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Vernal Equinox

Germans call this season “frühling.”
Spaniards name it “primavera.”
Welshmen say the term is “gwanwyn.”
Shetland trawlers go with “voar,” so

Let’s resolve this with a rüling:
It is “springtime” in this era.
Let the Anglophonic man win.
Some speak Spanish — English more so.
__Till that changes.

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The Trap

We’re caught between an instinct that says “Live!”
And one that says “Avoid all grief and pain.”
We seek to quench our parchedness with a sieve
And claim all other action is insane.

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Small Talk

I ask a friend, “How are you?”
Who really wants to cry.
_I’m told, “I’m fine,”
_A standard line,
The edge of tact and lie.

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Benjamin Cannicott Shavitz received his PhD in linguistics from the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. He lives in Manhattan, NYC, where he was born and raised. He has published two collections of his own poetry (Levities and Gravities), as well as an anthology of public domain poems by New York City poets (Songs of Excelsior). His work has also been published in The Lyric. He runs two online businesses: one that teaches innovative, linguistically informed classes on language skills, including poetry writing, and one that offers dialect coaching for actors. See www.kingsfieldendeavors.com for an overview of his activities and www.kingsfieldlinguistics.com for his businesses.

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7 Responses

  1. Joseph S. Salemi

    These are all perfect little confections of wordplay, each put together as carefully as the interior workings of a watch.

    The complex rhyme scheme of “Vernal Equinox” is striking and unexpected. This is what used to be called “macaronic” verse, that makes use of different languages.

    “The Trap” packs a lot of philosophical comment in four lines: hedonism, epicureanism, stoicism, and finally nihilism.

    As for “Small Talk,” it it seems to begin as a limerick but goes off in a different direction, to paint a very concise psychological picture: someone says he’s fine, but is lying, and the narrator remains tactful about his own perception that it is a lie.

    I can say about all three poems that they do a great deal of work in a very small space of language.

    Reply
  2. Julian D. Woodruff

    The rhymes in “Equinox” are virtuosic and fun, too. The other two are terse, hard, and true as the word of a prophet. Thanks for having all three posted.

    Reply
  3. Cynthia Erlandson

    These are all fun; “Vernal Equinox” is delightfully clever!

    Reply
  4. Shamik Banerjee

    Precise and skillfully executed. I especially liked Small Talk.

    Reply
  5. C.B. Anderson

    These were clever and well thought out, even somewhat edgy, more pungent than some of the ones you recently published in other venues. You are not finished, and I look forward to reading more of your work here.

    Reply
  6. Paul A. Freeman

    Small talk was very compact, very profound.

    I was very interested in ‘Vernal Equinox, though. I noticed that changing the poem into couplets using the corresponding end words of each stanza also seemed to work as a cohesive poem.

    Thanks for the read, Benjamin. Oh, and I loved the German ‘umlauts’.

    Reply
  7. Adam Sedia

    Three little gems of poetic craft: crystalline in their clarity and finely cut. The clever rhyme-scheme of “Vernal Equinox” matches the cleverness of its content — with a nice little coda to make things serious. The remaining two short poems are almost aphorisms; they distill truths about life into memorable bite-size descriptions. Wonderful work!

    Reply

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