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larryhammerA Fit of Something Against Something
by Alan Ansen
In the burgeoning age of Arnaut when for God and man to be
Shone a glory not a symptom, poetry was not austere.
Complicated laws it followed, generosity through order,
Dowered acrobats with hoops trapezing laurels undergone.
Fountainlike gyrations earned the free trouvère the name of master,
And the climax of his daring was the dazzling sestina.
When love the subject-object of Romance sestina
Left gay Provence for learned Italy to be
The guide and guard and graveyard of a supreme master,
The plaything followed, intricate turned more austere,
And doubled in and on its tracks, now woebegone
Began to learn its place and kiss the rod of order.
Petrarch and Sidney, time’s woodsmen, reorder
To pastoral the still pregnant sestina
With history and logic come to be
The inspissations of its present master
Landscapes that turn upon themselves have gone
To shape a shining surface to austere.
The pious young would be austere;
They pant and puff pursuing order
(Within a shorter-breathed sestina
The fewer true). Those that have gone
The masturbatory course must be
In doubt if they or it is master.
New rebels will not master
Forms pointlessly austere.
They feel that they will be
Screwed by that alien order,
That Gestapo sestina,
Cats, it’s the most ungone.
Its zing’s all gone,
It’s no master.
Get lost, sestina,
Go way, austere.
You’ll always be
Out of order.
Sestina order,
Austere master,
BE GONE!!!
---L.
by Alan Ansen
for John Ashbery
In the burgeoning age of Arnaut when for God and man to be
Shone a glory not a symptom, poetry was not austere.
Complicated laws it followed, generosity through order,
Dowered acrobats with hoops trapezing laurels undergone.
Fountainlike gyrations earned the free trouvère the name of master,
And the climax of his daring was the dazzling sestina.
When love the subject-object of Romance sestina
Left gay Provence for learned Italy to be
The guide and guard and graveyard of a supreme master,
The plaything followed, intricate turned more austere,
And doubled in and on its tracks, now woebegone
Began to learn its place and kiss the rod of order.
Petrarch and Sidney, time’s woodsmen, reorder
To pastoral the still pregnant sestina
With history and logic come to be
The inspissations of its present master
Landscapes that turn upon themselves have gone
To shape a shining surface to austere.
The pious young would be austere;
They pant and puff pursuing order
(Within a shorter-breathed sestina
The fewer true). Those that have gone
The masturbatory course must be
In doubt if they or it is master.
New rebels will not master
Forms pointlessly austere.
They feel that they will be
Screwed by that alien order,
That Gestapo sestina,
Cats, it’s the most ungone.
Its zing’s all gone,
It’s no master.
Get lost, sestina,
Go way, austere.
You’ll always be
Out of order.
Sestina order,
Austere master,
BE GONE!!!
---L.