World Class Poetry Blog

Two days ago I wrote a blog post about the production of poetry videos using musical scores as a backdrop along with creative, interpretive images that tell a story. Just for the record, if you got the impression that I don’t like Jazz, that would be incorrect. I do like Jazz, but it’s not the only music that is appropriate for accompanying poetry. I think the Beats got that notion stuck in people’s heads and it seems to be something that is almost taken for granted. But I think for my own poetry I’d like to experiment with some rock beats or alternative music.

At the end of this blog post you can see a video that I created myself for the poem “Siege.” It is nowhere near what I have in mind, but it’s a step (a small one) in that direction. This is a very raw production based on my limited skills, but it should give you some idea as to what I have in mind, sans the music score. All it really is is a video of an open mic poetry reading clipped to include a presentation of some photos that I took of the medieval walled fortress Rothenburg ob der Tauber, the subject of the poem. I don’t think I do it justice, but as I said, this is a start.

Dreamhouse Musical - An Off-Broadway
Poetic Experience
It has been brought to my attention that poet Barbara DeCesare’s book of poems jigsaweyesore is the basis of a new off-Broadway musical called “Dreamhouse.” The musical is a part of the Midtown International Theatre Festival and is the production of David Wolfson, who crafted the music, and Ari Laura Kreith, director. Other key people involved include:

• Musical Director/Piano: DANIEL FEYER
• Lighting Designer: JERI SYKES
• Stage Manager: LAUREN WALSH
• Publicity: SCOTTI RHODES

The musical’s cast are Suzan Postel, Maree Johnson, Jennie Eisenhower, Amy Hutchins, and Gayla D. Morgan. The musical promises to be full of wit and humor and observations on life, sex, love, and “the kind of soft sadness that never dips into maudlin theatrics” (Kessa De Santis).

The event is scheduled to run from July 21 to August 5, 2008 and will be held at The Workshop Mainstage located at 312 W. 36 St., 4th Floor, NYC. For more information you can call (212) 868-4444 or check out the website at www.smarttix.com.

Note: This information came to me via e-mail and I can’t vouch for its accuracy. I consider the source a credible source, but the website above currently doesn’t have any information on this event and I have another website address for the musical itself that currently doesn’t appear to be live. I will try to get more information on the event. It does look like one worthy of attendance.

Siege - Poetry Video
And now, without further ado, I bring you “Siege,” the video:

Happy birthday to Gary Snyder, who is, in my view, the best of the Beat poets. And you’ve got to watch this video. Thanks to Edward Byrne.

Finally, I’ve found something that Ron Silliman and I have in common:

A white male in a failing empire . . . .

Winners in Adirondack.

Speaking of contests, here’s one from Rattle.

Check out these five poets with staying power.

Ontario Review, R.I.P.

Here’s the strangest interview question that I’ve ever read:

8 - When was the last time you ate a pear?

(Answer) About two weeks ago. The first of the new year.

Rob McLennan knows how to get right to the core.

Poetry comes alive in the hands of Mr. Excitement.

You have until tomorrow to answer Don Wentworth’s question.

Whatever happened to American poetry?

More reasons to download the World Class Poetry Toolbar.

Everything you ever wanted to know about poetry + John Ashbery.

I just returned from one of my favorite poetry readings. York, Pa. They call it Poetry Brew.

Poetry Brew is hosted by Rich Hemmings, by far one of the best promoters of poetry and poets that I’ve ever seen. He’s like the Ed Sullivan of poetry. Real classy guy.

Tonight’s venue was billed as a themed event, “Increase The Peace: A Stand Against Teenage Gang Violence”. Rich had asked me to be one of several featured readers, but I couldn’t commit, unfortunately, and was not a featured reader. But the slate of those who were was a fabulous band of poetic talent from the South Central area of Pennsylvania and Baltimore, Md. Among the talent included:

• Rebecca Gonzalez (I wrote about her last night)
• Karen Atlas
• Snow
• Le Hinton
• Bedlam
• Carol Clark Williams
• Native Son (1/2 of Native Son and the Drifish)
• Rich Burrill
• Debberae Streett
• the Drifish (the other half of Native Son and the Drifish)
• and Rich Hemmings

While I was not among those featured, I did get to read during the open mic portion of the event. I read my poem “20 Acres”. My grandson, spending the weekend with us, was in attendance and after the reading (because the poem is about him), came up to me and gave me a big hug (while I was on stage, of course, and preparing to read a second poem). He’s 5 now; was 3 at the time of the poem being written and I had been home from Iraq for about two months. That was amazing; the little guy never ceases to amaze me.

