Limerick

Limerick

Limerick is a five-line witty poem with a distinctive rhythm, funny and often rude.  Named after the Irish town of Limerick, the poem allegedly got its name from the town custom of shouting “Will you come up to Limerick?” after a performance of nonsense poetry at social gatherings.   However the actual origin of the name is not certain. 

It was introduced in 1791 in Ireland.  The noble and often a staid stature of an epic or ballad could not be more at odds with the ‘nonsense verse’ of the Limerick.  The limerick is a brief and bouncy poem ideal for Mother Goose-style nursery rhymes.  Most of the limerick’s were simple and filled with fun.  Not many were constructed with any serious message of note.  The speech stress is often distorted in the first line as a feature.

The first, second and fifth lines (the longer lines) rhyme and the third and fourth shorter lines rhyme. (A-A-B-B-A).   First line is often repeated as the fifth line.   Verses of Limericks were constructed using the last line as a refrain and made them interesting to listen to.  Several variations have emerged over the years.  One variation removed the rhyming structure completely!

Limericks was popularised in 19^th century by Edward Lear.  It went through a period where they were considered obscene and looked down by the literati as folklore and not literature. Edward Lear published a series of ‘Nonsense’ limerick compositions during the middle of 19^th century. 

This is one of the few, often quoted from his “Book of Nonsense.”  Here the first line clearly shows the distorted feature of the speech stress.

There was a Young Person of Smyrna
Whose grandmother threatened to burn her.
But she seized on the cat,
and said ‘Granny, burn that!
You incongruous old woman of Smyrna!

As you can see, this does not offer any message or wit.  In fact, apart from the rhyming structure which makes it more than adequate for singing it doesn’t really mean anything.  Here is my take on a Limerick on a glass of wine;

Glass of wine

The red nectar that flows out of a carafe

That which imbues the flavour of life

I long for a glass of wine

I thirst for a glass of wine

It is the one that makes my eyes shine!

Shankar Kashyap

Villanelle

The Villanelle

 

The villanelle has humble origins as a rustic Italian song, but over the past few centuries it has developed into a highly structured form of poetry. Villanelle is derived from the Italian word villano, meaning a peasant.  Originated as a dance song with pastoral themes.

A nineteen-line poem divided into five tercets (three-line stanzas) and a closing quatrain (four-line stanza), the villanelle is further constrained by a regular rhyming scheme and two refrains that are echoed in each stanza.  For those of us who are familiar with Ghazals, one can see some similarities in the structure of the two.  A classic example of a strict villanelle is Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night,” though the poem’s structure is so particular many poets choose to break its tight confines and compose near-villanelles, such as Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art.”

Dylan Thomas

A highly structured villanelle is a nineteen-line poem with two repeating rhymes and two refrains. The first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the poem’s two concluding lines. Using capitals for the refrains and lowercase letters for the rhymes, the form could be expressed as: A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2.

Strange as it may seem for a poem with such a rigid rhyme scheme, the villanelle did not start off as a fixed form. During the Renaissance, the villanella and villancico (from the Italian villano, or peasant) were Italian and Spanish dance-songs. French poets who called their poems “villanelle” did not follow any specific schemes, rhymes, or refrains. Rather, the title implied that, like the Italian and Spanish dance-songs, their poems spoke of simple, often pastoral or rustic themes.

While some scholars believe that the form as we know it today has been in existence since the sixteenth century, others argue that only one Renaissance poem was ever written in that manner—Jean Passerat’s “Villanelle,” or “J’ay perdu ma tourterelle”—and that it wasn’t until the late nineteenth century that the villanelle was defined as a fixed form by French poet Théodore de Banville.

Regardless of its provenance, the form did not catch on in France, but it has become increasingly popular among poets writing in English. An excellent example of the form is Dylan Thomas’s –

 

“Do not go gentle into that good night.”

‘Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’

Contemporary poets have not limited themselves to the pastoral themes originally expressed by the free-form villanelles of the Renaissance, and have loosened the fixed form to allow variations on the refrains. Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art.” is another well-known example; other poets who have penned villanelles include W H Auden, Oscar Wilde, Seamus Heaney,  David Shapiro, and Sylvia Plath.

The strict structure of the original Villanelle put many of the artists off from venturing into this, many have taken liberties with the structure and been extremely successful.  Nowadays many of the song writers have taken elements of the Villanelle into their Ballads.

I too have taken some liberties in constructing what I understand to be a “free Villanelle”; Men have sacrificed more than their life and limb for a pretty maiden in history and still continue to do so.  An analogy of a bee to a flame springs to mind.

