It is my pleasure to announce that this month’s Fifty Year Friday is provided by guest author Leo the Deacon.
Return to Forever: Romantic Warrior
Ask the average person, a regular Joe, what the signature music of the 1970s was, and dollars to doughnuts, the answer you will get is disco. And to be sure, it was a phenomenon—the inevitable populist backlash to progressive rock, the best of which (think Gentle Giant, King Crimson, or Emerson, Lake, & Palmer), challenged its listeners to do just that: listen. Just listen. But, as Pascal declared, “All of man’s misfortune comes from one thing, which is not knowing how to sit quietly in a room.” Too many of my generation just wanted to dance, and disco’s Dionysian impulse trumped the Apollonian appeal of prog rock. Full transparency here: as disco came to dominate the college social scene in the late ‘70s, I was put at a distinct disadvantage. I like to think that I have some redeeming virtues, but physical grace would not be one of them. Diffident with the ladies, all I had to offer was a fondness for words and a sense of humor, neither of which was easy to deploy in the thumpa-thumpa of a disco club, where one was expected to strut and flex and display his plumage like some desperate bird of paradise in the New Guinea jungle. Yes, I’m still bitter…
Disco may have gotten all the attention, but at the risk of being accused of looking for a pony in a dung heap, I would argue that the 1970s produced another signature sound: the amalgam of jazz and progressive rock known as jazz fusion. Pioneered by vibraphonist Gary Burton with his Duster album in 1967 and legitimated in 1969 by Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way, fusion grew in prominence and popularity in the 1970s as jazz musicians sought a way forward from the esoteric wilderness of avant-garde and free jazz, seeking a style that would attract an audience. The result was a body of excellent jazz that held musical sway for a decade until a wave of talented young jazz musicians such as Wynton Marsalis and Terence Blanchard revived and modernized hard bop and post-bop jazz. (Yes, I am aware that Marsalis also championed “neo-bop” although I am not convinced that neo-bop differs significantly from post-bop; it is as much an attitude as it is a musical genre.)
The topic today, though, is 1970s fusion and, from my eccentric point of view, three albums in particular stand out as emblematic of that time and style: The Mahavishnu Orchestra’s Visions of the Emerald Beyond, Jean-Luc Ponty’s Aurora, and Return to Forever’s Romantic Warrior. I can already hear the outraged cries of “What? No Weather Report? No Pat Metheny or Herbie Hancock?” Cool down, take a deep breath. They are all worthy. I freely confess that my trinity of iconic fusion albums is subjective and idiosyncratic. It is heavily weighted toward the context in which I encountered the music and the associations it retains in memory. For me, the opening notes of any one of Visions of the Emerald Beyond, Aurora, or Romantic Warrior transport me to 1976. In those days, I and my roommate—we called him Wildman—would lounge around the backyard firepit immolating hot dogs while the sun set and we listened to the latest jazz cascade from the speakers propped up in the windows of my garage apartment. We lived in the easy penury of college kids, feasting on hot dogs and box macaroni and cheese, dreaming of the days when we would have real jobs and real money—not recognizing how good we already had it.
Romantic Warrior was one of Wildman’s albums; we played it to death. Representing the full ripening of Chick Corea’s fusion project called Return to Forever, Romantic Warrior was probably the best of the three iconic albums. It features Corea on keyboards, both electronic and acoustic; Al DiMeola, a newcomer to the band, on guitars; Stanley Clarke brandishes the various basses employed, and Lenny White commands a range of drums. Most of the compositions, and the longest ones, are by Corea, but each of the other three band members contributes one composition apiece. Too many cooks spoil the broth goes the old adage, but not this time: the six discrete compositions of Romantic Warrior fit each other like the tesserae of a mosaic. Had it been indifferently executed, Romantic Warrior could have been just an anthology of loosely similar pieces, but instead they achieve a synergy that makes it greater than the sum of its parts.