But the evening was topped off with an unexpected treat when Native Son and the Drifish took the stage as a duo. I’d seen them before and they are awesome. They are true performance poets, not the type of performance poet you’ll see at the slam event. They’re better. They perform with perfect harmony and clarity and it’s absolutely indescribable. They’ll be back in York on June 28 to promote a new album and I can hardly wait to see them again. That is an event worth putting on the calendar.

Have you ever sat in a poetry reading after signing up to read and deciding mid-way through that you just didn’t feel like reading? That happened to me tonight. I don’t know why. It could have been the heat or it could have just been a fickle feeling of gloom. But I waited and waited and waited and the reading spirit didn’t urge. I finally did allow myself to read, however. I was the last reader in the open mic period and wouldn’t you know that after the reading I received the most sincere compliment from someone who had never heard me read before. And I had read two poems that I had never read in public before. Both were poems that are included in the book I am revising, Rumsfeld’s Sandbox (working title), all poems I wrote while in Iraq in 2005. It just goes to show that reading is not always for me.

On a side note, the featured reader was a friend of mine and a local poet I admire, Rebecca Gonzalez. Rebecca is promoting a new book, Sonata for Rain, which I will be reviewing, but for now I’d just like to sing a word of praise. Sonata for Rain is published by Iris G. Press, who introduced me to the work of Jeff Rath.

Becca is a Pushcart nominee, which is impressive on its own, but if you’ve heard her read a poem out loud, her sensitivity to language and rhythm are incredible. She is fluent in two languages and the beauty of her lyrics in both is astounding. I am looking forward to getting lost in Sonata for Rain and bringing it to my readers.

Nic Sebastian at Very Like a Whale asked Jeb Livingston a series of questions on his blog. I thought Jeb’s answers were very telling and I’d like to offer a few snippets and my responses:

I sent my poems to all the wrong magazines; places that didn’t publish work in the same vein as mine — or places I wasn’t familiar, never read. That’s a recipe for failure and I cooked with that pretty much my entire 20s. Some people have to learn the hard way. I’m one of those people. Now I send poems out only to places I read and admire and sometimes to places that solicit work.

I think most of us go through this phase of sending out manuscripts to the wrong places. In truth, it’s hard to find compatible avenues for your poetry. It’s like dating. You have to go through hundreds of losers, whiners, ugly first cousins, loquacious snobs, self-centered eye-batters, silent prigs, and really awful date places in order to find one relationship that makes sense. When you do find a poetry journal that you really like, support it. Read it. Devour it for a while before you jump in and submit your work. Really make sure it is something that excites you and if it does, submit your work.

On “What would you do differently if you had to start all over again?”

I would save my money and not send to any book contests whatsoever. Bye bye $1500. What do I have to show for it? A handful of the “winning” books, most of which I don’t even care for. I could have published two books for that amount. Also, as I mentioned above, I would be more selective and knowledgeable where I send my work in general. Bye bye hundreds of hours of my life.

Geez, do I know how she feels. Not about the money. I’ve never been a big contest person. Though I’ve submitted to a few, I haven’t made a life of it. But I have wasted countless hours sending work to places I never should have been sending my work to, either for the prestige or for the self-congratulatory pat on the back, or because So-and-So did and I thought I should have that honor as well. It’s not worth it. Write what you write and find those journals that will publish it. Don’t waste time sending out work to schmucks.

That’s the beauty of ch(e)apbooks. I guess I don’t really understand the question of whether or not chapbooks are good or bad. Some books are good things, others not so much. I don’t see how length, distribution or the production process has any determining factor in that. Unless the pages are made from the skins of kittens.

When I discovered the power of chapbooks, I decided it was the way to go. One poetry reading can lead to the sale of four or five chapbooks, which pays for gas to and from and a snack, usually. Though now it probably just pays for gas. But you have to offer your chapbooks sparingly. Don’t publish a new one every week. If you publish too often then people will just think you are a money hound. Only publish a new chapbook when you know you’ve got one worth selling. Then hawk it for all it’s worth.