Bee to a flame

Strange indeed you have the art of stealing

O nimble eyed maiden, in bright daylight

When people are wide awake, listening

 

You steal men’s hearts and that from a distance

Look at me once more girl in light

With eyes tapering and long like a lance

 

We have heard it said that in this world

Light is an antidote to light

To brighten ones own world

 

Lily eyed one listen to the world

To the slander and slight

Of my wanderings throughout the world

 

Your face sweetheart, is a flower

A lotus flower in the depth of night

You hide in a drift of flowers

 

How on earth shall I find you, my love

Like a roving black bee at night

Looking for my flower of love

Wandering, still searching for my love.

Shankar Kashyap

 

Valentine days bring mixed emotions in lover’s minds.  Anxious, excited and full of expectation, lover’s mind wanders towards poetry.  Not surprising that it is full of passion mixed with anxiety and tenderness.

Be gentle with me

 

Be gentle with me sweet darling of mine

I am but a wounded deer in the dale

You are and you will be that gorgeous girl of mine

 

My heart beats for you just fine

When you lift up my heart so stale

You do be gentle sweet darling of mine

 

The stars above in the dark sky shine

The blooms and buds down in the vale

Wait in patience for gorgeous girl of mine

 

The innocent peacock’s light up fine

Dancing away their blues down in the dale

As the see the sweet darling of mine

 

The stars above in the dark sky shine

Down at the deep darkness of the vale

You are and you will be that gorgeous girl of mine

 

My sweetheart, my darling, all of mine

Don’t make me wait and let my heart go stale

I see in my being that sweet darling of mine

You are and you will be that gorgeous girl of mine

Shankar Kashyap

Galleria di Shankar

Shankar Kashyap

Shankar Studios at Etsy for downloadable paintings

 

 

An Ode

 

 

 

An ode is a lyric poem that is written to praise a person, event, or object. It is an elaborately structured form of poetry and was popular during the 19th century.  Because of the complex structure of the poem, it is not as common among the modern poets.  Many of the classic Odes have been put to music by such greats as Purcell, Boyce and Handel.

You may have heard or read the famous “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats. (Some students mistakenly believe that this poem was written on the physical urn, when in fact the poem is written about an urn — it is an ode to the urn.)  John Keats was a House Surgeon at Guy’s Hospital in London when the poetic bug caught him and he left the job to concentrate on writing poems.  He wrote many Odes and the famous Ode on a Grecian Urn was published in 1819.  I must admit that this was the poem that caught my interest in poetry.  It is complex at the same time sweet and soothing.

Ode on a Grecian Urn

‘Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness!
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flow’ry tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal – yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore

Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou sayst,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’

John Keats

The ode is a classical style of poetry, once used by the ancient Greeks and Romans, who sang their odes rather than writing them on paper. Today’s odes are usually rhyming poems with irregular meter. They are broken into stanzas (the “paragraphs” of poetry) with ten lines each, sometimes following a rhyming pattern, although rhyme is not required for a poem to be classified as an ode. Usually, odes have three to five stanzas. 

There are three types of odes:  pindaric, horatian, and irregular. ​Pindaric odes have three stanzas, two of which have the same structure. An example is ​”The progress of poesy” by Thomas Gray.  

Horatian odes have more than one stanza, all of which follow the same rhyme structure and meter. An example is @Ode to the Confederate dead” by Allen Tate.​

Irregular odes follow no set pattern or rhyme. An example is “Ode to an Earthquake” by Ram Mehta. Read a few examples of odes to get a feeling for what they are like before you write your own.

Horatian odes use rhyming structure which can be best explained by examining John Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale where the rhyming structure is quite simple and easy to use – ABABCDECDE.  It is a ten-line stanza and usually has five or six stanzas.  But Shelley on the other hand used only five lines in his stanzas with an ABABB rhyming structure – Ode to a Skylark.  Pindaric Odes are more complex using a rotating structure of strophe-antistrophe-epode.

Here are my examples.  I have used the simple Horatian structure with ten-line stanzas, but  with irregular rhyming pattern inline with most modern poets.

Everyone cherishes memories if they are sweet and happy.  Memories of some events, the first glimpse of the lover, first time hands are held or the first kiss carry such a powerful imprint that it is almost impossible to erase.

Ode to Memories

This heart filled with hundred memories

Fond memories of first sight and first touch

The electric feeling at the first smile

Holding hands for the first time

The first kiss, tender and hesitant

Are they just memories of a dream?

