Very cool.
Saturday Caturday
Radar’s new favorite place to hang out is right behind my laptop on my desk. I think it’s because the heat rises up from the heat vent on the floor under my desk.
He’s so adorably cute. Even as he’s almost knocking my cup of tea off my desk & pushing my laptop around.
photograph © polly macdavid
Kyrielle Notes
Dating from the Middle Ages the Kyrielle was once a very popular French form. Written in quatrains with the last line of each quatrains as a refrain. Each line consists of eight syllables. The rhyme scheme is
aabB ccbB ddbB and so on
Example
Jamie’s Song by Jez Farmer
We walked through the gilded gateway
Towards the moonlit castle keep
Without a word, nothing to say
Here where the black-winged dragons sleep
As silent as Death's last whisper
We slowly move in the night creep
The night singed, her breath crisper
Here where the black-winged dragons sleep
And we fall to our knees inside
The door before her eyes can weep
In silver light no place to hide
Here where the black-winged dragons sleep
The moon sparkles upon her wings
The power of flight within their sweep
And we tremble over these things
Here where the black-winged dragons sleep
The…
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Thursday Art
Russian art. From the Poet Cafe, a poetry & art blog maintained by Alex Markovich.
link here ~~~~~> https://poet.cafe/category/online-exhibitions/
40 Years Ago Today…
I remember it well.
Some remember what they were doing when JFK was shot, some where they were when Jim Morrison’s mojo stopped rising, me I know exactly what I was doing when I heard John Lennon had been murdered. Enough said, I will leave the rest to Lennon and his music…
Sunday Sonnet … on Monday
Yesterday was another day when things just got away from me! So Sunday Sonnet is a day late.
I picked out this poem yesterday. Anne Locke wrote a sonnet sequence using the Psalms as her theme; this one is based on Psalm 51. As you can see, it’s actually two sonnets comprising one whole poem.
References
Locke, Anne. “from A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner: Written in manner of a Paraphrase upon the 51 Psalme of David”. The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 200 Years of a Classic Tradition in English, edited by Phillis Levin. Penguin, 2001. page 8.
Vintage Springmaid Textiles Ads – A Real Eyeful
I’ve been streaming “Mad Men” for days now (don’t ask) & this great blog post from Sally Delstein fits my nostalgic mood perfectly.
In the puritanical Post-War years before there was Playboy Magazine, red-blooded ex-GI’s could still get an eyeful of racy pin-up girls just by glancing through their favorite magazine.
No, I’m not talking about Wink, Flirt, Eyeful, or any of the dozens of girlie pulp magazines hidden in the high, rear shelves of the local drug store, but right there in the mid-century family’s Norman Rockwell covered Saturday Evening Post. All-business, no-nonsense Fortune Magazine offered an eyeful too!
Vintage Springmaid Fabrics Ads 1948
These and several other mass-market magazines all ran a legendary series of advertisements put out by Springmaid Fabrics filled with enough risqué wording and sexy pin-up girls to rival those of illustrators Earl Moran and Pete Driben’s girlie covers on Twitter.
These ads generated both public adoration and puritanical outrage. It wasn’t so much the illustrations that caused a ruckus but the often salacious double entendre copy…
View original post 1,189 more words
Saturday Caturday
I put my Yule Tree up early this year. I guess lots of us are decorating earlier than usual this year.
Jack & Bobby could care less about the tree but Radar is still kitten enough to want to play with the ornaments. I have the breakable ones near the top, but I purposely put hanging round metal bells so that he can play with something.
Seconds after I took that picture, he had that bell on the floor & was playing with it.
Of course, he likes to just lie under the tree.
But I have to keep an eye on him because suddenly he’s doing this . . .
. . . going after an ornament he’s not supposed to play with. It’s going to be a long holiday season!
all photographs © polly macdavid
Lai and Virelai Notes
The Lai looks simple comprising nine-line stanza over five-syllable couplet and a two syllable-line. The couplets rhyme with each other as and the single lines rhyme with each other. There is no limit to the number of stanzas.
Rhyme scheme: aabaabaab ccdccdccd and so on.
Example
Clay of Life by Ryter Roethicle
Dig your fingers in
Watch it spin and spin
Life's clay
Shape it, press them in.
Feel the shape begin.
Each day
Watch! See it forming.
Then fire the kiln.
And pray.
See as the clay dries
Before your eyes
Your scheme
The shape you realise
Did you visualise
Or mean
None of us are wise
Do not eulogise
Your dream
The Lai Nouveau is much harder for the poet than the Lai and only has an eight-line stanza. The idea is like that of the Villanelle. The first two lines of the first stanza are the refrain…
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Italian Octave Notes
Consisting of two Italian quatrains the Italian octave was used by Petrarch in his poetry. Originally there was no set form or line length and Petrarch used it as a basis for his poems including his sonnets. Spenser later formalised it to iambic pentameter with a rhyme schematic of
abbaabba
However, English is not a naturally rhyming language and over the centuries as language and language patterns have changed modern poets simply add two Italian quatrains giving the rhyme scheme
abbacddc
Example
Moonlight by Terry Clitheroe
Moonlight is the bringer of your dreams
Pouring fantasies through the window
With the wind whispering soft and low
Enhancing with its sighs all the schemes
You shall plan in order to win your love.
Seducing him with more simple ways
Oft times in the end much better pays
Ending with promises through all above
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