Rafael Campo

I just discovered this poet, published by the Duke University Press:  Rafael Campo.  He's a poet of deep sensitivity and perception.

Comfort Measures Only

“Rafael Campo is one acquainted with the night—in detail. Wrestling with the lives and deaths of patients who are always individuals to him, and with his own personal blend of body and soul, love and guilt, compassion and exhaustion, fighting pain with the magnificent weap­onry of language and cadence, in poem after poem he says to us what he cannot say to the man in the bed: ‘You’re crying, just like me; you are alive.’”—Alicia Ostriker, author of Waiting for the Light

Praise for Alternative Medicine
“Rafael Campo is an extraordinarily skillful poet: his technique mani­fests itself in the range of forms he so brilliantly masters. But he is also a poet of gravity and poignant observation. Unlike so many people writing today, he has subjects, passions, and themes that are profoundly important.”—Sandra M. Gilbert, poet and Distinguished Professor of English Emerita, University of California, Davis

“In a style both precise and emotional, playful and earnest, Campo delivers a most extraordinary message: that in writing, in seeing, in remembering, and in being, we embody, simultaneously, the ache as well as the cure.”—Briana Shemroske, Booklist

Stop

Stop

Thinking

Worrying

Moving

Stressing

Working

Cleaning

Exercising

Running

Shopping

Looking

Waiting

Longing

Doing

Dreaming

Cooking

Looking

Analyzing

Judging

Criticizing

Shouting

Cursing

Crying

Avoiding

Ignoring

and just be

Start

Noticing

Observing

Listening

Understanding

Praying

Walking

Calling

Writing

Sharing

Helping

Empathizing

Studying

Playing

Posting

Reading

Paying attention

Dancing

Singing

Hoping

Planning

Seeking

Organizing

Sympathizing

Resting

and see what happens

Sea of Faith

Sea of Faith


by John Brehm

Once when I was teaching “Dover Beach”
to a class of freshmen, a young woman
raised her hand and said, “I'm confused
about this 'Sea of Faith.' “ “Well,” I said,
“let's talk about it. We probably need
to talk a bit about figurative language.
What confuses you about it?”
“I mean, is it a real sea?” she asked.
“You mean, is it a real body of water
that you could point to on a map
or visit on a vacation?”
“Yes,” she said. “Is it a real sea?”
Oh Christ, I thought, is this where we are?
Next year I'll be teaching them the alphabet
and how to sound words out.
I'll have to teach them geography, apparently,
before we can move on to poetry.
I'll have to teach them history, too-
a few weeks on the Dark Ages might be instructive.
“Yes,” I wanted to say, “it is.
It is a real sea. In fact it flows
right into the Sea of Ignorance
IN WHICH YOU ARE DROWNING.
Let me throw you a Rope of Salvation
before the Sharks of Desire gobble you up.
Let me hoist you back up onto this Ship of Fools
so that we might continue our search
for the Fountain of Youth. Here, take a drink
of this. It's fresh from the River of Forgetfulness.”
But of course I didn't say any of that.
I tried to explain in such a way
as to protect her from humiliation,
tried to explain that poets
often speak of things that don't exist.
It was only much later that I wished
I could have answered differently,
only after I'd betrayed myself
and been betrayed that I wished
it was true, wished there really was a Sea of Faith
that you could wade out into,
dive under its blue and magic waters,
hold your breath, swim like a fish
down to the bottom, and then emerge again
able to believe in everything, faithful
and unafraid to ask even the simplest of questions,
happy to have them simply answered.

Tam Lin Neville

I just read this poem by Tam Lin Neville -- I love it.

I Study the Sky

how it changes,
a cloud, bursting, its colors,
fierce at first, fast disappearing.
Another brushes in, this whisper I can hear
forming and reforming,
silken mesh dissolving,
unraveled, rewoven.
My self is kin to this cloth,
these shades of pink, purple,
lavender, gray.
Then night sinks over
my cigarette's ember.
Its ash glows red in the wind.

Popular Wisdom by Peter Makuk

Popular Wisdom, A Duo

Opportunity knocks.                                                 

I know, but money talks.                                                       

You telling me?                                                                      

Hey, I’m telling it like it is.                                        

It’s a jungle out there.                                                

Same page, man.  Dog eat dog.                                                           

But it’s no reflection on us.                                       

Right, it’s what’s happening.                                                

It takes all kinds.                                

You take the good with the bad.                                            

But it doesn’t pay to be nice.

Yeah, nice guys finish last.

Winners never quit.

And quitters—well, you know.

You learn from experience.

It’s the best teacher.

You can say that again.

No, man, that’s the bottomline.

Good, now I can breathe.

What?  A sigh of relief?

(I like this satirical poem by Peter Makuk.  Peter was last year's poetry chair at the NC Writers Conference in Wrightsville.)

