Tag Archives: poetry

Pantoum in Eindhoven

Posted on by

While sorting some old files I came across a small pack of notes, stapled together.  They were clearly written in a bar (the beer glasses are a give away!), and the notes mention Eindhoven.

I then remembered.  On one of my visits to Eindhoven, either teaching USI students at TU/e, or for the Desire conference,  I was sitting with someone at a bar, I think waiting for others to join us and I was describing the pantoum, a Malayan poetry form I had originally read about in “The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Form“.  This is a lovely book I was given for birthday or Christmas some years ago, that describes many poetical forms, some common such as the sonnet, others, like the pantoum, that I had never heard of before.

In a pantoum the second and fourth lines of the first stanza become the first and third lines of the second stanza, and then so on for the rest of the poem, like voices calling from verse to verse.  My favourite example was “The Method” by J. D. McClatchy, which stretches the idea of the repeated lines, modifying them slightly to be almost the same, but not quite: perhaps modified, punctuated differently or simply sounding similar but completely different words. For example, the second line of the first stanza is “Seem to pee more often, eat“, which becomes “Sympathy, more often than not” as the first line of the second stanza.

By way of demonstration I tried to write a pantoum on the spot.  There were paper slips on the table, to allow you to write your order to take to the bar, and these became manuscript paper. The lines are very short, which is only fair as I was writing a five line poem on the fly, but I had also clearly forgotten the proper rules (I just rechecked now) as I have six-line stanzas, instead of four-line quatrains.  However, I did manage to get the last stanza to cycle round and use the unrepeated (1st, 3rd and 5th) lines of the first stanza, not bad for a two minute demo 🙂

The Pantoum of the Guinness in Eindhoven

in the bar
on the street
of old Eindhoven
we sat drinking
Guinness in glasses
dark and deep

on the street
on the pavement
we sat drinking
of the visions
dark and deep
all around us

on the pavement
they told us
of the visions
they saw here
all around us
hidden souls

they told us
as children
they saw here
lonely spirits
hidden souls
are drawn to

as children
in the bar
lonely spirits
of old Eindhoven
are drawn to
Guinness in glasses

nice quote: Auden on language

Posted on by

Was thumbing through Brain Cantwell Smith’s “On the Origin of Objects”1, and came across the following quote:

“One notices, if one will trust one’s eyes, the shadow cast by language upon truth.”
Auden, “Kairos & Logos“

This reminded me of my own ponderings as a school child (I can still hear the clank of china as I was washing cups in the church at the time!) as to whether I would be able to think more freely if I knew more languages and thus had more words and concepts, or whether, on the contrary, my mind would be most clear if I knew no language and was thus free of the conceptual straitjacket of English vocabulary. Of course all shades of Sapir-Whorf (although I didn’t know the term at the time), and now I hold a somewhere in-between view – language shapes thought but does not totally contain it2.  Is that the moderation of maturity, or compromise of age?

  1. Trying to decide whether to start it again, as Luke Church, who I met at the PPIG meeting in September, told me it was worthwhile persevering with even though somewhat oddly written![back]
  2. I discuss this a bit in my transarticulation essay and paths and patches book chapter.[back]

pantoum amongst the lost emails

Posted on by

About to go off to Edinburgh for 2 day meeting of the Branded Meeting Places project in

Doing quick check on my outbox for 1/2 written emails that I need to finish … and then found the following from July 2006

spring flowers in the meadow
gold sunshine glinting
the grass between lies
cool and smooth

gold sunshine glinting
across the rippling waters
cool and smooth
towards the lonely isle

across the rippling waters
birds fly gently
towards the lonely isle
majestic but desolate

birds fly gently
spring long past
majestic but desolate
the snow buried grass

The Making of a PoemI recall the context now. I has been reading “The Making of a Poem” a lovely book, that discusses different poetic forms both history and current use and with loads of examples of each, classic and modern. I was talking to Masitah about the pantoum, a Malay poetic form where the 2nd and 4th line of each verse become the 1st and 3rd line of the next verse. I constructed the above as an example as we chatted! I had typed it into an email to save it and there it has lain, forgotten, ever since.

I think traditional pantoums have a particular rhythm structure within each verse, so my attempt above has the right line structure structure, but not the right metre. However, I did like the way it created an apparent continuity, yet the meaning could shift underneath – in this case from spring to winter.

My favourite in the book was a modern pantoum by J. M. McClatchy. He repeats the sound of the lines … but not necessarily the words … so in the first verse, the second line is “Seem to pee more often, eat” and in the beginning of the second verse this becomes “Sympathy, more often than not“. Or in the middle “The hearth’s easy, embered expense” becomes “The heart’s lazy: remembrance spent“.

Now back to looking for those urgent mails before the train!