Poem: Airborne Musings

Another poem on the way to Quito:

Away to the east lies Colombia,
Land of the FARC and Medellín cartels
and away to the west lies Panama,
where lies the best of Earth’s great canals,
lying north-south to join east and west.
Yet clouds obscure the ground: I will not see
that world wonder on this journey of rest—
and is it fit subject for poetry,
if I but view it from narrowed window
in the skin of an aluminum goose?
Ocean ships look like ants in a meadow
from this height, but that simile’s too loose.
Now into a strange wall of cloud we go;
it must be South America below.

How to Teach Writing Sonnets

Today was Shakespeare’s Birthday. It’s possible that you did something fun with your classes to celebrate. I taught mine to write sonnets. Everyone is under the impression that sonnets are hard. But if they’re so hard, then why was everyone in Elizabethan England absolutely mad for writing them? The trick is to learn the form first. Accordingly, go get a sheet of paper and a pen. Write sonnets in pen. Be ambitious! Along the right side of the page, write this on successive lines: A B A B C D C D E F E F G G Ok. Now go back through the list, and choose rhyming words. Lines with an A on them, rhyme with each other, lines with B on them rhyme with each other, and so on. But D lines only rhyme with D, not with E or F.

Keep your rhyming words simple. Don’t get fancy. One kid suggested ”mahagony” for a D-rhyme, and what rhymes with that?? Now… Count syllables.

Sonnets basically follow three rules:

1. each Shakespearean sonnet has 14 lines;
2. they rhyme according to the scheme shown above;
3. each line has ten syllables in it;
4. each line follows this complex “iambic pentamer” rule.

I’ve been doing this a long time. Rule 4 does not come instantly, but it does  come with practice. And kids will learn to HEAR it on their own,
but first they need to learn the three core rules, i.e., 14 lines, weird rhyming pattern, ten syllables in a line. So count syllables, like Shakespeare. You have ten fingertips. Your rhyme word is probably one syllable, so… find the nine syllables at lead up to that word. Is it a two-syllable word like “pencil”?So, then find the eight syllables leading up to it. Don’t change the words that you chose for your rhyme pattern. You’re not trying to write a perfect sonnet on the first go-round — you’re teaching your mind to learn a formal poetic style. And you won’t do that if you concentrate on content, that
is, the poem’s meaning. Insist that your brain conform to the form alone.

I’ve seen kids write (terrible) sonnets in twelve minutes using this method. You have to convince them that the quality of the poem doesn’t matter. (and it must NOT matter.. Extra super bonus points for really crappy sonnets that follow the form exactly, but get really weird around line 5 because the rhymes are odd. [save the meaningful poetry for the ninth or tenth run-through of the sonnet form].

The next five or six sonnets you write, choose the rhyme scheme first, then fill the fourteen lines with the correct number of syllables to match. In other words, build the poem in reverse — choose the ending words of the lines first, and then write the stanzas to obey the rhyme scheme. Around Sonnet 8 or 9, the process will reverse — your brain will find the line first, and then begin constructing the rhyme scheme. Around Sonnet 15 or 25, your brain and ear will start rejecting lines that aren’t iambic pentameter, or at least rejecting the ones which are obviously NOT iambic or pentameter.

And around the time that you write your fiftieth sonnet, some of them will be good enough to memorize. And you will no longer be the sort of person who can say, “oh, I could never write a sonnet.” And neither will your students.

But from a time management perspective, let’s break that down just a bit more. I’m guessing that it takes the time needed to write 50 sonnets for the form to become truly ingrained as a recognizable brain pattern. But let’s say you’re from Lake Woebegone, and you’re a bit above average (I assume all my blog readers are). In that case, you only need to write thirty sonnets. One a day for the next month. At fifteen minutes a pop, you’re talking seven and a half hours of writing effort to learn the base writing style of William Shakespeare.

The Bard of Avon. Happy Birthday, Billy.

