.

Windjam

Dry leaves abruptly fell that day—
Whirled weathervane communiqué
Proposing a quick stroll away
Along a narrow inlaid path
To venture past the aftermath
Of an alfresco yellow bath.

Emerging from the stonecut room
Behind a waterfall’s stray spume,
A tenor tone, “May I presume
To lift the leaf caught in your hair?”
“Please,” she replied. His short shag fair,
Plump, ruddy face—she dared not stare.
He gave her the particular
Gold serrate blade orbicular
“For luck” and strode off singular.

.

.

Paisley

A droplet shape with curling tip
Or Zoroaster’s swirling flame,
Eccentric intricate ellipse adrip,
Liquescent feathers nestled in a frame
Flamboyant.

The crookneck squash styled imitation
Prints patterns on odd scarves and ties
Devoid of smooth oblique sophistication
That coolly draws and satisfies calm eyes
Clairvoyant.

Not just a gaudy floral spray
With busy frills and furbelows,
Or starry skewed festoons to overweigh
Abstractly outlined archipelagos
Excessive.

Real flexile teardrops, mood askance,
Like commas clinging restfully
Where both sides of the wool or silk enhance
Gradations of clear tinctures zestfully
Inwoven.

Exotic lobes electrify
The blood of blithe gentility;
Maroon and claret and mahogany
Grenades flare Sassanid intensity
Impressive.

Rain yin and dewy yang recall
Pashmina pine cone garniture
From eras when pianos wore a shawl
And clothing put on Orient allure
Enduring.

Though fashion swivels, thrilling thrift
Tips off blue times to intertwine
New hues, and let loops pool and stretch and shift
In oval cobalt damascene design
Endearing.

.

Sassanid: Persian empire 3rd to 7th centuries, whence the pattern now known as paisley began to be exported

.

.

Margaret Coats lives in California.  She holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University.  She has retired from a career of teaching literature, languages, and writing that included considerable work in homeschooling for her own family and others. 

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39 Responses

  1. Paul Erlandson

    Margaret,

    The Paisley poem was EXCELLENT! As someone who has worn paisley neckties (and sometimes shirts) for about 45 years, I truly appreciate the care taken hear. It really catches the life, the vitality, of a good paisley design. It’s as if you took us on a museum tour of paisleys and, as our knowing docent, pointed here and there in the patterns, so that nothing could be missed.

    Thank you!

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Paul, I have loved paisley since childhood, and first bought a fine scarf in 1977, so we are similarly longtime connoisseurs. And Evan Mantyk said he was wearing a paisley tie when he read this submission and was delighted by it. You understand that there is “good paisley” and not-so-good–which is one of my themes in stanzas two and three. I ran my hands through a huge mass of my own scarves to get the feel for writing this, and found more rather sloppy imitations than well-defined designs. That means an almost infinite array of possibly paisley items–and I very much like your description of the poem as a museum docent’s critical appreciation of them. So glad you liked it!

      Reply
  2. Joseph S. Salemi

    Wow, these are good! They are perfectly formal, and yet intensely modern in style and tone.

    In “Windjam” we have tetrameter triplets (AAA, BBB, etc.) and there is a deliberate avoidance of using any verb of being, which emphasizes the poem’s telegraphic, impressionistic movement. In the longer and more complex “Paisley” there is also no verb of being; nevertheless, the kaleidoscopic blossoming of description, imagery, and the rich vocabulary of fabric and color is absolutely dazzling.

    “Windjam” follows the modernist habit of seizing on a simple incident or perception in its first six lines. But then the poet develops it to become a momentary human interaction between two strangers — slightly comic, perhaps flirtatious, and a perfect conclusion to the piece. There are three really brilliant lines in the poem, worthy of Eliot:

    Whirled weathervane communique

    Of an alfresco yellow bath

    Gold serrate blade orbicular

    I am utterly enchanted by the vocabulary of “Paisley.” The intricacy, the richness, the rarity, and above all the poet’s untrammeled freedom to use whatever words she pleases and desires, without adhering to some grade-school basal vocabulary list of “acceptable” diction, or some dreary workshop consensus about “what an audience will understand.”

