Volume 118 Summer/Fall 2023 Guest Editor’s Note

Poetry and Music

Many years ago, I learned that the song “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” by The Beatles has a refrain written in a dactyl meter, and I’ve never forgotten it. I use it whenever I get a chance to teach about poetic meter and sound. One could wonder why a poet would choose the limits of a traditional form amid “a moment of unprecedented expansion” (1) for creative expression. These limits, on the other hand, have the potential to safeguard history by emulating the oral tradition that gave rise to poetry. Simultaneously, forms preserve a people’s history and the history of the forms.

This folio contains Rebecca Maker’s sonnet “Found Solace.” Maker’s sonnet begins with a memory she “knows by heart” to establish the poem’s emotional and physical landscape. The memories are “etched-in.” The sonnet resolves as it engages the natural world with a sense of wonder. Maker writes:

Traditional forms ask a poet to consider each word and line carefully and experiment with new ways to convey material within a predetermined pattern. Forms such as the sonnet, pantoum, and sestina may seem anachronistic in the ever-changing world of artistic expression. Regardless, these forms have served as the foundation for many literary masterpieces.

While contemporary poetry provides more creative flexibility, the struggle of adhering to traditional forms’ rigid constraints remains enticing. A 2021 study of poetic forms in South Asian Popular Culture includes a comparison of the sestina to a “cave of echoes” (2). This metaphor underlines the sestina’s complex nature, in which words echo off cave walls throughout the poem. The echoes of a sestina can function as uncanny resonances of history and memory.

Another poem in this folio is Aiden Heung’s sestina, “Tea Ceremony,” which has stayed with me for months. The Sestina is a medieval French form that emerged during the Middle Ages. It consists of six six-line stanzas followed by a three-line stanza known as an “envoi” or “tercet.”

The Sestina’s defining pattern is set at the end of the lines of the first stanza. Those words are repeated in a specific pattern across the subsequent stanzas, creating a sense of recurrence—an echo throughout the poem. It is a contemplative form.

“Lupine Nocturne” by Elise Paschen is a pantoum, a French form. The pantun originated in the Malaya Archipelago (now Malaysia and Indonesia). This poem follows the lupine as it expands and takes over the landscape. The pantoum’s repetition blurs day and night, producing tension, with images vying for attention. Paschen writes:

Each quatrain has four lines, and the second and fourth lines of each are used as the first and third lines of the following quatrain. The interconnected lines express continuity, recurrence, and cyclical motion.

Traditional forms serve as an anchor and compass in our changing world, guiding us through the dimensions of literary expression. Storytelling fulfills the poetic function of communication (3), and I hope you return to these poems to find your own style of music.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank everyone who contributed work to the editors, as well as the contributors who made this folio possible. Your dedication and enthusiasm were vital in bringing these poetry forms to life. I am glad for the opportunity to have worked with such lovely people. Thank you for your unwavering commitment to the art of poetry and for ensuring that its legacy inspires future generations.

-Ruben Quesada

Notes:

1. [Dana Gioia. (1992). Can Poetry Have an Impact? Graywolf Press.]
2. [Venkateswaran, P. (2021)., South Asian Popular Culture, 19(1).]
3. Waugh, Linda R. “The Poetic Function in the Theory of Roman Jakobson.” Poetics Today, vol. 2, no. 1a, 1980, pp. 57–82. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1772352.