Poem #5 for Poetry Month-Burmese Than-Bauk

The  photo is of the shy and elusive fawn lily which arrives in shady spots as early as February. I spotted this one beside the Nootka Trail when we were working there one year.

This poem is a Burmese Than-Bauk, familiarly known as a “climbing rhyme” due to its internal rhyming structure. The than-bauk is a 3 line poem of 4 syllables per line wherein the key rhyming word is the fourth word in line one. The second line must have a word that rhymes with it at the third syllable and of course, the last line must then rhyme with both at the second syllable. So it suits short one syllable words best. Otherwise one’s brain becomes a pretzel trying to rhyme anything as complex as two or three syllables or it can become a ‘table’ ‘fable’ ‘gable’ sort of lame effort.

Spy Movie in Burma: Director’s Notes

Lady will wait

Inside; bait for

A late night guest.

Poem #4 for April Poetry Month-Bengali Payar

Bengali Payar is a form which lends itself to oral presentation as it has two rhyming couplets within long lines which are halved yet again .

There are two 8 syllable lines with an internal structure of 4 and 4 beats, then a six syllable line with a 4 and 2 beat rhythm.

The six syllable lines rhyme with each other and the last line is a finale. These are fun! The soaked flowers are Lily of the Nile or agapanthus, which follow hard on the heels of daffodils here on Lennard Island. I love their true blue colour and ability to withstand the vile weather of late!

Canadian Monsoon

Somebody wrote, Cruel April

   breaking records, hot cold

rolling thunder, lightning strikes too

   floods strand poor cows, mud mould...

But wait one day, or week or month

   April snickers, you’ll see

patience rewards, remember this

   don’t plant too soon, think like a bee.

                                                                                               

Poem #3 for Poetry Month-Arabic Hazaj Metre

Today, an Arabic Hazaj Metre Poem to celebrate the tree I see every day from my writing desk, along with a glimpse of Echachsis Island one mile to the northwest. The cement sidewalk leads to the turf heli-pad and the engine room. The Sitka mountain ash attracts birds in every season, from little hummingbirds to hungry Bohemian waxwings, song sparrows, crows and rufous-sided towhees, and that’s just for starters.

                                      Mountain Ash                                                            

 

Beneath pale skies                                                           

   her lime green leaves

   shield dense seed heads;

She waits, coiled, tough

   for true blue spring

   to warm sad hearts.

Poem #2 for Poetry Month-Anglo-Saxon Alliterative, Sievers' A

Strict Alliterative Verse #A-after Eduard Sievers’ system, or to be honest, quite loosely thereabouts due to my chronic disobedience, inspired by these dogs perhaps, although any excuse will do. Molly Brown and Rocky personify upwardly and downwardly mobile joy, joy on the run, all things Joy. Good dogs.

Mornings walking these mayhem-making dogs 

All brouhaha, barking madly 

Joy, more joy! Can you jump for it?

April Fool's Day Poem for Poetry Month-Anglo-Saxon Alliterative

A Poem A Day For ....

I suddenly remembered I had a blog. I'm too busy meeting actual deadlines for paid writing work to be a good blathering blogger even though everyone as in "everyone" says writers are supposed to sell themselves constantly and tweet and all that crap. I quite detest the practice. My struggle in life is to cut out all the noise and clutter and carve a path to my writing desk, not to add to it with a bunch of obligations to the uncaring world at large. 

Except for you, my eleven loyal followers. I am amazed and humbled that you haven't written me off as a reticent old beast who cannot stir her stumps enough to burble on in a blog every single day. Well, things have changed and I have inspiring friends to thank for it. You can blame them if you like.

I am about to blog a poem a day. You can unfriend me or deblog acquaintance me or whatever you need to do, if you must, since I've given you fair warning. But, herewith, forsooth, and so forth, here goes!

Anglo-Saxon Alliterative Verse (oh, should have said, I'm using a different form every day as well, helped along by the wonderful book, The Shapes of Our Singing by Robin Skelton.)

How then shall I live? Now I love each line

Of flowers blowing in the wind, that yellow cheering me onward

The pond alive with frogs, their braying mere praying,

For a lady-mate but not me, a green and sexy girl instead.

 


 

Review of Mary Lou's Brew by Jennifer Craig

Mary Lou's Brew by Jennifer Craig
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


There is one of those Fate & Publishing stories behind this book, as I discovered when reading the author's acknowledgements. This very funny, very smart, and highly readable book pre-dates the Harry Potter juggernaut. As anyone who has worked in a bookstore or in any facet of publishing knows, the collective unconscious dips into inventive minds around the planet. Voila, along with J.K. Rowling writing in an Edinburgh coffee shop to save money on her daytime gas bill, a British School of Sophistry with a reluctant student and a wacky faculty emerged in Canada, courtesy of a retired homeopathic doctor.Even more eerie is the fact that a form of airborne device which must be mind-activated by the passenger is a featured mode of transportation by all competent members of the imperilled School within a grand post-secondary institution, along the lines of an Oxford or Cambridge University.