Poem: for the Pleiades

Yesterday there was a window in traditional astrology for working with the Pleiades, a group of fixed stars on the back of Taurus the bull. I wrote a poem for the occasion, but due to the technical challenges of posting from Quito, I think it got lost in interneticization. Here it is again:

Hail to you, Alcyone and Pleiades,
Gatherers of spirits, keepers of gales,
Who know and reveal secret vanities,
Who awaken the eyes, and drive out their ills:
You ride on the back of heaven’s great bull!
You help us to know of all hidden thought;
You open to light and drive out the dull
And by your actions are connections wrought
Between living realms and all the dead.
Lighten my work, mighty, knowing maidens
Open up my eyes and open up my head,
That I may relieve any old burdens,
And more — come to know the music of spheres,
Which lightens the heart of any that hears.

Poem: for greenleaf

This is 6/30 even though its the 10th of April. Got to catch up!

For some years now, around this part of spring,
I wake in terror: this year may be first
that oaks fail to leaf. It’s only my thing —
This continuing terror that the worst
will happen, that we’ll drown in our black breath
while the fungi and insects eat the trees.
It’s a nameable dread of a choking death:
an end to the squirrels, the wrens and bees.
That’s what is meant by Ragnarok, I think:
The doom of Yggsadrill and rooted lands…
For a leaf is only one sacred link
In chains forged of wings, paws, seeds, spores, and hands.
Not this year, Fenris: let the apple bloom,
Else let me die before sweet maples’ doom.

Poem 3/30: Inviting A Muse

I sat in the Design Lab with a colleague today to write today’s poem.  She produced an incredible poem — all about money, and counting, and busyness at school… and it ended with an absolutely incredible triple of lines about the magnificence of spring, just outside the drawn window blinds.  Amazing.

Here’s my entry for the day:

No matter how this month turns out for verse,
whether I write immortal lines or trash,
at least I will have gone from none to worse,
and shifted my heart from frightened to brash.
Critics may deride me with all their darts;
friends may cry, “a poet?!?” and turn away
from my rough lines, these fragmentary starts —
for moonlit praise turns ash by break of day.
Yet some muse may waken to siren song,
and turn golden ear for these words of tin.
Though silent at first, her edits, ere long
she’ll speak back to me.  My task, then, through din
of weary chores that grind me day to night,
is to heed her call.  And until then — write.

There’s a TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert that I quite admire (although I know there’s some controversy regarding TED these days [thanks, Gordon]), in which she says that imagining a muse outside of herself gave her courage to write… and then she cites classical and Renaissance ideals of having a genius or guardian spirit rather than being a genius.  It’s a useful distinction, I find… but as I indicate in the last few lines, it’s still important to do the work.  The muse doesn’t show up casually if you’re not prepared to do the work.  It’s Maker Time vs. Management Time, again.  We have to give the muse — whichever muse we work with — at least some Maker Time to be successful; it can’t be all Manager time, because that’s not how muses work.

3/30

Growing in Power and Strength

11th Mansion of the Moon
Originally uploaded by anselm23

Rufus Opus has a post today about how to become a living god. (There’s also a pretty good one about how … ahem… stuff usually works out.).

I don’t know about the living god stuff, but I do know how to grow in power and strength. It’s one of those incredible, powerful secrets that Benjamin Franklin and George Washington and a bunch of other great leaders have known over the years, and used to great advantage. It’s also one of those things that you can shout from the rooftops, even though it’s a secret, and no one at all will stop what they’re doing because it’s so fundamentally obvious:

To grow in power and strength, stop doing the things that don’t work, and keep doing the things that do work.

See how easy it is? See how amazing one of the great secrets of the universe is? And I’ve just revealed it to you, for free.

Big deal, I hear you muttering. As a student of mine says, “That’s so obvi, it’s hardly worth saying.”

But it is. It needs to be said over and over and over. It needs to be shouted from the rooftops. It needs to be turned into an Internet meme with cats. It needs to be a song by Bryan Jackson and Julie Beman played on the Six Nations Voyageur and featured on NPR and Fox News.

