Next Contest at the Rondeau Roundup: A Triolet Challenge

The first two contests at the Rondeau Roundup have been rondeau contests, so it's time to mix it up a bit with another form.

The next contest at the Rondeau Roundup is a Triolet Challenge!

Not familiar with the form? It's an eight-line poem with a strict rhyme scheme:

explanation courtesy
Triolet

The features of the Triolet are:

* 8 lines.
* Two rhymes.
* 5 of the 8 lines are repeated or refrain lines.
* First line repeats at the 4th and 7th lines.
* Second line repeats at the 8th line.
* Rhyme scheme (where an upper-case letter indicates the appearance of an identical line, while a lower-case letter indicates a rhyme with each line designated by the same lower-case or upper-case letter):

A
B
a - Rhymes with 1st line.
A - Identical to 1st line.
a - Rhymes with 1st line.
b - Rhymes with 2nd line.
A - Identical to 1st line.
B - Identical to 2nd line.


Here's another explanation, courtesy poets.org
Triolet

For this contest, I'll accept two(*2*) triolets per entrant, since the form is only eight lines long. For this contest, there is no theme, but only triolets can win. No other form will be accepted. There is no entry fee.

First prize: $25 gift certificate from Amazon.com
Up to five More than Honorable Mentions will also be chosen to appear on the Rondeau Roundup Blog.

Contest opens December 1, 2009 and closes December 28, 2009. Winners will be notified by January 15, 2010.

Send your triolets to
rondeauroundup(at)gmail.com (replace (at) with @)

in the body of an e-mail message.
No attachments, please. If entering two triolets, put both in the same e-mail.

Here's a sample triolet by your Rondeau mistress to give you an idea of what the form can do:

Triolet for Janis

A Today I need your Texas wail,
B your ragged voice of pain and hurt;
a I need to walk your lonely trail.
A Today I need your Texas wail
a to buoy me up when I grow frail,
b to pick me up from ash and dirt.
A Today I need your Texas wail,
B that ragged voice of pain and hurt.

Allison Joseph

(rhyme scheme marked next to poem for illustrative purposes; you need not include it with your submission)

Autumn Rondeau Contest: More than Honorable Mentions!

Apologies for the delay in getting the Autumn Rondeau Contest More than Honorable Mentions up on the blog! Here they are--you will agree they were worth the wait:


Oak Tree Chronicle

Oak leaves hang on, blithely outride
the wind, swaying dun-colored, dried.
Acorns scatter in jazzy rounds
of random drumming on the ground,
the squirrels’ come-and-get-it guide.

Though almost in tatters beside
birches gorgeous in gold as brides
papery yellows swirling down,
oak leaves hang on.

School kids shuffle kicking sky high
red mauve confetti as they glide
laugh and leap into crackling sounds.
Hickory, maple, jumbled mounds
raked and vacuumed, dumped, nullified.
Oak leaves hang on.

Charlotte Mandel

Bio: Charlotte Mandel's seventh book of poetry ROCK VEIN SKY (Midmarch Arts Press) was listed as a Best Poetry Book Read for Fall 2008 by Monserrat Review. Previous titles include two poem-novellas of feminist biblical revision, The Life of Mary, and The Marriages of Jacob. She recently retired from teaching poetry writing for several years at Barnard College Center for Research on Women. Visit her at Charlotte Mandel.


Fall Rondeau

It’s fall. I’m knitting pairs of winter socks
and trying not to see the veeing flocks
fleeing South. Traitors. It’s not cold
yet. The locals have just begun to fold
away the lawn chairs, to pull up the docks.

Instead of raking, or taking rambling walks
I sit outside, stitch and purl the sumac’s
flaming red, the elm’s glowing gold.
It’s fall I’m knitting

into these socks. My Southern blood balks
at the Midwestern winter coming. It stalks
my every thought. And yet, each sock that’s rolled
off my needles staves off winter’s toehold.
It’s fall. I’m knitting.

Heidi Czerwiec


Bio: Heidi Czerwiec is assistant professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of North Dakota, where she is the Director of the annual UND Writers Conference. She is the author of Hiking the Maze (Finishing Line Press, 2009), the recipient of a 2009 Bush Foundation/Dakota Creative Connections artist grant, and has poems and translations published or forthcoming in Measure, Nimrod, Evansville Review, Southern Indiana Review, Hunger Mountain, and International Poetry Review.