The album opens with Corea’s “Medieval Overture,” but this is no Hildegard von Bingen antiphon. Instead, it acts as a kind of framing device, establishing a mood or atmosphere for the album. Corea’s electronic keyboards burst energetically, like the atoms popping in the core of a reactor, and are soon joined by Di Meola’s guitar, and White’s driving drum work. The energetic opening gradually morphs into a more languid, mysterious passage—this is medieval the way Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings is medieval, emphasizing the mystical and the fantastic, where dragons lurk in the blank spaces of maps and demons seek your soul. Soon enough, though, Corea’s popping keyboards bring us back into the light, preparing us for the next adventure.
That adventure would be Lenny White’s funky “Sorceress,” in which DiMeola’s guitar tends to come to the forefront, frequently using Corea’s keyboards as a stable platform for guitar riffs as well as for Clarke’s insistent bass. Di Meola’s guitar keens and soars even more prominently—as one might expect—in “Majestic Dance” which is Di Meola’s contribution to this musical chanson de geste. Those who lean more to the “rock” side of jazz-rock, will gravitate to “Majestic Dance” and “Sorceress,” and perhaps to “The Magician” as well, Stanley Clarke’s piece in which he demonstrates what can be done with an electric bass.
The center of gravity of the album, though, is the title cut, another of Corea’s compositions and the second longest on the album. My traditional biases are showing here, but the genius of “Romantic Warrior,” the third of six compositions on the album, is that it is acoustic, and Corea’s piano playing is turned loose. This acoustic gem, held fast in an electronic setting, shows Corea mastering the essence of fusion without plugging into the power grid.
The album Romantic Warrior is brought to a dénouement with Corea’s “Duel of the Jester and the Tyrant (Parts I and II).” This cut does not bring the album to a full circle musically, but it provides a climax or resolution to it. Like the opening “Medieval Overture, ” “Duel” helps to frame the whole album and brings it to a satisfying conclusion. Again, Corea’s keyboards stand out to me; in “Part I” of this last cut one can detect, I think, a subtle Latin flavor infused in his playing, a faint foreshadowing, perhaps, of his more explicit My Spanish Heart, which he would release under his own name in October of 1976.
In Romantic Warrior, Return to Forever reached its apogee; it is hard to point to another RTF album, good though they were, that achieves quite the same level of musical craftsmanship and creative symbiosis. At the time, though, Wildman and I did not think in such grandiose terms. Cash-strapped and barely fledged as we were, Romantic Warrior was a small, accessible luxury. To us, it was simply a tasty album, perfect for kicking back while a stealthy chill permeated the dusk, and a fitting soundtrack for charring hot dogs and boasting of all the great things we would do.
Our world certainly has many examples of extremes — here’s one: very evil people and very good people. Such extremes bookend their specific spectrums or continuums. For example:
Liberal to Conservative Tall to Short Dark to Light Good to Evil Farsightedness to Nearsightedness Concrete-Visual to Abstract-Conceptual
Lots of people identify as liberal or conservative, but some are less liberal or less conservative than others, and the majority of people identify as neither — or acknowledge that they have traits of both.
In Søren Kierkegaard’s Either/Or, the nineteenth-century philosopher challenges his reader to make the necessary choice between two posited extremes: the Aesthetic Life (living for the moment without commitment) or the Ethical Life (living by duty and commitment). But if we step outside his strict existential framework and use these terms as we understand them today, life is truly incomplete if we make an either/or choice between the aesthetic and the ethical. We can pursue both! These are not opposite ends of a single spectrum, but categories that are spectrums of their own. And each functions somewhat independently of the other: just because one is unethical doesn’t make that person aesthetic, and one can truly appreciate aesthetics and be one of the most ethical people we will ever encounter. Granted, as Kierkegaard correctly asserts, they are also intertwined — a better appreciation of aesthetics should help one be more ethical.
As we progress through the pages of Either/Or, Kierkegaard discusses the extremes of the aesthetic spectrum: the Immediate Person, who sees the world as it appears on the surface, and the Reflective Person, who sees things primarily in relation to other things. If a poem references “a slithering snake on a pathway,” the Immediate Person will think about a slithering snake on a pathway and the Reflective Person will consider what the snake and the path imply or symbolize. So we have another spectrum, with most people falling somewhere in the middle.
