This week's post was inspired by our family names in a wholly new genre of poems: the trilogy. It's not quite as official as the sonnet, but its results just can't be beat.
Eric Fretz’s “Fretz Trilogy, a Cento” plays on the homophone of the author's last name to great effect:
“Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room,”
An ex-army officer turned critic frets.Can you not hate me, as I know you? Do
Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?In one another’s arms, birds in the trees,
While far beneath us frets the troubled purple of the sea.
Elizabeth Solsburg offers “The Elizabeth Trilogy,” a poem that pivots on the conflict between “Little Women” and “The Church,” as mediated ambiguously by “My mother.”
My mother wanted my name to be Beth—
just that: plain, simple and sweet,
like her favorite of the Little Women,
who is always obedient and perfectly meek,
a good daughter for eternity.The Church had a different idea—
said I needed the name of a saint,
long dead, and of virtue they’d approved.
My mother, more obedient than I’d ever be,
added the syllables to fit their rule.She called me Beth the whole of her life—
and for a while I tried to live up to the name,
but those syllables finally caught up with me:
maker of rules instead of blindly obeying,
the chosen of God, the warrior queenThe time for diminutives has long ended
I am the Elizabeth I’ve chosen to be.
Eduardo Ramos Ruiz’s “La Trilogía de Ramos,” mixes Spanish phrases to excellent effect, and could serve as a model for yet another potential genre, the bilingual poem:
(In memory of my father: Juan V. Ramos)
I was named Juan—el nombre de mi padre,
who died before my birth. It’s said
he frequented the tavern La Paloma Azul,
played the accordion and loved
un trago de vino more than his wife.I was nicknamed “Juan without fear”
by my wife because I carry myself sin miedo.
In fact, I took the pitchfork away from the devil.
I am the undiscovered composer of corridos
who seeks no fame, only perfect end rhymes.I named my first-born son Juan—
como su abuelo, el primero.
Juanito plays the guitar, composes, and loves
singing more than un trago de vino.
I fear he’ll find a wife, so I pray for no strife.
Emily Winakur’s vigorous use of prose poetry in “The Black-Thumb Trilogy” proves that poetry is found in the language, rather than the line breaks:
I.
Heart-shaped philodendron can survive a minor depressive episode, but not the kind where you leave Seattle for Bethlehem, PA, at the height of summer, and you cry all through the Cascades, over the Columbia River, into Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, the poor plant baking in the back seat; you’re still crying when you run out of gas in Wyoming and you can’t find a motel room within 200 miles of Sturgis, South Dakota; the only thing that stops it is the naked lady on the back of a Harley in the Badlands.II.
A peace lily is not peaceful in the cold.
Even if you keep it on the side of the apartment away from the windows, where it will thin and drop yellow leaves, it can feel the cold in the snow you stamp off your boots, on the stacks of papers to grade that you’ve carried in from the car, in the gusts that shake the hawks who cling to the tops of bare trees.
If you take the bus to the city for a weekend, your peace lily will get lonely.III.
Until I had a baby, I was not about to fuss around my fiddle-leaf fig, sticking my fingers into its soil to test for dryness, turning it this way and that before this window or that. But after the baby, after I had given her a bath and combed her and nuzzled her and swaddled her,
it just made sense to turn to the ficus next. To check its dish for drainage, to soak cotton balls in baby oil and clean its ear-like leaves, to talk to it, occasionally, in my baby-talk voice, asking which position it preferred, which kind of light.
Visit the American Scholar's page to read the full post, with more poems and more commentary from quiz master Lehman himself! And check back next week for a whole new prompt.
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