Pantoum (1.2.19)

Greetings all!  Let’s begin the new year with a pantoum. 

A bartender told me the other day that he’s been reading the poems of Victor Hugo (as well as Swann’s Way!).[1]  Then, this morning, as I thought about what we might explore next at W@1, I came across a reference to Victor Hugo, who introduced the pantoum to Europe in his book of poems, Les Orientals (1829). 

I am a “believer” in coincidence, or “correspondence,” which I try to capture in my journals whenever it occurs.  Correspondences are basically two things experienced at random, though within a short period of time, and which are related in some small way.  So stumbling across references to Victor Hugo over the space of a couple of days, one of which involves this reference to pantoums, et voilá, our first project of 2019!

The pantoum is a verse form written in quatrains that proceed somewhat as the lines of a villanelle.  It derives from a Malay song form, according to The Academy of American Poets.  That is, lines repeat in an orderly fashion.  A pantoum is not necessarily rhymed (though, it certainly could be!), which for we writers in English must be a kind of blessing.  Here is how a pantoum works:

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . today

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . always 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . more 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . November

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . always

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . palace

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . November

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . rained

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . palace

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . waterfall

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . rained

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . horizon

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . waterfall

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . time

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . horizon

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . joy

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . time

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lasting

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . joy

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . slight

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lasting

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . more

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . slight

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . today

A pantoum can be as long as you want it to be (that is, as long as the poem you are writing wants it to be), but anything short of three quatrains will not fulfill the form.  Lines can be of any length, meter, or rhyme scheme, including none at all. 

Pantoums, like other forms with repeating lines, often have an incantatory quality, a lilt that lifts you out of the daily and into the eternal.[2]  How does it do this?  A hint comes from a comment on the form by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland, in their book, The Making of a Poem, and quoted in the Academy of American Poets’ www.poets.org pages: “the reader takes four steps forward, then two back . . . a perfect form for the evocation of a past time.”

Of course, no form is without its variations.  The one below, by John Ashbery, is known as an “imperfect pantoum.”  This simply means that the final quatrain varies from the rules of the traditional pantoum.  As you can see in Ashbery’s poem, the first and third lines of the poem—“Eyes shining without mystery” and “Through the vague snow of many clay pipes”—do not conform.  They are used in the final quatrain, but in the same order as they appear in the opening quatrain.  In a true pantoum, this order would be reversed.

Pantoum

Eyes shining without mystery,
Footprints eager for the past
Through the vague snow of many clay pipes,
And what is in store?

Footprints eager for the past
The usual obtuse blanket.
And what is in store
For those dearest to the king?

The usual obtuse blanket.
Of legless regrets and amplifications
For those dearest to the king.
Yes, sirs, connoisseurs of oblivion,

The usual obtuse blanket.
Of legless regrets and amplifications
For those dearest to the king.
Yes, sirs, connoisseurs of oblivion,

The usual obtuse blanket.
Of legless regrets and amplifications
For those dearest to the king.
Yes, sirs, connoisseurs of oblivion,

Of legless regrets and amplifications,
That is why a watchdog is shy.
Yes, sirs, connoisseurs of oblivion,
These days are short, brittle; there is only one night.

That is why a watchdog is shy,
Why the court, trapped in a silver storm, is dying.
These days are short, brittle; there is only one night
And that soon gotten over.

Why the court, trapped in a silver storm, is dying
Some blunt pretense to safety we have
And that soon gotten over
For they must have motion.

Some blunt pretense to safety we have
Eyes shining without mystery,
For they must have motion
Through the vague snow of many clay pipes.

Here’s a shorter pantoum (also imperfect), by the poet A. E. Stallings . . .

Another Lullaby for Insomniacs

Sleep, she will not linger:

She turns her moon-cold shoulder.

With no ring on her finger,

You cannot hope to hold her.

She turns her moon-cold shoulder

And tosses off the cover.

You cannot hope to hold her:

She has another lover.

She tosses off the cover

And lays the darkness bare.

She has another lover.

Her heart is otherwhere.

She lays the darkness bare.

You slowly realize

Her heart is otherwhere.

There's distance in her eyes.

You slowly realize

That she will never linger,

With distance in her eyes

And no ring on her finger.

And in case you’re thinking that pantoums are the poet’s turf alone, try the lyric below, from Neil Peart, drummer for the progressive rock band Rush.  As a song lyric, of course, it has to rhyme, and the closing quatrain is again “imperfect.”

The Larger Bowl

If we're so much the same like I always hear
Why such different fortunes and fates?
Some of us live in a cloud of fear
Some live behind iron gates

Why such different fortunes and fates?
Some are blessed and some are cursed
Some live behind iron gates
While others only see the worst

Some are blessed and some are cursed
The golden one or scarred from birth
While others only see the worst
Such a lot of pain on the earth

The golden one or scarred from birth
Somethings can never be changed
Such a lot of pain on this earth
It's somehow so badly arranged

Somethings can never be changed
Some reasons will never come clear
It's somehow so badly arranged
If we're so much the same like I always hear

Some are blessed and some are cursed
The golden one or scarred from birth
While others only see the worst
Such a lot of pain on the earth

I am quite sure that you can write something in the pantoum form.  You can try the true form, the imperfect form, or even a kind of modernist handling of the form, which might mean simply a gesture of repetition (e.g., using one key word from a preceding line in a follow-up line at the appropriate position), or using synonyms for some of the words of one line in the appropriate succeeding line.  Have fun!

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[1] The same fellow has also read Finnegan’s Wake, all of Shakespeare’s plays, The Iliad and The Odyssey.

[2] For better or worse.  Let’s think about writing incantation-like poems for a future project.

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