After E. T. A. Hoffman

“Only connect…” E. M. Forster, Howard’s End

By Ewald E. Eisbruc

The inner structure of the movements, working joint by joint,
the way they all are linked together, toward a single point,
th’ interrelation of main themes, producing unity,
beteem each listener to reach a new intensity.
Sometimes this bond is heard between two movements in this art,
where one might hear some common figures pairing part to part;
but deep connections go beyond the observations made,
as if from one mind to another as the music’s played.
The three Allegros and Andante mightily proclaim
the genius of Beethoven’s Fifth and its majestic flame.

 

A Little Serenade

By Ewald E. Eisbruc

The catchy Little Serenade by Wolfgang Mozart starts
with an ascending Mannheim rocket theme, as it imparts
joy with each little serendipitous phrase it accrues,
and falls into the mind so snappily in happy grooves.
A composition of a chamber orchestra in place,
two violins, viola, cello, and a double bass.
Called Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, it captures in sweet tune
the beauty of the Viennese milieu beneath the moon.
It dances in the scintillating city, jittering,
like dreams upon the waters of the Danube—glittering.

 

Human Stuff

By Ed Rubee Swical

“The food containers each of us uses boggles the mind and cloggles the Earth.” —Carb Deliseuwe

The vast variety of things that human beings make,
like trucks and tractors, jets and trains, books, bric-a-brac and brakes,
like cars, roads, buildings, rockets, satellites and furniture,
computers, dishes, phones, no matter what expenditure,
these things add to some thirty-some quadrillion metric tons,
compared to but five-hundred million tons of Earthians,
approximately fifty kilograms per metric square,
surpassing Earth’s own biosphere with this new technosphere;
Geologist Zalasiewicz of England’s Leicester U.
has so reported this in The Anthropocene Review.

 

Bruce Dale Wise is a poet living in Washington State.

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2 Responses

  1. CAROL HERRING

    Dear Bruce Wise,
    I’m looking at your poetry and thinking about it (and surprised that William Stafford, one of my favorite poets, turned down one of your submissions. However, I ask, unrelated to poetry, did you have a grandfather in California, named Correz Wise?
    He was my great uncle and moved from Virginia in maybe the 1920’s or 30’s’s. Wise is a Virginia name.
    Mrs. Carol Rowzie Whitmore-Herring

    Reply
    • Bruce Dale Wise

      Carol,

      I believe William Stafford rejected my poetry, because it was not the kind of poetry he wrote, nor wanted to write; however he did write me the following poem.

      Apologies to B. D. W.
      by William Stafford

      To be told off could hardly be a pleasure,
      but it’s appropriate to be condemned by measure

      and elegance—I am myself so slovenly
      it almost cheers to get the word by filigree.

      Of all my faults which one now finds me fudging?
      I must have carelessed through a contest-judging,

      and erred by giving someone undeserving
      the prize claimed forthwith by another not observing

      the total range of entries: remember poet,
      you can’t in reason blame until you know it—

      the quality that won, I mean. But thanks for not being coyed:
      yours is the only word back from the anonymous void.

      Here was my response to him.

      On William Stafford
      by Bruce Dale Wise

      He was the only one who answered me
      in verse, the man who avoided all rhyme,
      as if it were the plague. The masonry
      in much of our era is not sublime.
      Still, he had that within him, at that time,
      that made me stop and think, if only
      for a little while. I think his main crime,
      one I’m prone to too, was weakness. Lonely,
      he fought against the dark in his own way—
      not brilliantly; but he was not phony;
      he was more like a sad Don Quixote
      tilting at windmills, angular, bony.
      And though for me his poetry was gray,
      I still recall that drabness on this day.

      Some time ago I also created a Staffordian sonnet, a sonnet of 18 lines: ababcdcdefefghghii, modeled after “Traveling though the Dark”; in my mind his most successful poem. As you can see in my sonnet above, one of the things I learned from his practice was a casual disregard of metrical insistence.

      As to your question relating to genealogy, I am not directly related to Correz Wise.

      Reply

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