On Writing Bad Poetry (And Publishing It)

So the poems on this blog (I speak here only of my own poems, not the poems of others I sometimes, perhaps rarely, analyze for their triumphs and imperfections) are at their best the first draft of poetry. I write them as they come to me, indeed almost always at a single sitting. I rarely revise, at least after the lines have come to me; on occasion a rhyme or a meter will prove more difficult than I thought, or a thought itself harder to squeeze into form, and so I will rubbish a line or an ending or even a quatrain, but it is rare. If there is a spectrum from Ben Jonson's praise/dispraise of Shakespeare that he never blotted a line but "would that he had blotted out a thousand," I, while no Shakespeare by even anyone's most fevered dreamed imagining, am rather towards his end than Jonson's own. I write what comes and publish it, and not never but infrequently look back.

This is a longwinded way of saying what longtime readers and even shorttime readers have no doubt noticed: I write a lot of bad poems here.

And I think that's a good thing.

Admittedly, I do believe based on my acquaintance and reading that most if not all poets and indeed writers are better at and more comfortable with revision than I am. If so, in their cases, there may be virtue inherent in holding on to poems and tinkering, improving, and developing them. In my case, though, editing prose is something I can do; editing poetry (well) is a gift so far beyond my sphere.

As such, I am fundamentally faced with the question not of publishing a good poem or a bad, but of whether to publish or abandon work; whether to write or simply not; whether to put out into the world a poem that may be (or indeed, is) bad or no poem at all. And there are those, I do not doubt, to whom the latter answer is obviously preferable, especially given the frequency of late with which I have produced no poetry of either stripe. Why not simply expand that gap one further day? Why put poetry out that is not good?

My simplest answer to this assertion is that the good poetry relies on the bad. If I did not write the bad poems I would not write the good. I would not write any. And I much prefer a world in which I do write poems to one where I do not. And thus I write bad poems.

I have more to say on this topic, relating to how the bad poems produce the good, and why I publish it anyway in more detail, but for now I shall leave it there. Bad poetry is necessary as a means to good poetry; and publishing it is simply an acknowledgement of that.

Sonnet Analysis: Ezra Pound

It has been a while since I did one of these, hasn't it? Today I take a look at "A Virginal" by Ezra Pound (text from The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology, ed. Edward Hirsch and Eavan Boland).

No, no! Go from me. I have left her lately.

I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness,

For my surrounding air hath a new lightness;

Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly

And left me cloaked as with a gauze of aether;

As with sweet leaves; as with a subtle clearness.

Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness

To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe her.

No, no! Go from me. I have still the flavour,

Soft as spring wind that's come from birchen bowers.

Green as the shoots, aye April in the branches,

As winter's wound with her sleight hand she staunches,

Hath of the trees a likeness of the savour:

As white their bark, so white this lady's hours.

Triumphs:

I want to focus here on three particular elements of this poem that drew me to it when I decided to analyze it. All three are technical in nature (as befits a blog about writing sonnets). One is Pound's choice of rhymes: not so much the rhyme scheme although that is interesting in and of itself--I'll talk more about it in the Imperfections section because I'm not sure it works--as the complicated nature of the actual rhyme-words themselves. They tend towards feminine endings (lately, brightness, sheathe her, branches). This, along with the archaic style of the poem (archaic even for the time it was written--see Pound's other much more famous poems) creates a sense of the poem being almost overstuffed or overfull, whether of thought or emotion or what-have-you. 

This effect is heightened in the first and ninth lines (the start and the start of what would be a traditional volta) by the two strong caesuras in the line, which is related to the second element I want to emphasize: those two mirrored lines. I cait two caesuras (after the second no and the me) but it could even be three: no, no! has a strong spondaic rhythm that almost asks for a pause between the words. The effect of the pauses, I think, is again to make the line and thus the poem feel longer and more full than it actually is. The effect of the repetition, both within the line (no, no) and across the two lines is both to pull all parts of the poem together (across the volta) and to mark the strong sense of rejection that this poem gives off. This is not a traditional love poem, because the persona addressed does not seem to be the object of the romantic love in the poem--it is left extremely open exactly who is addressed, but it is emphatically not the her or this lady of the key lines here. 

The third technical element I want to draw attention to is the use of similar sounds and especially consonance across the poem, including variant forms of the same words: "sheath" in line 2 becoming "sheathe" in line 8, "no, no" in lines 1 and 9, "half in half" in line 8, the repeated "white" in the final line, but also more generally all the s-sounds, all the b-sounds, all the h-sounds (and also all the long a-sounds). This, in my opinion, makes the poem glide: it sounds like a coherent whole because the sounds of it are so consistent. This is powerful when combined with the overfullness and ambiguity noted above: somehow this sonnet feels like a single, unified idea despite at the same time feeling like it contains too much and reveals too little. It's a strong effect.

