Books-TourDeFarce

(after Robert Frost)

My horse and I have stopped to rest
upon the woodland’s fertile crest
and in the frosty air, just now,
have ceased to furrow or to plow

I watch the winter fill the trees
with snow or rain as does he please
and every time the wild bird flies
her flapping wings carve mountain skies

Before I trod upon the earth,
in winters long before my birth,
grebe and linnet soared these woods
though many have not stayed for good

If I could fly above the green
and see the lakes the hawk has seen
and ride the currents toward the sun
where sail the flocks as day is done,

I might then say goodbye to lands
where sparrows wing, where maple stands –
where restless winds have stolen leaves
and wear them on their ruffled sleeves

But here is where the trees stand tall
the tractor and the plow are all –
My horse and I would rather toil
amid this craggy northern soil

(after Archibald Macleish)

A poet should be culpable and cute
As he’s astute,

Strum
His golden galleons through words’ thrum,

Sighing, as the careworn bone
Of faceless pledges where satires groan –

A poet should be fearless
At the light of words.

* * * *

A poet should be potionless yet rhyme
as the tune chimes,

Cleaving, as the dune still pleases
Dig by dig the sight-bejangled seas,

Cleaving, as the loon beyond the summer sheaves,
Mammary by mammary the blind –

A poet should be potionless yet rhyme
As the tune chimes.

* * * *

A poet should be sequel to:
His view.

For all the mystery that’s brief
An open window and a parting thief.

Above
The squinting eyeglasses and pencils on his knee –

A poet should not be mean
Yet be

In TOUR DE FARCE, versatile Leigh Harrison sets out to deliver smiles and belly-laughs, of which nowadays our poetry needs all it can get. This light-hearted collection is like a dazzling style show, with Harrison parading in the garb of other poets -- Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, and more. Not that she can’t expertly do her own things. Check out “Indeed!”, “The Usual Gang,” and “Writer’s Block Day” -- delectable comic poems, each well worth the price of admission Go ahead, dip in, be regaled.
                   X.J. Kennedy
                   Noted American poet, author,
                           literary critic

Leigh Harrison in her book “Tour De Farce” holds a concave mirror up to the masters of poetic verse and does what Lewis Turco accomplished so ably in “The Book of Forms,” strips them of their distance from the reader. She puts the humor back in poetry. Whereas, other poets are restricted by rhyme, Ms. Harrison uses it to her advantage. It’s more a salute to poetical form than farce. But like Oscar Wilde, a student of Walter Pater, she honors her teachers by paying them the ultimate compliment – imitating their style.
Hal Sirowitz
Former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York