I find this particularly interesting in terms of which type of poetry appeals to an individual depending on where they are on this spectrum, or even if poetry appeals that much to the Immediate person. Or does that person favor poetry that is more direct and is less representative? I suspect that anyone on this spectrum could enjoy poetry, and that even image-laden poetry works nicely for the Immediate person, providing the images describe the real world and don’t represent abstract concepts or function metaphorically for other objects.
Either/Or was written in 1843, and we have some more current observations on personality types. In this case, my interest is the personality spectrum that ranges fromConcrete-Visual to Abstract-Conceptual. What is this spectrum or continuum of Concrete-Visual to Abstract-Conceptual?
Let’s jump to around 1943 during the middle of World War II: Katharine Cook Briggs, along with her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers, developed an early version of a questionnaire to assist the many women entering the workforce to determine the most appropriate jobs for their specific personalities and natural strengths. A couple of decades later, an updated version would be released to a wider audience, and then in 1977, a commercial version, known as Form G, was made available as a diagnostic tool used by schools for vocational planning. Soon, Corporate America and government agencies took an interest, with over 80% of Fortune 500 companies using an updated version of Form G, known as the “Myers-Briggs Type Indicator” (MBTI), to improve communication and teamwork among employees. While modern psychology is rather skeptical of MBTI, it serves as a great team-building tool, and I believe it does have some merit in terms of how individuals process information, including poetry.
The test has four spectrums or continuums, called parameters, and questions score each participant on these four parameters, ultimately assigning them one of two letters for each parameter. This is an Either/Or proposition, but thankfully most versions of MBTI provide a “preference clarity” or “preference score” — a percentage or bar graph showing how strongly one leans toward one end versus the other. For example, a person might score 85% Introverted and 15% Extroverted, or 55% Thinking and 45% Feeling. I remember when I took the test, I scored close to the midpoint on all four parameters. But no matter how close one is to the exact middle, they end up being assigned a letter representing one of the extremes for each of these four parameters.
The Four MBTI Parameters (The “Letters”)
MBTI measures four independent parameters. Each is a spectrum, and a person’s “type” is a four-letter code indicating where they fall on each:
Now here is the beautiful part: the two spectrums touched on earlier, Kierkegaard’s Immediate/ Reflective spectrum and the Concrete-Visual/Abstract-Conceptual spectrum, map directly onto specific MBTI parameters.
Our Spectrum
The MBTI Parameter
Why
Concrete-Visual ↔ Abstract-Conceptual
Sensing (S) ↔ Intuition (N)
This is how MBTI defines S vs. N. Sensing types trust their five senses and prefer tangible, specific, factual information (they want concrete images in their poetry). Intuitive types trust patterns, meanings, and possibilities (they prefer poetry that addresses topics like freedom, desire, identity, and alienation through concepts or even abstractions rather than concrete imagery). This is a perceptual preference: how one processes information.
Immediate ↔ Reflective
Extraversion (E) ↔ Introversion (I) — partially
This one is a harder case to make, but hear me out. Extraverts tend to process externally and react to stimuli in real-time (Immediate). Introverts tend to process internally, stepping back to mull things over before acting (Reflective). However, this is not a perfect match, because Kierkegaard’s “Immediate vs. Reflective” is more about time and commitment than about social energy. But in MBTI terms, the I/E axis is the closest proxy for whether you set up shop in the moment (reacting to the outer world) or live in your head (deliberating before acting).
In terms of poetry preferences, it seems likely to me that the Immediate type will be much less attracted to poems that require considerable reflection to determine their meaning or set of meanings.
Quick Recap Table
Concept
MBTI Parameter
What it measures
Concrete-Visual ↔ Abstract-Conceptual
Sensing (S) ↔ Intuition (N)
How one perceives and takes in information
Immediate ↔ Reflective
Extraversion (E) ↔ Introversion (I) (roughly)
Whether one processes in real-time or steps back
Aesthetic ↔ Ethical
None directly (as discussed, this is a false continuum.)
