Circumlocution #20
 

20. Glosa           DRAFT THREE

     from Circumlocutions: A Primer

               ‘We will lay this thing here’
                    Thus spake the voice of the sea,
                    Murmuring wearily—
               In the rock’s ear—

                         — Rudyard Kipling’s “Rejection”, first stanza


Off-kilter, this odd composition.
     Kipling’s, you say?
     It counters cognition
to think such a tub-thump musician
noodled with meter this way.
Anapestic? Syllabic, at times?
     The scansion’s unclear.
     Both margins career.
Irregular pulses. Wrenched rhymes.
‘We will lay this thing here,’

the tidal vicissitudes shrug,
     their listless resistance
     refusing to lug
what a shove against gravity’s tug
can abandon. And yet there’s persistence
within this passivity, too.
     It wills itself free,
     determined to be
unburdened of what it can spew.
Thus spake the voice of the sea.

Shape-shifters, these cadences show
     the moon-manic force
     as lines ebb and flow.
The sea’s letting everything go:
this thing that it wants to divorce,
     poetic convention,
attention to naysayers. (Three
     say no with esprit,
but the matter’s not up for contention.)
     Murmuring wearily

becomes, by the end of the song,
Ever persistently. Yes,
     as obsessions prolong,
     revulsions grow strong.
So dictate, Subconscious: express
     what silent deeps hide.
We will lay this thing here.
By setting it down, we can clear
     that corruption-plagued tide
     In the rock’s ear.



20. Glosa           DRAFT TWO, plus new S3L1 and new S4

     from Circumlocutions: A Primer

               ‘We will lay this thing here’
                    Thus spake the voice of the sea,
                    Murmuring wearily —
               In the rock’s ear —

                         — Rudyard Kipling’s “Rejection”, first stanza


Off-kilter, this odd composition.
     Kipling’s, you say?
     It counters cognition
to think such a tub-thump musician
noodled with meter this way.
Anapestic? Syllabic, at times?
     The scansion's unclear.
     Both margins career.
Irregular pulses. Wrenched rhymes.
‘We will lay this thing here,’

the tidal vicissitudes shrug,
     their listless resistance
     refusing to lug
what a shove against gravity’s tug
can abandon. And yet there's persistence
within this passivity, too.
     It wills itself free,
     determined to be
unburdened of what it can spew.
Thus spake the voice of the sea.

Seismographed scribble-lengths show
     the moon-manic force
     as the lines ebb and flow.
The sea’s letting everything go:
this thing that it wants to divorce,
     poetic convention,
attention to naysayers. (Three
     speak up with esprit,
but the matter’s not up for contention.)
     Murmuring wearily

becomes, by the end of the song,
Ever persistently. Yes,
     as obsessions prolong,
     revulsions grow strong.
So dictate, Subconscious: express
     what silent deeps hide.
We will lay this thing here.
By setting it down, we can clear
     the corpse-churning tide
     In the rock’s ear.


In Draft One, S1 was:
Off-kilter, this odd composition.
     And it’s Kipling’s, you say?
     How counter-cognition!
To think such a tub-thump musician
noodled with meter this way!
(Anapestic? Syllabic at times?
     Double iambs? Oh, dear.)
     Both margins career
down irregular pulses and chimes.
‘We will lay this thing here,’

In Draft One, S2L1 and S2LL5-6 were:
     their passive resistance
...
can abandon. But note the persistence
within that passivity, too.

In Draft One, S3 was:
Unpredictable cadences show
     the moon-manic force
     of each ebb and flow.
The sea’s letting everything go:
the thing that it wants to divorce;
     poetic convention;
and attention to critics — when three
     speak up with esprit,
the matter’s not up for contention.
     Murmuring wearily

Later, S3L1 was:
These shore-sketching cadences show
This seismograph's scribble-lengths show

In Draft One, S4 was:
becomes, by the end of the song,
     Ever persistently. Yes,
     as obsessions prolong,
the psyche’s recycling’s more strong.
All right then, subconscious: express
     what silent deeps hide.
We will lay this thing here.
By setting it down, we can clear
     the corpse-churning tide
     In the rock’s ear.

Later, S4LL3-5 were:
     when obsessions prolong,
what the psyche keeps cycling grows strong.
So dictate, Subconscious: express

Hi Julie,

Thoroughly enjoyed. For more of a critique I will need a day to digest. I had not read that poem of his before and as you say it is markedly off-kilter. Somewhat of a cross between Poe and Hood. I love how you have worked the quotation in.

Jan

Hello, Julie!

This is wonderfully cohesive, and you handle the complexity of the glosa form with real grace. The meter, rhyme, and tonal control are impressively fluid—everything reads as if it were effortless, even while the architecture behind it is clearly intricate.

One thing I wonder about is the opening stanza’s focus on Kipling’s technical metrics. While clever and witty, it feels slightly disconnected from the tone and imagery of the rest of the poem, which leans into oceanic and psychological motifs. Perhaps there’s a way to bridge those registers more directly? For example, shifting focus from Kipling’s metrical irregularities to the sea’s own unpredictable rhythms might help better integrate the beginning with the whole.

For the third stanza, I feel commas would work better to separate the list elements, especially since there’d be no resulting ambiguity:

The sea’s letting everything go:
the thing that it wants to divorce,
           poetic convention,
and attention to critics — when three

Finally, in the last stanza, the inclusion of multiple fragments from the Kipling quote before the final full line somewhat diffuses its impact. So, we now have Ever persistently (fourth line, last stanza); silent deeps (third stanza, last two words of the second line); We will lay this thing here. (repeats from your first stanza, from the first line of the reference poem). Thus, there’s no logic to what’s getting repeated from the source poem. If those fragments were tied to a more intentional scheme (e.g., appearing at specific structural turns, or referencing contiguous lines from the source poem), they might feel more deliberate. Also, as it stands, the repetition of “We will lay this thing here” earlier in the stanza feels a bit too prominent, since it lessens the impact of the required final line.

That said, this is already a smart, confident poem. I especially admire the interplay between the literal sea and the psychological “tide.” Just a few suggestions in case they’re helpful as you continue refining!

Cheers,
…Alex

Thanks, Jan and Alex. Very helpful. I've made some tweaks above to try to clarify a few things.

[Other stuff deleted — if I tell you what I hope to do, I won't know if people see it in the poem without explanation.]

Julie, I like it. I enjoyed the intricate rhyme scheme, the variations in line lengths, the sense of an argument that is odd but can be followed on its jagged course. I thought at first that you were trying to follow Kipling's metrical variety, too, but your lines seem more regular in their pattern. The one point at which a suggestion occurred to me was in S3L7, where I felt that dropping the "and" at the start might help. But overall, I think you could be even more odd in your rhythms if you really want to imitate the freestyle of Kipling. Maybe you don't.

Susan

Thanks, Susan. I've zapped the "and." It was an unstressed syllable sandwiched between two others, which I knew would feel off, but I think using substitutions like Kipling's would be more effective.

Overall, I struggled to wreck the meter without wrecking it too much. Since my version is so much longer than Kipling's (40 lines to his 28), I thought it might be tiresome to ask the reader to fumble for the downbeat as often as he does.

I've tweaked the seismograph line (S3L1) again, though I'm still not sure it really works in the context, being a geological tech metaphor in an oceanographic poem.

Draft Three posted. Thanks for all the comments.