Dream eons ago in a different life maybe

But they seem like only yesterday

Yet they feel so fresh, so real

It is so distant it could be a mirage.

 

Hundred memories of days gone by

Not real, not in essence and not of this world

My heart skips a beat even now

At the memory of our first embrace, heavenly

I can hear the sounds of the waves

The birds chirping as we sat on the shore

As the sun set on the horizon

With crimson blood and bright orange glow

As the water lapped on our feet

I am transposed a thousand miles from the shore.

 

A thousand memories of the day by gone

Walked through the glade with blue bells

And poppies, bright red dotted around

A little stream gurgling past us

A Deer and its calf drinking at the stream

Gentle breeze waving the green branches

Laden low with weight of the bounty

Of flowers, fruits and birds galore

Two love birds watching us, jealous

As we cuddled and kissed under the oak tree.

 

A million memories of the day

We sat under the oak tree

Whispering sweet nothings to each other

The day we swore our love for each other

I still remember your cheeks blush

When I said I love you

With a passion so gentle and soft

 You squeezed my hands and hugged me close

I didn’t want the moment to pass

As I cherished the feeling of belonging.

 

The day of memories flushed with love

A feeling of fulfilment and immeasurable joy

A day of immense happiness no one can deny

I was on top of this world

Not willing to come down for anyone

Heady with a feeling of accomplishment, of love

The tint in my eye was not a blemish

It made the world look rosy all the time

My head was swollen, not with pride

But with an overflowing sensation of love.

 

I remember the day we sat on top of the mountain

Savouring the vista of rolling hills in the distance

A river meandering through the lush forest floor

The cloudless sky watched us, blue with envy

It did miss its love, the curvy clouds

Even the birds seem to know

That we are a pair deep in love

They swooped in to take a closer look

Only to fly away with a heaving chest

And a flurry of wings at their best.

 

The days and years have passed my love

But my love hasn’t diminished

My heart still skips a beat when I see you

The mind is raging with hope

A hope to stay together, till the end of days

It is still like the first day, as fresh as

The daisies in the garden at the first sign of spring

Or those yellow Daffodils heralding the spring

Till death do us part is only for this world

Our love will live forever in every world.

Shankar Kashyap

A Free Verse

A Free Verse Poem as a rule, does not follow any rules of standard poetry forms.  It owes its origins to the French  Verse libre.   A French weekly magazine called La Vogue started a trend during the late 19th century with a group of poets who were termed to create a £”counter romanticism”.  Their creation is completely in the hands of the author. Rhyming, syllable count, punctuation, number of lines, number of stanzas, and line formation can be done anyway the author wants in order to convey the idea.
However, there are some who feel that it is only free form the strict metric structure. It has also been compared to playing tennis without the net. There is a requirement to keep the poetic lines true to form or even write a “beautiful prose”. There is no right or wrong way to create a Free Verse poem. Even though there are no requirements to use rhyming or metric structure for writing a Free Verse, a poet can use some to create a beautiful verse.  It was described as creating a beautiful poem using the syllabic structure and rhyme without the encumbrances of verses.   It was said, at least in French, that the free verse would speak to the ear and not the eye – meaning the cadence of the syllables would roll off the tongue from one sentence to the next with such a smooth step that it is invisible.

A famous example is Walt Whitman who used repetitive phrases and commas to give his verses a structure. Many were short pieces, such as Walter Whitman’s, A Glimpse;

‘A GLIMPSE, through an interstice caught,
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room, around the stove,
late of a winter night–And I unremark’d seated in a corner;
Of a youth who loves me, and whom I love, silently approaching, and
seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand;
A long while, amid the noises of coming and going–of drinking and
oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little,
perhaps not a word.’

Walt Whitman

My daughter, a veterinary surgeon, wrote a free verse after a day at work during this Covid19 pandemic and stress at working on the front line with scarce resources.

A Plea From the Cleaning Fairies*

 

‘Twas the dawn of the weekend shift, and the new team arrives,

Waving cheerfully in the car park, blinking sleepy eyes.

Keys jangling the locks, the shutters are opened,

Phones are off night mode, biochem machine unfrozen.

 

Moving through to hospital and the horrors are seen:

The bedding shelves are empty, the kennels unclean.

The laundry room overflowing, the dryer on the blink,

Few bins are lined, the dirty dental tray in the sink.

Mop heads lie grimy, there’s blood on the bin,

The Cleaning Fairies’ patience starts wearing slightly thin.

