Monday, October 25, 2010

Yesterday I posted a poem from my new manuscript--a poem that you may or may not have noticed was a sonnet. When I'm reading, I frequently don't notice that poems are sonnets; and what does eventually trigger my awareness is more often length (14 lines) than it is rhyme scheme. This interests me. For some reason, despite the form's relatively short length and repetitive sound pattern, a sonnet's sound does not necessarily overwhelm (for lack of a better general term) the sense. Of course there are sonnets that emphasize rhyme, but on the whole a well-balanced sonnet rings its changes more subtly--through the grammatical and syntactical logic of its rhyme groupings rather than through the rhymes themselves.

Yesterday's poem, "Home," was one of a large number of sonnets that I wrote while I was simultaneously copying out Shakespeare's sonnets. I called the project my sonnet diary; basically I sat down and wrote a sonnet about whatever happened to pop into my head, about whatever I happened to be doing that day, about whatever I happened to be reading or overreacting about. All my sonnets were Shakespearean in form: quatrain (a b a b), quatrain (c d c d), quatrain (e f e f), couplet (g g).

As you might expect, most of my sonnets were terrible. But a few were passable, and I began to find that what worked best for me was to understate the rhymes and to focus on accretion of thought. Each quatrain needed to speak to the next quatrain and then the next, with the couplet serving as a sort of end punctuation. The project reinforced my conviction that poetic language is more than just the stacking of images--which is something I see very often in contemporary work. It's a means for thinking one's way down a page. That's how Milton wrote the enormous poem that is Paradise Lost, and that's how Shakespeare wrote the tiny poem that is Sonnet 76. He didn't preplan his thoughts. He thought them as he wrote, which is why the poem is not static but supple and fluid. He guides me, as a reader, through the small drama of his sudden discovery: that he can't stop writing the same old poem. C'est moi aussi, Mr. Bill.

Sonnet 76

William Shakespeare

Why is my verse so barren of new pride?

So far from variation or quick change?

Why with time do I not glance aside

To new-found methods and to compounds strange?

Why write I still all one, ever the same,

And keep invention in a noted weed,

That every word doth almost tell my name,

Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?

O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,

And you and love are still my argument;

So all my best is dressing old words new,

Spending again what is already spent:

For as the sun is daily new and old,

So is my love still telling what is told.

6 comments:

Maureen said...

I haven't tried the sonnet form in years, mainly out of fear of being awful at it.

I like your description of poetic language as the "stacking of images", "thinking one's way down a page".

Ruth said...

Maureen, I like that description too. Dawn, I think that will be a helpful way to explain what my fifth graders need to do with all their gleanings.

Dawn Potter said...

It's also helpful (at least to me) to remember that not all of Shakespeare's sonnets are equivalently strong. He had to write a lot of them to find the gold. As I was copying them all out, I could clearly see that he was trying out ideas, worrying over problems, rewriting the same story in multiple poems. It was a great comfort to "watch him at work," so to speak--a reminder of how much writing--even great writing--depends not on inspiration but on repetitive grunt work.

Thomas said...

What's funny, Dawn, is that I was reading an recent essay last week by Don Paterson (whose work I am just getting to know) on Shakespeare's sonnets, and the personal approach he describes by which he lived with the sonnets reminded me so much of your Milton memoir. Lo and behold, here you are writing about the sonnets, too! Likewise, he makes a very similar point to yours here about Shakespeare's use of the sonnet form to think through a situation. Spooky synchronicities abound!
You might find the article interesting: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/16/shakespeare-sonnets-don-paterson

Tom

Dawn Potter said...

I recently read a completely excoriating blog post about Paterson's readings of Shakespeare. I kept feeling really sorry for him. scarriet.wordpress.com. It's an excoriating site in general.

Thomas said...

Whew! Excoriating indeed. The scholar in me certainly raised an eye at several of Paterson's claims, but I'm also not entirely sure how straight-faced he is throughout. Seems he's "taking the piss" (to use that bizarre Britishism) on the academics in the house (note his trashing of Helen Vendler's book and New Criticism in general). But in many ways I found his infusion of messy passion into the sonnest inspiring as I continue my quest to unlearn some of my hyper-academic training as I teach poetry to high school students.