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Requiem

The notes we cherish most
Are gathered from the throats
Of those who perished young.

The song we sadly toast
Was sown from wanton oats,
Disowned and never sung.

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Role Models

__A forager is digging ramps
Up on a sunny hill in Tennessee,
__Philatelists collecting stamps
Display their tidy books for all to see,
__And railroad bulls are rousting tramps
Who’d thought that they deserved to ride for free.

__But I, who think that honest work
Does not at all befit my social class,
__Look high and low for means to shirk
Responsibilities, and plunk my ass
__On cushions near a vial from Merck
While filling to the brim my favorite glass.

__I’ve never been the type of model
An adolescent child should ever copy,
__For I drink spirits by the bottle
And sometimes tend to get a little sloppy,
__And down that road I go full-throttle
When I decide to drive this old jalopy.

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ramp: a colloquial term for “rampion,” harvested for use in salads

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Time

__Time,
enfolding in its frantic passages
the gravity ascribed to dusty tomes,
preserved expired but urgent messages
__she sent herself from far ago.

__At no time
was she prepared to bear the chronic hurt
of borrowed moments stolen back, or beg
a lost reply, nor did the hours she bought
and saved repay in kind by saving place
when she had lost a turn—she merely hoped
__some word would come from long away.

__Just in time
an echo from another world caught up
to her and chanted in her perfect ear
the perfect words but, fading, let it slip
__that promises are made of air.

__Another time,
she walked abandoned roads and faded trails
and watched ahead for turns she thought to reach
in heartbeats, hoping to exchange her smiles
for open arms around the bend; but march
as fast she might, she only saw the heels
__of couples headed off to church.

__This time,
she thought, if nothing lay ahead in wait
she’d turn and comb the traces of her past,
but when she wheeled and marked that shallow rut,
__saw only footprints in the dust.

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C.B. Anderson was the longtime gardener for the PBS television series, The Victory Garden.  Hundreds of his poems have appeared in scores of print and electronic journals out of North America, Great Britain, Ireland, Austria, Australia and India.  His collection, Mortal Soup and the Blue Yonder was published in 2013 by White Violet Press.

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25 Responses

  1. Joseph S. Salemi

    I like all three of them — the first two for their flawless and very tight composition, and the third because it is something of a mystery.

    I can appreciate the five different uses of “time” in each of the stanzas: first as a noun, and the other four as adverbial phrases. But I’m not sure if “Time” should be taken as a female personification to which “she” refers in the bulk of the poem. Everything in the poem is clearly being thought or done by a woman, but the pronoun “its” in the second line seems to say that we are dealing with an abstraction rather than a personification.

    The entire poem, whatever the case may be, is resonant with what Thoreau called “quiet desperation.”

    Reply
    • C.B. Anderson

      Joseph,

      The mystery for me is why you identified time, an insufficiently explained feature of the world in which we live, with the subject (she) of the poem. Time is just that, and she, if I understand myself correctly, is a woman who, due to circumstances or to her own decisions and indecision, has lost the opportunity of motherhood. Does what I just typed clear anything up?

      Reply
      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Yes, that clears it up. I simply got fixated on the pronoun “its” and made an incorrect assumption about personification.

    • C.B. Anderson

      Well, Joseph, “she” doesn’t come to light until the end of the first stanza, and syntactically speaking, it looks like the antecedent of the feminine pronoun is “Time,…its.”

      Reply
  2. Brian A. Yapko

    I read through these poems several times, C.B., to get a handle on why they made me uneasy. Well, its only two things: the subjects and the poems’ structures and use of words! These are poems I have never seen before and this took me aback.

    “Requiem” has the most accessible form – iambic trimeter with both stanzas rhyming a-b-c. And in those few lines is the sad description of those who have perished young. This poem rich in internal rhyme and assonance. A special shout-out for using the word “sown” twice in two lines, first as “sown” and this as “disowned” which now has the meaning of being unsown along with its conventional meaning. That is a truly masterly touch.

    “Role Models” is a very interesting poem of insouciant self-awareness in the voice of a speaker who is something of a spoiled reprobate with no intention of changing and who doesn’t give a damn what the neighbors think. He is not admirable but he knows this and has the last laugh. There are many amusing and creative rhymes here with unusually specific images – Tennessee, ramps, philatelists, Merck. These little unexpected details and unusual rhymes are one of the unique characteristics of your work, as is the self-deprecation of an extremely self-aware speaker.