If you’re worried about trends, fashion or popularity, for God’s sake, don’t waste your time with poetry.

No kidding. Did she really need to say that? Yeah, if you are the trendy kind of person, try writing a memoir. Or write fiction and call it a memoir.

Poems don’t make anyone money. So when you’re creating your book, listen to your inner artist, not your inner capitalist. If your inner capitalist knew what he was talking about, he’d be telling you to write a self-help book or something for Penthouse Forum.

Hah! Funny one, that. Perhaps I should query Penthouse Forum about my poem on capitalism!

All jokes aside, she’s right. Poetry isn’t for capitalists. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take money for it.

If you mean do I do readings, speak on panels, link to my books from my websites, try to cajole people into reviewing my books, send out e- mails asking friends and family to buy them, agree to participate in interviews such as this one — then yes, most certainly. I do it because I want people to buy my books. I want people to read them.

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

On another note, Tony Brown is the newest Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere. Congratulations Tony!

There’s something quite indiscernible about Bill Knott’s outrageous tirade against Ron Silliman’s selection for the William Carlos Williams award. But I agree with him. At least in part.

Third paragraph:

and I assume (I hope) that many of those same poets are now feeling insulted and outraged by the choice of this year’s winner,

Well, I didn’t enter the contest and I’m insulted, though not quite outraged. As judge, Silliman had every right to choose whomever he felt was the best poet or who wrote the best book of poems among those that were submitted. But I understand Knott’s outrage despite the awkwardness of his delivery.

Two paragraphs later:

As for you fools at the PSA, all I can say is, what the fuck did you expect when you appointed him to be the judge? You got just what you asked for, schmucks. The joke’s on you.

Well, good question. I mean, it’s Ron “Langpo” Silliman. Avant garde of avant garde. Or post avant. Or whatever the hell they are calling themselves these days.

I’ve said before that I’m not a big fan of the avant garde. I’ve never understood the point behind making something deliberately convoluted in order to prove its sublimity. To me, that’s like masturbating to prove your manhood. OK, I’ve got the picture. You can play with yourself. But the rest of us would rather not watch, please.

So, back to Silliman and his selection for the award. It turns out that he chose Aram “Complete Super-Duper-Hyper-Over-The-Edge-Beyond-The-Universe Minimalist” Saroyan. Except that even Saroyan has outgrown his annoying adolescent fascination with flatulence. Too bad Silliman hasn’t.

I’ve got no ill feelings toward Ron Silliman as it seems that Bill Knott has. Both men made it through the ’60s alive (though I don’t think anyone made it through undamaged). I was born in 1966 so I don’t remember those years and that may be for the best. But I have often felt like I’d have enjoyed being a part of that generation. I might have even enjoyed minimalism in its hey-day (I’d have definitely enjoyed Woodstock and watching Hendrix pick a guitar with his teeth), when folks of Knott’s and Silliman’s generation sat around stoned listening to Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin on vinyl while banging the bongos, snapping their fingers, and navel gazing to John Gage’s 4-minutes-and-some-odd-seconds of silence while looking at Saroyan’s goofy looking m on an otherwise blank page. But we are not in the 1960s any more, and this isn’t Kansas, Toto.

I have been amused, during certain times in my life, to have met people who came through the 1960s and hearing them reminisce of the beautiful times they had. I thought most of them were full of shit. The old white guy born of wealthy parents schmoozing the assholes of Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonius Monk while worshiping the Beat God Allen Ginsberg as if he had risen from some tomb and pushed the sepulcher off a cliff (I don’t know, maybe he did). There was always something fake about these old men trying to sell us young’uns on the glory days of Vietnam protests and Peace, Love, and The White Album. A new era deserves a new aesthetic, don’t you think?

Well, you would think, except that Ron Silliman’s eloquent defense of Saroyan actually makes it almost believable that he should have won:

Reading Complete Minimal Poems, we are struck by just how sturdy these poems have proven to be and just how brightly Saroyan’s sense of humor shines through these pages. These poems are works of great optimism, and are as radical and strong in 2008 as the day they were written.