Rondeau: Autumn Leaves

These autumn leaves -- they burn citrine
As pumpkins glow. The stiff rake leans
Upon the apple tree, its fruit
Decayed and brown along the roots.
We dress warm, groom the backyard clean --

We make three heaps, breathe the pristine
Air. The sky: fat, a nectarine --
Now blackens to a crown of soot.
These autumn leaves --

It's all we care for, all we've seen
All day. Our mother says fifteen
Minutes and to wipe off our boots
Before coming in. But we hoot
Like imps; burst, like a time machine,
These autumn leaves.

William Soule

Bio: William Soule is a young poet currently living in Utah. His works have appeared in Read This Magazine, elimae, Tattoo Highway, and the delinquent, among others — he is also a former One Night Stanzas Featured Poet. He runs the webzine Clearfield Review, and works as a Literature Gallery Director for artist-networking site deviantART.

Texan's Lament

I miss the hues of death, the flaming trees,
the rotting sweetness carried by the breeze.
Escaping winter meant I made a trade -
I had to give up seeing summer fade -
surrendering fall to avoid the freeze.

I even miss the mold that made me sneeze -
the microbes in the air that made me wheeze.
Perhaps up north is where I should have stayed.
I miss the hues of death.

The faded green leaves here do not appease
my need for change, a turning climate's tease.
This was my choice - can't say I was betrayed;
and yet each year I find myself dismayed
when autumn does not visit me with ease.
I miss the hues of death.

Dorla Moorehouse

Bio: Dorla Moorehouse is a writer, dancer, and bookseller living in Austin, Texas. When not pursuing one of these three careers, she serves as the poetry editor of Gloomcupboard. You can find out more about her work at her blog, Dorla's Poetry and Prose.


A Distant Line of Hills

The air is clear, and leaves, undone,
drift in zigzags – russet, crimson.
Wild purple phlox and goldenrod
in rearview mirrors wave and nod,
like summer’s parting guests. And on

the complicated road we run
we take a deeper breath. The sun
ignites a sumac’s velvet pods.
The air is clear

and apple-crisp; light is honey
on tree-trunks in the afternoon.
We didn’t know, and find it odd:
behind the slowly molting woods
lies a long and low horizon.
The air is clear.

David Eye

Bio: David Eye earned a midlife MFA at Syracuse University in 2008. This followed a 17-year career in the theatre, and four years in the military, so he may be the only poet who has spent time in both the U.S. Army and Cats. While at SU, he garnered awards for his work as a writing instructor, and interned at BOA Editions, Ltd. His poems have appeared in Waccamaw Journal, Stone Canoe, roger, and Critical Encounters with Texts, a university reader. This fall, David is teaching English composition at St. John's University and will be conducting workshops at Manhattan College. He is completing his first book of poems, mostly during the hour-and-a-half commute from Harlem to Staten Island.

Autumn Rondeau Contest: Winner

Congrats to Janet McCann, who I've chosen as the winner of the Rondeau Roundup's Autumn Rondeau contest for her elegiac poem "Rondeau."

Rondeau

We walk through your city, this place where
years ago you breathed electric air
talked God all night with friends and called it heaven.
Now streets are lined with Starbucks, 7-11.
We walk through your city.

You look around for places that aren’t there,
the old bookstore, the Golden Chair
Saloon, the grocery, the Lucky Seven--
we walk through your city

which seems like nothing much, surely nowhere
one would remember. An old pair
of lovers quarrels, breaks apart. Not even
a bird sings in the autumn cold. Wind-driven
walkers hasten home. The trees are bare.
We walk through your city.

Janet McCann

BIO:
Janet McCann is professor of English at Texas A&M University, where she has taught since 1969. Her poems have appeared in New York Quarterly, Southern Poetry Review, Poetry Australia, New Letters and other literary reviews and anthologies. She received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1989..

Autumn Rondeau Contest: Winners!

Sorry for the slight delay on the results of the Autumn Rondeau contest.
Here are your winners:

Winner: Janet McCann for "Rondeau"

More than Honorable Mentions went to William Soule, Dorla Moorehouse, David B Eye, Charlotte Mandel and Heidi Czerwiec.

The winning rondeau will be posted here tomorrow, with the More than Honorable mentions following soon after!

Thanks to everyone who entered!

Keep writing those rondeaus!

