Pancakes, Plath and an Agnostic Villanelle
Last thing at night last night, I looked at Twitter. A foolish thing to do for anyone needing sleep as much as I do right now, but sometimes foolishness pays dividends.
I saw a tweet there from Live Canon, a troupe of actors who present regular poetry performances, and who were kind enough to ask to include my poem 'Training Run' in their Olympic show last year. The tweet asked if anyone knew of any good poems about pancakes.
I didn't. I had a look. I found a few sweet, trite rhymes, the best of which is attributed to Christina Rossetti. My rule of thumb with looking at Google at this late an hour is to give up if you can't find what you want by page three. I gave up, but the idea didn't give me up. I found I wanted to write something about pancakes, or at least something that mentioned them.
I wrote down a line: "Where does the mouth lead? Belly, heart or head?"For some reason, this screamed villanelle at me. I went to Wikipedia and looked up villanelle. The first example I spotted was Sylvia Plath's 'Mad Girl's Love Song' , which I remembered from reading The Bell Jar years ago.
It being midnight, on the cusp of the 50th anniversary of Plath's death and of this year's Shrove Tuesday, and given that the line I had written synced with Plath's rhyme scheme in 'Mad Girl's Love Song', I couldn't help but start writing.
I didn't even have time to step away from the computer to find a pen. I opened my word processor and started to beat out syllables with my thumb, as I typed on the touch screen.
The villanelle below is the product of this surprise. It is not a tribute to Plath, though it was very much triggered by the tone of her poem, as well as the words she used for her rhyming. It is not a nice poem about pancakes, either.
Instead, I found myself contemplating the religions of my ancestors (I'm Jewish on my father's side, and therefore not Jewish at all in the religious sense, and CofE on my mother's side). I have viewed both religions with caution for some decades now.
I'm pleased enough with this draft of the poem to post it here, largely because it is the first villanelle I have written that hasn't been immediately cast into the Chinese tea chest I use as a bran tub for stray lines. Poems usually get put in there because they make up for lack of sense with an excess of music, or a lack of music with an excess of nonsense.
This poem I'm willing to share, for all that it may change or never breathe beyond this point. If you like it, please feel free to say so. If you don't, please say so also. If, of course, you've even read this far. Here's the poem:
An Agnostic Villanelle
written on Shrove Tuesday, and thinking of Seder
All my beliefs are swallowed or unsaid.
Bitter herbs and fruits sting my throat like guilt.
Where does the mouth lead? Belly, heart or head?
My mother's pancakes. Sugar lemon spread.
A shriving, a taunt on memory's tongue.
All my beliefs are swallowed or unsaid.
The Seder sandwich. Horseradish, flat bread;
an apple sauce, smooth and sweeter than truth.
Where does the mouth lead? Belly, heart or head?
One pinch of sweetness and one pinch of dread.
Salt songs of sorrow ground down to a meal.
All my beliefs are swallowed or unsaid.
Hope is a hunger, a sliver, a shred,
a tear in the cloth, a focus for fear.
Where does the mouth lead? Belly, heart or head?
The pancake's flipped out, the matzoh's a thread
and I have nothing to put in their place.
All my beliefs are swallowed or unsaid.
Where does the mouth lead? Belly, heart or head?
