Seymour Mayne, 15 Word Sonnets

[EDITOR'S NOTE. My own concern with minimal forms of poetry & verbal composition goes back to the 1960s & discoveries I was making & creating in Techncians of the Sacred and Shaking the Pumpkin & connecting to experiments in our own time by poets like Ian Hamilton Finlay & others connected most specifically with what we were then speaking of as concrete poetry.  That there was a complexity of thought & act behind this was another point I had to make – both “there” & “here” – & still that point seemed obvious enough.  I called it, for Finlay & others, “a maximal poetry of minimal means,” & where I got into it myself, I found it helped to cool off, to set another temperature for what was otherwise my work.

               It’s with thoughts like this in mind that I approach Seymour Maynes’s long-running project of what he calls & practices as “word sonnets.”  In their one-word verticality I’ve found a strong resemblance too to the look & feel of Chinese poetry that led Ernest Fenellosa to see in the immediacy of the Chinese graphic/visual ideogram (set one per line) “a splendid flash of concrete poetry.”  The following, then, is from Maynes's recent gathering, Ricochet (University of Ottawa Press), composed over a short period of time & conceived by him as a single & unified series. 

Jerome   Rothenberg

PREFACE

The word sonnet is a relatively new variation of the traditional form.   In essence, it is a fourteen line poem, with one word set for each line.  Concise and usually visual in effect, this “miniature” version can contain one or more sentences, as the articulation requires.  

Each of the word sonnets in the following sequence attempts to be a pithy and suggestive poem in its own right.  Many draw on the seasons and also aim for a compact resonance that may attract the reader to return to them again and again.

JANUARY

After

the

third

fall

even

the

traffic

trails

away

in

the

thick

sinking

snow.

VESSELS

I.

In

celebration

of

God's

domestic

air,

this

show

of

confetti

stills

the

festive

tongue.

II.

Flailing

foolscap

shreds

sheet

after

sheet,

each

torn

flake

flying

then

embedding

like

seed.

III.

Today's

snow

recycles

into

yesterday's

swollen

solar

pumpkin

and

next

season's

crowded

blueberry

bush.

LIGHT

Who

believes

in

light

everlasting,

enlightening

silence,

darkness

and

the

first

and

final

word?

EQUINOX

If 

early

light

returns,

is

there

renewed

hope

for

ailing

tongues

rising

in

darkness?

HAIL

Hail

peppered

the

air

like

seed

as

you

were

lowered

below

the

frost

line.

STONE

You

have

come

and

gone

and

none

know

your

voice

or

name

but

stone.

CROWS

The

crows

of

Sandy

Hill

are

much

too

big,

sleek

with

wide

bristling

wings.

WIND                                                            

From

behind

the

maple

the

sun

flaps

its

blinding

plumage

without

a

waking

cry!

DUST

The

dust

of

afternoon

fragrance

settles

on

your

skin

and

limbs

grainy

with

touch.

PRACTICE RUN

What

is

this

sleep?

Practice?

I

put

up

my

feet

to

float

into

reverie.

SEPTEMBER RAIN

If

the

maple

trees

could,

they

would

dream

of

the

healing

entrance

of

May.

FROST

Cold

morning,

winter’s

reconnaissance

scouts

out

the

terrain

for

a

sortie

of

sudden

snow.

DECEMBER FLIGHT

These

starlings

swerve

in

flocks,

turning

their

frantic

wings

towards

the

sun’s

slanting

light.

Nota de  Lisarda-Wiki
Seymour Mayne (born 18 May 1944 in Montreal, Quebec) is a Canadian poet and literary translator. He has published over 50 works of poetry and literary criticism, and has edited several anthologies of Canadian and Jewish literature.

He also published a critical analysis of poet Irving Layton's work in 1978.

Mayne currently teaches Canadian literatur at the University of Ottaw

Libros:

• That Monocycle the Moon (1964)
• Tiptoeing on the Mount (1965)
• From the Portals of Mouseholes (1966)
• Ticklish Ticlorice (1969)
• Anewd (1969)
• Mutetations (1969)
• manimals (1969)
• The gigole teaspoon (1969)
• Mouth (1970)
• For Stems of Light (1971)
• Face (1971)
• Cutting the Keys (1974)
• Name (1975)
• Begging (1977)
• Diasporas (1977)
• Irving Layton: The Poet and His Critics (1978)
• Racoon (sic) (1979)
• The Impossible Promised Land: Poems New and Selected (1981)
• Essential Words: An Anthology of Jewish Canadian Poetry (1985)
• Children of Abel (1986)
• Killing Time (1992)
• The Song of Moses (1995)
• Jerusalem: An Anthology of Jewish Canadian Poetry, ed. with B. Glen Rotchin (1996)
• Carbon Filter: Poems in Dedication (1999)
• A Rich Garland: Poems for A. M. Klein, ed. with B. Glen Rotchin (1999)
• Light Industry (2000)
• Hail (2002)
• Ricochet (2004)
• September Rain (2005)
• I Am Still the Boy
• A Dream of Birds, written with B. Glen Rotchin (2007)
• Ricochet, bilingual English-French collection of word sonnets, translated by Sabine Huynh (2011)
• The Old Blue Couch & Other Stories (2012)

María Laura Spoturno, investigadora del CONICET en el Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales (IdIHCS, CONICET – UNLP), en colaboración con estudiantes de la cátedra de Traducción Literaria I de la Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP).ha publicado en 2013  traducciones al español de la obra de Seymour Mayne 

Seymour Maine y Leonard  Cohen

Fuente: https://jacket2.org/commentary/seymour-mayne