Contest Now Closed: Entries Look Great

The entry period for the Rondeau Roundup's Autumn Rondeau contest is now closed. Thanks so much to everyone who entered, especially those who pointed out the error in the e-mail address for sending entries. Despite that error, entries were numerous! I received over 35 entries for this particular challenge.

Results of the contest will be posted here on the blog on October 15, 2009.

If you missed the contest deadline this time, don't despair! Another contest will be launched soon.

Autumn Rondeau Contest: No Entry Fee! (Deadline Extended!)

Thanks to those eagle-eyed readers of this blog who spotted the typo in the e-mail address for submissions.  Because of that typo, I'm extending the deadline. Thanks for your patience!

Autumn Rondeau Contest: No Entry Fee!

The Rondeau Roundup is looking forward to fall colors, warm sweaters, and mellow sips of cider by the fireplace. To welcome in Fall 2009, the Rondeau Roundup blog is having a contest for the best rondeau on the topic of AUTUMN submitted by October 2, 2009.

Contest Rules:

Only one rondeau may be submitted per person. No entry fee. Top five rondeaus will be published on the blog (therondeauroundup.blogspot.com). The first place rondeau will also receive a $35 gift certificate from Amazon.com

For this contest, I'm looking for rondeaus that follow the standard definition, as given on poets.org

"The rondeau’s form is not difficult to recognize: as it is known and practiced today, it is composed of fifteen lines, eight to ten syllables each, divided stanzaically into a quintet, a quatrain, and a sestet. The rentrement consists of the first few words or the entire first line of the first stanza, and it recurs as the last line of both the second and third stanzas. Two rhymes guide the music of the rondeau, whose rhyme scheme is as follows (R representing the refrain): aabba aabR aabbaR."

Examples of the form: "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae, "We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar.

No other poetic form will be accepted for this contest. Non-rhyming rondeaus can be entered, but the blog moderator's preference is for rhymed and metered rondeaus.

To enter, send a single rondeau on the topic of AUTUMN to

rondeauroundup(at)gmail.com (replace (at) with @) by October 2, 2009.

Winners will be announced on the Rondeau Roundup Blog on October 15, 2009.

Love Rondeau Contest More-than-Honorable Mentions!

Here are the poems that were chosen as "More-than-Honorable Mentions" in the Rondeau Roundup's Love Rondeau Contest! Enjoy!


Spin Cycle

Love tumbles us through mundane life,
a rolling cylinder, we dive
into the dirty clothes we wash.
The scent of soap cuts clean across

daily bores of husband and wife—
a cotton kiss on pillows rife
with surprise in a rigid hive.
The wash, dry, fold, so far from posh.
Love tumbles us

into breaking, spinning alive
in cycles that turn us in strife,
foggy suds that leave us awash.
Each feeling we coddled and tossed
settles, fresh snap as you arrive
love tumbles us.

Tara Betts

Bio: Tara Betts is the author of Arc and Hue.  Tara is a Cave Canem fellow and a graduate of the New England College MFA Program.  She currently teaches at Rutgers University and leads community-based workshops with teens and other groups.  Tara's work has appeared in Essence, Black Renaissance Noire, Hanging Loose, Ninth Letter,Obsidian III, Callaloo, and Columbia Poetry Review, Gathering Ground, Bum Rush the Page, and both Spoken Word Revolution anthologies. She is also a poetry editor for The November 3rd Club, an online journal of political writing.

My, What Big Wishes I Had

I could not calculate my nature then,
too stunned by street and kitchen din.
Oh, the summer city bruised but did not
burn me, the night’s load of slushy heat caught
by sooty screens that let no breezes in.

That was before your autumn weather’s spin
undid me, its blue, lake-bitten wind,
chrome-dented light, and all its heart-cold plot.
I could not calculate my nature then.

No taffeta and locket, my old friend,
no sweet and butter-crumble, no bride, when
I thought nothing mattered but a love knot.
Loving you was always the long-shot,
a blind bet, underlay, the dividend
I could not calculate.

Susan Elbe

Bio: Susan Elbe is the author of Eden in the Rearview Mirror (Word Press) which received Honorable Mention for the Posner Book-Length Poetry Award, and a chapbook, Light Made from Nothing (Parallel Press). Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Ascent, Blackbird, Diode, Ocho, MARGIE, and North American Review. Her work has also been widely anthologized, including in A Fierce Brightness: Twenty-Five Years of Women's Poetry (Calyx Books), On Retirement: 75 Poems (University of Iowa Press), and Eating the Pure Light: Homage to Thomas McGrath (The Backwaters Press). She currently works as a Webmaster in Madison, Wisconsin. Her web site is www.susanelbe.com.