Can one measure something with two disparate continuums collapsed together?
So What Is Your MBTI Type, and How Does It Relate?
If you know your four-letter MBTI type, we can look at it and see:
Where you naturally fall on the Concrete-Visual ↔ Abstract-Conceptual spectrum (your S/Npreference).
Where you naturally fall on the Immediate ↔ Reflective spectrum (your E/I preference, roughly).
Possibly which Kierkegaardian trap you are most susceptible to (based on your T/F and J/P preferences)?
For example:
An ISTJ (Introverted, Sensing, Thinking, Judging) is naturally Concrete-Visual (S), Reflective (I), and Ethical-leaning (J). Their Kierkegaard trap? Becoming so rigid and duty-bound that they lose all aesthetic joy and spontaneity.
An ENFP (Extraverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving) is naturally Abstract-Conceptual (N), Immediate (E), and Aesthetic-leaning (P). Their Kierkegaard trap? Flitting from one beautiful idea to the next, never committing to anything long enough to build a life.
Spectrum Mapping Reference Table
Spectrum
MBTI Parameter
What it measures
Concrete-Visual ↔ Abstract-Conceptual
Sensing (S) ↔ Intuition (N)
How you perceive and take in information
Immediate ↔ Reflective
Extraversion (E) ↔ Introversion (I) (roughly)
Whether you process in real-time or step back
Kierkegaard’s Aesthetic ↔ Ethical
None directly
Your relationship to commitment, duty, and meaning—a choice, not a preference
For what I consider to be the highly suspect Aesthetic ↔ Ethical spectrum, Kierkegaard would say: Your MBTI type describes your starting point, but it does not determine your destiny. The “Either/Or” is not about being true to your type — it is about transcending your type through a conscious, passionate choice to become a full, integrated human being. The reality, of course, is that this is not a spectrum and one can excel at both Aesthetic pursuits and Ethical pursuits.
For the Immediate ↔ Reflective Spectrum, one placement here comes down to mostly natural inclination, though I have observed that one can develop skills to excel at both ends of the spectrum: one can improve their ability for real-time decision making, as you do in playing a sport or in a high-stakes conference meeting, and improve their ability to carefully think through all outcomes and possibilities.
Now, here is the part I find the most interesting and that I believe relates the most to poetry preferences — the Concrete-Visual ↔ Abstract-Conceptual Spectrum: how we perceive and absorb information — how we process not only information, but also what are our inherent data preferences. Do we prefer concrete images in our poetry, or do we prefer abstract and/or conceptual language? Are we more attracted to Emily Dickinson lines with concrete images like
The Grass divides as with a Comb — A spotted shaft is seen — And then it closes at your feet And opens further on —
or lines that deal with concepts
Pain — has an Element of Blank — It cannot recollect When it begun — or if there were A time when it was not —
(Please note the “—” are Emily’s own, and used long before the invention of AI)
Do we prefer Wallace Stevens’ concrete lines: … The pears are not viols, nudes or bottles. They resemble nothing else.
They are yellow forms Composed of curves Bulging toward the base. They are touched red.
or his more conceptual work:
The poem of the mind in the act of finding What will suffice. It has not always had To find: the scene was set; it repeated what Was in the script.
The handling of concrete images is pretty straightforward and is well taught in every MFA program on the globe. Perhaps less in vogue today are the conceptual tools of poetry:
Abstract Images / Abstract Imagery: Language that evokes ideas or qualities that cannot be directly perceived by the five senses (e.g., words like truth, freedom, sorrow, infinity rather than some physical object).
Conceptual Language / Conceptual Imagery: Language focused on theories or intellectual ideas rather than observable reality.
Discursive Language: Poetry or lines that rely on logical argument or explanation rather than sensory presentation. In literary criticism, “discursive poetry” is often contrasted with “imagistic poetry.”
Generalities / General Language: Nebulousness or overarching statements lacking the distinctness of concrete details.
Intangible or Immaterial Imagery: Descriptions or expressions concerning things that lack physical substance, weight, or sensory properties.