    As Paul E. says, Margaret is “our knowing docent” here. But not just about the paisley design. She is also teaching us what perfect fictive artifacts can be.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Joe, thank you for several high compliments here. I especially appreciate the description of these poems as “intensely modern” in a good way, because we often regard modernity as a bad thing related to all the ills of modernism. You make your meaning more specific by citing several lines as worthy of Eliot. I have studiously avoided imitating the great modern poet because I believe so many writers make the attempt, and fail in an obviously ridiculous manner because they have neither his scholarly background nor his genius. But from knowing his work, I see what you mean in these simple lines of mine. And I understand your analysis of “Windjam” as moving beyond modernist reliance on a simple incident to create a small drama. I am most grateful for the time and effort you took to say so much about technique in both poems.

      We have always agreed about poetic use of language. Words are the wealth of English; it is better for a reader to use a glossary or dictionary (which renders him the richer) than for a poet to accept misguided limitations restricting use of words, whereby literature is the loser.

      Reply
  3. jd

    Loved reading the poems and expositions. “Paisley” is really quite amazing for all the reasons so well listed. And I found “Windjam” charming, whimsical and a bit mysterious. Thanks to all.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks, jd. I appreciate your seeing mystery in “Windjam,” because that’s my perception of the real incident on which it is based. This happened exactly a month ago in the Huntington Chinese gardens at San Marino, California, and left me in pleasant wonder at how the mystery of human interaction makes one individual stand out as “singular” among a crowd. A moment of charm and whimsy; glad you perceive the poem that way!

      Reply
  4. Paul A. Freeman

    You’ve educated me on many levels, Margaret, not least because I was under the impression paisley came from Ireland (Ian Paisley was always in the news when I was a youngster).

    Every stanza of ‘Paisley’, I felt, visually resembles the paisley design, the final adjective wrapping up each teardrop of verse – or am I reading too much into it?

    I’ll be reading this one again. Thanks for the reads.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Paul, for noticing the stanza design in “Paisley” as like that of the teardrop pattern on fabric. In fact, it’s an inverted teardrop. The final line of a single 3-syllable word is the tip. Lines 3 and 4 are longer (pentameter) than lines 1 and 2 (tetrameter), representing the center portion of a drop as being larger than the base. Good perception!

      I too remember Ian Paisley as a militant separatist in Northern Ireland, opposed to militants of the opposing party who would have liked to see Ireland united and split from the United Kingdom. His name is Scotch-Irish, and the paisley pattern takes its name from the mill town of Paisley near Glasgow in Scotland. That was where paisley fabric became a worldwide export. The many mills of the town made it much more easily and cheaply than had ever been done in Persia or India. Even working-class women in the 19th century could afford a fashionable paisley shawl for special occasions. And some of the mills continued to produce highest quality goods competing with Kashmiri pashmina that has made a comeback in recent years. Economics as well as fashion is a part of the paisley story.

      Reply
      • Julian D. Woodruff

        Thanks, Margaret for being so imaginative as to evoke the paisley shape in your stanza design (and thanks to Paul for pointing it out). This is a wonderful instance of the auditory mode being a truer channel of poetic intent than is the graphic (so much in favor these days): the shape is visually suggested only in stanzas 3 and 5, but would be consistently represented in an oral reading. I’d love to hear you do it
        I’d love to hear and see you read “Windjam,” too, where you could voice and enact its coy mystery, the “what doesn’t happen” as much as the “what happens.”

    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks for your comment, Julian. You are right about the full effect of the metrical scheme in “Paisley” being auditory rather than visual–despite visual lines of a single word that point to it. And in a vocal reading, I think I would need a long pause before each of those coda words to make them heard. That might make the likeness to paisley teardrops intelligible.

      I am considering doing that reading, but the video short you seem to want for “Windjam” is beyond my technical capabilities. You are right again, I believe, that the words in the poem are more suggestive than visual representation, and might need to be visually overlaid. “Gold serrate blade orbicular,” for example, is a dendrologic description of the leaf more impressive than a picture would be. And if we added video to the poem, even with good actors and a wind machine to start off, would the result leave as much thoughtfully unsaid as do the words? But as you see, you’ve set me thinking!

      Reply
  5. Mary Gardner

    Margaret, “Paisley” surprised me with “Of course!” likenings to crookneck squash and commas. It’s given me a fresh look at the design.
    What era was “when pianos wore a shawl”?
    Does “thrilling thrift” refer to the pink of a thrift plant?