Yeah, right. It’s not like he’s Homer or Shelley (Percy or Mary, take your pick). I mean, he isn’t even dead yet. What will the world think of him 200 years from now? Will they even know who he is? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

But my beef isn’t with Saroyan. I don’t care that he comes from the upper class. I don’t care that Silliman makes so much money in marketing that he turns down offers to teach and perhaps his income level clouds his thinking on poetics (or maybe he just has preferences with which I don’t agree). I don’t care one bit about Bill Knott’s chip, or the shoulder upon which it balances. What I do care about is moving with the times. As Knott said, paraphrased, there had to have been other poets who had more recently published poetry worthy of notice that could have been the winner of the award. And it should not go unmentioned that had anyone else been the sole judge of the William Carlos Williams Award, that likely would have happened.

Howard Junker sums up my view of Silliman-Saroyan with perfect clarity:

IMHO, it was misguided to give an award for work done 40 years ago by someone who hasn’t been in the poetry mix for decades.

On Silliman’s blog, Junker commented thus:

sure, these poem deserve to be in print, but they are ancient. and saroyan is no longer a practicing poet.

i wish you would have chosen a book by a poet who is still in action.

Yeah, you know, the fact that these poems were probably written and published long before many of the entrants to the contest were born might have been a clue that Saroyan’s book should have been placed aside along with Silliman’s own (he recused himself from winning when he noticed his own book was submitted for the contest). But who am I to judge? The PSA didn’t invite me to cast a vote.

This whole brouhaha is a testament to the prejudices and preferences of judges. If you submit to contests, it is always a good idea to find out who the judge is going to be before you enter and to submit poems, or books, or what-have-you, that appeal to that judge’s preferences. If I knew that Silliman was going to be the judge of a contest that I was thinking of entering, I wouldn’t send a submission because any judge that would chose Aram Saroyan, who hasn’t written a poem in ages, as the winner of a contest is not going to fall in love with my poetry. He may like it. He may praise it. He may even say sweet things about it as Silliman does the beautiful losers. But he wouldn’t pick me as the winner.

It all boils down to preferences. Judges tend to pick winners who are most like themselves. If for any reason because it’s human nature. It’s called affinity. You feel a certain sense of love for those whose aesthetic is most like your own. The problem is when those preferences become prejudices. And you can tell the difference between a prejudice and a preference. A preference is when you say beautiful things about other people’s children but you save your acts of love for your own. A prejudice is when you have nothing nice to say about the neighbor’s kids because they are different. I might not want Silliman to be a judge of a contest that I had entered, but I wouldn’t trust Knott as one. His prejudice comes in loud and clear.

I have written about these matters before with regard to my own philosophy of poetics. Preferences are nearly impossible to shed, but prejudices aren’t. One must make a conscious decision to shed them, but one can do it. I believe that there is something to learn from everyone. Even Aram Saroyan. To be sure, minimalism can teach us brevity. But too much brevity is excessive and this is the difficulty that I have with extreme minimalism. I mean, the next logical step is to serve up a blank page and call it a poem. I’m surprised this hasn’t been done yet. If it had, people like Silliman wouldn’t argue; they’d simply heap up an unhealthy level of praise and justify the blank page through some convoluted form of aesthetic rationalization. And it would likely win an NEA grant, much to the chagrin of the convalescing Jesse Helms.

Visual poetry can teach us things too. But what we should not learn is to imitate it too much. We don’t want a bunch of mini-Saroyans running around putting single letters on a page and calling it poetry. Or placing back-to-back r’s on a page and oogling it like a bouncing baby boy. There comes a time when intelligent people must say, “OK, that’s enough. We’ve heard the sound of your Mustang’s overly loud muffler long enough. Turn the key off, young man, and go to bed.” Then we can have a glass of wine and enjoy the next advancement for 15 minutes while someone else prepares for fame.

A note to the PSA: Next year, instead of just picking one person to be the judge of the William Carlos Williams Award, if you are so tempted, just go ahead and cut out the middleman and give the award to which ever entrant most resembles the preferences of your judge. Don’t waste our time with anticipation. It’s disrespectful.

Yehudah ha-Levi was a Spanish Jewish poet that lived in the 9th and 10th centuries. He was born in Spain in 1080 while Spain was still under Islamic rule. He wrote in Arabic and Hebrew. He was versatile and wrote about more than simply religious themes. He also wrote many love poems, poems of journey, sorrow, and humanity. He even touched on some humorous subjects in his poetry. The following poem is titled “Hymn For Atonement Day”:

Lord, Your humble servants hear,
Suppliant now before You,
Our Father, from Your children’s plea
Turn not, we implore You!

