Sing Doun the Mune! Selected Ballads by Helen Adam
W. H. Auden awarded Helen Adam the New York Quarterly’s Madeline Sadin Award for “excellence in craft”; Richard Howard described her ballads as “glittering sorceries”; and Robert Duncan referred to her as “the grain of living poetry that saves me at times.” Adam’s magical ballads, the core of her poetry, are collected here for the first time with her own thoughts on the ballad and thoughtful commentary by Annie Finch and Kristin Prevallet.
Publisher: Poetry Witch Press
Publish Date: October 31, 2021
Pages: 120
Language: English
Hail the singularity of Pixie Pool! Hail the doyenne of golden monstrous hair, devouring our hunger for wild ballads both ancient-rooted and shiny new as only she can do!
Lee Ann Brown
Excerpt
From I LOVE MY LOVE
“In the dark of the moon the hair rules.” –Robert Duncan
There was a man who married a maid. She laughed as he led her home.
The living fleece of her long bright hair she combed with a golden comb.
He led her home through his barley fields where the saffron poppies grew.
She combed, and whispered, “I love my love.” Her voice like a plaintive coo.
Ha! Ha!
Her voice like a plaintive coo.
He lived alone with his chosen bride, at first their life was sweet.
Sweet was the touch of her playful hair binding his hands and feet.
When first she murmured adoring words her words did not appall.
“I love my love with a capital A. To my love I give my All.
Ah, Ha!
To my love I give my All.”
She circled him with the secret web she wove as her strong hair grew.
Like a golden spider she wove and sang, “My love is tender and true.”
She combed her hair with a golden comb and shckled him to a tree.
She shackled him close to the Tree of Life. “My love I’ll never set free.
No, No.
My love I’ll never set free.”
Whenever he broke her golden bonds he was held with bonds of gold.
“Oh! cannot a man escape from love, from Love’s hot smothering hold?”
He roared with fury. He broke her bonds. He ran in the light of the sun.
Her soft hair rippled and trapped his feet, as fast as his feet could run,
Ha! Ha!
As fast as his feet could run. . .