Hollywood Sonnet

I've been privileged to be part of the poetry workshop class at Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, Greece, courtesy of Skype and Facebook.  I taught one session of Professor Katerina Kitsi's class and have also been trying their poetry assignments.  One of their latest was to transpose Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 into a different dialect or frame of reference.  I'll give you Shakespeare's first and then the version I read via Skype at the class's final Poetry Night.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

      Hollywood Sonnet

My love’s eyes shine less than Liz Taylor’s did;
Her lips pale next to Angelina Jolie’s.
If breasts were bets, Marilyn’s would hers outbid.
Her hair’s less lush than Vivien Leigh’s.
I have seen Shirley Temple’s cheeks glow bright;
Hers look like Morticia’s by compare.
Starlets sell perfume filled with more delight
Than found in my mistress’s onion air.
I love to hear her sing, but well I know
Adele or Garland hit more pleasing note.
I never saw her in a Mercedes go;
Her Ford Focus bounces instead of floats.
    Yet I’d rather sit here, her hand in mine
    Than act in films with flawless stars divine.

Waltz of Love

Heard Amy Beach's "Waltz of Love" on the radio as I was going to work last week and was struck by how unpredictable it was, at least to a layman's ear.  No steady Straussian 1-2-3, 1-2-3 here. And then I began to think how all those variations  - accelerations, heistations, alternations, etc.- are more like love, more like the human heart, which is less mechanical and more responsive than a metronome.

                  “Waltz of Love”
                                    on hearing the piece by Amy Beach
           Lovely for listening
                   but difficult to dance
                             to any
                            conventional count –
                                                the rhythm
                                                  more expressive than
                                                                  regular, requiring
                                                                         the couple to intuit, antici-
                                                                                                        pate, alter
                                                                                                                       nate
                                                                                                          sep a rate
                                                                                          andrecombine.
                                                                                    Hesitate
                                                                          syncopate
                                                                      solo
                                                                   spin
                                               then intertwine.
                                such ebb and flow
                                       lovers know
                                            blurs the line
                                                    between
                                                          yoursandmine
                                                                 and makes the dancers
                                                                                         and the dance
                                                                                                 more human
                                                                                                              and divine.

Circe

Another mythology poem. I wrote it a while ago, but it seems I never posted it.

               Circe

Can I help it if men are pigs?
They blame it on my wand, my wiles,
my wantonness, but I merely
show them the way they were
already headed; I simply herd the swine
and tame the wild stallions before
they meet a fitting fate – all but
Odysseus, whose resistance
proved irresistible, who loved
me and left me here, big-bellied
and broken-hearted, wondering
if there truly are other fish in the sea.

Hippomenes

This one's about Hippomenes, a young man who run a race with Atalanta by tossing three golden apples from Aphrodite in her path.  As the winner, he won the right to marry her; the losers were beheaded.

           Hippomenes

O Aphrodite, you call yourself
Love’s goddess, but you gave me
Nothing but a forced affection.
Atalanta stopped in her course
For your golden apples, rich
And glittering, and not for me.
And on our wedding night,
She gave herself to her agreement
And not to a beloved husband
So I never got to know the soul
Behind the painted smile
Or the pulse behind
The perfect breast.

I know I am partially to blame,
Praying to you as if she were
A prize to win rather than
A person to be prized.
But you, a goddess,
Should have known better.
That’s why I never gave you
My promised thanks.

So now you punish me
For ingratitude and turn me
Into a lonely lion who,
The old wives say,
Can roar and rule, but
Can never truly mate.
And I ask you –
What difference
will it make?

Galatea

Another mythological poem.  The sculptor Pygmalion fell in love with his own statue, Galatea.  She was modeled after Aphrodite, and that goddess brought her to life for him.

     Galatea

It’s not easy being Aphrodite
made marble and put on a pedestal
to be shaped by one man’s desires.

It’s even harder to be made flesh
and step down into his world without
disappointing him, so I first turned part

of him to stone, hoping he would love his
own lust, even if he did not love me,
and would not notice my imperfections.

But then the real miracle occurred:
as we aged together, he saw my flaws-
my wrinkles, my worries, my silly fears-
and did not look away.

In this way we found something stronger than stone,
human love Aphrodite has never known.