Good Night

(In Front of Mestre’s, Paris, 1947, by Willy
Ronis, 1910-2009, French photographer)

One form of poetry is the pantoum, or pantum, composed of quatrains with internal rhyming and the repetition of lines according to an established pattern. The poet here has created a variation of that, involving the repetition of lines that he first rearranges. Read the poem out loud and you’ll note that this double-repetition begins to resemble an incantation.

GOOD NIGHT

Sleep softly my old love
my beauty in the dark
night is a dream we have
as you know as you know

night is a dream you know
an old love in the dark
around you as you go
without end as you know

in the night where you go
sleep softly my old love
without end in the dark
in the love that you know

~ W. S. Merwin, born in 1927, American poet, essayist, and translator

Lessons from a Painting by Rothko

(Untitled, 1960 by Mark Rothko, 1903-1970,
American painter)

Mark Rothko is best known for his abstract paintings of horizontal bands of color stacked vertically up a rectangular canvas. “Often the divisions and intervals between them suggest a horizon or a cloud-bank, thus indirectly locating the image in the domain of landscape,” wrote the art critic Robert Hughes in The Shock of the New.

“This format enabled him to eliminate nearly everything from his work except the spatial suggestions and emotive power of his color, and the breathing intensity of the surfaces, which he built up in the most concentrated way, staining the canvas like watercolor paper and then scumbling it with repeated skins of overpainting, so that . . . one seems to be peering into the depths of mist and water, lit from within.”

The poet was inspired to follow the artist’s technique of repeated overpainting and wrote her poem as a pantoum, or pantum — a verse form composed of quatrains with internal rhyming and the repetition of lines according to an established pattern.

LESSONS FROM A PAINTING BY ROTHKO

How would you paint a poem?
Prepare the canvas carefully
With tiers of misty rectangles
Stacked secrets waiting to be told.

Prepare the canvas carefully
With shallow pools of color
Stacked secrets waiting to be told
Messages from some unknown place.

With shallow pools of color
Thin layers of gauze float over the canvas
Messages from some unknown place
Where soft shapes expand above a glow.

Thin layers of gauze float over the canvas
With tiers of misty rectangles
Where soft shapes expand above a glow.
How would you paint a poem?

~ Bobbi Katz, born 1933, American poet

Pantoum of the Great Depression

(Drought refugee from Polk, Missouri,
awaiting the opening of the orange-picking
season at Porterville, California, 1936 by
Dorothea Lange, 1895-1965, American
photographer)

The decade of the Thirties was a time of economic crisis. Many countries suffered through a depression with years of jobless lines and overcrowded soup kitchens, and in places like Germany and Austria, uncontrollable hyper-inflation that rendered the currency useless. In response, the governments of seemingly stable nations abroad disintegrated into fascism or communism. In America, however, its democracy survived intact.

(A pantoum, or pantum, is a verse form composed of quatrains with internal rhyming and the repetition of lines according to an established pattern.)

PANTOUM OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION

Our lives avoided tragedy
Simply by going on and on,
Without end and with little apparent meaning.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.

Simply by going on and on
We managed. No need for the heroic.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.
I don’t remember all the particulars.

We managed. No need for the heroic.
There were the usual celebrations, the usual sorrows.
I don’t remember all the particulars.
Across the fence, the neighbors were our chorus.

There were the usual celebrations, the usual sorrows.
Thank god no one said anything in verse.
The neighbors were our only chorus,
And if we suffered we kept quiet about it.

At no time did anyone say anything in verse.
It was the ordinary pities and fears consumed us,
And if we suffered we kept quiet about it.
No audience would ever know our story.

It was the ordinary pities and fears consumed us.
We gathered on porches; the moon rose; we were poor.
What audience would ever know our story?
Beyond our windows shone the actual world.

We gathered on porches; the moon rose; we were poor.
And time went by, drawn by slow horses.
Somewhere beyond our windows shone the actual world.
The Great Depression had entered our souls like fog.

And time went by, drawn by slow horses.
We did not ourselves know what the end was.
The Great Depression had entered our souls like fog.
We had our flaws, perhaps a few private virtues.

But we did not ourselves know what the end was.
People like us simply go on.
We had our flaws, perhaps a few private virtues,
But it is by blind chance only that we escape tragedy.

And there is no plot in that; it is devoid of poetry.

~ Donald Justice (1925-2004), American poet