We find that our often featured poet Zumwalt tends to lean towards the conceptual, but we can find plenty of examples where he goes “concrete” on us:
Some shirtsleeve transient Sporting scrimshaw arms Scans a racing form His shoe leather face focused more On Santa Anita Than the saints Shouted, proclaimed By an antique black Whose white wisps of whiskers Cling to his accusing chin Clouds about a crag That trembles with every thundered damnation As the old man makes the park His pulpit (From Afternoon Off, ca. 1977)
Smooth and sepia Spirals down the throat, wet, warm For a moment attention drifts From the bleary graveyard denizens the three-day growth denim jacket derelict the greasy ember of a cook the scrubbed behemoth cop A granite waitress (From Black with Sugar, 1977)
And an example of concrete audio imagery: The radio unloads Heavy metal High volume, howling Then Upturned chairs the busboy plays counterpoint on a Kirby (From Solo, 1979)
Compare this to his more conceptual work:
Reams and reams The black-ink symbols inundate Flooding consciousness with printed words that possess Definitions but know no meaning (From They’ve Stripped the Forest for Babble, originally published in the first issue of GHLM Newsletter in 1974)
or
On a Mobius strip Crazy coordinates on a hellish helix With nowhere to go And no way home Not to worry Once more around and Once you grab that brass ring You will realize It’s mostly air. (From Full Circle (A rumination in 3 strokes), 1982)
Recently, on a phone call with Zumwalt, he recited a draft of a poem where he plans to either avoid all concrete images or heavily use concrete images — or maybe a mixture of both, once the poem turns; You spend the day outdoors, won’t come in at night back to the home you were born in instead you sleep under the shelter of trees I never learned the name of.
I won’t reveal the surprising turn this poem takes, and I look forward to how it is finally implemented. Can Zumwalt create a final version without a single concrete image — even less than the few weak ones it already has? It sounds easy enough, but the poem has to work within that constraint — not so easy.
But I digress. If we are an extreme S (sensing) reader or editor, we will prefer poetry rich in concrete images; if we are an extreme I (intuition) reader or editor, we will prefer more conceptual passages. Most of us are in the middle. A poet can be at either extreme or in the middle, and produce high-quality work — work that resonates with their particular set of readers. If a reader is in the middle of the spectrum, will they be able to appreciate the extremes of concrete poetry as much as a high percentage S reader? If the reader is all the way over to one extreme, will they have issues with the poetry that primarily uses data and information that appeal to the other side of that spectrum?
Now, remember the Myers-Briggs Test ultimately assigns one of two values for each of the four parameters, including Information Processing. Here is the distribution for Information Processing for people taking the test according to thinkimpact.com.
Intuition (N): Roughly 26.7% of the population.
Sensing (S): Roughly 73.3% of the population.
Even considering that the actual distribution is like a bell curve, with the majority nearer the middle than the extremes, we can better understand why poetry instructors emphasize the importance of concrete images — I am guessing that about 85 to 90 percent of readers will be fine with highly concrete poetry, where perhaps only 60 to 70 percent of readers will comfortably handle heavily conceptual poetry.
We also have the factor (Energy/Attention) of whether the poem is easily understood, or requires more work on the reader’s part to get to its inherent meaning. This reminds me of Zumwalt’s implied preference: “It’s much better if poetry is direct and simple, although the poem now has the liability of being readily understood” — a preference he often disregards, often employing both abstruse concrete and conceptual passages.
For example, instead of opening with: Our world certainly has extremes, but they are extremes on spectrums or continuums:
Liberal to Conservative Tall to Short Dark to Light Good to Evil Farsightedness to Nearsightedness
I could have used concrete images in place of my more conceptual introduction, but would you know what I mean? I wouldn’t; during a phone conversation with Zumwalt yesterday, he improvised the following conversion of my original:
Perilously on a spinning globe of cold saltwater and internal rivers of magma, we straddle a studio soundboard slider that skates from silent ponds to ear-shattering dance halls:
From speeding rivers to steadfast mountains From towering skyscrapers to worn-down speed bumps From inside a trunk in an underground closet in the center of an asteroid nine-tenths of the way between the Sun and the red dwarf Barnard’s Star to standing on an open observational platform, without quality sunglasses or protective goggles, three feet from the perimeter of Sirius. From helping ladies cross the street to tripping them and kicking them until their lungs collapse and their blood pools on the warm pavement. From perceiving the drifting nitrogen-ice blocks on Pluto to discerning the cilia on the outer cells of a dust mite
As almost three-quarters of people would apparently prefer image-rich poetry to conceptually dense poetry, I looked for submission guidelines in various journals to see if any explicitly stated this.