 

In these times of Covid, all our shifts are dreary,

But to leave disasters like that is getting a little weary.

Running about cleaning is never any fun,

But come on, Team Curiosity – it must be done!

 

Shamanthi Shankar

Here is one of my examples;

Homo sapiens

Someone once asked me to write a poem on ‘lesson on humanity.’ It got me thinking and realised that we are here only for a very short period and very few, if anyone remembers us after we are gone. Experts tell me that one is remembered at best for six months after death before memory starts to fade. But good deeds tend to live on much longer.

Do a good deed on this earth today, my man
You are on this earth but for a few moments
You are only a tenant in this world, my man
Make the best use of your precious moments.

You are remembered but only for a short period
But your good deeds will live on forever
Stay always happy with what you need
Don’t hanker after things you don’t need.

You are but only a passenger in this world
It’s not yours ever to rule or dictate
Treat it with a kind heart if you are bold
And love it with compassion so great.

You treat your fellow man always as your own
It’s with love and passion you make friends
Chase after money and power to drown
All the hard earned and coveted friends.

Money and power in plenty any one can earn
Empathy and compassion are not easy earned
Hate and jealousy is there for you to burn
Smile and laughter are the best earned.

Be strong for others always, my man
In your love for your fellow human being
Be strong for others always my man
In your efforts for your fellow human being.

Shankar Kashyap

Couplet

The name “couplet” originates from the French word meaning riveting or joining two pieces of iron together.   It originated in late 16th century with Sir P Sydney’s Arcadia.  A couplet is a two line verse, which rhymes and forms a unit alone or as part of a poem.   However, not all couplets do rhyme.  Chaucer’s Canterbury tales is almost entirely written using rhyming couplets. 

 

They often form parts of a longer poem such as a ballad. Many of the poems built on quatrain structure contained paired couplets. During 18th and 19th century, couplets often formed part of plays and often livened up a drawn out play. Here’s a famous couplet I am sure one would easily recognise.

“Good night! Good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.”

This couplet comes from Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare often used rhyming couplets at the end of scenes to signal the ending. Shakespeare also used a couplet to end each stanza in his sonnets. Often whole poems are written in couplet form — two lines of rhyming poetry, followed by two more lines with a different rhyme, and so on. Robert Frost, one of America’s greatest poets, wrote many poems using couplets. Rhyming iambic pentameter was introduced to English by Chaucer in “The Prologue to the legend of good women” in fourteenth century and became popular as a “heroic couplet.” John Milton popularised the octasyllabic form in 17th century in L’allegro and Il’ Penseroso.

There are two forms of couplets recognised – open and closed couplets.  In an “open” couplet the first line “runs into” the next line whereas in a “closed” couplet, the sentence the line tends to end with the last phrase or word.
One can often see couplets written on doorways in China during Chinese New Year. These couplets, called “chunlian,” are bought a few days before their new year and stuck on the doorway to hope for prosperity for the coming year. Most of the ancient Tamil scriptures were written in couplet form. Thirukkural, dating back to 300 BCE according to some people, is a moral code of conduct, somewhat in the lines of Manu smriti in Sanskrit and the Hammurabi’s code from Mesopotamia. Thirukkural is made up of 1330 couplets in ancient Tamil and is considered one of the greatest works of ethics and morality.

Alexander Pope’s ‘Essay on Criticism’ –
‘In Poets as true Genius is but rare,
True Taste as seldom is the Critick’s Share;
Both must alike from Heav’n derive their Light,
These born to Judge, as well as those to Write.’

Alexander Pope

 
Here is my example of a short couplet. Story of unremitting love is as old as poetry itself. Poets have used each and every form of poetry to eulogise love. Couplets do give a freedom to express one’s feelings a lot quicker and with emotive aspect coming out in every verse.

 

The Love of my dreams

It’s with love I cherish
My girl without a blemish.

It’s with love I long for
The girl I’d live for.

It’s with passion I care
Neither pain nor loss I care.

It’s with pleasure I endure
My girl who is so pure.

It’s my love, my dream
She’s there in my every dream.

