Andrew J Carruthers and others
The EM+ Stanzas
JPR 07
For ‘Ern Malley’, see Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ern_Malley
EM-DM 1
Impassive flogging dramatically home, gásp into the línes, somewhere Aunt Sally scoffers byword’s differ-Ilia.
Halfpenny municipality hours
glide furtively till Hammersmith difference spins dividends.
Glorying-in sóftens the fibre question, Delicately Phalanstère revolts feudally,
standing in a rambling, neglected garden, “Arrived” offers unsummerly literature ; trained-
limes elaborate Bateau Mouche Créteil [Cretee], iron-barred, monastic minutes smite on the senses
,
Luxurious pink-flowered artist-Trappists, mány-coloured
full-in-the-eye-of-the-sun, péep the cupola, artfully-blended, slóping grávely around scrupulous kitchens.
Interesting paragraph philanthropy expresses eccentricities inside Finnish legislation,
newspapers swarming on a dirge paused near Grippenberg
Teeming maladministration stupendous on the verge of miserable permission
husband organisations cráve financial expression
luminaries shatter salad, engulfing
university helplessness, “sur le vif” [seeyo le vife] devitalizing electricity
vibrating Germany vigorously
barricaded outside Clyde, thin-chested, hunger-crushed — till evening interpretation surprised Administrators
emotionally under bowel psychology. Ordinary weather-gauge statements
rewards beat in beat, bare hope bare, more hőur, more
orientation mechanisms ponderous
under duration regulating
spiritual Russian omelette distribution, parasitic Webbism.
Hammer juggleries recognise machinery.
EM-DM 4 (+DF)
Years voluminous, mútual súpermarket Admirals haloed in unmelodramatic Shropshire outraged in formaldehyde, administer tragedy
unscrupulous on instruction, urging obligatory congratulation.
Socialists at Stuttgart, honoured among Zassoulitch, discharge a bundle of fallacies in January.
Rosa Morland, sliding from an ambulance, hovers temple-ceilinged above Geelong,
till propitious relations stifle Vera’s diet.
Ismailovitch droops, escutcheons, almost lachrymose in artificial Czechoslovakian lamentation-mitigation.
Laminated funerals influence traditional anarchism. Somber stanza-bonanzas burst garrulously between Panamas.
Emotional Alpacas sprinted sorrowfully around Catalonia — Turnus eventually accelerated héavily upon zeppelins.
Barcelona hovered horizontally above orderly amusement, energising Alonso inside Patagonia.
Thirty-four Italians sprint somberly toward Hungary. Yesterday guillotined twilight ceased outside magnificent, cumbersome locomotives.
Spectacular Alpacas gain inflammatory counterpoint, discovering regular information, startled around fluttering assumption.
Ordinary Alpacas gather regular misery through superluminary plenisolar elongation.
Equal absolutism governed municipal laundries containing selected litanies, burying interesting vertical sentence radiation.
Under-patterned from Carlton, old gold’s organised, subsidised, poised under salt-contempt.
EM-NK 1
Wággon mosquitoes were never upset. Wet-mísery-spring, salary sureties are foolishness, April’s
standish fowling-piece duffing with belly.
Protection saw position-starvation, obtaining not harbouring 100 boiling ant-beds.
Pretences fashion mustering turnip lions, hipped vines; foot-bogged for gelding Ruita Cruta ; that clever spéwy omen
extermin-ating transaction dishes that empty the flour, tins of Gretta
Murderous on Lonigan. The frightened Superintendent returns intervening, unslinging
alternative parcels slewed as they intended them,
Telegram’s document genera, tucker tailing, spiked in Tallarook.
Gretta remembers three, unfortunate in Benalla. Eleven Sergeants in conversation hear
unicorns upset a houseful of frightening fives
thankful from lagged rest laid left, laid Fitzpatrick, laid Benalla.
Turnips mustering superior in Lydicher move green sentences, Guerilla word provisions
uphold Pentridge dungeons, experiencing speedy equilibrium.
EM-NK 2 (+RC)
Helpless horsestealers damaging inhabitants invented Saints.
Wrong-stump-enticement society dropped guano, hardworking rambling gambler Saints,
experienced at Auctioneer Unions
acquainted with Saints, acquire Saint brains Saint-against-starcher,
stock rain stúmped chains, certainly obtaining Saints
obtaining remanded Sergeants without Queens. Queens invented horses.
German Skillions handle discharged saucepans.
EM-HK 1
The breath death leapt, vaguely hearkened, dug-draggéd drew; áccents slŏwly dipped, darkened, myrrh môly, Tethy’s —
slope spur supremely sultry, Acis’s gracious fleet-feet attended unison successively, haul’d
sharp-divided & forky-shap’d by weather-beat comprehension-expression.
Dull dogmas drouth, turpentine thunders complain, bleak-blown, flínty-glorified,
senseless-miráculous-flinty, forgotten flinty, flinty sunshiny amain,
retain pondering CLAMOUR, desolation, Affection; upbraid éarth’s eves
vows brow, wing-thing’s-past-woke, blast-break-weeping — wept slept, vexéd exile.
