Three Anagram-Poems

Hello friends,

Three anagram-poems this week. Enjoy! (And if you do, please consider supporting my work by purchasing either my omnibus edition Knit Ink (and Other Poems) or something from my store.)

Alternatively, buy me a coffee on Ko-Fi!

This first poem is a perfect anagram of William Carlos Williams’ poem This Is Just to Say:

THIS STATUS IS JOY

I have confused 
the letters 
that were in 
the poem 

and which 
you were busily
scribbling 
for a book 

Forgive me 
they were a pale view 
so sad 
and so exact

---

The following poem permutes the same set of twenty letters:

TWENTY LETTERS

In these twenty letters,
we try ten lines. The test
set, we tether sly intent.
We net the stint tersely.
We intently test ethers.
We try the silent tenets—
try the new, tense titles.
Written, the steely nest
settles twenty therein.
We enter its tenth style.

---

This poem is a sestina , in iambic pentameter, composed of perfectly anagrammed lines:

ANAGRAM-SESTINA FOR PABLO PICASSO
 
The cubists paint the looming astral plane,
a torn plateau. Pale nothing stitches limbs
to planate space — to slash light, burn in time
the regal plans that motions built in space;
that multiple abstraction, song-line, shape;
that tragic spine: the point man labels “soul”.
 
A primal tone can light, best paints, the soul;
its shape this late, but long, romantic plane.
In mottling blue, Picasso learnt that shape.
In rose, the taut pleats hang Platonic limbs —
a blatant premise, thought on, in still space,
as points to help glance basal Truth in time.
 
A paintbrush calls! The angle points to time.
Grant main the plane! A bottle chips its soul....
So, halt that trouble planning: time is space;
all things abrupt to that one seismic plane;
all separate paths one night, cut into limbs;
one mulish, abstract glint: potential shape.
 
In Guernica’s still lamp, that too-bent shape,
a battle haunts horse-clapping lost in time;
then, too-tall paper statues, chaining limbs,
collapse in threatening baptism. That soul,
that battle springs malicious on the plane;
its night-lamp boils to haunt eternal space.
 
All bites, the Minotaur tonight plans space:
The beast, pulling a cart, its moon-lint shape
about to slip, retains the night’s calm plane.
Then, bathers lag: Points pull a coast in time;
that beach a still appointment, Ingres’ soul —
that posture, at pastiche, in long, lean limbs.
 
Atop Truth, painting, clothe an easel’s limbs....
Blot rain. Thin pigments lust to heal a space.
Plain talent meant the bright Picasso soul
(to mull) a plastic Einstein: both grant shape
to change, to lanterns, publish spatial time;
both aim at — sculpt their song — a silent plane.
 
Can’t night, our limbs — a palette lost in shape —
repaint that song in space? Lull, as both time,
soul, marble this, the poignant, static plane?