Shankar Kashyap

   

Lays (Lyric)

The Lays or its proper form – Lyric – is derived from the ancient musical instrument Lyre, which was probably one of the most often used instrument in any ensemble in ancient Greece. The term probably owes its origins to Aristotle, who classified three types of poetry – lyric, dramatic and epic. It was used to describe the emotions of a lover or a hero and is most often written in the first person. The lyric dates to the ancient Greece and was later taken up by the Roman poets as well as ancient Persian poets.
The now extremely popular Ghazal took origin from the Lyric during 10th century AD. The famous Hafiz and Amir Khusroo as well as Omar Khayyam are some of the well know Persian poets who made Ghazals popular and still considered some of the best ever written. Rhyming lyrics filtered down from the Persian poets to the western poets during the middle ages and the Persian poets are considered masters in the art of lyrical poetry.

Lays of Ancient Rome was compiled by Thomas Macaualay and published in 1881.  It is a collection of four ancient heroic episodes from Greek history along with a couple of more recent ones. 

 

The other well known collection is Lays of Ancient India which is a collection for English translation of ancient Indian narrative poetry.
Lays was spelled Lai in medieval French literature and was used for romantic interludes in Octasyllabic forms. Many poems were composed based on Celtic legends in 12th century and was popularised by several French poets.
The Lyrical poetry was constructed in strict metric structure using one of meters – Iambic, Trochaic, Pyrrhic, Anapestic, Dactylic and Spondaic, depending on the number of syllables and the amount of stress on each syllable. As it can be seen, these poems were constructed to be sung and not just recited. One might say lyrical poetry was the origin of the other forms of poetry including sonnet.

 

 

 

 

One of the famous Lay – Love – was written by William Wordsworth in 18th century in Cumbria, UK.

LOVE;
All Thoughts, all Passions, all Delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal Frame,
All are but Ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.

Oft in my waking dreams do I
Live o’er again that happy hour,
When midway on the Mount I lay
Beside the Ruin’d Tower.

William Wordsworth

 

The Lays during medieval period were written describing the love and passion between a knight and his lady of high born, often ending in tragedy. The structure allowed for the poets to convey emotions of love and sadness with passion.

 

 

Man often finds himself torn apart by deceit and treachery. The emotions of despair and loneliness at times when one feels the world is against him and he is alone in a world full of people. It is a difficult emotion to describe and express at best of times, particularly when he feels that the whole world is against him.

It is a man’s world

There are people hundreds and more
Yet I feel all alone in this world
Surrounded by friends, family and more
And yet so alone in my mind

I walk for miles seeking a sight
Sight of solace and peace in this realm
But all I find is treachery, fear and deceit
Deceit of mind and body of realm

Sold at will by those I trusted
With all my soul and heart
Treachery of will and power crusted
Fear of unremitting pain and hurt

It is hard in the world to give
The given stabbed me in the nether
Take everything with nothing to give
And destroy my life, love and my creature

They tell me it’s a man’s world
Who, may I ask is this man?
Who rules ruthlessly this world?
In form and fashion not a man

They tell me it’s a man’s world
Where one is right, good or bad
Where everything is sold
For a price anything can be had

I walk for miles seeking solace
I think for hours searching for peace
I can neither get peace nor solace
I walk for miles seeking solace.

Shankar Kashyap

Idyll

         An Idyll is a short poem written describing the idyllic countryside. Originated in Greece by Theocritus, trying to veer away from Homer’s complex ballads and epics and make them accessible to simple rustic folk. The word Idyll comes from the Greek word Eidyllion or little picture. It pictures a rural scene, mostly of peace and tranquillity while the world outside is racing ahead at breakneck speed. The term “Idyllic” also comes from this.

        It was picked up and used by many European poets, including Alfred Tennyson (Idylls of the King) and Nietzsche (Idylls from Messina). Tennyson’s work popularised the story of King Arthur in his epic Idylls of the King. He has used his own surroundings as the basis of his rustic description and still remains one of the best classics of all times.

“And a fainter onward, like wild birds that change
Their season in the night and wail their way
From cloud to cloud, down the long wind the dream
Shrill’d: but in going mingled with dim cries
Far in the moonlit haze among the hills
As of some lonely city sack’d by night,”

Rural scene evokes different feelings and emotions in different people. But by and large it is the peace and tranquillity that wins most of the time. Twilight in either urban or rural setting evokes a feeling of an end or coming of an end. It could be sad or pleasant. The rural setting does evoke a strong sense of something coming to an end.

 

       Oscar Wilde’s Humanitad is such an example of evoking intense human emotions in an idyll –

“It is full winter now: the trees are bare,
Save where the cattle huddle from the cold
Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear
The autumn’s gaudy livery whose gold”

 

 

The rhyming is not rigid and that makes understanding of the emotions of the poem that much more evocative.