Consider that last month, when I drew this image of the 11th Mansion of the Moon last, it looked like this:

Whiteboard Mansion 11

Craptastic, right? I mean, whiteboard marker in six minutes in front of a dozen sixth graders is likely to be bad. Whatevs, as the kids would say. But when they see this, they’ll be like, “Wow, that’s totally cray-cray (crazy-crazy).”

But the secret is to find what works, and keep doing that. In this case, what works is doing pencil sketches and combining tutorials from dragoart.com — one on drawing lions, and one on drawing knights on horseback. Is it perfect? No. Is it a lot better than the first bit of half-assery I did? Yes.

And further on in the article, here’s the time before that, using the iPad app Paper by Fifty-three.

Look, nobody gets awesome at anything the first time out. Write a sonnet. Right now. I’ll wait. In case you’ve forgotten, it’s a rhyming poem of fourteen lines, with ten syllables in a line and a rhyming pattern in the last syllables of ABABCDCDEFEFGG. Write one now, go ahead. I’ll be here when you’re done.

Done? No? Keep writing.

Done now? Ok, your sonnet. It’s terrible, unless you’re already an awesome poet. But it’s a sonnet, and that makes you stronger and more powerful than anyone who hasn’t written a sonnet, or drawn a Mansion of the Moon, or learned the names of six constellations.

Write another sonnet. I’ll wait.  In fact, I’ll write one while you write one, in honor of Neciel:

Digital Mansion 11

Greetings, Neciel, al-Zubrah’s angel,
prince of mastery, charisma and awe:
help us to grow strong in learning’s tangle,
acquiring power through Nature’s law —
Keep doing what works, avoid what doesn’t,
work through apprenticeship to mastery.
No skillfulness appears without comment,
adept-ship comes not by half-assery.
Help us ride the lion of our passions,
to steer it by the ear and seek the ring.
Help our creations guide future fashions,
help our work become the next big thing.
For in these lines of praise declared to you,
may my works become empowered and new.

Done with your sonnet? Not as bad as the first one, was it? You’re already discovering that you know the secret, intimately, already — Stop doing the things that don’t work, and keep doing the things that do.

Learning to do these things will earn you admiration from women and men, boys and girls. It will raise you in the eyes of your subordinates and in the estimation of your overseers. It will lend you grace and power. It will grow your power as a wizard and a teacher, and it will prove to you — over and over and over again — the value of this secret, which is more reliable than the Law of Attraction, or the Core Common Standards, or the Four Agreements, or all the re-readings of the occult Philosophies of Picatrix and John Dewey combined which you may choose to subject yourself to.

It is the Golden Chain of Homer, and the Dry Work of Alchemy, and the Hero’s Quest. Make it your New Year’s Resolution:

Stop doing the things that don’t work, and keep doing the things that do work.

Happy New Year.

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Via Flickr:
The eleventh mansion is complicated. Sometimes I show the lion from the side. This time, it’s sort of a 3/4 view. Doesn’t matter — I usually get the proportions wrong between the human and animal bodies. And the human here looks more like a Playmobil figure than a true warrior. The forest background is complicated, too.

On the other hand, even with these challenges I think the drawing shows promise.

From a magical perspective, of course, each time I draw this picture or a version of this picture, the power inherent in the image will grow; from an artistic perspective, the quality of my efforts will get better, and the quality of the drawing’s proportions and imagery will improve the more times I try to draw it. In both cases, frequent repetition will empower me in ways that are difficult to explain — but just as drawing is thinking, ritualizing is thinking. There’s a creative confidence that comes from frequent application of the energies of each image — and from that energy and confident application of skill comes greater power. So does the work improve and grow.

Poem: Star Election of Cetus

I’m not a student of Christopher Warnock’s astrological magic course, but I am on his mailing list, and I do like the act of creating poetry and hymns around the astrological windows he and his students find.

