Medieval-Style Sampling: The Glosa

Over the decades, sampling and corresponding with other poems has become ingrained in my poetics. I might start with a prompt based on a poem, say, by Charles Wright, then, in revision, the triggering line might fall away. Other times, the lines intermix. There are lots of forms I reach for when I want to work this way, inspired by the work of other poets. There is the popular golden shovel form invented by Terrance Hayes, or the “Mistress Bradstreet Stanza,” invented by, no surprise, John Berryman. Centos can offer an expansive use of quotes, and erasures can commune with literary texts (Jen Bervin used Shakespeare, Chase Berggrun Dracula). An elegy to a writer is also a particular kind of attention, with or without quoted lines (W.H. Auden’s “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”). Still other writers announce their intention in the title (Donald Justice’s “Variations on a Text by Vallejo”). Literary allusions can be sly nods, as when J. Alfred Prufrock asks about “squeez[ing] the universe into a ball.” And Marianne Moore fashioned her sui generis poems by inserting numerous quotes from other writers, advertisements, and so on.

Of course, sampling isn’t limited to Western literature. Princess Shikishi, typical of her times, wrote waka that alluded to other writers’ works from the past. In composing a type of lyric poem called cí, classical Chinese poets borrowed patterns to evoke specific song tunes. I find these numerous ways to steal (a nod to Eliot) very inspiring. Working on a draft is such a solitary event that reaching out across decades and centuries is a lovely way to commune, hold, push back. Plus, I love a prompt.

A few years ago, on a trip for work, I decided to make space for a mini residency. I’d been wanting to write odes to something abstract and decided to address lines of poetry that were close to my childhood heart—that is, lines that were so familiar as to feel a part of my body. During those few days, I came up with “Ode to the Whitman Line ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d’” and “Ode to ‘Not for these/the paper nautilus/constructs her thin glass shell.’” After writing a dozen more, I assembled a chapbook (Write it!), published by Wells College Press in 2019. Then, continuing this kind of play, I began to mix up forms. I’ve borrowed lines for villanelles, a kind of tango with, say, Thomas Hardy’s “The Convergence of the Twain.” More recently, I used the opening lines from W.B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming” for the opening stanza of my villanelle “A Revelation with Yeats”:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
The cyclone cannot feel the air.

And, during quarantine, I apprenticed myself to Helen Vendler’s Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries. Every day, for one hundred and fifty days, I read a poem. Then from Vendler’s close reading, I made up a prompt. From F194, “Title divine, is mine,” I came up with: “Write a list that contains ‘ecstatic disruption.’” From F1428, “Lay this Laurel on the one”: “Exhort an inanimate thing to do something.” The point was not to imitate, but to get into Dickinson’s sewing basket.

During this time, I also started looking around for lesser-known forms and hit on a list from the Writer’s Digest website. Here I stumbled on one that I’d never heard of: the glosa (also called a “glose” or “gloss”) from medieval Spain. The glosa opens with another poet’s lines (this attributed quote is called the cabeza, “head”), a kind of integrated epigraph that sets the theme of the poem. Each stanza ends with a successive line from the cabeza. The number of lines for the cabeza is usually four; therefore, including the cabeza, the number of stanzas is five. Traditional stanzas contain ten lines with a rhyme pattern that takes its cue from the borrowed line. Variations abound.

It’s easier to observe the requirements than describe them, but examples of the glosa are a bit difficult to come by. The most circulated is “Planet Earth” by Canadian poet P.K. Page, who made the form popular in the last century. In the December 2019 issue of Poetry, I found Kathleen Ossip’s “Glosa in Middle Age.” Here is a diagram of Ossip’s set-up, starting with the cabeza quatrain:

Shake some action’s what I need
To let me bust out at full speed
And I’m sure that’s all you need
To make it all right
—Flamin’ Groovies, “Shake Some Action”

Stanza 1, lines 1–5: unrhymed
Line 6: rhyme with need
Lines 7–8: unrhymed
Line 9: rhyme with need
Line 10: Shake some action’s what I need

Stanza 2, lines 1–5: unrhymed
Line 6: rhyme with speed
Lines 7–8: unrhymed
Line 9: rhyme with speed
Line 10: To let me bust out at full speed

Stanza 3, lines 1–5: unrhymed
Line 6: rhyme with need
Lines 7–8: unrhymed
Line 9: rhyme with need
Line 10: And I’m sure that’s all you need

Stanza 4, lines 1–5: unrhymed
Line 6: rhyme with right
Lines 7–8: unrhymed
Line 9: rhyme with right
Line 10: To make it all right

I immediately felt not just wonderfully challenged, but taken by the form. Using lines as a prompt, and sometimes embedding them in a draft, started when I was an undergraduate in Michael Burkard’s poetry workshop and he offhandedly suggested we talk back to a poet or line (after all these decades, I hope I’m quoting him correctly). Back then, I happily picked fights with writers (T.S. Eliot) and honored them (Ono no Komachi). And since this gesture is nothing new, the glosa felt especially alluring. When I chose the quatrain, I was bound by the quote’s content. At first, I kept to the rules, such as the rhyme scheme in lines 6, 9, and 10 set by the glossed line, but the ten-lined stanzas felt thudding. In reviewing the diagram, I felt that the rhyme pattern was more like a mistake because there was no rhyme until the ninth line. The set up didn’t feel satisfying. So, I tinkered with shorter stanzas and this reduction produced greater sonic potential. I also rendered the quoted lines in italics. For some poems (see “Elizabeth’s Cabeza,” which follows this essay), I closed up the stanzas to produce a single fabric.

A glosa is an intimate way to apprentice with a writer and/or with a specific poem. In the case of Bishop, I’d been rereading “First Death in Nova Scotia” for years, trying to learn this poem’s craft secrets. And, although I’m not good at memorizing poems, some lines in this poem float up unbidden. Some are iambic: But how could Arthur go? Some are part of a constellation of rhymes, rather than a set pattern: go, so, roads, snow. I especially love her use of consonance: feet, -est, court, shut, tight. For me, this poem has become a guide. Working with her lines was a heady experience.

When reading a new poem, or one I’m less familiar with but want to study, I initially read it first noting my experience, then pour over it: physical response, close reading, closer reading with a pencil to mark repetitions. The Lucille Clifton poem “poem in praise of menstruation” felt magical and feminist. In later drafts of my gloss, I decided to ignore the stanza breaks set by the glosa form and progress more intuitively (see my poem “ ‘if ’ is a conjunction” on the pages that follow).

Annie Finch wrote of the glosa in her A Poet’s Craft: “This form concretely acknowledges the links between poets—the ways in which one poet’s work can spring from another’s.” Yes, the glosa is a perfect means to honor, love, and even take issue with another writer. When I first began trying my hand at writing a glosa, I read work in search for that quatrain. That kind of reading can be an alternate way to experience a poem. When “sampling,” relationships form across time, geography, language, and cultures. Isn’t connection what poetry is, in part, for?