The Changeling Stanza

I recommend you read the description at the left of the page before embarking on this journey.  Welcome to The Beginning!

"So, Mr. Dew.  What is your opinion of our authoress's recent claims?" asked Jonathan Woodworth, the most recent initiate into the presence of the inimitable Joseph Dew.  (And what an initiation!  To be described, naturally by means of a trite and poorly placed flashback, in future entries...)

Joseph stirred his tea, jovially concocted from the long blades of lemon grass blasting gracefully skyward from every corner of the yard.  "I assume, Mr. Woodworth, you refer to her claim that it was peer pressure which brought her, so helpless, into the blogging world.  Well, you and I might both easily refute her, for what man knows himself who does not know his maker?"

An uncomfortable, meek clearing of the throat from Jonathan's corner of the sun-speckled porch.  "As you may imagine, I have these past few days begun to doubt very much that I do know myself, Mr. Dew.  And as to my maker... you have quite called that matter into question as well."  Jonathan was more at ease in the presence of Joseph Dew (There it is again: "The presence of Joseph Dew."  But that is precisely and most perfectly what it was.  Presence.  Repetition can be important anyway.  Why throw out the mot juste simply so you don't have to use it more than once?  Seems an illogical practice.  So long as it does not inhibit poetry, if you give me the perfect word once, by all means give it to me twice.) than he had ever been in any other situation in his life, and far less at ease in his own presence.  Indeed, his own presence was to him a new and very large question, the answer to which he now constantly sought in the cosmic depth of Dew's eyes.

"Mr. Bickmore!"  Hailed Joseph Dew to the ponderous figure crossing the green and lively weed-strewn lawn.  "What is today's contemplation?  I do hope it is iambic."

It was sure to be.  This was Icarus Bickmore, whose every footstep was perfectly measured, but whose tongue was invariably traversed by consistent uneven feet.  He considered it his curse:

 "Iambic line may seem to thee

To fit, to flow, not forced nor free.

But lacks it, sometimes lazily,

That shifting shadow: Mystery."

"Yes, yes, Mr. Bickmore!  I see your point.  The best poetry follows pattern, surely.  But the real effectiveness of real poetry is that it builds pattern, and thereby expectation, and then suddenly breaks with it.  The break!  Surprise.  Alteration.  Yes, the changeling stanza: a perfect fit and yet an apparent substitution, deletion, or gloss at the same time.  The ideal challenge for any poet."  The lemon-grass tea was now gone, and Dew had moved on to the second course of his every meal: a book, the pages of which he somehow managed to consume and continuously turn, even while participating in so involved a discourse.  "What do you think she was really saying, Icarus?"

"'It is an empowering tide,' she wrote,

'That draws us out to cybersea

on simple waves of anecdote

or strokes of ingenuity!'"

Growling, Mr. Bickmore dug into his pockets to produce a metronome.  Turning it on, he tried to repeat his statement, searching desperately for at least a trochee---and anything but a rhyme---but to no avail.

"Icarus," said Mr. Dew with some seriousness, "My friend, you must know that will not help.  A man who wills to change his nature cannot simply alter it.  He must re-form it, and in order to do so he must have some knowledge of his original formation.  He must know something of the great Former."

Intrigued by the actual content of Mr. Bickmore's verse, which seemed to him to have been quite overlooked by Joseph Dew, Jonathan asked for an explanation.  "Are you saying it was some other force that brought her to this point, Mr. Bickmore, something other than the persistent request of acquaintances that she inform them of her life by these means?"  

Mr. Bickmore folded his arms, lifted his chin, and despairingly turned it only slightly to the right.

Joseph Dew smiled.  "It's a little harder on him than usual today.  Who can blame him?  Such an expansive and flexible mind, trapped in a little iamb!"  He offered Mr. Bickmore a chocolate by tossing it down to him from the porch, shattering both the rigid frown and frozen pose.

And Joseph Dew spoke, turning his beam once again to the resilient, searching eyes across the table.  "Jonathan.  You have not seen the hand that wrote you---though you've not a doubt in your mind it exists, or at least existed.  Yet you do know this: you must know, as every breathing thing knows, that you are important.  Even more, that you are crucial.  You cannot believe that you were written into existence, into a breathing and thinking and even creative existence, on account of any trifling force or reckless whim.  You, Jonathan Woodworth, are here to alter the universe."

To be continued...