Winter Reigns -- Mary Youngquist

Guest poem sent in by Ajit Narayanan

(Poem #1429) Winter Reigns Shimmering, gleaming, glistening glow-- Winter reigns, splendiferous snow! Won't this sight, this stainless scene, Endlessly yield days supreme? Eying ground, deep piled, delights Skiers scaling garish heights. Still like eagles soaring, glide Eager racers; show-offs slide. Ecstatic children, noses scarved-- Dancing gnomes, seem magic carved-- Doing graceful leaps. Snowballs, Swishing globules, sail low walls. Surely year-end's special lure Eases sorrow we endure, Every year renews shared dream, Memories sweet, that timeless stream. -- Mary Youngquist

The most important criterion for good wordplay has always been 'transparency'
-- how good the content is when it's viewed independent of the structure. I'm
told that Georges Perec's book 'La Disparition', for example, garnered rave
reviews from Parisian critics[1], who praised it as a modern masterpiece, many
of them not realizing that Perec had composed the entire book without a single
'e'. I don't read French, however, and consequently, _my_ standard for
transparency in wordplay is set by this poem by Mary Youngquist. An elegant,
very readable and very naturally constructed poem which masks a surprisingly
difficult structure that the poet has most skillfully imposed on it. Can you
guess what it is?

I wish I could find out more about Mary Youngquist. I've read only two of
her works, one of them being this one, and have been very, very impressed.
The other is a poem about California (sort of), which is part of this
article (another ingenious exercise in wordplay, by the way; read it)
[broken link] http://wordways.com/crazy.htm
Any further information, or links to other works of hers, would be most
appreciated.

:ajitQ

[1] [broken link] http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/X/ contains some, but you
have to know French, of course.

The answer: Each word -- including the title and the author's name --
begins with the last letter of the preceding word. Sounds like an easy
constraint? -- try writing even one complete sentence that way and you'll
realize the amount of skill it took to make this poem as coherent as it
is.

[Martin adds]

Not the easiest typographic constraint to observe, even neglecting grammar,
rhyme, equal line extents, scansion, name[1] etc. Craftsmanship,
poetry - Youngquist's stanzas - sonorous, smooth - highlight them
marvellously.

[1] Nice extra.