Fall 2007

The following poem came out of Steve Arntson's class “Fixed Forms,” where Craig Franklin encountered the paradelle for the first time. Created by Billy Collins, the paradelle is intentionally absurd and meant to satirize bad formal poetry. Collins even included a fictional introduction to “Paradelle for Susan,” describing it as an old, difficult French form. Craig says that he initially decided to tackle the paradelle as a joke. “I tried to write very somber, serious sounding poetry, hoping that the grammatical contortions that followed would be amusing. To increase the fun, I added end rhymes and did my best to maintain loosely iambic pentameter lines.”

An Urban Morning in Autumn
By Craig Franklin

Wind shuffles the crisp leaves like playing cards.
Wind shuffles the crisp leaves like playing cards.
The subjects gasp at the wounded King of Hearts.
The subjects gasp at the wounded King of Hearts.
Playing wounded, the subjects of leaves, hearts gasp
like cards. The crisp king shuffles the wind.

On the road, scavenging crows outnumber cars.
On the road, scavenging crows outnumber cars.
The chill descends, and streetlights replace stars.
The chill descends, and streetlights replace stars.
Scavenging on the chill, cars replace streetlights.
Stars outnumber crows, and the road descends.

Skyscrapers leer, displaying their crystal teeth.
Skyscrapers leer, displaying their crystal teeth.
Sunlight slithers down the sky like sweat.
Sunlight slithers down the sky like sweat.
Teeth leer like the sky. Displaying sunlight, crystal
slithers. Skyscrapers sweat their down.

Scavenging the sky, the king descends.
Streetlights leer at leaves. Down the road, the sunlight
shuffles on. Skyscrapers wind the hearts
like crystal cards. The cars of gasp outnumber
teeth. The crisp crows, playing, sweat their chill
like stars. Displaying slithers wounded subjects.

Jan Bultmann says that “Last quarter every Tuesday I went straight from therapy to the Water from the Deepest Well writing class with Daniel Hintzsche at Hugo House, where we read and wrote myths and fairy tales.” The combination produced a gleefully wicked family mythology that she continues to chisel away at. “I loved working in the impersonal, eternal storyteller voice —the freedom from convincing regional or temporal details, from the need to make up names, from even trying to seem human or kind or merciful at all,” she says.

The Good Fit
By Jan Bultmann

Once in a town by the ocean loved by the sun there was a handsome young man who sparkled with charm and laughter. He was smart and capable and caring—in all ways a fine fellow, but one: he had a hole right through his middle. It was about the size of a coffee canister.

        You could look right through him and see the sky (or buildings, or viaducts, or little animals, or billboards or whatever happened to be on the other side of him from your perspective). Some people found it tempting to try to put their hand right through him, but it is said that no one ever did.

        In the same town, on a street lined with orange trees and washed by the breeze from the sea, lived a lovely young woman. She was merry and appreciative and she sang made-up songs as she worked around the house. She was a splendid soul, but she did have one difficult problem: she was very afraid.

        These two met, and fell in love. The young woman looked through the hole in the young man's center and thought gleefully, “I could fit right in there, and then I would be safe, and he would be whole!”

        And so they were married.

        The young woman popped right into the young man's center and for some time they wandered around this way in perfect harmony. Others would exclaim at what a miraculous fit they were; how they seemed made for one another.
   
        But alas, after a few winters had passed, she began to grow bored and lonely. It was dark and confined in there, for one thing, and she wanted to see more of the world, meet some people, hear some stories. She told him this, perhaps less kindly that she could have, perhaps a bit unimaginatively—at any rate, he responded with a thundering "NO!" and squeezed his center fiercely.

        After a quiet spell she began to sort of poke him and whack at him from inside. She would shriek a little too. Crazed with fear and anger and embarrassment, the young man wadded up a cloth and stuck it in her mouth. He put plugs in her ears and made her wear very heavy gloves so she couldn't use her hands.

        This put things to rights for a time, but soon enough, he started to resent carrying her around. “What use is a wife who can't say or do or hear anything?” he asked himself, aggrieved. He grew quite annoyed and insisted that she thank him every day, as best she could, for carrying her around and doing and hearing and saying everything for her.

        When he met other people in the street, he would make a great show of how heavy she was, heaving her about with quite unnecessary force; glancing at strangers and rolling his eyes to show how selfless and beleaguered he was.

        One day, she thought she would get back at him. She began to eat and eat. She stopped even trying to hear, or speak or use her hands at all; she just ate and ate and got heavier and bulkier and more cumbersome to carry around.

        “She likes her victuals, this one!” The man would tell people in the street, or, “Got a lot of avoirdupois, we do,” and shrug helplessly, as if to indicate, “What can you do?”

        He became so worn down and exhausted by saying and doing and hearing everything for her, not to mention just carrying her around, that he died.

        She rolled out of him at last, and sighed a little and stretched. She put on a show of grief for the people, but after the rituals were done, she took a deep breath and removed her gloves, her earplugs and her gag.

        Alas, in all the intervening years, her hands had shrunk up into little wormy things, and her ears had gone to sleep, and her tongue had got stuck to the roof of her mouth. There was no moving it.

        She died a few weeks after he did, and they were reunited in the afterlife, where they greeted one another with gratitude and relief and assumed their previous positions for eternity.