Imperfections:

I don't have a lot of imperfections to point out here: some things that might feel like weaknesses in a slightly different poem are here folded into the emotional impacts noted above, especially in terms of ambiguity. I might object in other cases to the ending of the sonnet, which I don't find especially compelling--but the very ambiguity of the value of "white" in the final lines works, I think, because of the rest of the poem's effects (or perhaps I've just read too many romance novels about rakes recently and "white" is not intended ambiguously--but I think, in this poem, I prefer it so). 

The major imperfection I want to draw attention to is, as with the triumphs, technical. As noted above, I'm not entirely sure I find this rhyme scheme works for me. It's a little hard to categorize: "brightness" and "lightness" should rhyme with "nearness" and "clearness" but they don't quite because of where the emphases fall in the feminine endings; similarly "savour" and "hours" look at first like they are trying to rhyme but don't. On the flip side, "aether" and "sheathe her" don't rhyme in my pronunciation of English, and yet they do here. This can, viewed one way, contribute to the ambiguity of the poem, but for me it feels more awkward than effective. I'm also just generally not a huge fan of Italianate sonnets (which this definitely is--a hard end-stopped turn at line 9, and a complex rhyme scheme [EFGGEF] in the volta) that don't embrace the power of the AB rhymes in the octave fully. Nor am I that fond of the volta's rhyme scheme itself, since the visual connection of the -our[s] rhymes, for me, flattens it out into almost a series of rhymed couplets. From my angle, then, while the word-work of the poem is strong (see Triumphs), the structural work makes poor use of it. Still, it is fascinating, from my perspective, to read a traditionally-shaped sonnet from Pound, a poet so known for eschewing traditional forms.

Sonnet Analysis: John Milton

Today, I take a look at John Milton's famous sonnet on his blindness, "When I Consider How My Light Is Spent."

When I consider how my light is spent,

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one Talent which is death to hide 

Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent 

To serve therewith my Maker, and present 

My true account, lest he returning chide; 

“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?” 

I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent 

That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need 

Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best 

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state 

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed 

And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest: 

They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Triumphs:

If there is one reason I love this sonnet, it's the way John Milton, who was a prodigy, a busybody, and the very definition of a tryhard, manages to cast himself as a patient sufferer who only "stand[s] and wait[s]." I do not in any way mean to make light of Milton's actual blindness, which does seem to have been a trial to him, but the pose of martyrdom is truly an artistic tour-de-force. How does he do it? Well, first of all, he never actually says that he is standing, waiting, or anything of the sort. He's not even, necessarily, patient! The entire sestet is ventriloquized through the character of patience, speaking to him, while Milton's response is implied it is very much not explicit. In fact, the famous last sentence is, if anything, a distancing effect: it is not "you" or "I" who "also serve who only stand and wait" but "They"--as if even in the climactic moment of the poem Milton could not bring himself to actually commit to being the stationary one. At the same time, giving that much of the poem over to patience still gives the impression of the author being patient, and listening to patience, even as he fails to respond to what it has to say.

There is also a great play on the word "spent" at the end of line 1. It's only when we start out on the enjambed line 2 ("Ere half my days") that we can tell "spent" means "used up" and not simply "used." "My light is spent" could, after all, refer to how one passes the day--how the light, the "day-labour" that the speaker refers to later, is "spent" day by day. It only comes to certainly mean "I have no access to light," which is not actually an instinctive meaning for the words, once we understand both the biography of the author (always a dangerous source in a genre that is inherently imaginative) and once we try to parse "spent/Ere half my days," which definitely calls for spent as "used up." And yet the other sense of spent keeps raising its head--the sestet is, after all, about ways to spend time. They also serve who spend their light standing and waiting.

The religious references in the poem are also a great effect. The intertwining of the parable of the talents with the issue of Milton's talents in the modern sense is very well done, and of course resonates with the third sense of spent, "exchanged like money," which is an active concern within the parable. And then we get a typical Miltonic attempt to square the circle of God's might and human obligation: God doesn't actually need any of what we do; doing what God has assigned us, what his "mild yoke" has led us to, is the best service, and straining against that yoke is the only real sin. In this, especially in "His State/Is Kingly" we get the sense, recognizable from Paradise Lost if nowhere else, that for Milton the key fact of God is precisely that He (and Milton's God is definitely He) is inherently above the questions that seem so vital to humanity. 