And I hit pay dirt! Twenty-four carat gold! Guidelines that leave no doubt about what the journal will accept.
The journal is Third Wednesday Magazine, a website with slightly fewer monthly visitors and WordPress subscribers than zumpoems.com, but showing a healthy monthly increase, and containing a wealth of excellent poems, available for free, including downloadable PDFs. Here is one for the current issue.
Below are some highlights of their guidelines with full text HERE.
We’re drawn to poems and prose that trust concrete images over abstraction — a name, a gesture, an object doing the work a sentence about “feeling” would otherwise do. We publish across forms, so our most important issues are voice, craft, and image control. Endings that land on something specific and physical interest us more than ones that resolve into reflection or moral. We see a lot of work about loss, and we welcome it, but it should arrive through a scene or an object, not as raw statement.
Isn’t that great? And they go on to say: We’re not opposed to the occasional risk, but risk should earn its place through control, not indulgence. Humor is welcome when it’s dry and plainspoken rather than broad. Above all: we’re a generous, big-tent magazine that welcomes all voices.
They also indicate one of the important points of Zumwalt’s view on poetry, that the form and structure of the poem support the message, with the message never subordinate to the fulfillment or the restrictions of the form: Is the form doing something, or just being followed for its own sake?
I am not sure about this guideline: Does the ending land on something specific and physical, rather than summarizing or moralizing?
How would that work with Emily Dickinson’s ending to one of my favorite poems, Tell All the Truth?
As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind –
I am guessing that Kipling’s If (And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!) and Longfellow’s A Psalm of Life (Learn to labor and to wait.) would also violate this constraint.
But whether I agree with each and every guideline, I have to acknowledge and commend the site for providing these guidelines transparently, and I certainly recognize that journals curate poems around one or more themes, one or more constraints, and/or towards a given audience. There is nothing wrong with a journal like The Society of Classical Poets requiring rhyme and meter, or Light requiring humorous rhyming poems or New Verse News requiring topical poems — and all three journals provide clear guidelines on what their requirements are.
Written Tales, a journal with a smaller audience than Third Wednesday Magazine, provides similar, though much briefer, “show don’t tell” guidelines:
We look for work grounded in specific, concrete imagery: pieces that show rather than tell, bringing the reader into a particular moment through vivid, tangible detail. Abstract or purely emotional work is not a good fit for us.
On the other side, every once in a while one sees guidelines that do welcome “tell, don’t show,” as with Storm Cellar, which includes this umbrella statement: it’s all good. (Even anti-affect “conceptual poetry.”) Or as the Madrigal did a while back with the Discursion Issue call: we are looking for poems that are at play with reasoning and the sounds that facts and logic make even when divorced from any actual grounding.
For me, it’s all good. I am in the middle of the Myers-Briggs Information Processing Spectrum, and love poems brimming with concrete images as well as those providing challenging conceptual explorations. This is why I love visiting these various journals and reading WordPress blogs — blogs where the author is free from all constraints except for the ones they impose upon themselves.
Please visit these journals, read at least a few of their published poems, and post some comments about your thoughts. Please also spend some time discovering poems on WordPress: Free Verse, Poetry, Poems, etc.
Here is the fourth of Zumwalt’s revisions to his set of 10 poems in his Sassoon Collection.
iv. Butter and eggs
Robust diners, deftly forking in the fat. O greasy fauna against the heedless tongue Of buffet and banquet days, what sends them gliding through This set of dancing teeth?
