ArtLog: writing -- this time, a pantoum

[elisem]

The poetry handbook I consulted informs me that the pantoum is probably of fifteenth century Malayan origin, and owes debts to Chinese and Persian poetry. This one is not a classical pantoum in that it does not rhyme. Eh, them's the breaks. I started with the line "A poet with paper and pen is in business," which was a stray line from a sestina I started to write once in the airport in Toronto; once in the pantoum, the line went off in an entirely different direction.

Please note: the first verse has changed slightly, because I realized I had transposed two lines while writing it. This edit was made on June 26, 2005. The version posted here before started off like this:

Remember to keep your tools sharp.
Don't let them know what you're doing.
A poet with paper and pen is in business.
Brush up on your covert ops skills.

The corrected verse is in the version below.

A poet with paper and pen is in business.
Don't let them know what you're doing.
Remember to keep your tools sharp.
Brush up on your covert ops skills.

Don't let them know what you're doing.
Poets know how to get past the borders.
Brush up on your covert ops skills --
It helps to look abstract, or pretty, or simple.

Poets know how to get past the borders;
A poem can be a way of smuggling truth.
It helps to look abstract, or pretty, or simple.
Some poems are strong enough to bear that.

A poem can be a way of smuggling truth.
Bones speak louder than official histories.
Some poems are strong enough to bear that.
A poet can owe a debt of story to a bone.

Bones speak louder than official histories.
Some things demand that we tell how they happened.
A poet can owe a debt of story to a bone
Or a stick, a charred stub, white stones, blood.

Some things demand that we tell how they happened.
A poet with paper and pen is in business,
Or a stick, a charred stub, white stones, blood.
Remember to keep your tools sharp.

I am inordinately pleased with that one just now, but it's only been born twelve minutes ago, so that may change in the sober light of morning. Or afternoon, or whenever it turns out I wake up. For now, I am going back up to stack tarot decks in the new-recycled shelves in the velvet room, which is what I was doing when that line jumped out of a stack of manuscripts and notes and made me write a pantoum.