stonepicnicking_okapi

One of the themes this month's poetry postings has been 'poems about poems.' And finding collections which are rich in poems that speak to me. The last of the poems from A Poem of Her Own: Voices of American Women Yesterday and Today edited by Catherine Clinton is by Marianne Moore. DW doesn't do service to the shape of the stanzas which cascade like stairs.

I have been listening to a lot of audiobooks on Youtube and some of them start off with this phrase 'The moral right of the author has been asserted.' And the phrase stuck with me, so I wanted to write a poem (a villanelle, one of my favourite forms) using that phrase.

Poetry by Marianne Moore

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond
all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

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asserted by okapi

in form mutilated or in spirit converted,
this verse—though terse or worse, hapless, hopeless—must not be.
the moral right of the poet has been asserted

but once out of hands, it stands to be changed, perverted,
beyond recall, recoil to sanctity, living free
in form mutilated or in spirit converted

despite lightning storm, kite string is drawn in, reverted
to type, cutting the hand which fed it glass, alas, the,
the moral right of the poet has been asserted

once cut and plastered, faster and faster, it’s flirted
with, and with disaster, most disconcertingly
in form mutilated or in spirit converted

but muse will choose which words are snagged and which are skirted
that’s everywhere, whether in the air or privately
the moral right of the poet has been asserted

that which inspires lights fires, and when warmth had deserted,
the poet’s rage turns to sobs, for all who care to to see,
in form mutilated, or in spirit converted,
the moral right of the poet has been asserted