Deck the Halls; Two Sided Tag, Collage, Mixed Media
~~~
O
fury-
bedecked!
O glitter-torn!
Let the wild wind erect
bonbonbonanzas; junipers affect
frostyfreeze turbans; iciclestuff adorn
all cuckolded creation in a madcap crown of horn!
It’s a new day; no scapegrace of a sect
tidying up the ashtrays playing Daughter-in-Law Elect;
bells! bibelots! popsicle cigars! shatter the glassware! a son born
now
now
while ox and ass and infant lie
together as poor creatures will
and tears of her exertion still
cling in the spent girl’s eye
and a great firework in the sky
drifts to the western hill.
Sonnet in the Shape of a Potted Christmas Tree by George Starbuck
George Starbuck (1931-1996) was an American poet of the neo-formalist school. His work is marked by clever rhymes, witty asides, and the fusing of Romantic themes with cynicism towards modern life. Starbuck called his style of formalism SLABS, for Standard Length And Breadth Sonnets. He was not widely appreciated by mainstream culture during his lifetime, but in the few years since his death his work has earned favor from both literary critics and casual readers of poetry.
“Starbuck wasn’t a marginal figure during his lifetime. A Yale Younger Poet while still in his 20s, he went on to win the Lenore Marshall prize and direct the creative writing program at the University of Iowa. And he enjoyed a certain credibility among poets across the stylistic spectrum, having shown a mastery of both traditional forms (such as the sonnet) and their subversion (the space-saver sonnet), as well as a general respect for experiment. But the poetry world didn’t know what to do with him. His idiosyncrasies made him difficult to categorize and impossible to imitate. He worked extensively in forms that aren’t currently fashionable and some that may never be. Though he studied under Robert Lowell in the now-legendary Boston University workshop that included Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, the years have been kinder to their confessional explorations than to his concrete poems and clerihews…” (Read more at Slate)
Deck the Halls; Two Sided Tag, Collage, Mixed Media. Purchase.