We Love As You Do

We love as you do, more or less:
The careless talk, the bland caress,
Selective ear, ironic brow,
Companion silences—and how
We waste our weekends, you can guess.

We do not hunger to transgress.
Although we’re still, with some success,
Denied a sanctioned marriage vow,
We love as you do.

We bicker, misconstrue, express
ambivalence when we undress.
Think mainly of yourself if now
We lobby leaders to allow
Our share of that dull happiness
We love as you do.

Buzz Mauro

Bio: Buzz Mauro received his MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tampa Review,River Styx, NOON,  Poet Lore, and other magazines, and is currently featured on www.barcelonareview.com. He can be reached at buzz.mauro@comcast.net.

Lost Love, in Memoriam

October leaves brush by the door.
I hardly recall what I wore
yesterday, yet fifteen years comes
back easily enough--a pet, some
unwanted but familiar chore

to break up the afternoon before
I accomplish too much. Before
I can savor autumn's sweet crumb,
October leaves.

Cider, gourds, dried corn are no more
than dreams, figments, epitaphs or
the palest ghost of bubblegum
on his desk. Lost, my hushed succumb
to kisses by the sycamore.
October leaves.

R. Elena Prieto

Bio: R. Elena Prieto is a graduate of the creative writing program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.  Prior to being published by Rondeau Roundup, her work has appeared in Compass Rose, both online and in print.

It Isn't What I Thought

It isn’t what I thought. It can’t compare
with the early days, she said, so don’t despair
when snooze is all you do in bed, and lust,
if it exists, turns out to be a bust
because equipment fails or needs repair.

It’s natural. Attraction fades. Prepare
yourself for less romance with age and share
a deeper love. Don’t worry. You’ll adjust.
It isn’t what I thought:

He’s at his sexiest with silver hair,
my menopause is freeing. Our kids declare
us old and passionless as they combust
with hormones, assuming that the thrust
of us is talk, now, and sex is rare –
it isn’t.

Marybeth Rua-Larsen

Bio: Marybeth Rua-Larsen lives on the south coast of Massachusetts.  Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in:  Measure, 14 by 14, Soundzine, The Recusant, The Raintown Review, Two Review and The Worcester Review, among others. 

 

Love Rondeau Contest Winner!

Rondeau with NASA Article

The coldest known object in space
is very unnatural: fallen from grace
the now-defunct hunk of metal
haunts the outer dark, starts to settle
into absolute zero’s embrace.

I once knew how that felt. Three days
at forty below, betrayed, a carapace
of ice, I felt unloved and brittle,
the coldest known object

in North Dakota. Beyond night’s black lace
above me something drifts close, grazes
the craft – the friction’s warmth little
but, like yours, enough – a subtle
nudge that now makes something else
the coldest known object.

Heidi Czerwiec

BIO:
Heidi Czerwiec is assistant professor of English and creative writing at the University of North Dakota, where she directs the UND Writers Conference. She is the author of Hiking the Maze (Finishing Line, 2009) and the recipient of a Bush Foundation/Dakota Creative Connections grant, and has poetry and translations published or forthcoming in Measure, Connecticut Review, The Evansville Review, International Poetry Review, and Nimrod.

Love Rondeau Contest: Winners!

It is with delight that I announce the winners of the Rondeau Roundup's Love Rondeau Contest!

First-prize goes to Heidi Czerwiec for "Rondeau with NASA Article." Heidi's prize consists of a $35 Amazon.com gift certificate and a feature on the Rondeau Roundup blog.

More-than-Honorable Mentions went to the following poets. Each of these poets will have their rondeaus featured on the blog as well:

Tara Betts for "Spin Cycle"
Susan Elbe for "My, What Big Wishes I Had"
Marybeth Rua-Larsen for "It Isn't What I Thought"
Buzz Mauro for "We Love as You Do"
R. Elena Prieto for "Lost Love, In Memoriam"

Thanks to everyone who entered, and look for these poems to be featured on the blog next week!

Thanks to all those poets who entered the contest!

The Love Rondeau contest, sponsored by the Rondeau Roundup blog, has yielded 25 entries! Not bad for a first time contest.