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Mary. Pianos wore shawls in the Victorian era. Today you can get a plain fitted cover for your grand piano if it is to be closed for any length of time. But during those days when shawls were the biggest sellers among paisley products, the biggest size shawl made a stunning decoration for a musical instrument. I inherited one. With the grand piano long gone, its shawl was deep in an old cedar chest among expensive but stained table linens. With tablecloths all white, as the fashion then was, piano shawls provided an exotic display of color. Glad you asked!

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      By thrift, I meant the Scottish virtue of finding a new way to save or make money when fashion changes. But I like the idea of pink thrift for blue times when fresh designs are needed. Let’s put a vase of pink thrift flowers on a paisley table runner!

      Reply
  6. Cheryl Corey

    What I find so striking about “Paisley” is your artistic eye to see – really see – a crookneck squash, a teardrop, and a lobe in a very painterly way.

    Reply
      • Margaret Coats

        What about an ocean wave curling and about to break? Were you never a surfer, Paul?

    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Cheryl. This takes imagination first and good choices next, since there are many possibilities. Pears didn’t get into the poem, nor did stringed instruments like cithara and lute, or cooking whisks. None of those yet made with a curved handle!

      Reply
  7. Roy Eugene Peterson

    I am amazed at the paisley images bouncing in my head replete with all the extraordinary words that each verse brought alive. I could not image writing so many fantastic verses about such a subject that sizzles in intricacy and clever creative composition. Unparalleled majestic use of the English language and adept poetic skills as always. “Windjam” was equally enchanting with the image of the leaf and the waterfall coupled with the artistry of word usage.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      How did you like grenades as a paisley likeness? My husband read over the poem and considered them too militaristic, but when I recall weapons familiarization, the “lemon” hand grenade and the large “pineapple” for a grenade launcher fit the bill, and make quite a flare. The little leaf in “Windjam” is smaller yet more precious, as it provided the opportunity for strangers to meet for a moment. Thanks as always for your appreciation, Roy.

      Reply
      • Roy Eugene Peterson

        I thought the use of grenades as insightful, imaginative, and appropriate. You are so right about the terms used for them and took me back to my basic training when I had to throw them or fire them off.

  8. Brian A. Yapko

    Both of these are marvelous poems, Margaret, presented with a palpable love of language.

    “Windjam” offers a delightful chance encounter between a man and woman. It’s full of ambiguity despite the specifics of your sumptuous word-choices. For startes, why “Windjam?” Initially I thought this a place name, then looked it up in the dictionary to find a not complimentary definition (“excessive talk with little substance” — I sincerely doubt that’s what you meant. ) My best thinking is that you describe a narrow passageway where the characters are “jammed” as the odd meeting takes place. But I would really love to know what your intent is. I’m also fascinated by whether she stares because she’s attracted, intrigued, repulsed or simply shocked by the man with the chubby red face and the shag haircut. This leaves me wanting to know more about the subject and the stranger. Causing a reader to “want more” is the hallmark of a very fine poem.

    Speaking of sumptuous language, your “Paisley” poem is an absolute delight. I’m trying to decide if it qualifies as “ekphrastic” or not since it has an artistic subject which is, however, not a specific artistic subject. While I weigh how to categorize, I will simply savor the many lovely descriptive images you present in a rather straightforward structure which you then bedazzle with a final three syllable word coda to each stanza. These adjectives are related each to the next starting with “oyant” words which move on to “ex” and “in” and finally end with the near rhymes of “endearing” and “enduring.” These additions make what might otherwise have been a conventional (if superior) poem into something indeed artistic and, if I might add one more coda word, indulgent (which I intend in the sense of sheer luxury.”) I would never have guessed that a paisley pattern would yield such riches!

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks, Brian, for your comments and questions. “Windjam” has much behind it (jam session, traffic jam), but its main point is that the wind sets up the close encounter. The weathervane whirls abruptly, a strong gust of wind blows down that alfresco bath of yellow leaves, and starts people moving away from it along a narrow path where paths of persons necessarily cross and jam. I intended to suggest also “windjammer,” or a sailing boat as opposed to a motorized one. This may be related to the pejorative meaning you found (which is obviously related to “windbag” or empty talker). Motorboat skippers generally dislike navigating a passage jammed with windjammers. But my overall intent was to characterize the meeting of the man and woman as something impelled by nature and thus likely to be favorable.

