black sun

black sun, after Rimbaud

word-drawing, 2008

Pongeostic

    

   PI ns
   NE edles

One of the minor forms that I have adopted in recent years is the 'Pongeostic', derived from Francis Ponge, the first poet I am aware of having composed with this structure. In 'Mimosa', a prose poem from Mute Objects of Expression, which Ponge composed as a notebook  in the Loire, during the Second World War. The form may have emerged from the process of analysis, for the book presents clusters of information, refined into draft poems. The single example of the form – though I doubt Ponge would have given it any such formal status – is translated by Lee Fahnestock:

      MI raculous
      MO mentary
      SA tisfaction!

      MI nute
      MO ssy 
      SA ffroned!




     MO re
  h OR izons

The 'Pongeostic' is essentially a mesostic, but with the 'stem' name doubled, or even tripled. Of course, it only succeeds with names that consist of an even number of letters. There is a limit to it's expression, and yet, there is something satisfying in its clustered nature.

   MO ssy
h OR izons

And a sea sequence.

     WA sh

 o VE r

      RIP ples

rip PLE s

        SA lt

stra ND

Let's add some more examples and then maybe, someday, the Pongeostic will earn its place in the anthologies.


poem-labels photographed by AF & HT, at Heriot Toun, Jaunuary 2013; for more on Fahnestock's translations see this review from on the sea wall.