Contest results will be posted on July 31. In addition to the winners, other rondeaus will be posted on the blog as more-than-honorable mentions.

The next contest sponsored by the blog will be a Autumn Rondeau contest. Deadline TBA. No fee to enter, as will be the case for all contests connected to this blog.

Thanks,
Allison J.
Rondeau Mistress
The Rondeau Roundup

Love Rondeaus Contest: No Entry Fee!

The Rondeau Roundup, has been silent the past few months. To re-launch the blog, I'm having a contest for the best rondeau on the topic of love, submitted by July 15, 2009.

Contest Rules:

Only one rondeau may be submitted per person. No entry fee. Top three rondeaus will be published on the blog (theroundeauroundup.blogspot.com). The first place rondeau will also receive a $35 gift certificate from Amazon.com

For this contest, I'm looking for rondeaus that follow the standard definition, as given on poets.org

"The rondeau’s form is not difficult to recognize: as it is known and practiced today, it is composed of fifteen lines, eight to ten syllables each, divided stanzaically into a quintet, a quatrain, and a sestet. The rentrement consists of the first few words or the entire first line of the first stanza, and it recurs as the last line of both the second and third stanzas. Two rhymes guide the music of the rondeau, whose rhyme scheme is as follows (R representing the refrain): aabba aabR aabbaR."

Examples of the form: "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae, "We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar.

No other poetic form will be accepted for this contest. Non-rhyming rondeaus can be entered, but the blog moderator's preference is for rhymed and metered rondeaus.

To enter, send a single rondeau on the topic of love to

roundeauroundup(at)gmail.com (replace (at) with @)

by July 15, 2009.

Winners will be announced on the Rondeau Roundup Blog on July 31, 2009.

TRIOLET THURSDAY: Three by Kate Bernadette Benedict

Dreamscape Triolets

Empty Confessional

Cellar, attic, I’ve searched everywhere.
Where is the child I conceived in Nonce Garden?
Eras ago, it was; memories harden.
Cellar, attic, I’ve searched everywhere,
the abandoned tavern, the deserted square,
this sterile church where I’ve come for pardon.
Cellar, attic, I’ve searched everywhere.
Where is the child I conceived in Nonce Garden?


Occlusion

Police have blocked with barricades.
We the people cannot break through
the yellow ties of these blockades.
Police have blocked with barricades
the shock victims, the nurses’ aides,
the amputees, the able few.
Police have blocked with barricades.
We the people cannot break through.


U. S. of E.

Without war, without deliberations
the nations unify, the borders thaw.
It’s the free-for-all of the destinations
without war, without deliberations!
Passports burn at massive celebrations,
matches light up effigies of straw.
Without war, without deliberations,
the nations unify, the borders thaw.

Originally published in, respectively, The Barefoot Muse, Poemeleon and thanal online

BIO: Kate Bernadette Benedict is the editor and publisher of Umbrella: A Journal of Poetry and Kindred Prose. Her collection Here from Away was published in November of 2003 by CustomWords. Her poetry has been appearing in literary magazines and anthologies since 1980. Kate has served as a moderator at Eratosphere, the on-line poetry forum. She lives with her husband John Leahy on New York City’s upper west side. Visit her website at Kate Benedict

TRIOLET THURSDAY: Two by Heidi Czerwiec

DETRITUS

We shed a lot while making love.
Yet what we gain, by what is lost
along with all the hair and skin we slough
(and we shed a lot while making love!):
our inhibitions at being in the buff,
the weight of failed loves past—
We shed a lot while making love,
yet what we gain by what is lost!


TRIOLET

I praise the circumference of thy shaft!
All night long, O my Evan,
I praise it lowered, half-, and fully-staffed.
I praise the circumference of thy shaft,
but most of all I praise the craft
with which you work its inches seven.
I praise the circumference of thy shaft
all night long – O my! Evan!


Heidi Czerwiec is assistant professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of North Dakota, where she is the Director of the annual UND Writers Conference. She is the author of Hiking the Maze (Finishing Line Press, 2009) and has poems and translations published or forthcoming in Measure, Nimrod, Evansville Review, Southern Indiana Review, Hunger Mountain, and International Poetry Review.

SPOTLIGHT: A Rondeau and a Rondel by Anna Evans

Tea Ceremonies

       for MP

We drink our tea and leave unsaid
the hungry words which once misled
our friendship. Nowadays we weigh
each phrase’s power to betray;
you tell me of a book you’ve read.