Meanwhile Harry found a good publisher in Bloomsbury UK and went on to World Domination while this manuscript, equally talented in my opinion, was set aside. Finally in 2014, Mary Lou's Brew was self-published.(Why? Why? If I still worked in publishing, I would have pounced on this manuscript, championed it and then sold it to those of us who are sick to death of unicorns (should be shot on sight to prevent pastel imaginations from spreading like pink jello across the land of childhood), vampires (hand me a sharpened stake and a braid of garlic please) and those relentless, rotting-on-the-hoof zombies.)In contrast, this book is very well-written and science, pseudo-science, and the politics of academia are all skewered with great good humour and word play (look for JIM Beam technology).


For smart older teens (a hookah in the hands of a Dean is involved, but then a hookah appears in Alice in Wonderland as well) and especially fans of all ages pining for the sheer imagination of Harry Potter ...this book is for you. Adults who have not lost their sense of humour will be delighted as this book is often laugh-out-loud funny. The author knows her Greek philosophical sects and creates memorable characters, zinger dialogue and a brilliantly-paced plot. What a movie this would make as well! Dame Maggie Smith is a shoo-in for Octavia.


Highly recommended!


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Review of The Longer I'm Prime Minister: Stephen Harper and Canada, 2006---

The Longer I'm Prime Minister: Stephen Harper and Canada, 2006- by Paul Wells
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

First a reader alert: do not read this book, The Longer I'm Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Canada 2006 just before sleeping. I usually love reading myself to sleep with a good book but this one gave me nightmares. This may not apply to you if you tend to believe Daddy Knows Best and that someone with stony, empty eyes is a Strong Leader who should Take Charge while Canadian citizens pass out for three decades.

That said, Paul Wells is a terrific journalist and writer who has a great sense of humour (considering his beat for MacLean's magazine, federal politics, it's either that or leap off the Bell Tower) and the ability to synthesize a staggering amount of research while moving the narrative forward in a compulsively readable fashion. The reader isn't weighed down with every documented conversation or pelted with a dizzying array of names dropping from great heights.

It's best read in the clear light of day and will confirm what most political junkies already know, that the Prime Minister is overly-controlling about all aspects of governance and especially his contact with media, and that his aim is, above all, to hang on to majority government power (which he currently does with only 39% of the vote). This means curtailing the colourful outbursts of wing-nuts from the Reform Party in the merged ranks of Red Tories, fusty regular Tories and Reformers who line-danced their way into power by peddling right-wing umbrage on everything that was was immoral and/or involved paying too many taxes during the 20th century. I was counting on them reminding the four minute voters, the ones who managed to get to the polls with the latest political ad in their uncritical minds, that the quality of federal legislation was dependent on a lot of whack-job seat-warmers on the Conservative side of the house. But that's lazy, if hopeful, thinking on my part. What's even more sickening is the account of smear tactics used against NDP leader, Jack Layton, and the Robo-calling fiasco which directed dithering voters to the wrong polling station in hopes of nullifying their vote. There are an awful lot of unethical mean little trolls working for the Conservatives in this country at all levels. And that goes for the "Liberals" in British Columbia as well, an unholy assortment of opportunists from God-only knows what political beliefs spectrum.

The recent announcement of a bunch of gerrymandered ridings (at least, I assume they are ridings with much-studied borders and prior voting patterns with this micro-managing PM in charge)will undoubtedly bear even more Conservative fruit. The progressives on the left'ish side of the House seriously need to consider strategic voting or else we citizens will not recognize this country as our home within a decade or two. This PM and our country will continue to be international pariahs where once we were honorable world citizens and some us wish to be a great deal more honorable than we ever were before in the areas of aboriginal, environmental, chronic homelessness/poverty, immigration criteria, and women's issues in this country.

Now I'm going to read some murder mysteries just to recover from the trauma of reading this book...I comfort myself by knowing that when Stephen Harper dies, and he will someday, as we all will, there will never be a funeral for him like the one Jack Layton had. I'm sure the PM was taking notes while he attended, stoney-eyed as ever, but even the Master Micro-Manager will never be able to command an outpouring of genuine affection, admiration and love. Consider the way that he/his underlings botched the G-8 meeting in Toronto several years ago, the one with police brutality and a fake lighthouse and lake? The one where those of us watching television could not believe we were watching Canadians being corralled in our own civilized streets? There are certain issues of finesse far beyond the pedestrian power-hungry mind.

That he is highly disciplined, hard-working and true to his own beliefs is also undoubtedly true and this book is balanced in that the pros and cons of the PM's mind-set and approach are all handled in a transparently, even-handed way. I may not like what I read because I am a left-wing-leaning citizen but I feel I've read an entertaining, well-documented and honest appraisal.

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