      Of course, the man makes a decision to take advantage of nature. In a situation where everyone has been leafblown, why should he offer to take one leaf from the hair of one woman who hasn’t even looked at him? That’s the circumstance revealed when he comes to her attention only as a “tenor tone.” Here I have to go from the poem to the experience it’s based on (as I revealed above to jd). I have the leaf the man gave me, along with plenty of other dry, broken, brownish yellow leaves that blew into my open handbag at the same time. The one he took from my hair is a lovely golden yellow, perfect in shape. He must have seen it and immediately thought it a sign of good luck that only he could bring to my notice, and only by immediate action. And then he’s so courteous as to ask permission. I am fortunate to have had a brief experience of the gentlemanly charm that makes him “singular” in my memory. Notice that the final rhyme is imperfect, if we consider the other two as triple rhymes ending in “-icular.” Imperfect, but singular. I didn’t stare at him because that’s rude, especially when the stranger’s face is only inches from one’s own. I think I was too surprised to smile during those few seconds, but I hope there was something about me that makes him value his opportunity as singular good fortune.

      Now you know what I know, Brian, and as you can tell, there must still be more to know. Perfect topic for a poem, and I’m happy to have been able to write one conveying questions!

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks as well, for noticing the coda words and how they go together. I’m glad you gave them a name that implies music. They help identify stanzas, and define a quality of each in the poem. Codas 1 and 2 rhyme, then 3 rhymes with 5, enveloping the unique unrhymed coda 4–and as you noted, codas 6 and 7 are near rhymes. My logic in the poem takes a back seat to the images, but as it stands, stanza 1 is by logic the initial description, and “flamboyant” fits there, because paisley teardrops sometimes feature small surrounding flames like those in Gothic flamboyant architecture. “Clairvoyant” in stanza 2 speaks rather of keen viewer perception, in the stanza where I say viewers may be dissatisfied with patterns that are “imitation” paisley. Stanza 3 goes on to characterize deficient paisley patterns as gaudy, busy, abstract, and excessive (the third coda word). Stanza 4 defines real paisley in my view as “clinging restfully” and displaying color “zestfully inwoven.” “Inwoven” as the single word at the heart of the poem exhibits my preference for the finest paisley as woven, not printed, and showing the same pattern in reverse on back and front of the fabric, with pleasing variation of color on either side. “Impressive” as the coda to stanza 5 comments on the origin of the pattern, and on one particularly fine scarf of mine in the elegant dark red colors mentioned. Stanza 6 goes further into historic and philosophical paisley, while stating that its allure is enduring. That could have been the poem’s final word, but it would have been a bit solemn. I chose “endearing” instead, as the distinction good paisley always has, no matter its current colors or fashionability. As I wanted all this in my online notes, I am grateful to you, Brian, for reading closely enough to give me the opportunity. Cheers!

      Reply
  9. Sally Cook

    Dear Margaret –

    As you know, words and images can and often do co-exist. Fascinating ! If I’m brief, it is because I’ve
    not been well , but may I echo Joe Salemi in his comment, and add to that how happy you made me by your use of the word “furbelow”, one of my favorites, and so perfect for the poem.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you for reading and commenting, Sally. I’m sorry you’ve been unwell, but glad to have made you happy by using one of your favorite words. “Furbelow” does suit the highly decorative poem “Paisley.” Get well soon!

      Reply
  10. Adam Sedia

    “Paisley” is absolutely wonderful: unique subject matter, great use of allusion, a unique form with interlocking rhyme. As a fan of paisley (particularly ties), this poem really spoke to me.

    “Windjam” is a captivating narrative with much tantalizingly left unsaid.

    Both poems display a striking use of vocabulary — sumptuous, I would even call it. For me at least, it is the richness of the language above all else that made these a pleasure to read.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks, Adam! I’m always glad to discover more fans of paisley, having been one myself for so long. Some of us are just naturally drawn to what I’ve called its “smooth oblique sophistication.” And you certainly judge rightly about the “Windjam” poem as a narrative with “much tantalizingly left unsaid.” Thanks a second time for putting it that way, and for your other perceptive remarks.

      Reply
  11. C.B. Anderson

    I’ll be hanging on to my paisley neckties, Margaret, until they pry them from my cold dead hands. I can count the times I’ve worn one of those in the past thirty years on the fingers of a single hand. Thanks for going there.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks for your own piece on “The Color Plaid.” That’s where Monika Cooper made the suggestion of a poem on paisley, which I’ve taken up here. I quite understand that a fondness for plaid shirts doesn’t make for much use of paisley ties. I love both patterns, but haven’t yet tried combining them in one outfit.