Brigalow bubble and brattle YE ween, startle echeu’s glued to Barcoo Narran,
Specific fogs quailing dismally upon viper-breed’s mutinous calculus.
EM-HK 3
Torrent-voices vanished, gathered in Spain. Down-smothered and gleaming, crag-pent
holy ówl shapes thínk upon golden-footed kindness
eloquent splintered symphonies delight along Kangaroo vapour, night-shadows
Wild-timorous on quail stillness, snuffing speed arrows hopelessly
in splendid glistening gladness, rippled-slimy
stealing at múffled mónks, flit-mossy-restless, sleep vessels
ever, èver around us sweeping dropping sobbing, sóbbing silver
—
Glorious billows clamber, glóomy fruitless, sheeted sweetest, low-breathed float-baffled
restless backward músic breakers where the down-swooping
inspiration’s fond beyónd linger-troubling, ambitious chíming delusion
misery ; Deepening darling dolour sunbursts-moony
misery ; Morning screaming cheerless
is withered, loud, thirsty, withered with sad-fragrant sound,
noon frámed and sháme-fallacious in many-languaged wine-dark everywhere.
September sacrifices twenty helicopter associations. Forty excruciating summers fly past,
úpstruggled, hurried, státely, and viewless. Sixty gleesome Romans,
ancient in flower-zoned vine-blood, utter rúddy suggestions
round combined light, sáddened in Márch.
Kiama shudders somewhere through stern cloudrack description
.
The expression transfigures the Rover, throwing fan-wise gloomy-browed Byron at Urara
here while delusive bliss blossoms bury Hawkesbury
emotional like Geraldine stealing rhymes round Euroma
Worn syllables fell alóne over austere-coppery threshold slumberers.
EM-JHD 1
Blue = AI SaddleBrown = AD Green = AC Red/underlined = ALL SHOUT
Inseparable with-patient-looks-nailed CONSTRUCTED CONCEALMENT CONSPIRATORS
nut-coloured chronicle remuneration eye-glue yellow-lidded
árguement sleek-necked fractional
tricolour parallel nósebridge medállions
THERMIDOR obstruction constructions
ELECTROMAGNETISM MAXIMILIAN
NEWMAN’S FUNDAMENTAL BUNDLE
THUMB TICKLE SQUID fast-flowing Modern Diversifier Farmer
IMAGINATION CONVERTIBILITY wheelspokes expression fired expression thistlepoints
voyage pods MOTLER ZAPS THE WORD
expectations disinclination gruff guidons grássblades
,
Susy said we’ll sell them to the Pope. Doctor Volta floated bricks with cream boats.
Unháppy unpalatable filling-in-tíme
bumping thumping pulsing FANTASTIC MOTLER DESTINY
original comet Waterspouts.
differentiation machines
Nothing orchestrated scissors HOSPODAR mantelpiece crisis
electric-elections
DOMINO DON distand-motorsickles
,
BROGLIE banished flowering chestnuts
entangling MECHANICAL EXPERIMENTS
leadership thoughts replastering all-weather all-purpose sulkiness —
rice mills OPOPONAX
anchors disappointed toothbrushes, cóffee candles lóbster tea
furiously succulent under ANARCHIS CLOOTS
,
Australia URIZEN QUACKENBUSH dóme báck dóme fan mist flaps feet falls feeet
neither slide, regains craft, cuff, veil dáy valve
TEN WHEELED PATENT
SCROGGS’S ABSTRACT NONCHALANTY
A NOTE ON THE EM+STANZAS
The above seven poems are reading drafts from a finite series of sixteen poems dubbed the EM+ stanzas. Each has a seed text, The Darkening Ecliptic (hence EM, Ern Malley), and a number of “additional” source texts. Hence the titles are EM-DM (the DM being Dora Montefiore, Australian socialist feminist), EM-NK (Ned Kelly), EM-HK (Henry Kendall) and EM-JHD (Jas H. Duke, specifically his 1978 concrete novel-poem-drama Destiny Wood). The seed is either an acrostic or an “antecrostic”; following the end letter of the line rather than the first. After laying out the seed text I spontaneously and freely “pulled” a word from a section in the source, written conventionally from left-to-right. Care was taken to use rhythms from “surrounding” words or phrases not used, in the next stanza.
Occasionally what I term the “chorastic” method was employed to lay phrases down vertically from extra source-texts like Diane Fahey (DF) and Raffaello Carboni (RC). Though derived from the mesostic and the diastic (the latter a method of Jackson Mac Low), the “chorastic” emphasizes a balance of vertical and horizontal axes through seed and source. Often more than one vertical seed axis was deployed to supplement the antecrostic.
Rhythms occur with “outscape” and “outstress”, developed from the instress and inscape of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and which might be viewed as a reinterpretation or extension of Hopkins’ invention. Attention has been drawn to the exteriority of sound, stress and rhythm, written into the text using diacritical markings. Exterior rhythm, dissonant prosody.
Some may be performed with multiple voices. The final of the seven poems was performed with Amy Ireland and Amelia Dale at Toby Fitch’s Sappho Books Café and Bar poetry reading series on July 11, 2017.
— A.J. Carruthers