Your lips press kisses in my head;
your fingers tremble as you shred
the crumpled tag from your Earl Grey;
we drink our tea.

I want to slake our thirsts in bed,
be steeped in you; I break the thread
of what I’d been about to say.
We lock eyes over china, sway
an instant in silk sheets; instead
we drink our tea.

Originally appeared in The Formalist



Indian Summer Rondel

The leaves aren’t falling this September.
Truth’s at least as odd as fiction;
nature reels in contradictions—
snow in June, a warm December.

All old people can remember
times the sky defied prediction.
The leaves aren’t falling this September.
Truth’s at least as odd as fiction.

If you’re human, you’re a member
of a race with an addiction
to routine. A source of friction
in the months before November—
the leaves aren’t falling. This September,
truth’s at least as odd as fiction.



Anna Evans’ poems have appeared in the Harvard Review, Atlanta Review, Rattle, and Measure. She gained her MFA from Bennington College, and is the Editor of the Raintown Review. Her chapbooks Swimming and Selected Sonnets are available from Maverick Duck Press.

TRIOLET THURSDAY: Two by Mary Meriam

Red Kiss

Who will miss me when I’m dead?
Maybe someone reading this
is just the sort of daisy head
who will miss me when I’m dead
and planted in a tulip bed.
To her, I offer this red kiss.
Who will miss me when I’m dead?
Maybe someone reading this.

(first published in Light Quarterly)


Daylight Losing Time

I dread turning clocks back an hour.
I’m scared of the turning of leaves.
I’m sorry my mood turns so sour.
I dread turning clocks back an hour.
Can I spring up ahead like a flower?
In fall my clock withers and grieves.
I dread turning clocks back an hour.
I’m scared of the turning of leaves.

(first published in Snakeskin)

BIO Mary Meriam's chapbook of poems, The Countess of Flatbroke (afterword by Lillian Faderman), was published in 2006 by Modern Metrics. Her poems and essays have been published in Literary Imagination, Light, Windy City Times, Umbrella, The Lyric, OCHO, Soundzine, A Prairie Home Companion, and The Gay & Lesbian Review, among others.

TEACH THIS POEM: Marilyn Taylor's "Rondeau: Old Woman with Cat"

I'm not the only fan of Marilyn Taylor's wonderful rondeau, which has one of the best rentrements ever--Edward Byrne is featuring the poem as the VPR Poem of the Week!

One Poet's Notes

TRIOLET TUESDAY: Two by Marybeth Rua-Larsen

Hanging the Wreath

I nail it to the door. It doesn't swing
or fall or blow away. I make it stick,
unlike our holidays, your latest fling,
I nail it to the door. It doesn't swing,
like you, proposing with a diamond ring
and then surprised by No. I learned the trick:
I nail it to the door. It doesn't swing
or fall or blow away. I make it stick.

(first appeared in Lucid Rhythms)


My Early Spring

Another rainy day has turned to snow.
You sip your cabernet and turn the page
of a book you love, pretending not to know
another rainy day has turned to snow
and frozen everything I’d hoped would grow…
but me; I grab my boots and skip the rage
as another rainy day has turned to snow.
You sip your cabernet and turn the page.

(first appeared in Snakeskin)


BIO: Marybeth Rua-Larsen teaches English, Reading and ESL in the South Coast of Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in Measure, The Barefoot Muse, 14 by 14, Soundzine and The Worcester Review, among others.

SPOTLIGHT: A Rondeau Redouble and a Rondel by Ned Balbo

Rescuing the Voices

The story of the Langley sessions is...part of the mystique--
how a young rock guitarist, needing a job, became a gypsy
music teacher in a Canadian farm region and created timeless
recordings that were never intended to be heard beyond
the school community’s perimeter.
--Irwin Chusid, liner notes to the CD Innocence and Despair:
The Langley School Music Project

You know the songs--“Space Oddity,” “Good Vibrations,”
“The Long and Winding Road,” a dozen more--
arranged for voice, percussion, xylophones,
performed by untrained children near Vancouver

during the ’70’s, gathered together
from different rural schools to take positions
on the risers, facing the young conductor
who led them through “Space Oddity,” “Good Vibrations,”

captured in Spector-sized echo, young musicians
filling the school gymnasium with fervor,
missing their notes in unison, expressions
rapt for “The Long and Winding Road,” and more,

classics and corn, “Mandy” and “Wildfire”
sung into empty space: ideal conditions,
strangely, for making a record, the teacher’s guitar
steadying voices, percussion, xylophones

pinging, mostly on cue, throughout the sessions
no audience but the children and their director
witnessed, caught in one take, the imperfections
of voices from the outskirts of Vancouver

pressed onto vinyl, forgotten. But their renditions,
rediscovered, survive. You ain't gettin' no younger

chorus gone silent, a soloist, past all questions,
sings to every desperate listener
who needs her song.