The Quintain

QUINTAIN

Sometimes called a quintet and most commonly known as a cinquain, this poem or stanza consists of five lines, sometimes with the same meter in each line but often with alternating meters and line lengths (e.g., the limerick [link: http://www.credoreference.com/entry.do?id=10752749]). The earliest Fr. poem, the 11th-c. Vie de Saint Alexis, is written in decasyllabic cinquains; in 1174, Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence wrote cinquains in alexandrines [link: http://www.credoreference.com/entry.do?id=10752128]. The 19th-c. poet Victor Hugo wrote cinquains with alternating alexandrine and eight-syllable lines. In Eng., George Puttenham uses the term quintain. Examples include Philip Sidney (Psalms 4, 9, 20, 28; Astrophil and Stella, Song 9; Old Arcadia), John Donne ("Hymne to God my God"), Edmund Waller ("Go, lovely Rose"), William Wordsworth ("Peter Bell," "The Idiot Boy" in tetrameters), and E. A. Poe ("To Helen"). The Am. poet Adelaide Crapsey popularized unrhymed cinquains, inventing a syllabic form (built on the analogy to Japanese tanka [see JAPAN, MODERN POETRY OF [link: http://www.credoreference.com/entry.do?id=10752704]] and influenced by *haiku) in her 1915 book Verse. Her five lines consisted of 2-4-6-8-2 syllables; and her poems were mostly iambic. Unlike Japanese tanka, Crapsey gave her cinquains titles, which often served as a sixth line. Twentieth-c. variations on Crapsey's form include the following (all syllabic): reverse (two, eight, six, four, and two syllables); mirror (a cinquain followed by a reverse cinquain); butterfly (a concrete, nine-line stanza with two, four, six, eight, two, eight, six, four, two syllables); crown (a sequence of five connected cinquains forming one poetic sequence); and garland (a series of six cinquains in which the sixth cinquain is formed from lines taken from the preceding five poems, line one from stanza one, two from two, etc.). Since the early 20th c., cinquain tends to refer specifically to Crapsey's original (two, four, six, eight, two) syllabic verse form, which has achieved specific popularity in Am. elementary classrooms as the "didactic" cinquain. The term cinquain, then, has supplanted the more general quintain, which describes only a poem or stanza of five lines rather than Crapsey's syllabic form. More specific rhyme schemes for the quintain are named the English cinquain (a poem in no specified measure with rhyme abcba), the Sicilian quintain (ababa), and the pentastich (no specified meter). Tetrameter quintains include the Spanish cinquain or *quintilla [link: http://www.credoreference.com/entry.do?id=10753022] (ababa, abbab, abaab, aabab, and aabba).


        * Schipper, v. 2; Crapsey, A.. Verse (1915); Lote, v. 2; Scott; Toleos, A., http:Wwww.cinquain.org [link: http://www.:Wwww.cinquain.org]

.



T.V.F. BROGAN

M. MARTIN

QUINTAIN. (2012). In The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Retrieved from http://www.credoreference.com/entry/prpoetry/quintain

Copyright © 2012 by Princeton University Press
The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Princeton University Press
http://www.credoreference.com/entry/prpoetry/quintain

To contact Credo Reference: support@credoreference.com

Haiku 2

Clouds of grey and white

Drift by silently tonight

Like waves on the sea.

Haiku 1 (c)

My little cat is napping

In a circle of sunlight

Chasing her dreams.

Christmas Poem -- 1991

Christmas Poem for Chris

(1991)

On this lovely Christmas Day,

I have so very much to say

To the special little boy,

Who has brought me so much joy.

But what I hold most dear

Is your help throughout the year.

So thanks from deep within my heart,

Because you certainly do your part,

In so many, many ways

To lighten and brighten our days.

And what are some of the things that you do?

Why, I’ll count them off, two by two.

You clean your room

With never a moan

You carry the groceries

With never a groan.

You’re a friend to your friends.

You share and help out.

You rise early for school,

With never a pout.

You play soccer each year

And root for the team.

Your attitude is sunny,

Your smile, a sunbeam.

Your mind is awash

With fun things to do.

Reading is one

That I love, too.

Your spirit is kind,

Your love fills the ocean.

When my friend died last fall,

You gave all your devotion.

You’re eight years old,

Full of energy and play,

And how I love to check out

How you’ve grown every day.

It’s Christmas time now,

And though we haven’t a lot,

You’re mostly concerned

With what others have not.

In this age of tv

Advertisements galore,

You are mostly concerned

With the plight of the poor.

No cries “gimme, gimme”

Do I hear from you, Chris

You have managed to capture

The true meaning of Christmas.

May we keep our concern

And the spread of good cheer

Alive throughout

The rest of the year.

And a long time from now

And of this I am glad,

You’re going to be

A very fine dad.

And I must confess,

To all I say:

Being part of a family

Is great everyday!

The Offering

It was in France

last year, 

When a gentleman offered his arm

As I went down some stairs.

A strong arm --

To keep me from falling.

To keep me safe.

Later, I cried,

As I remembered that kindness.