    Of the three poems, “Time” was most striking to me not just for the wistful emotions of it, but for the slant rhymes and near rhymes. They made me really work to understand what you were going for here. “Passages/messages” “ up/slip”, “March/church” “Trails/smiles…” I found myself admiring the skill and confidence displayed in these deliberately unrhymed words and how they make their own kind of beautiful, Dickensonian poetry. And then, understanding that the subject of this poem is a woman who never quite connected with her life… Well, that’s when it struck me. All of those end-words are near misses. Incredible. I’d never have thought of such a thing.

    Your poetry always makes me work a little harder, C.B. — and I am always richer for the experience.

    Reply
    • C.B. Anderson

      “Requiem” is indeed, Brian, a nest of perfect rhymes tangled up with, as you mention, assonance & internal rhyme, and also copious sibilance. The narrator is, in my opinion, a man who has abandoned his children, which may be by-blows.

      One of the keys to understanding “Role Models” is realizing that the narrator of the poem and the “old jalopy” mentioned at the end are one and the same.

      I’d not thought of such a thing, but it makes sense. And, oh! if only I were richer for having written them.

      Reply
  3. Julian D. Woodruff

    A trio of finely formed poems, CB. I’d almost say “sculpted,” as something one walks around to view fully. “Time,” so full of embedded rhyme and assurance, is especially intriguing. The reversal of “long ago and far away” is striking, but also appropriate. As for the “borrowed moments stolen back,” the phrase well conveys the everyday experience of motherhood. In fact, I’d guess the moments are often gone before the thought of a specific borrowing is formulated.

    Reply
    • C.B. Anderson

      It’s all grist for the mill, Julian. I’m glad you found them toothsome.

      Reply
  4. James A. Tweedie

    There seems to be a hint of aging, retrospection and regret in these three introspective musings. As Joseph says, they are tight but it is the the final, poem with its “mystery” that I find most compelling as it moves smoothly and inexorably through time. Are footprints (and a grave) all that we leave behind? Footprints for others to follow? Or footprints that wash away with the wind or the next day’s rain? How ephemeral.

    Much to ponder.

    Reply
    • C.B. Anderson

      What we leave behind, James, might depend on how far we’ve gone forward. Did you ever get the feeling, when your children were born, that you had done what you were sent here to do? I wish we were neighbors, just so that we would have the opportunity to talk theology and other cosmic preoccupations hours on end.

      Reply
      • James A. Tweedie

        That would, I think, be a most mutually edifying pleasure. The conversation, of course, would be in verse. Or inverse. One of those. Best the all.

  5. Daniel Kemper

    I’m of a mixed mind on Requiem. The tautness and tightness is exemplary economy of language, but if you are trying to say, what I think you are trying to say, it strains a little under the pressure. That’s a big “IF.”

    It seems like it connects with “Time,” and the celebrated song is the sex with nothing to show for it idea. That is, no kids. To get the poem at depth, I have to connect the unsung song in the last line, back to the song in the first line, which in turn connects to a child, or really; the song *is* the child.

    Interestingly, the second poem picks up the motif by continuing the drinking and singing, though the reader has to wait until the end of the reveal. It’s easy to ascribe too much to a selection, but in any case, it seems to work well. The second poem also introduces the idea of wasting time, which links it to the third.

    In “Time,” although I see it as consistent with childlessness, I’m not sure that it’s narrowed enough to require that. I’m not finding a child there. That could easily be me — as you well know, I totally blow it sometimes. I certainly read it as a woman alone, regretting whatever made her alone.

    Metrically, the first line of “Role Models” tripped me up a little. Four of the first five syllables are unstressed, without the momentum of meter to promote them, but it’s the opening line, so that momentum isn’t there yet. The only other nit I have is the inversion, “while filling to the brim my favorite glass.” I point these rather tiny nits out mainly to highlight how pleasantly tightly wound everything else is. Always a pleasure to read your work.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Daniel, once again your fixation on ideational schemata in meter is showing. There is nothing at all wrong with the first two lines of “Role Models” — indeed, there is no metrical problem at all in the entire poem. It is composed of alternating tetrameter – pentameter lines, and there is nothing in the meter that disturbs a traditional reading of them by someone familiar with the flow of traditional formal verse.

      Why must you come up with abstract, mathematical reasons why a line of verse is wanting, when in fact nobody reading the line in a normal and accepted fashion has a problem with it? And what the hell is wrong with a simple inversion that has countless examples in centuries of canonical English verse?

      Reply
      • C.B. Anderson

        And it’s not much of an inversion either, is it Joe? It’s just a natural, legit way of expressing the thought.

