November Poems. A curse, a praise song, harmony, belief, time's slow investments, and some happy-sad payoffs fall like autumn leaves at the turn of the year

          

November's Verse-Virtual, the online poetry journal, includes some very good poems on very tough subjects. 

           A stupendous poem by Dick Allen on a subject that continues to haunt American life in these politically disordered times, "A Curse" seeks to blast the names of our country's homegrown mass murderers into negative space. The message rips me open, but I love the word music in this poem's construction.  For instance, all those 'r' sounds, grr-grring, in the final stanza:

"For they are dung and spit and gelatin and scar,
The dribble soaked into a chewed cigar,
Old knots in dirty hair, crepuscular.
We want to hear their names no more."

            Joan Colby must truly know the ins and outs of every useful occupation employed to keep our everyday world running. It's enough to make the rest of us feel thoughtless and incurious. Her "Saint Roofer" pounds nails "to secure our lives."

"As the hailstones beat
A severe harmony retelling
All that we have missed."

I'm convinced. Thanks heaven for roofs that keep the winter out of our indoor lives and the people who keep them tight.

We hear the music of the city in "Saint Busker":

"Sad operetta of the unemployed
Strumming an old song for coins
Thrown carelessly in a bucket."

Anyone who's ever waited in a subway station appreciates the apt phrase "sad operetta."

Of the "Saint Roadbuilder," whose place of employment I pass with never a grateful thought for the blessing of passable roads, here is the poet's depiction: 

"Aloof in the cage working the levers
Of a juggernaut as we pray
For safe passage."

Amen.

            Donna Hilbert's "What to Believe" melds Sunday, church, family, pop culture, childhood nostalgia, and darker moments into a kind of prayer, elegy and statement of self-assertion, part affirmation and part accusation.

"I did love Sunday mornings, but needed more than love.
I lacked the knack for easy pleasure," the poem confides. 
Be sure to read the rest.

          Tricia Knoll's poem teaches me a new word, "Rhytides" :

"My script is rhytides, wrinkles
that accrue with interest after slow investments."

It's the measurement of time in our skin. The indexing. Many of us will identify with the spirit of this poem.

           The sad, lovely music of Kate Sontag's "Black Knot Blues," a poem about the transformation of a tree into a walking stick is both poignant and entrancing:

"we croon, prune, spray in repetitions thick

as jam. But galled limbs, trunk split then sold,
our plum tree becomes a walking stick,"

It took me a while to recall that the term for a poem built of stanzas like these, with repeating third-line refrains, is villanelle -- even though Verse-Virtual made it a theme a while back. Whatever we call it, this is one of those true poems about time that poets have to keep writing because we can't wish it way it way, forget it, or do anything about it except to make something artful. Like a poem. This one is a beautiful lament for time's victim; but also a 'stick' that will help keep us on our feet.

See the rest of these poems, and more, in http://www.verse-virtual.com/poems-and-articles.html
I continue to be happily amazed at how many marvelous poems Firestone and Verse-Virtual's contributors wrap up in a lovely package each month.