Note: In “Rescuing the Voices,” nine-year-old soloist Sheila Behman sings Don Henley and Glenn Frey’s “Desperado”; Hans Louis Fenger is conductor/arranger (as well as guitarist/pianist) for the Langley Schools recordings. The CD Innocence and Despair: The Langley School Music Project is available from Bar/None Records.

Rondel for a Timepiece Not Yet Obsolete

  In an age awash with digital devices from cell phones to PDAs, plugged-in people of all    ages are opting to leave their old timepiece at home.

--Susan Lee, “Are wristwatches becoming obsolete?”

 Columbia News Service, December 27, 2005

Analog watch--wrist-worn circle of time,
ticking the days away in symmetries
Swiss-made and sleepless, tireless mysteries
concealed by stainless steel--your hours rhyme

in sets of twelve. Essential in your prime,
object of habit now, set me at ease,
analog wristwatch, worn circle of time.
Keep ticking away the days in symmetries

that call to mind the past: sleek hands that climb,
pointing across a face that’s not a face,
as if in search of lost simplicities….
Earth’s orbit round the sun your paradigm,
how soon will you run down, worn-out? Circle of time.

BIO: Ned Balbo's books are Lives of the Sleepers (University of Notre Dame Press, 2005) and Galileo's Banquet (WWPH, 1998). A chapbook of new poems, Something Must Happen, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. He is recipient of three Maryland Arts Council grants, the Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award, Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize, and a ForeWord magazine Book of the Year Award. He teaches at Loyola University and lives in Baltimore with his wife, poet Jane Satterfield, and stepdaughter Catherine.

TEACH THIS POEM: Gail White

Gail White is one of the most clever poets out there. Here's a poem of hers that's particularly relevant these days--and her refrain sounds like a John Lee Hooker song!

Ballade of the Common Lot

Lai, Virelai, and Lai Nouveau welcome at the Rondeau Roundup

The lai, virelai and lai noveau are criminally neglected and frightfully difficult forms. Examples of these forms are also welcome at the Rondeau Roundup. 

Directions for writing a lai can be found under the links list at left.  One of the few examples of the lai I can find is Chryss Yost's lovely "Lai with Sounds of Skin." Here's a link to the poem on Chryss's website:

Chryss Yost

Who says Rondeaus can't be sexy?

His Mouth

My husband has the mouth that haunts.

To satisfy my body's wants,

I need to feel his lips on mine,

our thoughts and limbs both intertwined,

my satisfaction no mere taunt.

His life before? It hardly counts,

his other loves too brief to flaunt.

What matters now is how I shine

beneath his tongue, so deftly kind.

Eradicating every doubt,

my husband has

made me forget those bills that mount,

and filled our bed with breathy shouts,

abundant lust that makes these lines

my testament to barest times.

So sad to hear your husband won't--

my husband has.

Allison Joseph

BIO: Allison Joseph is the Rondeau Mistress of the Rondeau Roundup. She teaches at SIU in Carbondale, Illinois,  and also runs the writers' list-serve CRWROPPS.

A Ballade by Marilyn Taylor

Ballades are the longest form we'll include here at the Rondeau Roundup, and also one of the hardest. Here's a funny one from poet Marilyn Taylor, who is the current Poet Laureate of Wisconsin.

Ballade of the Open Mike

AN OPEN MIKE READING UPSTAIRS
WILL FOLLOW TONIGHT’S POETRY
                          —Bookshop poster

O will you won’t you join the gang
down at the books-and-java store
where browsers browse and poets hang?
We long to greet you at the door
and steer you to the second floor
where we’ll festoon the atmosphere
with rhythm, rhyme, and metaphor—
         the poems you didn’t know you came to hear!

Linger for the whole shebang,
and get more than what you bargained for!
Poems in Spanish, poems in slang,
ripe confessionals galore,
piles of sex (please don’t keep score),
and now and then a sonneteer
will show you why you can’t ignore
        those incandescent poems you need to hear!

