Birth Marriage Death

I imagine every poet has been asked to write a poem for a special occasion. When that happens, I do my best, deciding between free verse or a form like the sonnet or ghazal. I did write an ode to my hometown once, and it’s celebratory because that was the assignment. Was I inspired? I’m not a fan of that word, anyway. I don’t wait around for Inspiration to show up and sprinkle enchanted glitter on me. I sit down and go to work.

For the record, here are a few pretty well-known occasional poems: Amanda Gorman’s “The Hill We Climb,” written for Obama’s Presidential inauguration. “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Tennyson commemorating the tragic Battle of Balaclava. And a gorgeous lament by Auden used as a commemorative elegy -- “Funeral Blues.” If you liked the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral, you heard it there.

My poem today is about the occasional poem. It is not itself an occasional poem. It’s about the occasional poem.

The Occasional Poem

Recently I wrote “I Buy Myself a Shirt” and “On Getting

Out of Bed.” That’s why it’s so great to be a poet today:

Basically I’m self-employed with nobody to please but myself.

In the past, there was a court poet. He got out of bed, too,

and probably put on a shirt, but he couldn’t write about that.

His subjects were momentous: marriage, birth, death.

Take a royal wedding, for example. There sat the king

horny and bored, stuffed with peacock and swan. The poem

had to be perfect – part epithalamion, part bawdy limerick.

And nine months later, a poem on birth. For an heir,

an eclogue in Virgilian hexameters with references to

a golden age. For a girl, well – something pretty.

A song of praise but tempered with regret.

When it came to death, a lingering illness helped. Time

to strike just the right note. Black-clad parishioners

should nod and weep silently. The meter should match

the tolling of the bells.

Sudden death was the worst. News brought by horseback.

The messenger pacing in the courtyard, children shrieking

and taunting each other while upstairs the poet mutters

and chews his quill.

Clearly occasional poems are written for occasions and on demand. They are not poems written occasionally in the sense of now-and-then.

My poem today is if not long, then long-ish. Six stanzas can be a lot if the poem maunders. Readers give up, and that’s the last thing any writer wants.Let’s see what I did to keep that from happening:

In stanza #1 I set the tone – easy-going and light-hearted.

#2 ushers Readers into the past.

#3 as in an essay, gives examples and the middle line is meant to propel the Reader onward with its unpredictable adjectives and nouns.

#4 reminds everyone of how things were in the past as far as gender parity is concerned.

#5 adds a poetry-lesson when “deliberate meter” comes in. And “the tolling of the bells” is three iambic feet.

Finally I end with a photo of a court poet (what Robert Frost called “a tame poet”) working under duress.

* * *

P.S. One of the most charming poems I’ve read recently was written by an eleven year old boy: “On Liking Lynne A Lot”

Ah, falling in love. Always an occasion worth celebrating!