Finals week reprieve--one trick pony

A famous published poet came into our workshop one day. Her name was Barbara Goldberg, a little Jewish lady from the Bronx, she was (tough!) funny. Anyway, professor Simon was explaining sestinas to the class before Barbara came, and she was asking for end words to show how they repeated for each of the six stanzas and 39 lines. The students gave 5 words and then stopped, so for the six one as a joke I said, "Copernicus" cause it is the antithesis of the kind of word you want, some really easy word with lots of meaning and lots of homophones. And Maurya said, "You're going to be real sorry you picked that word because you want easy end words. It is impossible to write a sestina with Copernicus as an end word." and I said, "Oh yeah?" And she said, "YES!"

It was a challenge, and I did it, and did it well. I blew her mind and Barbara Goldbergs as well (also a lot of other poets and faculty). Anyway Barbara talked about how amazed she was with me, which was really cool, coming from a fancy schmansy publilshed poet from Nuwerk.

But when she got to my poem to critique she asked, " What is it about Brian's poetry that makes it distinctly his?" And I was wondering that as well because I keep hearing from my peers, "Wow this is totally you, Brian" or some version of that.

So then the class, rather easily, says, "The voice is usually intellectual, objective and factual with a pensive tone usually to solve some kind problem."

And then Barbara Goldberg said, "Yeah, I noticed that immediately. He writes a style of poetry called 'meditations'-- how one thinks, we go into their brain, see how their mind works, and its associations. It usually has to do with big ideas and research and it moves around the ideas, sometimes coming back to old ones."

And I was like, "So that is what my poetry is. That's what makes it distinctly me. That's pretty cool." I thought at the time, having discovered something new about myself.

But when I got home and looked at some of my old work I saw that it was the same kind, meditations, all of it.

All this time I thought I was trying new things and stretching my abilities, but I see now its all the same thing, like I am some kind of one trick pony incapable of writing anything else.

It made me really sad.

Here is the impossible Copernicus sestina:
The end words are: five, century, hide, or, Copernicus, done. the order changes for each stanza, and the words must repeat. They can be homophones. So I use Oar, as well as Dun a couple times.


Counting Alligators With Nicolaus Copernicus
“…25 alligators, ready or not here I come.”
~me, circa 1991

Yesterday I turned twenty-five
and realized I’ve only been alive for a quarter of a century.
A few days earlier I was "it," facing a tree and counting alligators for hide
and seek. Will my life always involve remembering simplicity, or
will it be simple again? Did the great men before me—Caesar, Alexander, Copernicus—
wonder where their time went? Did they compare their lives to what others had done?

Julius Caesar was in Spain at my age, saddling his shaggy dun
to ride out and quell a rebellion. When Alexander reached twenty-five
he was proclaimed Master of the Universe by newly conquered Egypt. Copernicus
wrote the heliocentric theory published in the sixteenth century,
theorizing that earth encircled the sun and our world wasn’t the center of the galaxy or
the universe, as the scriptures said. He didn’t have to hide

like Galileo Galilei, or Isaac Newton did. Hide
for fear of the inquisition branding their skin—Heretic—their lives done
for, forfeited. Did they ever wonder what marks they’d leave on the world? Or
were they too busy inventing calculus and trigonometry at twenty-five—
something indispensable for my century,
something that would have changed the theory of Copernicus,

had he known? I imagine Copernicus
standing on a boat traveling through Venice, his hide
cloak hanging to his boots, papers wedged under his arm. In his century,
did he realize he made a liar out of God? Could he imagine what would be done
five-
hundred years later with his theory, or

was he focused on balancing in the boat; each stroke of the oar
worrying him—clutching the only existing copy of heliocentric theory? Copernicus
(smiter of the faith-based geocentric theory at twenty-five)
challenged eons of belief, paving the way for the future, without need to hide
in fear of excommunication. When the last dun
evening came, did he realize what he had given his century?

Will I give anything to my century?
Will my words be hailed like Shakespeare’s, 500 years after my death? Or
will I be the first victim of some new disease they will name after me? Done
in by The Me Disease, like Lou Gehrig, or George Huntington. Copernicus,
greatness did not hide
from you when you reached alligator twenty-five.

I wish I could ask you, Nicolaus Coppernicus,
I feel like I am counting alligators, one for each year, playing hide
and seek with greatness, and I want to know there are only twenty-five.