Fauxccasional Poems

Daniel Scott Tysdal

• Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780864928214
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Poetry
• Index: Literature

In Fauxccasional Poems, Daniel Scott Tysdal imagines himself into poetic voices not his own, writing to commemorate events that never occurred, for the posterity of alternative universes — and the delight of our own. From the reign of the first philosopher king once envisioned by Plato, to the twelfth-century Iroquois colonization of Europe, to Barack Obama's career as a poet, to the lasting peace to come under the rule of the Democratic Kampuchea Global Party, Tysdal envisions the paths not taken and what might have been. In these poems, the crew of the Enola Gay refuse to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, John F. Kennedy evades assassination, and Karl Marx moonlights as an agent provocateur for a capitalist consortium.

In a dizzying display of poetic insight, technical prowess, and playful parody, Fauxccasional Poems brings these alternate universes to life, forcing the reader to ponder the contingency of history and how each moment brings us to a thousand turning points. Despite our certainties, nothing is ever as it seems, and the future unfolds against our best designs. History is an unreliable vessel for the upwelling of our deepest hopes and fears, and in Tysdal's hands poetry shakes history by the lapels and shouts, "Wake up! Your time is now!"

YEAR 0–1945

Last Poem

The remaining fragment of an ode ordered, Year 0, by the leadership of the First Philosopher King Republic.

close the cave

and shadows

banish

Too far removed

Poets

appearance

a weapon

The waters

well-ordered State.

New World

Examples of Iroquois influence on English writers following the Iroquois’s 12th-century landing on European shores.

1. How Beoyote Lost Her Song

When Beoyote arrived in the world beyond the great waters, she discovered a war divided the land. Grendel, the monster of the woods, attacked the Scylding home of Heorot. The Scylding, the builders of this wood house, stormed the forest to hunt the beast. The way of this world was war.

Beoyote sang her song of unity to create a new world of the old one. She stopped the battle with her beautiful voice. Her melody showed the Scylding how their wood house was the same as Grendel’s woods. The men, enrapt, agreed: all homes were homes. Yet, the men raged, the monster’s skin divides it from us. Grendel also growled against her song: the wood house and the woods were united, but skin separated monster from man. The way of this world was war and the battle continued.

Beoyote was quick, though, and she halted the war again with her melody. This time her song taught the Scyldings and Grendel that skin was skin. Both men and monster agreed, but the way of this world remained war. Words divided, both sides cried as they prepared to return to battle. Before they could, Beoyote stopped them again with her song. All words were words, she sang. The men were the monster and the monster was the men. The war stopped as all divisions vanished. The former combatants slumbered as one at peace.

Just as Beoyote peeled away the boundaries of her home, skin, and words to join them in this new world, she watched the old war and world begin again. From the dreams of these sleeping beings, Grendel arose roaring and the Scyldings, armed, rose up to meet the beast in battle. Beoyote sang her song to the dreamed monster and dreamed men, teaching the lesson of unity: all homes were homes, all skin was skin, and all words were words. These dreamed beings, like their dreamers, united in sleep, but they too dreamed the old war and world back to life.

This cycle continued. Beoyote taught the dreamed combatants the sleep of peace and the sleeping beings birthed the war again in their dreams. She sang her song again and again and again until she could no longer sing it, her beautiful voice reduced to a plaintive howl.

This is how Beoyote lost her song. And yet this is also why she still ventures out at night to cry into the dark. For even though she can no longer sing, she still hopes she can, howling, strike a note that shows us we are the creators of the lines that divide us and we have the power to sing them into new uniting forms.

2. Excerpt from The Canterbury Tales (manuscript dated 1390), “The General Prologue” (Lines 1-18)

Here begins the Book of the Tales of Canterbury

When winter with his blizzard stark with cold

Has tied in ice the castle and the wold

And frozen all the grain that was not reaped

And cast the youthful year to aged sleep;

When from this icy land no Iroquois

Build New World fire to offer heat to thaw

That deeper cold that men beget to tear

Men from all things, like voice cut off from air;

Then wakes the call, so true, of the Great Spirit

For we who in this silence need to hear it

And rise in hope to balance out our rage

And undertake our veiled pilgrimage.

Of England, we to Canterbury wend,

Though Christian love is not our final end;

We quest to praise the people this love martyred,

Their lack the land we seed with our true ardour:

This woman ripe with sky who fell in birth,

Now from her riven body grows our earth.

Sonnet 155

Composed on the occasion of the publication of Dr. Marjorie Rubright’s Not to Be: How One Forgotten Man Made the Globe. Oxford: OUP, 2014.

One ray of light does not the dark curtail.

No hunger’s fed by apricots alone.

A solitary wolf’s predation fails

to carve a path. The body’s more than bone.

Yet Rubright claims a candle is a sun,

asserting Globe’s Grand Players did not write

their ageless plays and poems; Shakes...

Table of contents

• Synopsis/Reviews
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• YEAR 0–1945
• 1946–2000
• 2001–YEAR 0
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author