Theirs are the hungry cadences between The enraptured chewing of hefty humans that make Heaven in the booth while second helpings simmer; And theirs the faintest whispers that hush the desire.
And they are the airship that floats away Out of the starlit dimness above the moon And they are the most inflexible beings—born To know but this, the phantom glare of fullness.
— zumwalt (2011, revised 2026)
Admin’s Note: This is the fourth piece in Zumwalt’s ten-poem tribute to poet Siegfried Sassoon, The Sassoon Collection, originally written in 2011, recently revised. “Butter and eggs” is loosely based on Sassoon’s “Butterflies.” Zumwalt mirrors the original structure, but alters the tone and content considerably.
Here is the third of Zumwalt’s revisions to his set of 10 poems in his Sassoon Collection.
iii. Blonde
Her head-weak thoughts that once eagerly gave way To looks that leapt from eye to brain and into heart, Weaving unconscious promises of love, Are now thrust outward, dangerously heard from lips to air. And he who has watched one world and loved it all, Star-struck with blindness, an ensnared fiber of pity, With feeble hopes of attracting a returning glance, Now listens with his ear to the rambling noise.
— zumwalt (2011, revised 2026)
Admin’s Note: This is the third piece in Zumwalt’s ten-poem tribute to poet Siegfried Sassoon, The Sassoon Collection, originally written in 2011, recently revised. “Blonde” is loosely based on Sassoon’s “Blind.” It directly tracks Sassoon’s opening (“His headstrong thoughts that once in eager strife / Leapt sure from eye to brain and back to eye”) and his shift in perspective (“And he who has watched his world and loved it all”).
Here is the second of Zumwalt’s revisions to his set of 10 poems in his Sassoon Collection.
ii. A pickle and a black hole
Mass and form had the pickle, sweet, sour, tall and straight; The round black hole collapsing still further than it knew Made its longest shadow with gravity A ghostly bridge ’twixt the pickle and space. But stars, with their continuous day, must pass; And blustering winds will stretch all gherkins for which I’ve no measurements to express the moment of conjunction, a singularity with no exit for stars and pickled cucumbers alike.
— zumwalt (2011, revised 2026)
Admin’s Note: This is the second piece in Zumwalt’s ten-poem tribute to poet Siegfried Sassoon, The Sassoon Collection, originally written in 2011, recently revised. “A pickle and a black hole” is loosely based on Sassoon’s A Poplar and the Moon.”
As always, we appreciate your sharing your thoughts in the comments, not only about the poem but also about the danger of AI — is it just a matter of time before AI determines that we are just an annoyance to be disposed of?
Zumwalt has provided revisions to his set of 10 poems in the Sassoon Collection. Here is the first:
i. Everyone sang while I fell asleep
voices wailing around the house thud of feet and slam of doors everyone yowling only the clocks wind down
around this small room no sense of the hour crowded with lemonade breath high-pitched voices like hounds in pain as clouds hover over my eyes
fighting sleep with the fork from my dessert plate not yet ready to go where the dreams are built where you take reality with you so as not to be alone dragging it by its rough cotton shirt collar
the blurry faces become blurry voices despite discordance from straying notes the lights descend and siphon colors whirling into a vortex that spins off dimensions like a playlist streaming fragments from the past
drifting towards sleep the hounds now whining like imprisoned puppies the darkness becoming home without furnishings everything fading into peace except for one small lingering concern for everything unfinished
— zumwalt (2011, revised 2026)
Admin’s Note: This is the first piece of Zumwalt’s ten-poem tribute to poet Siegfried Sassoon, The Sassoon Collection, originally written in 2011, recently revised by the author. This poem opens the set by providing a misleading head fake to Sassoon’s Everyone Sang, when in reality the poem is primarily based on Sassoon’s Falling Asleep. Where in the original, Sassoon sustains a hushed, introspective mood using domestic quiet and natural sounds to mirror the speaker’s mental transition from wakefulness to sleep, Zumwalt leans into domestic turmoil and modern-day stress, even throwing in an Emily Dickensen reference for good measure.
