Sestinas and Villanelles
As you may know, my friend Oliver is teaching forms again, and is writing the forms with his class. I got on a forms kick in April when I was doing poem a day, and had already written a villanelle and 2 sestinas. I think I may even have posted them briefly. I think the villanelle I wrote is more successful than any I’ve ever written—which doesn’t mean it’s successful, but it’s still ok in my book. This week Oliver’s teaching sestina, but I’m totally sestina’d out.
Last weekend we went to see the King Tutankhamen exhibit at the Denver Art Museum. There were some impressive pieces there, but no actual mummies or even coffins. Lots of statues, statue heads, one canopic jar lid, and a canopic coffin (that held a liver). Also a gold mask, which was impressive to me. I liked seeing the movie that showed the mummies themselves, and wondered at the way that the Egyptians figured out to preserve the bodies for the afterlife. I’m into the science of it. But, like all museum visits, even this one spurred in me the imagery for a new poem. So I’m writing that poem now.
In the meantime, I’ll repost the villanelle and sestina from April. Also, I saw on a blog on my RSS feed this poem by Billy Collins, which I really do love for a lot of reasons, and it’s definitely worth reposting.
*poof*
Purity, by Billy Collins
My favorite time to write is in the late afternoon,
weekdays, particularly Wednesdays.
This is how I go about it:
I take a fresh pot of tea into my study and close the door.
Then I remove my clothes and leave them in a pile
as if I had melted to death and my legacy consisted of only
a white shirt, a pair of pants, and a pot of cold tea.
Then I remove my flesh and hang it over a chair.
I slide it off my bones like a silken garment.
I do this so that what I write will be pure,
Completely rinsed of the carnal,
uncontaminated by the preoccupations of the body.
Finally I remove each of my organs and arrange them
on a small table near the window.
I do not want to hear their ancient rhythms
when I am trying to tap out my own drumbeat.
Now I sit down at the desk, ready to begin.
I am entirely pure: nothing but a skeleton at a typewriter.
I should mention that sometimes I leave my penis on.
I find it difficult to ignore the temptation.
Then I am a skeleton with a penis at a typewriter.
In this condition I write extraordinary love poems,
most of them exploiting the connection between sex
and death.
I am concentration itself: I exist in a universe
where there is nothing but sex, death and typewriting.
After a spell of this I remove my penis too.
Then I am all skull and bones typing into the afternoon.
Just the absolute essentials, no flounces.
Now I write only about death, most classical of themes
in language light as the air between my ribs.
Afterward, I reward myself by going for a drive at sunset.
I replace my organs and slip back into my flesh
And clothes. Then I back the car out of the garage
And speed through woods on winding country roads,
Passing stone walls, farmhouses, and frozen ponds,
All perfectly arranged like words in a famous sonnet.