Dcima in English: The controversy P. Pasmanick Decima, my idee fixe, has a number of conventions.

One is that in a "controversia", a toe to toe slugfest of improvised metric invective, a verse has more merit when it begins with the last line of a rival's poem. Use of this device demonstrates that one is truly improvising and adds a conversational note to the process. The inhabitants of rec.arts.poems, a distant planet, took it on themselves to launch decima controversias IN ENGLISH. I responded to one and inadvertantly set off another battle. I reproduce it below for the benefit of nonSpanish speakers who would like a taste of how the process works. Of course, an on-line controversia is nothing like a real live face to face confrontation, to lute and clave or guitar, but something of the flavor gets through. Here's the text of a post I sent that summarizes the state of affairs, without all the embedded quotes. You will note that the rec.arts.poems guys are big on inside references. First, I had written, inspired by a clever controversia begun a few days before...

the effort causes too much sorrow. I'll save it for another day. I riposted:

Why save it for another day, if it causes you such pain? In South America and Spain it's just a form of literate play. That IS the point! To come away, not with "fees" or published books but with the crowd's admiring looks for your sweet ephemeral rhyme. A mental sport, a game sublime-but not for mercenary schnooks.
-P. Pasmanick Then Dennis M. Hammes wrote (obscurely) If not for mercenary schnooks, That starving baby, Art, would die, For Martijn's eaten all the Pije, Mike Tyson's eaten all the books, And Peter eats the UseNet k00ks. What pay there is for seven fits Between the pocket's linty bits, And if you do it live, I tell you Not one woman wants to smell you; Still, it's all about the tits. I saw this at work, OK? And on the way home, on a bike with two pedals (note foreshadowing), despite the uncharacteristic vulgarity, I come up with this:

Dcima's back! I'm excited. You even had yourselves a duel. I'm an old dcima fool, so I'm really quite delighted. A few months ago I sighted pies forzados' in ar.ay.pee. I took some of them with me and presented them in Spain and now here they are again English fruit from Spanish trees.
-P. Pasmanick Peter J Ross responded: Are English fruit from Spanish trees red apples grown from orange blossom? We write these things, and then we toss 'em straight in the bin. We're paid no fees, so what's the point? See Richards? He's the expert, yet he throws away most of the stuff he writes. C'est vrai. Myself, I'm giving up tomorrow;

No, it's NOT about the tits. My wife's, for me, are still the best and the sight of someone's breast inspires in me no rhyming fits The slams that are the biggest hits involve knocking poets' blocks off But what really gets my rocks off when some pretty woman's listening is to see her black eyes glistening as she laughs her Spanish socks off.
-P. Pasmanick But meanwhile, PSR (Peter Stewart Richards) stole a march on me and used the mercenary schnooks thus:

It's not for mercenary schnooks. the spires of poesy aspire poets perspire for inner fire. Sweet adulation in the looks of those who see the arcane books in which they speculate and scribble are no more than the puerile dribble of introverted fantasy, dreaming there might one day be food and money on the table. PSR So now I gotta deal with HIM:

-P. Pasmanick Then my old pal, Mike Doran, also known as Yamb, gets in a few licks to my delightwed surprise: Come-backs to their rival's jive Doesn't have to mean a put-down It can also be a new found exploration what's alive Oh, how the mighty strive And lesser folks, like us, who grumble 'bout a verse convention's humble rules that may still yet deprive us from expressing what we might've if we only hadn't stumbled. Phillip? Felipe? If you reproduce this, I will have to kill you. OK, youre on, I thought: Don't worry, there will be no reproduction. The decima cult is one of the safe sects. "B" that as it may:

Food and money on my table are the product of my job I'm a normal working slob making rhymes when I am able. I don't need the "poet" label I claim no muse, I'd just waste her She'd say my efforts disgraced her. You guys, she, and I all know it I am not really a poet I'm a ten-line poetaster.
;-P. Pasmanick BUT THEN, there's another country heard from (Dennis M. Hammes): Food and money on the table? Fantasy will only meddle With The Bike That Has One Pedal, As we pump what sweat we're able To deliver song and fable All around a wordless town. I don't mean to put it down, But dreamin' money is assumin' We will pedal until human Voices wake us, and we drown. This is getting arcane. Human voices wake us, and we drown is T.S. Elliot. But One Pedal?

If we were afraid to stumble then we'd not have learned to walk we would never learn to talk if we had no chance to mumble. That's the way the cookies crumble: my philosophy for you. It may be trite, but it's still true you have to have a lotta nerve to develop poetic verve; you've got chutzpah, mi Yambu.

Voices wake us and we drown in a sea of our own spittle Dcima, it tends to whittle pompous blowhards way way down. There are poets of renown who, no matter how they strive when they have to compete live are embarrassed and made humble when they stall, stutter, and fumble come-backs to their rival's jive.