Symmetry

I feel the need to post this for the sake of symmetry. Can't short-change the girl children. This is quite old and was just taken last year. Marianne Moore said that you should not give up on a poem until it had been seen by 40 editors. She was right.

 

CYDONIA OBLONGA

Franz K. Baskett

My daughters have bitten into a quince.
Faces wet with tears and mouths wrenched shut
As if they had chewed the original apple,
They burst into the kitchen like a squall.

Lots of water clears the mistake.
I remind them that I told them not to.
And tell them it won’t be until
First frost that quince is fit to eat.

Chastened, careful, they go back to play
But they will pause sometime at make-believe
Tomorrow or today, vaguely precocious
Of some coming bitter knowledge
That only time and frost
Makes palatable.

 

  For S. W. & S. K.

 

Comments

[Heather Miller]

O Franz, this IS the poem we all long to create, damn you! And we don't intend to ignore our daughters - you just started something, okay. But what a smoothly written poem this is, musical and full of a natural energy I love in poems. And the allusions to Eden, the apple of Discord, all knowledge, all lost innocence - fitting into that quince, those little girls - "only time and frost makes palatable." Your fine verbs, your colorful images - their mouths "wrenched shut" as they "burst into the kitchen like a squall." I'm so glad you persisted and got this poem into print. Excelsior!

[Heather Miller]

Okay, I admit I can't translate the title. Please? I got to know!

[Franz K. Baskett]

It's the scientific name of the plant, commonly called Flowering Quince or Japonica. This took place in southern Mississippi where the Japonica grow to enormous size and produce fruit the size of apples.

This, of course, makes me consider about the title. I think what I wanted was a little aesthetic distance.

[Heather Miller]

I figured that's what it meant, but too lazy to look it up. It's a beautiful title, Franz, no need to change. But if you do, just use something simple, like "Flowering Quince," or maybe just "Flowering." You're the greatest daddy, two little girls ever had, I betcha.

[Franz K. Baskett]

I vaguely recall that's there's a significant poem called "Flowering Quince" somewhere. Stevens, I think. Perhaps someone in the shop will remeber and save me the research.

[Franz K. Baskett]

The poem I was thinking of was "The Flowering Quince" by Ciardi. Boy, that was down deep in my poetic DNA. I think I might have had in mind to escape that association with that tile