A to the B to the B to the A

I tried to tighten up my ABBA poem
but I’m not sure if the 10-syllable per line version works as well.
Can anyone offer feedback?

Glimmerings of ABBA

Fantasy turned blonde in ‘seventy-six.
Bjorn, Benny and the flickas ruled the West.
Santa Lucia never shone so blessed
as she did in my private Euro-mix.
Perfect pop longs for that feminine fix.
Cassette wheels whirred – branding, then impressing
grooves upon the brain; my thrall confessing
love for Nordic light (in Disco metrics).
The names still strike flames, kindling bright renown:
I Do… (times five – and will forevermore).
Those Viking voices sacked my harbor town.
Frida, Agnetha – your longships linger
portaging hope to this shipwrecked singer,
enwreathing smiles to reach our further shore.

[original version):

Emerging global fantasies turned blonde for me in ‘seventy-six.
Bjorn, Benny and the flickas sailed the radio waves from East to West.
Santa Lucia’s crowning princess never shone so blessed
on midnight pines as she did in my private Eurovision-mix.
Perfect pop intensifies the longing for that feminine fix.
Cassette wheels whirred – first branding, finally impressing
deep grooves upon the brain; my pre-pubescent thrall confessing
helpless love for Nordic light (in thumping Disco metrics).
The names still hum, strike flames, kindle bright renown:
Bang a Boomerang, SOS, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do (and will forevermore).
Those Viking visages sacked and razed my little harbor town.
Frida Lyngstad, Agnetha Fältskog – your longships linger
syllables flicker, portaging hope to every shipwrecked singer
Enwreathing smiles in evergreens to reach our further shore.

Thank Diversity

Nov28

Nobody but America celebrates Thanksgiving. It is reserved by history and the intent of “the founders” as the supremely white American holiday, the most ghoulish event on the national calendar. No Halloween of the imagination can rival the exterminationist reality that was the genesis, and remains the legacy, of the American Thanksgiving. It is the most loathsome, humanity-insulting day of the year – a pure glorification of racist barbarity. White America embraced Thanksgiving because a majority of that population glories in the fruits, if not the unpleasant details, of genocide and slavery and feels, on the whole, good about their heritage: a cornucopia of privilege and national power. Children are taught to identify with the good fortune of the Pilgrims. It does not much matter that the Native American and African holocausts that flowed from the feast at Plymouth are hidden from the children’s version of the story – kids learn soon enough that Indians were made scarce and Africans became enslaved.

Text & Image Credit: THE PEOPLES CUBE

Auspicious Simultaneity: Holiday Potentiation

Nov27

Plymouth Rocks!

We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing;
He chastens and hastens His will to make known.
The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing.
Sing praises to His Name; He forgets not His own.

How to post something about Chanukah as well as Thanksgiving without going into cultural dissonance? Is it portentous or auspicious that they fall on the same day this year? What, in God’s name, does it all mean? I met someone recently who told me it meant people were going to find redemption…

I certainly hope he is right.

Θεοφάνεια

Sing, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel;
be glad and rejoice with all the heart,
O daughter of Jerusalem.
The Lord hath taken away thy judgments,
he hath cast out thine enemy:
the king of Israel, even the Lord, is in the midst of thee:
thou shalt not see evil any more.

A Limp and Fangless Thing

Nov22

There are about six people who buy new poetry, but they are not feeling very well. I bumped very lightly into one of them while walking down the sidewalk, and for a while I was terrified that I would have to write to eleven MFA programs explaining why everyone was going to have to apply for grants that year. The last time I stumbled upon a poetry reading, the attendees were almost without exception students of the poet who were there in the hopes of extra credit. One of the poems, if memory serves, consisted of a list of names of Supreme Court justices. I am not saying that it was a bad poem. It was a good poem, within the constraints of what poetry means now. But I think what we mean by poetry is a limp and fangless thing.