My Inauspicious Return

On By Suzanne B. LeitnerIn My Poetry, New Things, Poetry, Reading1 Comment

Virtual life had to give way to real life for the last 3 days, so I will carry National Poetry Month three days into May in order to fulfill my stated purpose of a poem a day in celebration of poetry.

Today’s device from William Packard’s The Poet’s Dictionary:  A Handbook of Prosody and Poetic Devices is (oh, dear)

    Limerick:  Usually anonymous five-line light verse poem, generally with surprise or eccentric RHYMES, with first and second and fifth lines in anapestic trimeter [ . . / . . /. . / ], and with a rhyme scheme of a/a/b/b/a.  Limericks often play on geographical or proper names, and commonly treat an outrageous subject irreverently.

    Critical comment on the limerick tends to stress its anti-literary pedigree; thus Arnold Bennett said, “All I have to say about limericks is that the best ones are entirely unprintable.”  George Bernard Shaw commented, “They are most unfit for publication.  They must be left for oral tradition.”  Film director Mike Nichols, commenting on a limerick contest he was once asked to judge said, “It was easy.  We just threw out the dirty limericks and gave the prize to the one that was left.”

    Commenting on the technical effect of a limerick, Morris Bishop wrote in The New York Times Book Review: “The structure should be a rise from the commonplace reality of line one to logical madness in line five.” Continue reading “My Inauspicious Return” →

What’s so funny about losing your document? I’ll tell you: April 15

On By Suzanne B. LeitnerIn Observations uncategorized1 Comment

Before we get down to business, I would like to take this opportunity to take advantage of a “teachable moment.”

As you may know, yesterday I worked most of the day on a poem and then lost it because I did not save it before I closed it.  When I realized I had closed my document without saving it, I did what any doe-eyed dreamer would do, and googled the phrase “I just closed a document in Word I didn’t save. Can I get it back?”  Note how quickly desperation renders one inarticulate.  Furthermore, it is rather difficult to type and think while rending one’s garments and howling like a wolf (a wolf which, apparently, has spent some time in the Navy).

However, in spite of my inartful phrasing, Google led me to Word Tips World: Forgot to save my Word Document!! Well!  That sounds like the place for me, and I especially relate to the use of double exclamation points (even though I was feeling more quadruple pointy at the time – this was a Code Red, after all).  I found a good bit of useful information on that page, but my heart sank when I realized that the following advice there applied to my exact situation:

1) SCENARIO: Forgot to save the document at all, even when exiting Word/closed Word without saving!

“Yes!” I cried.  “That’s me!  That’s exactly what I did!  Oh, joy! Somebody out there gets me!” [read, read, read, scan, scan, scan, searching for answer]

To the best of my knowledge, if you press NO at this point [when prompted “Do you want to save changes to the Document?”] there is no way to retrieve the document.

“What?!?!  But wait – there’s more writing after this!  If I’m really hosed, why are there more paragraphs down there?” Oh, trust me.  In my head, the running monologue was even more irrational.

SOLUTION: weep quietly …[then there are suggestions to try, in case I really hadn’t made that bonehead move that I knew I really had made.  End of story.  Full stop]

Okay, in all seriousness, I am glad I stumbled upon that site.  I like how it is written with clear illustrations, instructions and humor, and it is now bookmarked as one of my favorites.  Imagine my dismay, however, when I realized that, not only had I made an irreversible mistake with my document, I also had failed to apply the only known solution to my problem properly … because what I did could not be considered, in any universe, “weeping quietly.”

As you know, I reconstructed/revised the poem as best I could and ended up with what I ended up with, and I’m okay with it.  Having thought about it, and applied some much-needed perspective, these glitches happen in life, and, yes, I think it did warrant weeping quietly.  However, the second dose of the prescription ought to be, in many cases, laugh loudly in response to the memory of the glitch within 72 hours of enduring it; otherwise, you might find yourself kicking the cat for no good reason (no cats were harmed in the making of this post – I don’t even have a cat).   Continue reading “What’s so funny about losing your document? I’ll tell you: April 15” →

I Cheated the Prompt, and then I Cheated Myself: April 14 Poem

On By Suzanne B. LeitnerIn Making Mistakes, My Poetry, New Things, Poetry, ReadingLeave a comment

There is only one entry under “J” in William Packard’s The Poet’s Dictionary: A Handbook of Prosody and Poetic Devices, but all is well.  My inability to write anything illustrating the particular tradition described therein has led me back to an old mountain song my grandmother used to sing, to Peggy Seeger’s website, and, ultimately, to a new poem … and maybe even a series of new poems.  Today’s device:

Jongleur:  Roughly from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, throughout France and Tuscany and northern Italy, Jongleurs were entertainers (acrobats, actors, musicians, singers) who originally wandered from town to town offering their arts for a fee.  Later, these Jongleurs became official fixtures of the various European courts as jesters, clowns, and  reciters of poetry.

At first the Jongleur did not create his own poems but drew from a repertory of ballata and canti and chansons de geste, but by the twelfth century the minstrels or trouvères or Troubadours of Provencal and Tuscany were writing their own poems to be sung.

So, the Jongleur tradition is a tradition of sharing poems through song.  Packard further explains, about the Troubadour:

The Troubadour poet (from tobar, to invent; also from trouvère, to find) usually sang of courtly love – the ethereal, extramarital praise of any Lady who inspired the poet to virtue and to moral excellence and achievement.  Sometimes the Troubadour’s songs followed specific conventions, as the following list indicates:
canzo – song of love
balada – story in verse
plante – elegy or dirge for a lost lover
serenade – evening song
alba – dawn song, when lovers realize day has come and they must part

Continue reading “I Cheated the Prompt, and then I Cheated Myself: April 14 Poem” →

April 13 Poem: American Idyl (clemency, please)

On By Suzanne B. LeitnerIn Observations uncategorized6 Comments

Today’s device from The Poet’s Dictionary: A Handbook of Prosody and Poetic Devices, by William Packard, is

Idyl [not to be confused with Idyll … or idle … or Idol, for that matter]:  Any pastoral poem, rustic and bucolic, such as an ECLOGUE.  From the Greek, meaning “little picture,” an idyl is usually a short poem showing the joys of rural nature.

Well, Packard lost me when I read the words “short poem.”  I don’t tend to write many of those.  I will offer today a poem from my chapbook, String Quilt, as an idyl.  An earlier version of this poem was originally published in Crucible.  Thanks, as always, for reading! Continue reading “April 13 Poem: American Idyl (clemency, please)” →

Poem for April 12: Back to the Dictionary

On By Suzanne B. LeitnerIn My Poetry, New Things, Poetry, ReadingLeave a comment

Today’s poetic device from William Packard’s The Poet’s Dictionary: A Handbook of Prosody and Poetic Devices, is

Haiku: Japanese short form poem, sometimes called hokku, with origins as far back as the thirteenth century. Haiku are written syllabically with seventeen separate syllables arranged in three STANZAS according to a 5/7/5 count.

Every traditional haiku uses a kigo, or season word, to specify whether the poem is of a winter, spring, summer, or autumn mood. Traditional haiku will also be characterized by rensō, or loose association of disparate images, and contain an elliptical leap from the second to the third line which simulates sudden zen satori, or enlightenment, illumination of the true nature of reality.

I was thinking about the word “Spring” earlier today, so I’ll just stay with that idea.  Here is my draft haiku for today.

“Spring.” Such a plain word.
Take note: green leaves, new buds, grass.
“Spring.” The perfect word.