Twilight

           Here is my example. The colours displayed by nature at dusk and twilight varies from day to day and place to place. Painters love the twilight as it gives them some freedom to experiment with colours, they are often restricted from using but love to use. Twilight brings out a feeling of peace in some and a sense of melancholy in others.

Queen of colours flooded crimson, the face of the sky
And so, declared it was evening then
The village’s edge the cloak of leaves carelessly fallen
Now and then stirring in the river, so gentle a breeze
A crimson and gold sky above turned dark violet
Stars shone like the blossoming white flowers
Scattered in a woman’s sleek black hair
The full moon like the azalea flower was smiling
Girl with big round eyes whom all desire
Was returning home with a basket of fruit
The path to the orchard like a frolicsome kitten
Was following her tangling her feet behind
Cool breeze, scented with autumn flowers
A pigeon freed from my heart following her shadow
Unaware of what it was doing
Following the sun as it set on horizon
Letting the moon reign over ethereal sky.

Shankar Kashyap

 

A Ballad

Ballad has been there for several centuries (around 13th century) and started off as folk songs, accompanied by musical instruments. Earliest ballads were transmitted orally in song form and mainly dealt with religious and folk lyrics. The ballad’s lyrical rhythm and rhyme owe to the fact that this poetic form is rooted in song telling a love story. It was popularised as a singer’s choice due to the rhyming tone. It was used mostly as dance music with traditional folk songs during the fifteenth and sixteenth century. It fell into disrepute during the late 17th century with street sale of broad sheets with romantic ballads and was considered ‘street music’ written by ‘down and outs’ living in the unsavoury part of the towns. The poets were often titled “pot poets” – a derogatory term for the ballad poets of 19th century. The theme could be anything from love to hate and often used to tell stories and even history. The ballad often did not tell the story but showed the story in words. It was mostly a plot driven poem, running at a canter to end in a dramatic conclusion in the last two lines.
The traditional ballad was performed in dance halls in time with the music, and the term ultimately derives from the Latin word ballāre meaning “to dance.” It is also the origin of the word Ballet. French popularised it in 13th century as Balladee. French also introduced Ballade – as a form of dance music during 13th century. This form of narrative poem is structured with an unspecified number of rhymed quatrains (four-line stanzas). The lines were often quite simple with three or four stresses. Usually the second and fourth lines rhymed, but there were many variations of the ballad making it difficult to define. During the medieval period, the wandering minstrels used the ballad structure for their songs. Ballads about Robin Hood were sung during the 14th century medieval England.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth wrote numerous ballads. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe are particularly famous examples of ballads. The “Rime of the ancient Mariner” is still considered as the best classic of genre;

It is an ancient mariner
And he stoppeth one of three
By the long grey beard and glittering eye
Now wherefore stoppest thou me?

The bridegroom’s doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set;
Mayst hear the merry din.”

He holds him with his skinny hand,
“There was a ship,’ quoth he.
“Hold off! Unhand me, grey-beard loon!”
Eftsoons his hand dropped he.

He holds him with his glittering eye –
The wedding guest stood still,
And listens like a three-years’ child
The mariner has his will
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The ballad made its way onto British poetry in a big way during the 19th century with the likes of Samuel Coleridge, only to peter out in time. There were many types of ballads over the centuries. Traditional Ballads were sung by minstrels during the medieval period. Some of the biggest names in poetry – Samuel Pepys, Robert Burns, Walter Scott and Robert Harley to name a few, wrote many Traditional Ballads. I have already alluded to the “cheap ballads” – Broadsides – with the onset of cheap printing during 16th century. To counter this movement as it were, Literary Ballads appeared with many well-known works from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Burns, William Wordsworth and Oscar Wilde. Operatic Ballads made their appearance during the 18th century to counter the invasion of Italian stage operas into London. Sentimental Ballads made their appearance as a development of “Broadsides” – they are slow soulful songs appealing to the young lovers everywhere.

 

Heart of Stone

A broken heart imbues melancholy into a lover and brings out the intense passion and a sense of despair in his or her heart;

Oh, my dearest love, a proud one not be proud.
What you have in your heart is utterly false precious
Don’t be angry with your lover, no you should
Chain me in your arms, shelter me with kisses yours.

And still if you think the fault is mine
Pierce me with arrows of your side glances
The magical and bewitching smile of thine
Gifted woman, perfect skill in archery you possess.

You pierce men’s hearts with only a bowstring, no arrows
Your eyes are of blue lily, your mouth a heavenly gem
Teeth from jasmine buds, lips from the vernal flowers
And He made your limbs from daintiest stem.

