Villanelle for Minnie Imber, by Hank Kalet

Here is a revision of a first villanelle, the French form that had been used primarily for bawdy lyrics but that had been made famous as a more solemn poetic structure by Dylan Thomas and Elizabeth Bishop. This particular villanelle has undergone significant revision -- this is the 11th version of the poem.

VILLANELLE FOR MINNIE IMBER
for my grandmother, 1905-1986

By Hank Kalet

She leaves the house, wanders the city
alone on a grid with now unfamiliar lines,
her mind untroubled, lacking clarity,

lost in headlights, streetlamps, whir of packed jitneys
that run down a street she’d walked so many times.
She leaves the house, wanders a city

of chattered English now foreign as she
fades back to girl’s shtetl Yiddish, her mind
splicing frames out of sequence, without clarity,

calling to long-dead mother, vacant and empty
in the cold dead space behind her eyes.
As she leaves home, wanders alone in the city,

damned by grainy scenes to obscurity,
decades of images, cutting from shot to shot,
her mind untroubled, lacking clarity,

as the film reel flickers, snaps, is spliced, turns gritty,
frame by frame, leaning into the stuttering light.
She leaves the house, wanders alone in the city,
unmoored mind drifting, lacking of clarity.

First try at a villanelle

This is my first attempt at a villanelle. I'm not sure what I think of it.

VILLANELLE
by Hank Kalet

Her mind untroubled by a lack of clarity,
memory decayed, sputtering in a buzz like
radio static that damns a song to obscurity.

She'd leave the house, wander alone in the city
on streets unknown to her brittle, fragmented psyche,
her mind untroubled by a lack of clarity,

echoed noise, nothing approaching lucidity,
a fog of vague images and sound and such, like
radio static that damns the song to obscurity.

muffled tones, a dress she recalls as so pretty
she refused to take it off, thoughts jumbled in time,
her mind untroubled by a lack of clarity,

dense calls to long-dead lovers; I have to pity
the emptiness and cold white noise in her eyes, like
radio static that damns a song to obscurity.

Film reel sputters, flickers, snaps, gets spliced, turns gritty,
frame by frame, leaning into the stuttering light,
her mind troubled by a lack of clarity,
radio static that damns her song to obscurity.

Dogs in the Rain by Hank Kalet

This is a new poem, mostly finished, I think, but I am open to suggestions -- including for a better title.

DOGS IN THE RAIN

“Be wet
with a decent happiness.”
-- Robert Creeley

Rain pools on vinyl chair covers,
the dripping from the bent edge of the gutter
a rhythm that pushes
steadily into the hard
improvisation of a wind
chilly with the last
talons of winter grasping
to hold off the change of season.

The creek is full and flowing
beyond the fence, breaking in white
crests as the mud-brown stream
rushes across the rocks and
fallen limbs and toppled trunks.

The dogs run, bounding through a yard
stripped clean of grass from a wet year,
a vast sea of rain and heavy run-off,
mud spraying back into air
from fast-moving paws like
infield dirt from a base-stealer’s spikes.
They like it out there in the rain,
can sit for hours as it
pours down, soaks into fur,
or splash like two children in a puddle,
like my nephew Dan does,
stamping his sneakers
just to watch the surface crack
and the water spray out.

They love that spot at the rear of the yard
where the water collects,
a mucky pond, lake-like when it rains,
bobbing and digging in dirt-brown water,
tracking mud into the house and
smelling sour for hours as they dry.

This storm is biblical, a friend says,
but that seems extreme,
though the rain has been coming down hard,
beating the windows and the roof
like a heavy-metal drummer,
lights flickering, phone going in and out,
and the dogs jingling the back-door bells
to go out every ten minutes.

Is there
a lesson in this I wonder,
this deep pooling of rain water
in the sinking corner
of a yard ignored for years,
a depression in the ground
near our shed,
at the base of a slope that runs
the length of the street,
yard to yard, the runoff
a rushing river almost
and this temporary pond
an attractive nuisance for the dogs?
Is there a lesson
or maybe a warning,
the storm overpowering it all,
dimming lights and closing roads?

We’ll install a drain, re-grade the yard
to redirect the flow
of water, but nature always gets its way;
even the massive trees that
shade the streets we walk with the dogs,
the northern red oaks with thick trunks
the width of a sturdy fullback
or an Olympic power lifter from Russia,
even they fell in the presence
of the rain and wind, storm-soaked sod
giving way, the aging oak
tipping, ripping roots from saturated soil,
sidewalk’s cement slabs
wrenched upward and flipped
like burgers on a grill,
like the branches and stray sticks
the dogs will find and play with
after the storm fades to calm.

Bare Tree, a poem by Hank Kalet

Bare Tree
By Hank Kalet

like an old woman's boney fingers

the tree's bare branches stretch out
in gnarled twists
swollen and knotty with time

Three readings

Three readings, the first featuring yours truly, the other two are part of the Sundary reading series in South Brunswick:

Wednesday, Feb. 17:
Somerset Poetry Group Poetry reading featuring New Jersey Poets Hank Kalet, Ray Brown, and Paul Sohar.
Followed by an Open Mic. Feb. 17 at 7 p.m.
Free. Bridgewater Public Library, 1 Vogt Drive
908-526-4016
Contact: Bob Rosenbloom bloom306@yahoo.com

Sunday, Feb. 21:
South Brunswick Library reading series featuring Metta Sama and DéLana R.A. Dameron
Sunday, Feb. 21, 2 p.m.
South Brunswick Library, 110 Kingston Lane, Monmouth Junction
732-329-4000, ext. ext.7635
e-mail, arts@sbtnj.net or otherhalf@comcast.net
Readings are free, but a donation of a nonperishable food item for the South Brunswick Food Pantry is encouraged.
Open readings follow all features.

Sunday, March 21:
South Brunswick Library reading series featuring Madeline Tiger, Lois Marie Harrod and Renee Ashley
Sunday, March 21, 2 p.m.
South Brunswick Library, 110 Kingston Lane, Monmouth Junction
732-329-4000, ext. ext.7635
e-mail, arts@sbtnj.net or otherhalf@comcast.net
Readings are free, but a donation of a nonperishable food item for the South Brunswick Food Pantry is encouraged.
Open readings follow all features.