      • Daniel Kemper

        Joe, this might be a good starting point: Perhaps we just come at it differently. To me, if a line can achieve everything with perfect meter that it can achieve with imperfect meter, is not the line with perfect meter better? And so, isn’t that be the direction to go? To you (I think), it seems that if a line of imperfect meter achieves everything a line of perfect meter achieves, what’s the point of perfecting the meter?

        Do you think that’s an accurate estimation?

    • C.B. Anderson

      What do you think I am trying to say, Daniel?

      Not all debauchery is “wasting time,” for didn’t Blake say that the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom?

      There is no child there, which is the problem. In “Requiem” a child there is implied, which is a separate problem.

      And no worries: nits are there to be picked.

      Reply
      • Daniel Kemper

        Howdy, sorry to be so late in reply. Life intervenes.

        Well, regarding debauchery, let’s just say I research the question of whether it is wasting time or not as often as I’m able, I suppose. The quotation you cite is from “Proverbs of Hell,” though, isn’t it?

        In “Requiem,” here’s what I think you are saying. In S1, dying young is tragic, more tragic than dying later; therefore, we cherish the little things that we remember even more. S2 contrasts what we cherish with what we celebrate. We toast one-night stands, whose importance ends there; hence, no songs created to be sung. This, in turn, returns us to S1 by equating songs with the young.

        I wrote this: “the celebrated song is the sex with nothing to show … the song *is* the child,” referencing requiem, not Time. My writing wasn’t very clear and the two poems, to me, seem to tread the same ground.

        So looking back over your formulation, it seems I got it, but certainly expressed it less succinctly.

        About “nits,” I feel like responses ought to have both praises and challenges. Praise affirms what’s already achieved; challenges are meant to inspire. Critique is an unsung art, and I could always improve there as well.

        As you mentioned to Joe on the inversion, yes, it’s not much of one. A “nit.” I’ll wager that you’ve never spoken that way or heard someone speak that way, though. “While filling to the brim my favorite glass.” 🙂 Basically, if the rest weren’t so clean, this would never show up. #VictimOfYourOwnSuccess

        I make an effort to fence things in as my experience of the poem so as not to impose my aesthetic. In that, I also try to keep metrical commentary purely empirical. If I don’t see five iambs in a line which seems to me to be designed to be iambic pentameter, I’m going to mention it — if it’s sufficiently relevant for commentary. Everything can’t be said about every poem all the time. In the case of your craft, you didn’t fall out of bed writing at such a high level of precision. The feeling that I hope comes through with onesy-twosy nits is a collaborative “as iron sharpens iron…”

        Looking forward to the next, although I see I’ve got to catch up with some of the posts, already!

        One more thing: This is not a workshop site, but I often comment as though it were one, because of so much time in the past spent at AbleMuse, I think. Working on it.

      • Joseph S. Salemi

        “I’ll wager that you’ve never spoken that way or heard someone speak that way…”

        Yes, Daniel. That’s precisely what poetry is allowed to do, and what in fact it is supposed to do.

        I don’t think you have ever examined certain modernist assumptions that you hold.

  6. Adam Sedia

    You are a master of wistfulness, and I genuinely appreciate that. The one thing your poems always give is perspective.

    “Requiem” really “packs a punch,” its brevity yet depth mirroring the legacy of those we lost too soon.

    “Role Models” is a biting dramatic monologue from a self-deprecatory perspective. (Part of the beauty of poetry, to echo what Dr. Salemi has said before, is that I don’t know if the narrative voice is really you — but that doesn’t matter.)

    “Time” was not what I expected from its sweeping title. It is a very intimate poem about what I envision to be an old spinster who “missed her chance” and realizes only too late she cannot go back and retrace her steps (something all of us experience at one time or another).

    Thank you for sharing.

    Reply
    • C.B. Anderson

      I hope, Adam, that I am not too much like the narrator of “Role Models”. You’ve got “Time” pegged, but a woman needs only be around forty to experience such regrets. Many do today.

      Wistfulness — I kind of like that. And a person must make some use of his memories.

      Reply
  7. jd

    Yes, thank you for sharing everything on this thread. More and more I feel blessed to have found SCP.

    Reply
  8. David Whippman

    Thanks for these, CB. “Role Models” is surely a cleverly rhymed hymn to fecklessness! “Requiem” is literally true: for my generation, the songs that marked our youth were sung by those who all too often died at 27: Hendrix, Joplin et al.

    Reply
    • C.B. Anderson

      Honestly, David, I didn’t have the music industry in mind when I wrote the “Requiem” poem, but I get the point. For me it was often more about my favorite bands breaking up than the death of individuals. But I can still mourn both types of event.

      I’m glad you liked the end rhymes in “Role Models”; some of them were hard to come up with.

      Reply

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