Peter Klappert Peter Klappert was born in Rockville, New York, in 1942. He was educated at Cornell and the University of Iowa. His first book, Lugging Vegetables to Nantucket, won the Yale Younger Poets Prize in 1971. His later books are Circular Stairs, Distress in the Mirrors (1975), Non Sequitur O’Connor (1977), and The Idiot Princess of the Last Dynasty (1981).

ELLIE MAE LEAVES IN A HURRY

There’s some who say she put death up her dress And some who say they saw her pour it down. it’s not the sort of thing you want to press so we just assumed she planned on leaving town and gave her money for the first express. She had some family up in Puget Sound.

Well we are married men. We’ve got interests. You can’t take children out like cats to drown. It’s not the sort of thing you want to press.

We didn’t know she’d go and pour death down, though most of us had heard of her distress. We just assumed she planned on leaving town.

There’s some of us who put death up her dress but she had family up in Puget Sound. We gave her money for the first express.

Well we are married men. We’ve got interests. Though most of us had heard of her distress. You can’t take children out like cats to drown, it’s just the sort of news that gets around.

villanelle: a verse form consisting of nineteen lines divided into six stanzas—five tercets (three-line stanzas) and one quatrain (four-line stanza). The first and third lines of the first tercet rhyme, and this rhyme is repeated through each of the next four tercets and in the last two lines of the concluding quatrain. The villanelle is also known for its repetition of select lines. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 1800

She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways

She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove,1 A Maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! —Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me!

1 A small stream in the Lake District in northern England near Wordsworth’s cottage.