The Circus Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEFGHIEEAJJKLAMNO PAQARSR TAUTVNAWOAXYVA OZUA2AB2 U VC2AD2B2AMAE2F2G2 AH2I2J2I2 WI2K2NWL2E2AM2N2OEO2 P2A AUK2UQ2JAXOR2I2K2C2E 2S2NK2 AT2 U2I remember when I wrote The Circus | A |
I was living in Paris or rather we were living in Paris | B |
Janice Frank was alive the Whitney Museum | C |
Was still on th Street or was it still something else | D |
Fernand L ger lived in our building | E |
Well it wasn t really our building it was the building we lived in | F |
Next to a Grand Guignol troupe who made a lot of noise | G |
So that one day I yelled through a hole in the wall | H |
Of our apartment I don t know why there was a hole there | I |
Shut up And the voice came back to me saying something | E |
I don t know what Once I saw L ger walk out of the building | E |
I think Stanley Kunitz came to dinner I wrote The Circus | A |
In two tries the first getting most of the first stanza | J |
That fall I also wrote an opera libretto called Louisa or Matilda | J |
Jean Claude came to dinner He said about cocktail sauce | K |
It should be good on something but not on these oysters | L |
By that time I think I had already written The Circus | A |
When I came back having been annoyed to have to go | M |
I forget what I went there about | N |
You were back in the apartment what a dump actually we liked it | O |
I think with your hair and your writing and the pans | P |
Moving strummingly about the kitchen and I wrote The Circus | A |
It was a summer night no it was an autumn one summer when | Q |
I remember it but actually no autumn that black dusk toward the post office | A |
And I wrote many other poems then but The Circus was the best | R |
Maybe not by far the best Geography was also wonderful | S |
And the Airplane Betty poems inspired by you but The Circus was the best | R |
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Sometimes I feel I actually am the person | T |
Who did this who wrote that including that poem The Circus | A |
But sometimes on the other hand I don t | U |
There are so many factors engaging our attention | T |
At every moment the happiness of others the health of those we know and our own | V |
And the millions upon millions of people we don t know and their well being to think about | N |
So it seems strange I found time to write The Circus | A |
And even spent two evenings on it and that I have also the time | W |
To remember that I did it and remember you and me then and write this poem about it | O |
At the beginning of The Circus | A |
The Circus girls are rushing through the night | X |
In the circus wagons and tulips and other flowers will be picked | Y |
A long time from now this poem wants to get off on its own | V |
Someplace like a painting not held to a depiction of composing The Circus | A |
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Noel Lee was in Paris then but usually out of it | O |
In Germany or Denmark giving a concert | Z |
As part of an endless activity | U |
Which was either his career or his happiness or a combination of both | A2 |
Or neither I remember his dark eyes looking he was nervous | A |
With me perhaps because of our days at Harvard | B2 |
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It is understandable enough to be nervous with anybody | U |
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How softly and easily one feels when alone | V |
Love of one s friends when one is commanding the time and space syndrome | C2 |
If that s the right word which I doubt but together how come one is so nervous | A |
One is not always but what was I then and what am I now attempting to create | D2 |
If create is the right word | B2 |
Out of this combination of experience and aloneness | A |
And who are you telling me it is or is not a poem not you Go back with me though | M |
To those nights I was writing The Circus | A |
Do you like that poem have you read it It is in my book Thank You | E2 |
Which Grove just reprinted I wonder how long I am going to live | F2 |
And what the rest will be like I mean the rest of my life | G2 |
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John Cage said to me the other night How old are you and I told him forty six | A |
Since then I ve become forty seven he said | H2 |
Oh that s a great age I remember | I2 |
John Cage once told me he didn t charge much for his mushroom identification course at the New School | J2 |
Because he didn t want to make a profit from nature | I2 |
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He was ahead of his time I was behind my time we were both in time | W |
Brilliant go to the head of the class and time is a river | I2 |
It doesn t seem like a river to me it seems like an unformed plan | K2 |
Days go by and still nothing is decided about | N |
What to do until you know it never will be and then you say time | W |
But you really don t care much about it any more | L2 |
Time means something when you have the major part of yours ahead of you | E2 |
As I did in Aix en Provence that was three years before I wrote The Circus | A |
That year I wrote Bricks and The Great Atlantic Rainway | M2 |
I felt time surround me like a blanket endless and soft | N2 |
I could go to sleep endlessly and wake up and still be in it | O |
But I treasured secretly the part of me that was individually changing | E |
Like Noel Lee I was interested in my career | O2 |
And still am but now it is like a town I don t want to leave | P2 |
Not a tower I am climbing opposed by ferocious enemies | A |
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I never mentioned my friends in my poems at the time I wrote The Circus | A |
Although they meant almost more than anything to me | U |
Of this now for some time I ve felt an attenuation | K2 |
So I m mentioning them maybe this will bring them back to me | U |
Not them perhaps but what I felt about them | Q2 |
John Ashbery Jane Freilicher Larry Rivers Frank O Hara | J |
Their names alone bring tears to my eyes | A |
As seeing Polly did last night | X |
It is beautiful at any time but the paradox is leaving it | O |
In order to feel it when you ve come back the sun has declined | R2 |
And the people are merrier or else they ve gone home altogether | I2 |
And you are left alone well you put up with that your sureness is like the sun | K2 |
While you have it but when you don t its lack s a black and icy night I came home | C2 |
And wrote The Circus that night Janice I didn t come and speak to you | E2 |
And put my arm around you and ask you if you d like to take a walk | S2 |
Or go to the Cirque Medrano though that s what I wrote poems about | N |
And am writing about that now and now I m alone | K2 |
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And this is not as good a poem as The Circus | A |
And I wonder if any good will come of either of them all the same | T2 |
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The Circus from The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch published by Alfred A Knopf Inc Copyright by Kenneth Koch | U2 |
Kenneth Koch
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