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Publishing is the Auctioning of the Mind, Says Emily Dickinson

A Sestina

by Darcy Pattison
(c. 2011. Please do not reprint without permission.)

A woman sits before a computer.
Her writing time drags by. Idle stories
clog the screen with black and white squiggles.
The woman’s mind is bare.  She’s kept nothing
back.
	The auctioneer’s voice stirs the woman:
         “Here’s a mind for sale.  Who will start the bidding?”

Rebel words refuse to do her bidding,
so, she sits and composes computer
gibberish.
		The voice rouses the woman,
crying, “It’s time to bid.  Stories!  Stories
for sale.”
		She looks up. Her mind holds nothing,
but fear.  Today, they auction her squiggles.

Black gibberish scrolls down in strange squiggles.
She tap, tap, taps.  The task is forbidding.
Buyers want stories; instead there’s nothing
but a blank mind facing a computer,
spewing words that fail to become stories.
Before the screen, sits an broken woman.

She’s a good writer, this empty woman.
On other days, she wrote cursive squiggles
in blank notebooks.  The surprise was stories
that left her laughing or crying, bidding
her to share them.  She bought a computer.
Tap, tap, tapping.  Words were a joy; nothing

could stop her, decorum be damned, nothing
stopped the words coursing through the young woman;
power and beauty filled the computer
till compromise. Then all was dim squiggles.
	The auctioneer thought to start the bidding:
	“Where’ve you put your words?  They want your stories?”

“I assure you, the woman writes stories
that will keep you awake. You’ll do nothing
else until you finish reading.”
					       Bidding,
the auction of her mind, leaves the woman
in tears.  Stubborn, she stands.  She prints squiggles
stored for such a day on a computer.

“Ready?”
		The woman flings precious squiggles,
gleaned from computer files.
				          “Stories!  Stories!”
And nothing stems the frenzy of bidding.

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I went to the MoMA and…”saw a coat closet trash and two water fouintains I’m very disapointed I did not see  a dinosaur you call your self a museum!” [MoMA]

Cute alert: Goose looks after blind dog [Metro]

Apparently, James Frey will be a guest on the final Oprah [NYPost]

Most Americans can’t name a GOP presidential candidate [CBS]

Notes from Chris

CHART: Gay marriage opponents now in minority [FiveThirtyEight]

Curious what $110 of Lucky Charms marshmallows looks like? [Reddit]

Some fascinating facts about Mr. Rogers [Tumblr]

This is a video of little boys with incredible dance skills [YouTube]

Last Friday, I challenged all of our readers to write a sestina. I expect many of you discovered just how difficult this form can be. I’d like to highlight the poem I received from Paul Gallear of Wolverhampton, UK. Paul is one of the voices behind the Artsy Does It blog and you can follow him @paulgallear.

I’m a dirty-shirted mess.
My eyes are heavy and thick
With fatigue; I’ve not slept for days
And I’ve never been so tired.
All I need to do is sleep,
Long and deep and numb.

My thoughts are thoughtless, numb;
My skin, greasy; my hair, a mess.
Things change without sleep:
I’ve become listless, thick
And stupid – I’m idiot tired,
Living in a stunned daze.

Time moves from hours to days
And perspective becomes numb.
Beyond tired.
My mind begins to mess
Around. There’s a kind of thick
Which only comes from lack of sleep.

I daydream of sleep.
Waiting – the hours the days
Crawl as though caught in thick
Honey, drowsy, lethargic and numb.
While they are mired in that mess,
I grow more weary, more tired.

One day, I won’t be tired.
The time will come for sleep.
When I am enough of a mess,
And my dignity went days
Ago, I won’t care. I’ll be numb
And sleep will be long and thick.

I hope the night is black and thick
And that even the moon and the stars are tired.
They can make their lights numb
And pale to help me sleep.
The sun will shorten the days
To help me out of this mess

If the night is thick, I’ll sleep.
I’m so tired, it’ll be for days.
Until then, I’m one numb mess.

0 Comments on Linked Up: MoMA, Oprah, marshmallows as of 1/1/1900

Just when you thought it safe to dip your toes into the poetic pool, along comes the sestina. For those up to the challenge, the 39-line sestina is one of the most interesting forms in a mind tickling way.

As it turns out the structure of a sestina is almost as difficult to explain in words as to write. That is, the easiest way to understand it is to write one. Using the line by line break down below, the letters indicate the word at the end of each line in the six stanzas, each of which has six lines; plus a three-line kicker at the end. So, for example, the last word in the last line of the first stanza must be the first word in the first line of the second stanza.

To top it off, the ending three-line stanza (tercet), uses the six line endings from the first stanza in the sequence noted below. Often the endings of the three lines in the tercet are the same as the endings for lines two, four and six in the first stanza. The object is to write the sestina so its rigid structure doesn't appear evident. My attempt is not an eloquent example of a sestina and, in fact, becomes more twisted with each succeeding verse. But it may give you something to go on.

Give it a try and you'll soon be writing sestinas with the best of them. Here's to getting all your line endings to end up where they must.

Enjoy.

Sestina line-ending sequences:

Stanza 1: A, B, C, D, E, F
Stanza 2: F, A, E, B, D, C
Stanza 3: C, F, D, A, B, E
Stanza 4: E, C, B, F, A, D
Stanza 5: D, E, A, C, F, B
Stanza 6: B, D, F, E, C, A
Tercet: AB CD EF

Twisted Tales Of An Ancient Warrior
By Bill Kirk

“I came.
I saw.
I conquered.”
That’s what
The warrior
Said.

And since the day he said
He came,
Each warrior
Who has come after the one who said he saw,
May think he knows just what
That warrior supposedly conquered.

But could he have conquered
All that he said?
And is all of what
He came
To tell us he saw,
The true tale of a warrior?

For which warrior
Has ever conquered
All he said he saw
At precisely the time he said
He came?
Can we be sure of whom or even what?

Alas. The truth of neither whom nor what
Can be verified because the warrior
Who so long ago came
To tell us he had conquered,
Simply said
Only that he conquered what he saw.

Might his tale be just another old saw—
The stretched and embellished bits and pieces of what
Has for centuries been said and re-said
About the deed this fabled warrior
Might have done, were he to have conquered
All that he said he did when he came?

Nay. As all warriors then and since, when the ancient warrior came and saw,
He could only have conquered or been conquered; so what
More could be asked of any warrior? And what better could be said?