I am pleased to announce that Zumwalt’s poem, “Optional,” was published today in the latest issue of Zoetic Press’s 4LPH4NUM3R1C2.0, included with entries from only four other authors for this bi-monthly journal. Please visit here: https://www.zoeticpress.com/an-24-dominion-of-domination
I have a list of over 4,000 journals that publish poetry: some do so online, some in print, some do both. As noted in last week’s Thoughtful Thursday column, I enjoy checking out both poetry blogs and poetry sites to read new work. Sometimes these poems fall short of expectations; sometimes they are well worth the effort of hunting them down.
Today, I randomly picked entry 1613 in my poetry list, a journal named Poemeleon. I knew I was in for a treat reading the description of their content: “Quirky/Humorous/Lyric” and “Playful/Lyrical work.” This sounds great, I thought. As readers of this blog know, I am a fan of Zumwalt’s poetry — which generally is more disruptive or snide than lyrical, but is often quirky, humorous, or playful. I am also a fan of Louise Glück for the lyricism, emotional depth, and overall precision of her writing. And she can also be disruptive and humorous, as in her poem Anniversary. I can say the same about Kenneth Koch — precise control, sometimes lyrical, sometimes disruptive, often playful, clever and/or humorous. Well, there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands of such poets, and I clicked on the Poemeloen link to discover some of the lesser-known such poets.
I would like to say that when I first landed on their home page, I was greeted with the above image — the image of the poemeloen, a distinctive and highly specialized clade of a large family of contemporary online journals that champion a diverse range of poetry. And to some degree I was, though it was much smaller. However, what immediately confronted me was the image of the “SORRY WE ARE CLOSED” sign at the top of this blog post.
Above that closed sign was this very small version of their logo and additional text:
Well, in truth, I was pretty undeserving of any thanks. I never supported this site, nor even visited it until today. And now, despite its ability to blend in (or maybe because of its ability to blend in) with its background, it is now another entry in a long list of defunct poetry journals. It could clearly show a range of colorful poetry, and vary what was displayed. But it was eventually overwhelmed by its changing environment: a world where many people have substituted clicking, reacting, and sometimes sharing (though can one really share what isn’t theirs?) for engaged reading.
However, the poems are still there! And their founder’s mission is still intact: “poemeleon seeks to make visible the invisible. By placing disparate poems alongside one another, I aim to highlight not just their contrasts, but their similarities.”
For how long, though? Eventually, the domain will be unfunded, and the poems will not be so easily accessible. I say, “not so easily,” because, thankfully, we have The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which has captured content from this site and its predecessor 296 times between February 23, 2007 and April 20, 2026. Compare that to our site, zumpoems.com which has been saved 217 times between November 1, 2011 and July 8, 2026, and one can feel pretty good that as long as Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine is enabled, all the poems that the site’s editors (there were multiple: https://poemeleon.me/missionandhistory) ended up selecting from the many submissions sent to them over the years will be avaible for those willing to take the extra effort to track them down.
One day, I won’t be around to fund zumpoems.com. At that point, much of Zumwalt’s work will be lost forever — except for the captures of this site in the Internet Archive. How long will that site be around? Maybe it doesn’t matter, as eventually there will be very few people who will still have the ability to read. The poems will still be around, and they can be read out loud by our AI assistants, but will those AI readers ever understand the meaning of even the simplest or most transparent poem to provide a meaningful enough reading to engage even their most receptive user?
I have no plans to stick around to find out, but if AI extends my life long enough, I guess whatever plans I do eventually make may matter very little.
I am pleased to announce that Zumwalt’s poem, “The Threat of Virtue,” was just published today in the highly respected Society of Classical Poets. This poem is a necessary indictment of the People’s Republic of China’s (not a government by, for, or of the people) systemic persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. Zumwalt effectively contrasts Falun Gong’s spiritual virtues of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance with the ongoing state censorship, forced conformity, and organ harvesting perpetrated by the criminal PRC.
Appreciate any comments you leave on their website, particularly those expressing your opposition to these atrocious actions by the current mainland Chinese government.