Why is it the Creator made your heart out of stone?
How is it that He did not give me a heart of stone?

Shankar Kashyap

Narrative Poetry

A narrative poem tells the story of an event, a place, city or a kingdom or a hero/heroine, in the form of a poem. There is a strong sense of narration, characters, and always plot. This is pure story telling in poetic format. The content is often dramatic, and the words played on the emotions of the listener. There are many forms of Narrative poetry – epics, ballads, lays and idylls. Minstrels often changed words during a performance depending on the response of the audience – particularly Idylls and Lays.

Oral tradition of narrative poetry goes back thousands of years to the Vedic chants of Rigveda and Homeric ballads. Most of these were composed using a definitive metric structure. They were composed in poetic form rather than prose as it was easier to remember verses than long texts with oral tradition. Writing did not come into use much later. There are examples in almost all cultures and languages across the world. Most of the classic epics were composed using Narrative form of Poetry.
We will deal with each of these in turn using sub-chapters. Among the ancient cultures across the globe from the Andes in South America to Greece, Mesopotamia and Egypt to India and China, peoples have used this form of metric poetry to sing the history of their nations and the exploits of their heroes. Emperors and Kings employed bards in their courts to compose epics and record the history. Historians have used these epics/poems to record history. Emperors such as Alexander the Great and Babur took bards with them to battles to record their exploits.

The oldest known poem in English is a narrative one – Beowulf. Alfred Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, Charge of the Light Brigade and Robert Browning’s Ring and the Book are prime examples of medieval history in poetic form. Chaucer’s Canterbury tales is another example of a narrative poetry. Other famous narrative poetry are Divine Comedy by Dante, Epic of Gilgamesh, Iliad and Odyssey by Homer, Don Juan by Lord Byron to name a few.

We will deal with an Epic this week;

Epic;

An Epic is a lengthy narrative poem often in a grandiose language celebrating the adventures and accomplishments of a legendary hero in a historical setting. Epics are probably the earliest forms of poetry dating back thousands of years. The Vedas, particularly the Rigveda has been dated back to third or fourth millennium BCE, constructed by many sages and bards. Rigveda is considered to be the oldest scripture with over 1028 hymns and 10600 verses in one of the recensions. This epic scripture is constructed using a strict structure of iambic metres – Gayathri, Anushtubh, Trishtubh and Jagati. I will not go into details of the construction of these metres. Many of the hymns are considered more of a eulogy – praising one or the other of the Gods or a king or even a sage.

Much like a ballad, an epic is a narrative poem that spins a tale— and a lengthy one — of a hero’s great valour and adventure. Like the elegy, the word epic is derived from ancient Greece, where epikós meant “speech,” “tale,” or “song,” and applied not only to the subject matter, but also to a specific type of meter, the epic meter. The first epics of Western literature are the Iliad and Odyssey by Homer, Epic of Gilgamesh in Sumer, Virgil’s Aeneid and in the English tradition we have Beowulf, Spencer’s The fairie queene, Dante’s Divine Comedy and Milton’s Paradise lost. All the epics, as the name implies are long, some of them are several thousand verses long. Mahabharata has 17000 verses and Ramayana has 24,000 verses making them some of the largest pieces of literature in the world. Greek, Latin and Sanskrit epics began with an invocation – to musa in Greek and Latin and god Agni in Sanskrit.
Here is my example of a narrative poetry an epic – A Golden Goddess; Rohanna. It tells the story of a young girl in a medieval Indian village. Trials and tribulations of young women during what could be termed as the ‘dark ages’ for women in India lends itself to an emotional story.

Golden Goddess Rohanna;

Good-hearted golden ladies
And maids with eyes like water lilies
And future mother, now but children
O listen ye to the tale I tell.

Of dance and song the incantation
Of fluid words the honey hives
Mother of mother, o ye mother
Now listen to the tale I tell.

In a faraway valley set in the mountains
There is a lake and, on its bank,
In the small village a farm stands
Which holds a golden goddess.

In ancient days the goddess
Had a farmer who had a daughter
Gold as the golden goddess
And who was famous for her devotion.

The maiden served the goddess daily
As the season came and went
She plucked the flowers for her worship
Was herself a golden goddess.

And as the season came and went
She gave the fruits each season brought
Served the goddess with devotion
The sweet golden girl Rohanna.

The sweetest fruit the valley bore
Was the juicy golden Pear.
When the valley pear blushed
Coloured her cheeks, she came of age.

