(With apologies to Michael Donaghy)
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Several years ago today, the webzine The Chained Muse published the first section of my poem “November Song.” As I have been unable to find a publisher for the complete poem, I am putting it all together here for the first time, now in slightly revised form.
This sonnet sequence comes from my current work-in-progress, Take Your Guns to Town (a novel about a father and his two sons making their way through their day to a gun rights rally), and is written by ‘The Jeremy ΠtrMan’, motivational speaker and guru to one of the two sons, Joey, who has just arrived home after having participated in Jeremy’s annual convention, the Πtrthon, which culminates in a twelve-hour lecture (or ‘Jeremiad’) concerning the Jeremy’s Twelve Lessons—which may or may not resemble Jordan Peterson’s own 12 Rules, by the way, as I know nothing about the man or his work. This poem not only begins said lecture, it also acts as a handy TLDR of same.
This poem, featured in The Guardian’s poetry workshop back in 2007, takes a poke at conventional domestic arrangements…
Here’s a poem inspired by (as the title says) an inadequate postcard reproduction of an amazing painting by Marc Chagall. It is a poem that couldn’t find a home in Canadian poetry journals, but I still think it deserves a reader or two.
Lines Written On The Back of a Shitty Postcard Reproduction of Chagall’s “Souvenir de ma Jeunesse” [Poem]: Click on the thumbnail below to read!
A few other poems of mine can be found here and here.
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“Leda and the Swan”, by WB Yeats, has inspired a poetic “retort” by a fictional character!
Pegeen Mike O’Flaherty, a character in my work-in-progress, The Death of the Author, is a famous Canadian novelist who was a feminist poet in the late 1960s, and who gives a lecture to an undergraduate class on the supposed failings of W.B. Yeats. Below you will find her poetic retort to “Leda and the Swan”, (“Leda Sings Nomans Pricksong”) published in her first collection –suitably (?) titled Penis Envy.
Click on the embedded picture below to get a much larger view:
“Leda and the Swan” is a masterful but disturbing sonnet about (among other things) the indifference of and masculine nature of history. If you are new to the poem, or to Yeats, an excellent analysis can be found at aterriblebeautyisborn.com, along with discussions of a number of his poems. The epigraph to Pegeen Mike’s response poem comes from Eli Faure’s floridly written History of Art.
Finally here is another poem “by” Pegeen Mike, also dating from the late 1960s and dedicated to her alleged paramour, Leonard Cohen!
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I’ve long had a love affair with Leonard Cohen. And while my passion has been life-long and metaphorical, Pegeen Mike O’Flaherty, a fictional character in my work-in-progress, The Death of the Author, claims to have had a much more short-term and physical relationship with the poet, for whom she wrote this poem way back when. Dedicated to Leonard, “Game Theory” is from her now out of print first collection, Penis Envy (Kassandra Press, 1968).
Click on the thumbnail below to get a larger version of the poem!
Poems referenced in Pegeen Mike’s response can be found in Leonard Cohen’s Let Us Compare Mythologies (“Prayer for Messiah”) and The Spice Box of Earth (“As the Mist Leaves No Scar“), and can be previewed on Google Books.
Finally, another of Pegeen Mike’s poems — a retort to “Leda and the Swan” by WB Yeats– can be found here
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