      Reply
  12. Monika Cooper

    You capture it, Margaret, the unique magic of paisley. I never could have done it the way you have. Yes, there’s an education here but the mystery remains and the pattern of paisley has a mystery deep as melody or, something more axiomatic, musical scales. There’s something like an ancient, unfamiliar scale behind the beauty of it. (3rd to 7th centuries, amazing. And how long was the tradition before that?) Thank you for writing this poem; I love the stubborn vibrant opacities of it that mirror the same qualities in the fabric. Paisley is worth the second and deep consideration you give it, because the strange dwells irreducibly its familiarity!

    “Windjam” is beautiful too, with a certain encoded quality: like a handwritten confidence. So many kinds of love in the universe.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you for the comment, Monika. Paisley is unique. I looked up mathematical curve generating functions and found that no single function graphs as a closed paisley droplet. Spirals and loops are possible, and with asymmetrical additions or superimposed doubling, these can come up with paisley areas for computer graphics. This helps account for sloppy paisley design such as what I speak of in stanzas 2 and 3, but it is all the more remarkable that the Scottish mills in the town of Paisley were able to weave such precise beauty so early. The early Persian examples were undoubtedly printed, as is pashmina today. That means the design came from an artist’s freehand imagination, informed by tradition.

      I like your description of “Windjam” as manifesting one of the “many kinds of love in the universe.”

      Reply
      • Monika Cooper

        Amazing! Amazing what a free hand hand can do, when informed by tradition (and simultaneously by genius/inspiration).

        Also amazing, though decline is a law of fallen nature, to find undeniable traces of the original beauty and archetype in the “sloppy” descendants. And to think how the dazzle of inspiration could be revived, infused again: because the Holy Ghost over the Bent world broods.

      • Margaret Coats

        Yes, indeed, and artists almost always depict the Pentecostal tongues of fire as droplet shaped.

  13. Linda Marie Hilton

    i also love paisley,
    this is a lovely poem,
    and it catches the extravagance and
    variety and colorfulness of the design
    called paisley, which is at once both
    ancient and modern.

    Reply
  14. Daniel Kemper

    Hi Dr. C~

    Wow am I glad you pointed me back to “Windjam.” BTW, growing up on the Outer Banks of NC, “windjammer,” was slang for small sailboats, sometimes even referring to catamarans. A dear friend from that time inherited and mastered a business of teaching and renting them.

    Back to the real story. I love the tension and release of the first stanza. I had to read the poem an extra time to place the physical situation built up in the first stanza, but that’s no necessary ding. I bet it felt really good to coin that second line! A lot of what made this poem so fun was also what made it a bit challenging. E.g. “Gold serrate blade orbicular.”

    I really like that the ornamentation of the words and phrases captured the way the moment was lifted out of the ordinary. Everything seemed to have an aura about it after that single interaction, I bet. And the ornamented language captures that very nicely.

    Thank you for writing and for pointing me back. You know me well enough by now that I just “whiff it” sometimes and miss obvious stuff.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks so much, Daniel. You’re right that the ornamented language is a way to show this encounter as something unique and poignant because unlikely to be repeated. Or perhaps I should say, because a chance meeting of strangers is unlikely to be significant–and yet here is one full of “sign” value, where the two understand for a moment their power to enhance one another’s lives. And you’re right again that an aura in memory sustains elevation of feelings and contributes to the future.

      The persons are windjammers in the sense of being small craft that would ordinarily preserve a safe distance between them. Where I grew up in Florida, any vessel without a motor was a windjammer, so the term would apply to catamarans. Hope you have fine memories from your friend’s business. It’s always an adventure to go out on the water under wind power–and try your best to exercise control!

      Reply
  15. Tom Rimer

    Margaret, the charm and freshness of these two poems shows me a whole new side of your great talents. The rhymes in particular fall like energized music to the ears. The smile behind both shines through so well, and the graciousness too. Congratulations!

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Tom, thanks so very much for this laudatory response. Coming from someone so well versed in vast realms of poetry, it means a great deal. I am always trying something new, but I’ll hope to retain and come back to the spirit of these works.

      Reply

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