Four Poems (and an Announcement)

Hello friends,

KNIT INK (AND OTHER POEMS) — an omnibus edition featuring my books STRAY ARTS, SLATE PETALS, THE UTU SONNETS, and THE NOSON SONNETS — was officially published last Tuesday! This 360-page book presents a project more than ten years in the making, featuring all kinds of experiments in formal and highly constrained poetry. Many thanks to my publisher, Deep Vellum! The book can be purchased here.

Here are four poems from the collection:

MOON SONNET

The Moon,
despite
its white
lagoon,
has strewn
tonight
blue light,
maroon
by dawn
and lost
to sun —
withdrawn,
like frost
unspun.

---

ANAGRAM-TRIOLET FOR SHELLEY
 
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings.
A knife, I kiss my sand, my gazing moon.
My sky moans ink, so fazed, imagining
my name.... Is Ozymandias king of kings?
“An oak-size infamy!” my kingdom sings.
A sinking sky my maze, I’m fading soon —
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings.
A knife, I kiss my sand, my gazing moon.

---

ZEUS AND OLYMPUS (Palindrome)

So:
Ah, Cronus!
We name open Olympus—aware still a deity rots onsite.
My Mnemosyne! Go next, far. Cognise. Resume:
No Muses lessen a Titan—a Titaness—else sum one Muse.
Resin, go craft xenogeny, so men.
My Metis: no story tied all.
Its era was up—
my lone poem a new sun
or Chaos.

---

And finally, an “aelindrome”.

The aelindrome is a form of “meta-palindrome” that orders its letters according to a premeditated numerical sequence (that is, according to a numerical palindrome).

For example, the line “Melody: a bloody elm” is an aelindrome structured by the palindromic sequence 1234321:

[M]1—[el]2—[ody]3—[a blo]4—[ody]3—[el]2—[m]1

By convention, “Melody: a bloody elm” is said to be an “aelindrome in 1234” — since after 4 the numbers reverse back to 1.

The aelindrome in this video is aelindromic in the first twenty digits of the golden ratio: 16180339887498948482. Thus, the palindromic sequence underpinning it is 16180339887498948482(8484989478893309161).

You can hear me reading this poem on YouTube!

RATIO (Aelindrome in φ)
16180339887498948482
 
Old, rational ways gleam
pictures I coil and frame
in detained
theorems
and in the new score.
 
In space,
read the worth;
read vines now as lines.
 
Now a sad view or thread,
thin space renews cores
and,
in the ore, mined.
 
Theme in detail
and fractures, I compile
an always-gold ratio....