Thursday, October 1, 2020

From Arcady

Read "From Arcady" at The Eldritch Dark:

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/204/from-arcady

This poem finds Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) using the pantoum form, which I don't believe I've previously encountered among his works in verse.  In a pantoum, two lines repeat across each pair of successive quatrains, with a slight variation in the final stanza.

The use of that form, with an emphasis on repetition, gives "From Arcady" an incantatory pacing.  CAS adds internal rhymes to several of the lines, such as "The rolling of a roted surge".  Taken together, those technical constructions add something of a meditative quality to the reading, particularly in the fifth stanza: 


Weaving in pain, to one wild dirge,
The ancient, deep, foregone delight. . . .
The rolling of a roted surge
Returns around a pagan height.


It's quite interesting to see CAS using an uncommon poetic form, especially given his fondness for the sonnet form in his earliest published works.    


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