February 2021
Tad Richards
tad@tadrichards.com
Author's Note: The Aragon is the most difficult form I have ever attempted to write in, and I've only managed to complete one poem in it. It’s a form invented by the French surrealist Louis Aragon to keep his mind occupied while hiding from the Nazis in occupied France during WWII. It’s a poem that can be read either as stanzas of six tetrameter lines or four hexameter lines, which will rhyme perfectly either way.

Sometimes you need a few tries to find your way into a poem. Maybe you start it as free verse, and it feels all over the place, so you try to find a form for it, and maybe that will pull it together. Maybe you start it as a formal poem, but that’s too stifling, and you try it again to see what happens if you loosen it up. If you’re lucky, you’ll find a way that works. “The Woods,” unusually, seemed to work equally, or fail equally, two different ways: as a five/four, a syllabic form of my own invention, or as a sonnet.

So that’s what I’m up to. It keeps me off the streets.

Manichean Aragon

The metaphysicals delight
In abstract thought; the hedonists
Prefer the solid thwack! of lust.
They’ll find their way wherever trysts
Are free or bought. They claim that right
Inviolate. They won’t adjust.

Can there be compromise? We ought
To end the fight, to live in trust,
Remember that the mind exists
To filter pleasure as we must.
And yet it might be all for naught:
Perhaps we all are masochists.

* * * 

The metaphysicals delight in abstract thought;
The hedonists prefer the solid thwack! of lust.
They’ll find their way wherever trysts are free or bought.
They claim that right inviolate. They won’t adjust.

Can there be compromise? We ought to end the fight,
To live in trust, remember that the mind exists
To filter pleasure as we must. And yet it might
Be all for naught: perhaps we all are masochists.

The Wood, Version 1

Kurosawa
dreamed of a wedding
of foxes
the boy who watched
and was caught out
could never return home
and even
little teddy bears
are dangerous
if you interrupt
their picnic
don’t go to the woods
and best not to
stay at home either
no safer
your cat has designs
on your parakeet
and don’t get
me started on humans
they want that sex stuff
and even worse
if they don’t
best to ride the subway
pack some sandwiches
and a thermos

The Wood, Version 2

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But bears are out there with their mamas,
And Kurosawa's foxes keep
Their watch for boys in striped pajamas,
Or little girls in riding hoods--
It seems they too can be misled.
Be careful with your worldly goods,
You're better off at home in bed.
But even that's no place to hide.
For sure someone will want your sex
Or withhold theirs. Perhaps it’s time
To hit the underground and ride
To where the IRT connects
To Coney Island of the mind.
©2021 Tad Richards
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