dragon.

Wyre against Rhoghieri.

As children in the Wizard Enclave, Camisse and her niece Alstera recited that catechism daily.  Yet the war against sorcery seems far from the Enclave, and the current leaders have forgotten that childhood chant.

Available on Amazon Kindle. Click here!

For more about the Enclave world of Remi Black, Click here!

Burning Candles: Edna St. Vincent Millay

For poetry lovers, we have a series of blogs, Poetry Lessons, guest-hosted by Emily R. Dunn of Writers Ink Books.  Visit our page on every 5^th  (5th, 15th, and 25th) to see which poem has inspired a lesson in thinking and writing.  We'll also intersperse news about books. ~~ M. Lee Madder

Burning Candles“First Fig”

My candle burns at both ends

It will not last the night

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends,

It gives a lovely light.

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “First Fig” is a rich gem.  An unassuming jewel of four deceptively simple lines preceded by a clever title, the poem seems merely to celebrate the bravado and esprit of the bohemian lifestyle:  adventurous, blithe, and insouciant.

Closer examination reveals the poem is crafted with a diamond-cutter’s precision, sparkling with St. Vincent Millay’s talent.

Part of a collection entitled A Few Figs from Thistles and published in 1920, it heralded the Roaring Twenties.  In many ways, “First Fig” pronounces the prophet’s message for the decade.  In concept and execution, “First Fig” rewards deeper analysis with its treasured secrets.

At First Glance

A quick read finds a persona reveling in an unending carouse as the persona burns daylight and nightlife, as stated in line 1.  St. Vincent Millay employs the “brief candle” allusion to Macbeth’s famous speech by Shakespeare.  She burns her metaphor even more quickly than Macbeth did.

Like Macbeth, she may even see the end coming.  She remarks that her life “will not last the night”.  Yet she does not care what her gossiping “foes” or her worried “friends” will say.

Why doesn’t she care?  Her deeds provide “lovely light”.  So, now we ask about her deeds?  How do we find out?

Return to the first line.  How can a candle burn at both ends?  It has to be held horizontally and kept balanced to avoid burning the holder.  If candle = life, then how does a life “burn” at both ends?  It can only do so if the daytime hours are as fully utilized as the nighttime hours.

Like Emily Dickinson’s “labor and leisure, too,” (from “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, perhaps another poem St. Vincent Millay had in mind), we realize the persona is enjoying herself as equally as she is performing her laborious daytime duties.

A Closer Look

The structure reinforces the revelations of the extended metaphor.  The clear rhyme of lines 1 & 3 (“ends” to “friends”) and 2 & 4 (“night” & “light”) clues the reader that more is going on than simple rhyming lines.

The rhythm is primarily iambic, which is a traditional meter providing no additional information.  A stronger magnification is needed for this diamond.

The syllabication per line is a clearly cut facet, in sequence 7, 6, 8, and 6.  The persona clearly relishes her life which “burns at both ends”.  It is perfect to her, and 7 is symbolic of perfection.  Virtually everyone knows this.  Let’s go deeper.

The persona may not achieve what some would call a complete life (symbolized by the number of 10).  Friends and foes caution that her life may be cut short, a possible interpretation for line 3 with its 8 syllables.  The persona does not care.

That eight-syllable third line also lets us know that St. Vincent Millay is very careful with her word choice.  “Foes” could easily have been enemies;  that’s 10 syllables.  She wasn’t after 10 syllables, though.  She wanted to play out the alliterative f, and the 8 fit with the rapidly burning candle.

Just as she relishes life’s adventures, so may she relish the adventures of the after-existence, the exploration of the greatest mystery that we face ~ thus, the two lines of six syllables, a number of doubled mystery.  (I am “reading in” here, but it fits.)

Back to the Title

Since the metaphorical idea and the line structure mirror and reinforce each other, we need to chip away and polish off the title.  “First Fig” is an unusual choice.  Why not “Burning Bright” or “Single Candle” or “Candlewick”?

Could she make a metaphorical allusion with the title just as she does with the candle?  

Could it be a Biblical allusion to the fig leaves sewn together by Adam and Eve when they first recognize the shame of their nakedness?

Is it an art allusion to the classic fig leaf used to cover a male statue’s genitals?  Again, a cover for nakedness.

Is she picking off one leaf after another, revealing a shame others want her to feel but she has no trouble baring to the world?

That fits—but it doesn’t.  St. Vincent Millay says “first fig”, not “first fig leaf”.

A fig is a seed-filled fruit.  Its sweetness is an acquired taste.  And the tiny little seeds are potential that bring growth.

This also fits her poem:  The sweet-tasting events of her life, daytime and nighttime, are seeding her writing.  The events’ potential is birthed through each poem in the collection.

And this little gem is just the first in the collection.