Lord, Your people, sore oppressed,
From the depths implore You;
Our Father, let us not, this day,
Cry in vain before You.

Lord, blot out our evil pride,
All our sins before You;
Our Father, for Your Mercy’s sake,
Pardon, we implore You.

Lord, no sacrifice we bring,
Prayers and tears implore You;
Our Father, take the gift we lay,
Contrite hearts before You.

Lord, Your sheep have wandered far,
Gather them before You;
Our Father, let Your shepherd love
Guide us, we implore You.

Lord, Your pardon grant to all
That in truth, implore You;
Our Father, let our evening prayer
Now find grace before You.

Lord, Your humble servants hear,
Suppliant now before You;
Our Father, from Your children’s plea
Turn not, we implore You!

I have been meaning to purchase a copy of Mark Jarman’s new book of prose poems titled Epistles. It was my desire to bloviate, I think, but I put it off. I was hoping to share one of the poems on this blog this month in honor of religious poetry, but I have still not purchased the book. So I instead sought poems of his already published that might appear online. Lo and behold, I was successful. Found them (where else?) at the Poetry Foundation.

There I found four sonnets from his collection Unholy Sonnets.

Perfect, I thought. I’ll use one of those.

I’ve never bought a Mark Jarman book so I didn’t know what to expect. I’d never read any of his sonnets. It was a new experience for me. Quite frankly, I’m not impressed and I’ll tell you why.

A sonnet should rhyme. Enjambment is fine; each line need not end with a complete thought. I’m OK with near-rhyme even and rhyme that doesn’t look like rhyme or that forces the reader to move over the words from one line to the next so quickly that the rhyme isn’t noticeable until you stop to examine the poem word for word. All of that is fine. It’s what poetry is made of. But a sonnet, after all, is a sonnet. It is defined by two things: rhyme and meter. Leave one out and you no longer have a sonnet. Well, wouldn’t you know it: This New Formalist, a school of poetics that believes the old forms are still valid, writes a doggone sonnet that doesn’t rhyme. I don’t like it.

No. 1 wasn’t the first one I read. It wasn’t the last either. I read all four sonnets, and I’ll likely never read another poem from Mark Jarman. I won’t be buying Epistles. But it isn’t because of that one poem I didn’t like. I’m not fond of any of his sonnets.

“Unholy Sonnet No. 4″ rhymes. And I almost like it. My favorite lines are the first two - especially the first one - of the second stanza:

Not Dante’s rings, not the Zen zero’s mouth,
Out of which comes and into which light goes,

The allusion to Dante and alliteration with Zen zero’s mouth was impressive, but not elegiac, as one would expect of a religious poem. No. 4 isn’t his best of the four that I did read.

I found “Unholy Sonnet No. 13″ rather intriguing, but I’m ambivalent. I was put off at first by the repetition of the word drunk. Simply put, I found it unnecessary. Then he referenced Americans. I nearly puked. It seems out of place.

Nevertheless, No. 13 nearly succeeds. I do not like the repetition. I do like the near rhyme of some of the end words: bread, breed; stars, stirs. I do not like another/forever. I like the time and wine, and even the off-rhyme of moon. But the repetition of end words in place of rhyme is unnerving to me. It seems like a cop out.

Then there’s the juxtaposition of the divine with the mundane. I actually appreciate Mark Jarman’s attempt to employ this device. It’s one that I’m rather fond of in my own poetry and hope that I succeed at to some degree. The use of the word “Umbrian” in the first line sets me up for an expectation of something extraordinary, but I am let down by “two young Americans”. Why so parochial? It took me out of the poem despite some beautiful imagery in the pink cloud and marble smile. As I said, it almost succeeds.

I think the best of the four poems that I read was No. 1. It’s the one that I think is best crafted and it’s surprising because I wasn’t sure that I liked it when I first read it. I’m still not sure, but I do appreciate the craftiness of the poem. It was the first one I read. Reprinted below, analysis follows:

Dear God, Our Heavenly Father, Gracious Lord,
Mother Love and Maker, Light Divine,
Atomic Fingertip, Cosmic Design,
First Letter of the Alphabet, Last Word,
Mutual Satisfaction, Cash Award,
Auditor Who Approves Our Bottom Line,
Examiner Who Says That We Are Fine,
Oasis That All Sands Are Running Toward.