The parents of golden Rohanna
Loved the Pear and they loved her less
Grew heartless in their greed for gold
And they married her to a rich old man.

Lilies laughed on the blue lake
Spring came upon the mountain valley
Rang with the song of countless birds
Sorrow, when the birds saw her groom.

Her lily like face lost its bloom
Her graces dropped like a cheap garment
Her two eyes two wells of tears
The golden sheen of her face dulled.

The village girls with whom she played
Mocked her as the poor girl wept
Gave up her companions she did
And served with tear, the village goddess.

Day came the lecherous groom to claim
His girl-wife, little golden Rohanna
He came with golden ornaments and dray
With crimson silk dresses for Rohanna.

Her brother’s wives they rubbed her
With thick cream and she had her bath
They chafed the bride as is usual
With unseemly innuendos about sex.

She touched the feet of the elders
Parents blessed her and as they blessed
A pearl of silver laughter rang
From the sad golden bride Rohanna.

She called her brother and sisters
With tears she bade them all farewell
Her words to them were sweet as honey
Left eyes none without a tear.

“Goodbye my brother and sisters
You must love our parents well
For they are old. And do your duty
To the golden goddess, our guardian.

And as the season come and go
With fruits and flowers, the seasons give
Adore the goddess with devotion
In her worship you must not fail”.

“When all family in future gather
And overflow with joy, remember
Your loving sister, brothers and sisters
To a child, each you give my name.”

Her eyes flowed like waterfalls
The eyes of little golden Rohanna
Dried her eyes, laughed silver laughter
The golden goddess, little Rohanna.

Her brother’s wives and brothers wept
Her mother, sisters wept hot tears
Only the father who had sold his daughter
Was happy thinking of all his gold.

When dark evening fell as usual
Rohanna gathered flowers, made garlands
And out she went with a happy face
To serve the golden goddess with devotion.

Come the night cows came with calves to byre
Birds swarmed back to the roost in trees
In the black skies the stars came out
And yet Rohanna did not come home.

The light of her eyes was lost to lilies
The gold of her skin was lost to gold
The grace of her walk was lost to swans
She merged with her golden Goddess.

Find her peace and heaven she did
Our little golden Goddess Rohanna.

Shankar Kashyap.

Haiku – Japanese poetry

This week’s poem is a Haiku.

 

This ancient form of poetry writing from 17^th century Japan is renowned for its small size as well as the precise punctuation and syllables needed on its three lines.   Originally, Haiku’s were the opening stanza of a style of a longer format poem called the Renga, or linked verse, but the compactness of these introductory lines intrigued Japanese poets of the 17th century.  Soon, the Haiku broke away from its longer version into the three-line poems with seventeen syllables popular in Japan today.

The Japanese Haiku is a rigidly structured poetic form with very little scope for ‘poetic license’.  Haiku’s are composed of 3 phrases, each a phrase, often with three different qualities.  There is juxta-positioning of phrases or qualities between lines.   The first line typically has 5 syllables, second line has 7 and the 3rd line repeats another 5.  Quite often, there is a seasonal reference.   It is written in the present tense, often read out in a single breath with sometimes a pause at the end of first or second line.  Its focus is on a brief moment in time and used colourful images for impact.  There are many forms and varieties of Haiku in practice.  In Japanese, it is written in single vertical line and in English it comes out as three lines.

There is a “cutting word” or Kireje at the end of the second line giving the structure for the three phrases.

Haiku did not make its appearance in English till the beginning of 20^th century.  It is not as popular as the other forms of poetry in English mainly due to its rigid structure of construction and poets felt restricted in use of flowery language.

“The Other world”;

Whitecaps on the bay:
A broken signboard banging
In the April wind.

Richard Wright

As you can see there are no rhyming structure and doesn’t allow for the poet to elaborate on what he wants to say.  Whereas couplets with just two lines were used as part of a much bigger poem, Haiku became a poem on its own once it broke away from being the introduction of Renga.  It would be in a similar vein as a Matla for a Ghazal – an introduction to longer story or epic about a hero or king or country.

Another example of a Haiku is by well known poet, Cynthia Buhain-Baello;

 

My attempt at a Haiku, A lone Eagle, was originally an introduction to a much longer poem on a Himalayan bird of prey – the majestic eagle.

Enjoy this short and very interesting format of poetry.  It has taken off in English in recent times and there has been many variations introduced by the western poets.

 

Shankar Kashyap