And if some old orangutang
has rescued from a dresser drawer
his strange pentameter harangue,
or some benighted sophomore
reveals her fling in Singapore—
five minutes and they’re outta here,
making way for lines that soar:
       the kind you’ve waited far too long to hear!

You simply can’t go home before
we breathe our blessings in your ear—
our songs of the unsung troubadour,
       the ones we know you really came to hear!

SPOTLIGHT: Two Rondeaux by Moira Egan

Snow Rondeau

      Michael Furey

Let it snow let it snow let it snow
the children chant outside, though grown-ups know
that the pristine, mystical hush
becomes, next day, wheels squealing, ugly slush.
Yet we smile and stand at the window.

Inside I sip hot chocolate and Cointreau.
Let me tell you something you don’t know:
a voice inside me keeps me free from touch.
       Let its no

ring out to the whirling circles of snow
falling, as if “general all over Ireland,” slow,
on the grave of the boy who dies of a mutinous
heart, and the man who’s crushed
to learn he loves a woman he doesn’t know.
       Let it snow.

(first appeared in Potomac Review)


Grimm Rondeau

I bite my tongue. I’ve seen what can go wrong
when ugly words come dripping off the tongue
as poisonous as snakes and lizards from
that fairy tale. It’s better to go dumb,
to swallow what I want to say. That song

—Dad’s calling, 3 a.m.— of all that’s wrong
with me: I’m stupid, useless, fat, and going
nowhere fast, just like my mother. Um—
I bite my tongue.

I know he’s drunk and doesn’t mean the things
he says to me. So now when things go wrong
between me and my lover, I go numb.
Because I’ve been injected with words’ venom
and still remain affected by the sting,
      I bite my tongue.


(first appeared in the online journal Innisfree)

BIO: Moira Egan has an MFA from Columbia University, where James Merrill chose her manuscript for the David Craig Austin Prize. Her books include Cleave (WWPH, 2004) and La Seta della Cravatta (a bi-lingual volume, forthcoming from Edizioni L'Obliquo, Italy, 2009). Her poems have appeared in many journals and in several anthologies including Best American Poetry 2008 and Poesie per anime gemelle (Newton Compton Editori, Rome). With Damiano Abeni, she published Un mondo che non può essere migliore: Poesie scelte 1956-2007, a substantial selection of poems by John Ashbery (Sossella Editore, Italy, 2008). She lives in Rome.

TEACH THIS POEM: Sophie Hannah's "Rondeau Redouble"

Sophie Hannah's a whiz at these forms. Here's her "Rondeau Redouble"

Rondeau Redouble

Triolets Welcome Too!

One of the smallest members of the Rondeau family, the TRIOLET is welcome here too at the Rondeau Roundup.

Here's a new one:

Triolet for Gen. Ann Dunwoody

Whether you put her on the line,
she has laid down her life
and made a vow, conscious design.
Whether you put her on the line
she's come through horrors, blood, and strife:
wedded to country and to man, a double wife.
Whether you put her on the line,
she has laid down her life.

Mary Alexandra Agner

Red Carpet Rondeau

To inaugurate the Rondeau Roundup, here's one of my own, inspired by watching too many awards shows!

Red Carpet Rondeau

You wear the dress that costs a lot
so commentators call you hot.
You grin as if you’re glad to be
in a tight dress on live TV,
your face and tummy both too taut.

You pose for yet another shot,
smile big to show off all you’ve got.
The paparazzi all agree
you wear that dress

designed for you by some big shot
like you were born to it. You flaunt
and strut, afraid that you’ll be history.
If you don’t win tonight, you’re free
to be the one that everyone’s forgot.
You wear the dress.

Welcome to a blog devoted to RONDEAUS and other fantastic repeating forms!

I've started this blog to honor the RONDEAU and its related brethren: the rondel, roundel, rondolet, triolet and the rondeau redouble. I'm looking forward to reading new examples of these time-honored forms.

Why did I start this blog? There are lots of internet resources for sonnets, villanelles, sestinas and pantoums, forms which I love but will not cover here. There aren't hardly as many for the rondeau and its associated forms.

If you've written a rondeau, rondel, rondolet, triolet or rondeau redouble, send it to me for possible inclusion on this blog. Send to
rondeauroundup@gmail.com

Thanks,
Allison Joseph
Rondeau Mistress