Today there is such an opening for Menkar, the alpha star in the constellation of Cetus, associated with finding lost things, good luck, and happiness.

Menkar, bright star of heaven’s graceful whale,
adorning Cetus with fluorescent jaw!
Send out your fortunate rays without fail,
To bring joyous days under heaven’s law!
Deep Ocean knows the crested serpent’s route,
Mimicking heaven’s own dutiful stars;
Now in your breaching, send the lucky spout
Raining down on us to drive away cares!
Give us fresh eyes to find that which was lost,
Tumble knuckle bones to favor our deeds;
Steady our keel though we be tempest-tossed!
Opportune times come to him the whale leads:
Cetus and Menkar enliven my art;
Prosper this work with good luck from the start!

Sonnet: Paul Aurelian (March 12)

What does one write about a Welsh monk who decided to become a hermit at 16, and then lived to be 104? It sounds very much like those Tibetan monks who go into seclusion and live their entire lives in tiny caves, meditating.  Breathing.  Were the Celtic Culdees on their tiny island fastnesses at all like the Tibetan lamas on their mountain heights?

Paul Aurelian, great pilgrim for Christ,
you left home to wander at tender age;
among hermits you were reckoned the least
until holy Illtyd, that kindly sage,
nurtured you ’til your bloom bore proper fruit.
Thus mentor led student in ancient dance,
elder guiding younger ’til work takes root,
and miracles rose from prayer and trance.
Paul, remind us not to love the flower
alone, which at first is fair to perceive,
but pales beside maturity’s power,
which faithfully tests what it must believe;
Paul Aurelian, guide us with each breath
into God’s love, stronger than life or death.

Sonnet for St Constantine (March 9)

Constantine was a Cornish king with a Roman name. Retiring from kingship at the death of his wife, he became a monk and tended the monastery grist mill until his identity was revealed and he was forced to take a “more suitable job”. This didn’t suit him, so he moved to Iona and then undertook missionary journeys; one one such trip he was martyred.

I take from his story a reminder that a good life is made of many chapters and episodes – some of leadership, some of followership, some of service and some of witness. We can be decision-makers, problem-solvers, menial task-doers, spouses and servants of God all in the same life.

Constantine, king of a forgotten land,
Monkish millwright dragged from loving labor,
To many sorts of lives you put your hand:
Warlord, and judge, and husband and father.
When widowed you abandoned worldly cares
For life by mill-stream, and rumbling stones.
Not knowing your fame, all watched unawares,
Until recognition brought abbots’ thrones.
What is the crook to one who wore the crown?
Iona took you in, then sent you out,
And you died at peace on some adventure
Doing the Lord’s work: make my life so broad,
that I go to my death praising my God.

Sonnet: Saint Senan (March 8)

Senan, possibly also Saint Sennan, was the founder of monastic communities in Ireland and Cornwall, including a monastery school at Land’s End in Cornwall. Why one would found a school at the edge of the earth is hard to guess at, but — from a druid’s perspective, and perhaps a teaching one as well — it’s a great place to observe the changes in the land and the world, and to get close to nature.  He lived about 544, which puts him at the time when the Irish were busy trying to save civilization — recording all the classical learning they could find while the old Roman empire unstitched itself into a great barbarian mess.  That makes his monasteries and his schools a kind of bulwark in difficult times, and a reminder that it is better to light many lamps rather than just one, if things seem to be getting bad:

Saint Senan, wandering with book and bell,
you lit candles in a darkening time,
not for exorcising demons to Hell,
but for ensuring survival of rhyme
and sweet reason into the coming age.
Few could predict how the years would play out —
first clannish troubles, then the Saxon rage,
then Viking invasion, and English clout.
No matter: your heart lay in founding schools,
and spreading education far and wide.
Lords ignored you, for a king’s ardor cools
when he sees no wealth. Yet you were a guide
for saving what could be saved of the old,
and lighting the lamps in the dark and cold.