Sometimes when bereft I’d love a snail
Though it might wet my bed with silvery trails
Would snails be lonely living in my house?
Shall I be but fit to love one louse?
I hugged a rowan tree but now it’s dead
The council said they’ll give me oak instead
It stood upon the pavement by the gate
But now it is what McCall Smith calls “late”
I wonder if self massage’s the thing
Some perfumed lotion stolen on the wing.
I stroked my arms with Cream E45
Now they say I’m not allowed to drive!
I was sad but now I am at peace
All I needed was some eggs in grease.
A man whose face was smiling in repose
His eyes gleamed with the lustre of a gem
He never said too much but had his woes
Carried with a good will, and great aplomb
Like the lights where people cross the road
He had a face that smiled in kindness sweet
He never said too much, he hid his woes
Despite his age he still had both his feet
Like a poem has metre,has a beat
Like the lights where people cross the road
Signals make us sensible when fleet
He never said but knew how gnosis grows
His company is kind and never awes
As a poem has metre,has a beat
He cannot tolerate my jangled flaws
Symbols that insinuate deceit
He never entered College can he read?
His company is kind,no stasis glares
Never would he plead for my defeat
He cannot bring his custom to my flaws.
And so he is an instrument quite rare.
Who will not snoop nor wander with wide ears
Alive but cause unknown
A good talk cured this patient.Sent home with CD
Alive or a good actress.
Alive despite treatment.
Alive though humourless
Died laughing,cause unfound.Maybe doctors’s face triggered fit
Alive after eating the hospital food for a week.Sent home to lower risk
Said pain has moved to the third level.Sent to the Tower by lift
The sleeveless coat is wet and so am I
What made me buy such foolish,fashion garb?
Rain struck like sad lizards with bad eyes
From their poisoned blood some women die
Life in third world countries is damned hard
The sleeveless coat is wet, oh foolish I
But with the fire as hot as a Trump lie
My clothes have dried and I send my regards
Though rain fell like old lizards with bad eyes
The Walk In Centre is a blessing undenied
From my sofa I can watch the cars
The fire is warming me as burn Trump’s lies
I wonder if the doctors may be spies
Yet nothing I reported needs a guard
As rain fell like wild lizards bloodied eyes
If you dislike this, you may discard
And, on your mobile phone, block me,your bard
The sleeveless coat is wet and so am I
Rain flayed like hot lizards with bad eyes
The pantoum originated in Malaysia in the fifteenth-century as a short folk poem, typically made up of two rhyming couplets that were recited or sung. However, as the pantoum spread, and Western writers altered and adapted the form, the importance of rhyming and brevity diminished. The modern pantoum is a poem of any length, composed of four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza serve as the first and third lines of the next stanza. The last line of a pantoum is often the same as the first.
The pantoum was especially popular with French and British writers in the nineteenth-century, including Charles Baudelaire and Victor Hugo, who is credited with introducing the form to European writers. The pantoum gained popularity among contemporary American writers such as Anne Waldman and Donald Justice after John Ashbery published the form in his 1956 book, Some Trees.
A good example of the pantoum is Carolyn Kizer’s “Parent’s Pantoum,” the first three stanzas of which are excerpted here:
Where did these enormous children come from,
More ladylike than we have ever been?
Some of ours look older than we feel.
How did they appear in their long dresses
More ladylike than we have ever been?
But they moan about their aging more than we do,
In their fragile heels and long black dresses.
They say they admire our youthful spontaneity.
They moan about their aging more than we do,
A somber group—why don’t they brighten up?
Though they say they admire our youthful spontaneity
They beg us to be dignified like them
One exciting aspect of the pantoum is its subtle shifts in meaning that can occur as repeated phrases are revised with different punctuation and thereby given a new context
In fiction, character is (almost) everything. We discuss “the elements of craft” – characterisation, plot, point of view, dialogue, detail, setting, style, and so forth – as if they were separable, as if you could disentangle them one from another. You can’t, of course; but when you filter almost all things through the specificities of character, many questions resolve themselves, almost miraculously.
Each of us is, in any given moment, the sum total of our temperament and experiences up to that point. Our baggage and idiosyncrasies may be suggested in our appearance; but much is invisible to the world. We all know that if there are three people in a room, each will tell a different story about what happened there – so character determines the story itself. But it also determines what will unfold – the plot.
As a writer, when you create a character, you don’t simply create his exterior (the wispy goatee, the receding hairline, the Liberty print shirt and expensive loafers); you must also come to know who he is (bullied in school, uneasy in friendships, veering between eager to please and cruel; vain but pretending not to be), and what has formed him (a Catholic school in the Sydney suburbs? A comprehensive in Exeter? Born with a silver spoon; or things started off comfortably, but his father’s business failed when he was 11? Raised in the shadow of three older siblings? Or alone with a single mum?). You must know his passions (loves pugs? Bicycle racing? First world war history? Talmudic study?) and his fears.
Once you know this person as well as you know yourself (or better), and once you put him, or her, in a particular place in a particular time, your character can only really act (or react) in a limited number of ways. He will notice only certain things, and those things only from a particular perspective; he will interact with others as only he can. If you’re using the first person, or the third person privileging this character, your diction and syntax – your very writing style – will be shaped by this person.
So much about a character is invisible, in fiction as in real life; but what lies beneath the surface will affect every aspect of your story. If you really take the time to figure out who you’re dealing with, much will become clear.
• Claire Messud is a senior lecturer in creative writing at Harvard
How my heart sings 