Martin Bidney

Book of the Floating Refrain Martin Bidney

My collection of tone-crafted poems is a call to song. I named it "Book of the Floating Refrain" to highlight a musical feature of each poem: the line that's repeated in every stanza appears in line 1 with stanza one, in line 2 with stanza two, and so on, till it floats down to line 5 in stanza five. Refrains were typical of the word songs a late medieval "troubadour" poet would write to his lady love, and I'm a modern troubadour who hopes to awaken in you, the reader, a liking for this noble, mellifluent, canorous craft. My dream is that, at some point, you'll put the book down and write a word song of your own. Because troubadour word song writing is an existential project, a quest, a therapy, a sensual pleasure, a means toward love and friendship, an overcomer of doubt and even a builder of character, the result is that art and life merge. A way of art-making becomes a way of life. And a word song form devoted to enhancing both art and life becomes a kind of "wisdom literature" in its intent and goal. Bidney includes a "blogatelle" (blog + bagatelle) of commentary to accompany every poem in the present book, though often the blogatelle refuses to be wholly, or even partly, written in prose and sprouts wings for its own lyrical flight!