Petit the Poet

Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel--
Faint iambics the the full breeze wakens--
But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
Ballades by the score with the same old thought:
The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanised;
And what is love but a rose that fades?
Life all around me here in the village:
Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,
Courage, constancy, heroism, failure--
All in the loom, and oh what patterns!
Woodlands, meadows, streams, and rivers-
Blind to all of it all my life long.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics,
While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines?

Petit the Poet Questions:

1. What does his name reveal about his character?
2. What do the seeds in the dry pod represent?
3. What are tiolets, villanelles , etc.
4. What does Petit think of himself as a poet?
5. What does it mean when Petit noted that "Homer and Whitman roared in the pines"?
6. What is "The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;/And what is love but a rose that fades"?
7. Explain what is meant by the loom and patterns?

 

Petit the Poet

Masters told Kimball Flaccus that this poem was based on Ernest McGaffey. McGaffey was a friend of the poet in Chicago during the 1890s and was briefly associated with the Scanlon and Masters law firm.