…an ode/sonnet again. I think I have in mind the method to make such modular sonnets sound like sonnets. It has to do with the beginning and ending of clauses.

Anyway, for posterity, here is the Sonnet reformatted in ode form:

See there, what are those pestilent
That smother in the muck?
And there, I see, ignored
Within the mire, more are stuck;

And Lord! Behold, one bunches up,
To bid another Well!
Though, unobtrusively, its brother
It disdains with such a tell,

With bored enthusiasm
One will slither toward
An ugly thing as if to give
the other an award.

But lo! What it intends!
Now, can it actually be,
to grant the other honors,
and a meaningless Degree?

How sweet, if my corrupted friends,
Would slyly acquiesce,
to grant me scanty honors
with an automatic yes.

Here is the very first draft as I dashed it off with hardly a thought; instead, allowing my anger at the state of art to be my guide:

See there, what is that ugliness
That crawls upon the muck?
And there, I see some more of it
Within the mire stuck

And there, I see it aggregate
to wish the other well
And yet disdain it also
With an unobtrusive tell

And see with what enthusiasm
one will slither toward
the other ugly thing
as if to give it an award

But lo! its true intention,
can it actually be
to grant the other honors
and award it a degree?

I think how I might ask a friend
if he might acquiesce
to award and grant me honors
And my friend would just say yes.

The thing about the Poemet’s Bullow, is that… How shall I put this… Sometime in spring in the very early 1980ies, I picked up a copy of, what at least at that time was called, “Poetry” magazine. It could have used a tag line such as “All ugly. All the time.” The thing I find most interesting now, is that poetry, at least in what may be regarded as the mainstream, hasn’t changed much. It hasn’t gotten any uglier–although that would hardly have been possible with that edition of “Poetry” as a starting point, so to speak–and it hasn’t recovered any kind of sense of life. Or Joy at the art of it. Or grandeur of the clockwork of it–the way it fits into the clockwork of the very fabric of existence.

This is why it was very easy to write the above.

I had originally formatted this work using colors for the two respective rhyme schemes. Blue for the ode, (couplet rhymes) Red for the Sonnet, (Petrarchan in this case) and purple for those which coincided mathematically. In any case, some might find it interesting formatted in this way with ALL the rhymes displayed.

See there, what are those pestilent
That smother
in the muck?
And there, I see, ignored
Within the mire, more are stuck;

And Lord!
Behold, one bunches up, To bid another
Well!
Though, unobtrusively, its brother
It disdains with such a tell,

With bored
enthusiasm One will slither toward
An ugly thing as if to give
the other
an award.

But lo! What it intends!
Now, can it actually be,
to grant
the other honors, and a meaningless
Degree?

How sweet, if my corrupted friends,
Would slyly acquiesce,
to grant me scanty
honors with an automatic yes.

I didn’t consult my colored version, however I think I found them all.