Décima in English: The “controversy”P. Pasmanick

Decima, my idee fixe, has a number of conventions. One is that in a "controversia", a toe to toe slugfest of improvised metric invective, a verse has more merit when it begins with the last line of a rival's poem. Use of this device demonstrates that one is truly improvising and adds a conversational note to the process.

The inhabitants of rec.arts.poems, a distant planet, took it on themselves to launch decima controversias IN ENGLISH. I responded to one and inadvertantly set off another battle. I reproduce it below for the benefit of non-Spanish speakers who would like a taste of how the process works. Of course, an on-line controversia is nothing like a real live face to face confrontation, to lute and clave or guitar, but something of the flavor gets through. Here's the text of a post I sent that summarizes the state of affairs, without all the embedded quotes. You will note that the rec.arts.poems guys are big on inside references.

First, I had written, inspired by a clever controversia begun a fewdays before...

Décima's back! I'm excited. You even had yourselves a duel. I'm an old décima fool, so I'm really quite delighted. A few months ago I sighted ‘pies forzados' in ar.ay.pee. I took some of them with me and presented them in Spain and now here they are again English fruit from Spanish trees.

-P. Pasmanick

Peter J Ross responded:

Are English fruit from Spanish trees red apples grown from orange blossom? We write these things, and then we toss 'em straight in the bin. We're paid no fees, so what's the point? See Richards? He's the expert, yet he throws away most of the stuff he writes. C'est vrai. Myself, I'm giving up tomorrow;

the effort causes too much sorrow. I'll save it for another day.

I riposted:

Why save it for another day, if it causes you such pain? In South America and Spain it's just a form of literate play. That IS the point! To come away, not with "fees" or published books but with the crowd's admiring looks for your sweet ephemeral rhyme. A mental sport, a game sublime-- but not for mercenary schnooks.

-P. Pasmanick

Then Dennis M. Hammes wrote (obscurely)

If not for mercenary schnooks,That starving baby, Art, would die,For Martijn's eaten all the Pije,Mike Tyson's eaten all the books,And Peter eats the UseNet k00ks.What pay there is for seven fitsBetween the pocket's linty bits,And if you do it live, I tell youNot one woman wants to smell you;Still, it's all about the tits.

I saw this at work, OK? And on the way home, on a bike with two pedals (note foreshadowing), despite the uncharacteristic vulgarity, I come up with this:

No, it's NOT about “the tits”.My wife's, for me, are still the bestand the sight of someone's breastinspires in me no rhyming fitsThe slams that are the biggest hitsinvolve knocking poets' blocks offBut what really gets my rocks offwhen some pretty woman's listeningis to see her black eyes glisteningas she laughs her Spanish socks off.

-P. Pasmanick

But meanwhile, PSR (Peter Stewart Richards) stole a march on me and used the mercenary schnooks thus:

It's not for mercenary schnooks. the spires of poesy aspire - poets perspire for inner fire. Sweet adulation in the looks of those who see the arcane books in which they speculate and scribble are no more than the puerile dribble of introverted fantasy, dreaming there might one day be food and money on the table. PSR

So now I gotta deal with HIM:

Food and money on my tableare the product of my jobI'm a normal working slobmaking rhymes when I am able.I don't need the "poet" labelI claim no muse, I'd just waste herShe'd say my efforts disgraced her.You guys, she, and I all know itI am not really a poetI'm a ten-line poetaster.

;-P. Pasmanick

BUT THEN, there's another country heard from (Dennis M. Hammes):

Food and money on the table?Fantasy will only meddleWith The Bike That Has One Pedal,As we pump what sweat we're ableTo deliver song and fableAll around a wordless town.I don't mean to put it down,But dreamin' money is assumin'We will pedal until humanVoices wake us, and we drown.

This is getting arcane. “Human voices wake us, and we drown” is T.S. Elliot. But “One Pedal”?

Voices wake us and we drownin a sea of our own spittleDécima, it tends to whittlepompous blowhards way way down.There are poets of renownwho, no matter how they strivewhen they have to compete liveare embarrassed and made humblewhen they stall, stutter, and fumblecome-backs to their rival's jive.

-P. Pasmanick

Then my old pal, Mike Doran, also known as Yambú, gets in a few licks to my delightwed surprise:

Come-backs to their rival's jiveDoesn't have to mean a put-downIt can also be a new foundexploration what's aliveOh, how the mighty striveAnd lesser folks, like us, who grumble'bout a verse convention's humblerules that may still yet depriveus from expressing what we might'veif we only hadn't stumbled.

Phillip? Felipe? If you reproduce this, I will have to kill you.

OK, you’re on, I thought:

Don't worry, there will be no reproduction. The decima cult is one ofthe safe sects.

"B" that as it may:

If we were afraid to stumblethen we'd not have learned to walkwe would never learn to talkif we had no chance to mumble.That's the way the cookies crumble:my philosophy for you.It may be trite, but it's still trueyou have to have a lotta nerveto develop poetic verve;you've got chutzpah, mi Yambu.