The poem is also a self-referent allusion.  Her bohemian lifestyle is an acquired taste, delectable only to her.  Thistles are beautiful purple flowers on ugly, spiky stalks.  This fig, this “First Fig” taken from a thistle, may prick and seem ugly to others.  However, it provides the sustenance she desires (even as other people do not approve of such sustenance).

Summing Up

The burning candle is the obvious metaphor that dominates the first reading and points to the meaning, yet it is all three elements—metaphor, structure, and title—which reveal the theme.

Celebratory of a life that others condemn, “First Fig” speaks to the sparkling independence each individual seeks to craft from life.  Like a rough diamond or a thorned thistle, our existence must be polished or pruned of thorns.  We must peel away the layers of others’ expectations to reach the glittery heart or sweet fruit of what we desire.

Rock Allegory: Lady Fortuna & "Hotel California"

For poetry lovers, we have a series of blogs, Poetry Lessons, guest-hosted by Emily R. Dunn of Writers Ink Books.  Visit our page on every 5^th  (5th, 15th, and 25th) to see which poem has inspired a lesson in thinking and writing.  We'll also intersperse news about books. ~~ M. Lee Madder

“O Fortuna” by Carl Orff seems a strange beginning to a post about the classic “Hotel California” by the Eagles.

Stranger things have happened.

To remind:  allegories are surface stories which have underlying meanings.

The persona in “Hotel California” seems to relate a surreal visit to a roadside hotel that turns ugly before it imprisons him.  However, through allegory, the song relates a pursuit for fame and fortune that cost more than the persona anticipated and did not wish to pay.

“O, Fortuna”

The lady who draws in the persona to Hotel California is Lady Fortuna, goddess of fame and fortune, luck and fate. 

Carl Orff (a rather uneasy German composer, seeking Fortuna with her sacrificial demands) does not consider this goddess benevolent.

Her world is lit by the moon, changeable in its monthly course: “statu variabilis / semper crescis / aut decresciss” (Orff).  In our pursuit of her, we must enter her realm.  She will first oppress her then soothe us.  She takes her whip of servitude to our naked backs, punishes us before she rewards us: (“mihi quoque niteris; / nunc per ludum / dorsum nudum / fero tui sceleris”).

When Fortuna grants what we have sought, we discover the additional monstrous price we must pay.  And we also discover that fame and fortune are empty achievements, material but not wonderful, a “monkey’s paw” of evil wrapped around good.  As Orff writes, life becomes “immanis / et inanis”.

Moving to the Eagles' classic "Hotel California" that shows their pursuit of fame and fortune and encounter with the lady at her hotel.

Let’s play 20 Questions.

1^st Stanza & Chorus introduces the pursuit of fame.

On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair

Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night.

People in pursuit of their dreams believe that their lives are deserts that they must drive through before they find where they want to be.

1        Pick three words in the first stanza that represent the persona’s blindness about where he is heading in his pursuit of fame.

2        What does the “shimmering light” represent?

There she stood in the doorway;
I heard the mission bell
And I was thinking to myself
'This could be heaven or this could be Hell'
Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way
There were voices down the corridor,
I thought I heard them say

3        “She” is Lady Fortuna.  Why is she so attractive to people pursuing their dreams?

4        The “mission bell” tolls a warning.  In which line does the persona admit to hearing the warning?

5        How is the line for #4 a paradox?

Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place / Such a lovely face.
Plenty of room at the Hotel California
Any time of year / you can find it here

6        How does the famous Californian city that lures people seeking fame and fortune always have “plenty of room”?

Stanza 2 with Chorus

Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes bends

She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys she calls friends.

How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat

Some dance to remember, some dance to forget

 7        What does Tiffany refer to?

8        Mercedes-Benz is the best engineered, mass-produced vehicle on the roads.  What is the point of the pun “Mercedes bends”?

9        From these two brand references, we know the persona is achieving success, enough that he can waste money.  Why are material possessions a waste?

10    What does the line “Some dance to remember, some dance to forget” mean? (Assuming that ‘dance’ is related to performing the job that is winning fame and fortune

So I called up the captain, “please bring me my wine”

He said, “We haven’t had that spirit here since 1969.”

And still those voices are calling from far away

Wake you up in the middle of the night

Just to hear them say . . .

11    The wine represents the sweetness of the dream still before the persona.  Why has that “sweetness” left him?

To understand the reason that the sweetness left in 1969, you need to know about Woodstock, the Summer of Love, and the change in the music industry:  basically, the music corporations required musicians to “sell out” their purpose in order to make $$ while making music.  Musicians who didn’t buy into the industry’s model of success were shut out.  The persona feels that he had to abandon his simple dreams for something much more complicated and which twisted his original purpose.

12    “The voices [that] are calling from far away” have to do with the persona’s original dream.  Which line relates that he is stressed about the loss of that dream?

Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place / Such a lovely face.
They livin’ it up at the Hotel California
What a nice surprise / Bring your alibis

13     Notice the two changes in the Chorus.  How is “living it up” a “nice surprise”?

14    Why does he warn people to “bring your alibis”?

 3^rd Stanza

Mirrors on the ceiling, the pink champagne on ice

And she said, “We are all just prisoners here, of our own device”

And in the master’s chambers

They gathered for the feast

They stab it with their steely knives,

But they just can’t kill the beast.

 15    Lady Fortuna tells them they are “prisoners . . . of [their] own device”, or as Orff says, “Sors salutis” and “semper in angaria” :: “Fate is against me” and I am “always enslaved” to her.   How is this devastating?

16    “The beast” is the juggernaut of the now-rolling success.  The master is what controls the success: the audience. How does an audience start controlling successful people?

17    Who has the “steely knives” to kill the “beast”?

 4^th Stanza

 Last thing I remember, I was / Running for the door

I had to find the passage back / to the place I was before

“Relax,” said the night man, / “We are programmed to receive.

You can check out any time you like,

But you can never leave.”

 18. Why is the persona “running for the door” to find the “place [he] was before”?

19. The night man says that “we are programmed to receive . . . you can never leave”?

20. What does this line means:  “You can check-out any time you like”?

Answers

1.       Dark, colitis, dim (sight), distance, night

2.      The lights from an arcade promoting a performance.  The shimmering would be the action of the neon in the lights.

3.      Lady Fortuna is attractive because people believe that once they are rich / famous, they will have no worries.

4.      “This could be heaven or this could be hell”

5.      #4 contains a paradox because life can be both a heaven and a hell at the same time.

6.      People keep coming, expecting to succeed, only to fail and return, making room for more seekers.

7.      Tiffany is an extremely famous NYC jewelry store.  Highly successful, highly branded, over-priced:  you pay for the name.  Should we want to buy brands?  No.  We should go for quality that meets the $$ we pay.  However, materialism “twists” us to prefer the brand.

8.      The “bends” could refer to driving on a crooked road.  The persona does start out on a “dark desert highway”.  And the pursuit of fame and fortune requires some bend-y actions that we might abhor in honorable daylight.  Or it could be the “bends”, decompression sickness when deep divers come too quickly to the surface.  Rising fame could be making the persona sick as he considers everything he’s giving up and everything he’s hurting.  Nyah, I’ll sticking with the highway.

9.      Material possessions only temporarily feed our greed and gluttony.  They do not help the persona or others.  Without giving to others, the persona will never fill satisfied and will always seek more and more to fill his emptiness.  This is classic Platonism:  attempting to balance the mind, the body, and the soul through equally fulfilling events.

10.  This is the treadmill that the persona is on:  the beauty of the work he loves keeps him still performing but the grind of the work wears him down.

11.  The joy of his work has left.

12.  “Wake you up in the middle of the night”

13.  The persona has paid so much sweat and pain that he is surprised when he finally has the opportunity to enjoy the benefits that fame and fortune have finally brought to him.

14.  Alibis are only necessary when criminal activity has occurred and penalties will be adjudicated.  Has Fortuna led the persona into evil misbehavior?  Obviously.

15.  The evil and the pain are what the persona has brought upon himself in his selfish pursuit of the lady of fortune.  He is appalled at his choices, but he still cannot give up fame and fortune.

16.  For musicians, they are controlled because they must keep producing the same things that brought the original success.  For painters and writers and performers, they are also trapped, their creativity cast aside so that their work can continue to keep the audience happy.  If they do not produce what the audience wants—with just a tiny bit of change to seem “new”, the fickle audience will abandon them.

17.  It’s not the audience.  It is the trapped performers, who have come to hate the juggernaut wheel grinding them down and down.

18.  He can no longer accept everything he has sacrificed, all the pain and evil he has endured;  he wants to return to the time before fame and fortune.

19.  Success can never be abandoned.  Lady Fortuna’s hotel accepts people in, a small funnel that can endure the pain, laps up the evil in a blind acquiescence to the dream, and willingly abandons everything good about the dream in order to achieve wealth and fame.

20.  The only way to “check out” of Lady Fortuna’s hotel is death.

Summing Up & Coming Up

I enjoy the guitar solos and then the guitar duet at the end of “Hotel California”.  Most people with their “imp of the perverse (as EAPoe calls it) get focused on the lady and the wine and the beast and go no farther.

Understanding the darker elements of HCa doesn’t destroy my enjoyment of the song;  I just have to turn off the intellect and dance around to the guitars.  It is not a happy hotel to visit.

And in my own blindness on dark desert highways, I have often wanted fame and fortune for myself.

Next up, a lighter work, thank goodness.

Join us on the 25^th of July for a lighter work than “Hotel California”.  I promise.

Well, it might be a little dark and a little snide.  ;) grn

~~Emily R. Dunn of Writers Ink Services, http://writersinkservi.com/