Sonnet Analysis: My Old Sonnets IV

I apologize for the delays in posting; certain scheduling difficulties arose, which I do not anticipate arising again anytime soon. Let's just jump right back into the swing of things with another analysis; while this blog will often consist predominantly of new work, if only because it can be hard to shift gears when in what feels like a creative state, the call of analysis is ever-present, and should not be ignored. So let's go ahead and look at one of my old sonnets, so that I can be appropriately nasty to it.

My face is just a mirror of desire
But mirrors are not windows. Look at me
As closely as you like, and you will see
Nothing but what is in you. I acquire
The outside form of what you would inspire
But do not show my own. Stare carefully
And you might notice something silvery
Behind the glass. Of course, if you inquire
You might see what's behind that - but unless
You ask directly, do not think you'll find
The secret to my future happiness
Or what I want right now so clearly lined
In how I look. If asked, I may confess,
But otherwise my face won't show my mind.

What Went Wrong:
So the first thing that's a little awkward about this sonnet is the rhythm. We must assume that the "-ire" ending is bisyllabic (ac-qui-re) rather than monosyllabic (ac-quire), but that's an acceptable option, I think; more troublesome are things like "what I want right now so clearly lined," with both "right now" and "so clearly" looking much more like placeholders for the verse than necessary modifiers. Obviously they do contribute to the poem, mostly by accentuating its insistence on the individuality of this precise moment (maybe later, not now) and the ambiguity of the emotions being expressed (not clearly visible, reflective, unrepresentative). So they aren't a complete loss. But they're definitely weak, and their placement in the last line of the last quatrain, a powerful position, somewhat undercuts the strength of the poem. The silveriness of what is inside the narrator is also never explained, and looks awfully like a reach for a rhyme. There is a possibility of a quicksilver/mercurial temperament that might be implied by the adjective (and obviously, mirrors are silvered) so there is, again, some justification for it, but it is also weak. And some of the emphases in the lines, especially "You might see what's behind that, but unless," seem to fall a bit off of the meter, although again that might be salvageable by pointing out that the poem is all about expectation, the seeming satisfaction of that expectation, and the implication that the satisfaction is false - something is just a little bit off, just as in the verse.

Not Too Shabby:
Besides the exculpatory points offered above in defense of weakness, there are some more definitely positive things about this poem. The Italian form, I believe, contributes to the flow of the poem and to its meaning; by using a more strict rhyme scheme, the issue of expectation and seeing only what you look for is heightened, and the rhymes, with the possible exception of "silvery," fit well into both the meaning and the meter. The poem as a whole is a good unpacking of the first sentence (lines 1-2) and an explanation, yet there still manages to be a turn at line 9 just as there should be. The theme is an interesting one too. Sadly, I think this poem comes out as a little less than the sum of its parts; the exculpatory points end up not covering the weaknesses as much as they might, and so the poem is unsatisfactory on the whole, despite good technique. But the technique is there, as a building block for either editing or future poetry.