The Ballad of the Ballade

Yes, it's a ballade -- with an "e". The reference to birds is a signature trope from the troubadors, one of whom I believe may have invented the form. It is best known for the French literary poet Francois Villon, whom I posted on very early in this blog. The standard translation of his masterwork, The Testament, is by American master Galway Kinnell, also referenced in that blog post (The Forensic Caesura, in the 2008 archive).

Kinnell, in his introduction, says something about rhyme being a "dead hand" for a modern poet, and writing ballades made me see where he was coming from. That B rhyme has got to match a lot of English words! And this is the shorter form of ballade used by Villon.

I had to struggle with this one because all my beforehand planning meant nothing once I started to write!  I think English really rewards the laconic writer (Perhaps French the prolix*? I wouldn't know.), but with the ballade, you have the English quatrain doubled, with a mandatory refrain line at the end. So, you've got to use "beefier" ideas to fill the ballade out, but you have the requirements of much tougher rhyme scheme and overall form to meet than say, the sonnet. Remember, English, like German, has fewer rhyme words than any Romance language. For example, the Italian ballata and ballatteta, similar to the French ballade, have much tougher rhyme schemes than the French form does. I doubt the Italian form (or forms -- not sure if ballata and ballatetta are that different) can even be attempted in English for original poetry.

This blog is mostly about form, but the matter of my ballade deserves some comment from me, too. Though I think it's hard (if not impossible) to critique your own work usefully, here goes:

I was tempted to put "Easter" in quotation marks in the title, because I'm not referring strictly to the Christian festival day so much as the general idea of springtime resurrection. And though the envoi (that's the last four lines, my friends) pointedly refers to a natural disunity, the unity of nature is the dominant theme of the work (I say "work" because, if you remember, someone else has got to call it a poem before it gets to be one, at least in my book.). Irony is tough to bring forth, especially these days, in formal verse, partly because I think you need swings in diction ("'Twixt" and "on the make", for instance) to really pull it off -- but the form is so daunting that it can stifle that sort of thing, or make it come off as really pompous (a perennial problem for me). I revised "twixt" out several times, only to put it back in, simply because I needed the "x" to suggest the real theme here. (I'm serious.) Still, I thought the exercise was worth it, partly because, as the third of a series of ballades (the other two are too personal to put here), it needs contextual references to Villon for the whole to work, at least for me.

So yes, maybe it's OK for English writers to use French verse forms, after all. But I still think you need a really good reason to do it.You'll have to decide for yourself whether or not I had one.

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* I meant 'prolix' in the original sense of 'extended', not necessarily with the negative connotations we have in the word's modern sense.

"I thought he said to 'Leave it to the French'!"

Easter Comes Early

Before the hills clothe their dry banks with green,
The cold ground's morbid grip begins to break,
And blue crocuses start to sprout their sheen;
The past falls away like dead limbs that shake
Off maples and oaks in dry wind's take.
As sap rises in trunks, so warmth does in me;
It lights a fire that burns for its own sake,
Watching birds cry 'havoc' from tree to tree.

After the fall's abyssal seres the scene,
The tiny feathers weave their bobbins' stake;
They cross the shorn limbs' riot, as they glean
What they may while hungry hearts and loins quake.
The bulbs push petalled flame in spiralled rake
As dancers' flowing waves lip spuming sea.
My draught of wind shudders in their wake,
Watching birds cry 'havoc' from tree to tree.

While I gaze through warping space, the timing's keen
'Twixt hawk and sparrow, both on the make
For prey, neither finding the other mean:
Dart or dagger the same in root's mandrake.
We join in search for our creation's ache;
Whether meal or meaning, our goal's to be.
Truth's nightingale's fraud, though he's no fake,
Watching birds cry 'havoc' from tree to tree.

Chiefs of state and those who want to hold it,
Buy this petty advice (it's yours for free!):
There's no union in nature -- I've polled it,
Watching birds cry 'havoc' from tree to tree.

Copyright (C) 2012 William Mark Gabriel. All Rights Reserved.

I plan to have some notes later on. For now: "abyssal" is an adjective without a noun. I want the cracked grammar to go along with the cracked time-sense in that line. Also, "cry 'havoc'" is not original with me. As best I recall, it's in one of Pound's translations of either de Born or Daniel. Neither text is available to me right now (another book giveaway mistake). They're in, I think, the Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, published originally by New Directions.

Till more comments come, please look at the structure here and compare it to the English (or Shakespearean) sonnet structure I suggested in my post Conceited Metaphors.