I can say almost anything about you,
O Big Idea, and with each epithet,
Create new reasons to believe or doubt you,
Black Hole, White Hole, Presidential Jet.
But what’s the anything I must leave out? You
Solve nothing but the problems that I set.

I like this poem best of all because it carries a simple idea from beginning to end. It starts out and finishes with that idea and is easy to follow. No. 1 reads like a prayer. It should. For that is essentially what it is. You know right away that the speaker is talking to God. He uses words that one would expect a person praying to God to use: “Dear God”, “Heavenly Father”, “Gracious Lord”. That’s a wonderful first line. It sets me up for the rest of the poem perfectly.

“Unholy Sonnet No. 1″ reminds me of Gerard Manley Hopkins in so many ways. The meter is a little bit uncommon. Unlike many sonnets, the iambic pentameter isn’t a sing-song twittering of musical simplicity. Each expression of divinity is capitalized - very reverent. Each is set apart as a clause, broken up by commas. Appropriate. And as you get further into the poem, the speaker begins to use names for God that are very uncommon and almost irreverent except that you know they are expressions of contemporary sanctity.

• Atomic Fingertip
• First Letter Of The Alphabet (Alpha - I like this one)
• Cash Award
• Auditor Who Approves Our Bottom Line
• Examiner Who Says That We Are Fine
• Oasis That All Sands Are Running Toward

Like traditional sonnets, the first stanza sets up the situation that the second stanza answers. It is sometimes defined as problem/solution, or question/answer. In this case, I think the proper characterization should be dilemma/cure.

The problem can be stated thus: What do we call God? Answer: Anything; it doesn’t really matter. What really matters is that He is there and we can call on Him. Cool.

The second stanza moves. I love how it starts:

I can say almost anything about you,
O Big Idea, and with each epithet,
Create new reasons to believe or doubt you,

The word “epithet” is perfect, and unexpected, because until now all we have heard from the speaker is words used to describe God in rather uncanny ways. They are really offensive. If I were God, I’d be offended. “Mutual Satisfaction”? I think not. But the names are not totally offensive. They just are not wholly reverent, and that’s the problem. It’s what makes the poem so believable.

The rhyme scheme of No. 1 stays true to the form. Thanks Mark! But there is something about that fourth line in the second stanza that bugs me. Why “Presidential Jet”? Of all the names for God, that is perhaps the most obtrusive. Still, he follows that rather awkward line up with “But what’s the anything I must leave out?” and I know it’s the perfect follow up line. It’s a good question, for one thing, but it also points to the dilemma: Who is God? Why is He there? And that last line is the zinger, the whopper, the big squeeze. No matter what you call Him, he’s the Divine Problem Solver, The Eternal Cure For All Things, The Answer To The Questions I Didn’t Know I Should Have Asked.

I love the feminine rhyme in that second stanza - about/you, doubt/you, out? You. It shows Mark Jarman’s playfulness and attentiveness to language. But it also makes me wonder why we don’t see more of that. If he can do that in one poem, why can’t he do that in the others? I’m not prepared to say versatility for that would imply skill, and I don’t see that. What I see is sloppiness, a criticism he has lobbied against others. It’s odd, but that’s probably what he seeks most to avoid for I know that his poetic philosophy is defined by attentiveness to language, to words, and to craft. To some degree, he has it. So why aren’t I impressed?

Thomas Campion was a Renaissance poet, a Cambridge law student, composer, and an M.D. The following kyrielle is one of the many poems he left us. Its title is “A Lenten Hymn”:

With broken heart and contrite sigh,
A trembling sinner, Lord, I cry:
Thy pard’ning grace is rich and free:
O God, be merciful to me.

I smite upon my troubled breast,
With deep and conscious guilt oppress,
Christ and His cross my only plea:
O God, be merciful to me.

Far off I stand with tearful eyes,
Nor dare uplift them to the skies;
But Thou dost all my anguish see:
O God, be merciful to me.

Nor alms, nor deeds that I have done,
Can for a single sin atone;
To Calvary alone I flee:
O God, be merciful to me.

And when, redeemed from sin and hell,
With all the ransomed throng I dwell,
My raptured song shall ever be,
God has been merciful to me.

Learn more about the French form kyrielle at World Class Poetry.