Imperfections:

This poem, as with many Petrarchan sonnets, gets a little too cutesy at the volta, the turn between octave and sestet. In doing so, it makes a characteristic Miltonic change to normal English word order, shoving the actual action of the sentence as far back as possible and inserting what looks like a Latinate ablative absolute along the way: ""Does God exact day-labour, light denied?"/I fondly ask." "Light denied" here is really bent over backwards for the rhyme, and another delay of the verb comes in the next sentence to allow "prevent" as the final rhyme in the octave. But the most notable point is that "fondly ask" is actually the verb of the sentence that takes the entire first seven lines! This is very Milton, but it's also pretty annoying when you try to actually figure out what he's saying. When he considers his blindness and his talent being "Lodged with [him] useless," then he asks (fondly) about whether God exacts day-labour. It's a gorgeous poem, which makes it easy to miss this, but it's a terrible sentence. Which is, in a lot of ways, what Milton is all about.

Lin-Manuel Miranda's Sonnet at the Tony Awards

The sonnet just got a boost in the news in the reporting of this year's Tony Awards, as Lin-Manuel Miranda, the brilliant author of Hamilton: An American Musical, recited one in accepting his Tony for composing the musical. This poem has been published with a couple of different line divisions, none of which (that I've yet seen) make it a sonnet--but I think there is a set of line divisions that would make it one.

CNN has Miranda's 'sonnet' without line divisions at all

"We chase the melodies that seem to find us until they're finished songs and start to play when senseless acts of tragedy remind us that nothing here is promised, not one day. This show is proof that history remembers. We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger. We rise and fall, and light from dying embers, remembrances that hope and love last longer and love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside. As sacred as a symphony Eliza tells her story. Now fill the world with music, love and pride. And thank you so much for this." 

(From http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/13/entertainment/lin-manuel-miranda-sonnet-hamilton-orlando/)

This is probably appropriate for Miranda's well-known spoken-word, hip-hop origins, but it's not a sonnet. Sonnets have lines, meter, and rhyme. And of course they include the "thank you so much for this," which refers to the Tony award but probably isn't intended as part of the poem.

Vanity Fair has it as, basically, a ballad (four quatrains), although they don't emphasize the quatrain divisions.

My wife’s the reason anything gets done

She nudges me towards promise by degrees

She is a perfect symphony of one,

Our son is her most beautiful reprise

We chase the melodies that seem to find us

Until they’re finished songs and start to play

When senseless acts of tragedy remind us

That nothing here is promised, not one day

This show is proof that history remembers

We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger

We rise and fall and light from dying embers

Remembrances that hope and love lasts long

And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love

Cannot be killed or swept aside,

I sing Vanessa’s symphony, Eliza tells her story

Now fill the world with music love and pride

(From http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2016/06/lin-manuel-miranda-tony-speech)

This isn't a sonnet because a) sonnets have 14 lines, b) sonnets are consistently rhymed, and c) it's a ballad. Ballads aren't sonnets; different lyric forms exist for different reasons and uses, and it's not helpful to conflate them. There's nothing wrong with Miranda's poem as a ballad (except that he called it a sonnet). This was how I first encountered the poem set, and it has a strong appeal--partly because the lines end up the same length or roughly so throughout. But it's not a sonnet, which is a problem given that Miranda told us it's a sonnet.

The NY Times has it as follows:

My wife’s the reason anything gets done

She nudges me towards promise by degrees

She is a perfect symphony of one

Our son is her most beautiful reprise.

We chase the melodies that seem to find us

Until they’re finished songs and start to play

When senseless acts of tragedy remind us

That nothing here is promised, not one day.

This show is proof that history remembers

We lived through times when hate and fear seemed stronger;

We rise and fall and light from dying embers, remembrances that hope and love last longer

And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.

I sing Vanessa’s symphony, Eliza tells her story

Now fill the world with music, love and pride.

(From http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/13/theater/lin-manuel-mirandas-sonnet-from-the-tony-awards.html)

This is not a sonnet; they've made it 14 lines, but they wrecked the rhyme scheme and the line lengths end up really weird and inconsistent. Nice try, but it's not quite there.

EW reports the line divisions very oddly, dividing some lines with a virgule (/) and some with actual line breaks:

My wife’s the reason anything gets done/ She nudges me towards promise by degrees / She is a perfect symphony of one/ Our son is her most beautiful reprise.

We chase the melodies that seem to find us until they’re finished songs and start to play/ When senseless acts of tragedy remind us that nothing here is promised, not one day.

This show is proof that history remembers/ We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger/ We rise and fall and light from dying embers remembrance that hope and love last forever. 

Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside/ I sing Vanessa’s symphony. Eliza tells her story. [we] fill the world with music, love, and pride.

(From http://www.ew.com/article/2016/06/12/tony-awards-2016-lin-manuel-miranda-sonnet-orlando, italics removed) 

This is almost there, but like the NY Times version, it too ends up mucking up the rhyme scheme (and actually ending up as a thirteen-line poem) because of what looks like a missed line division in the third from last line.

So what do I think Miranda's sonnet should look like? This:

My wife’s the reason anything gets done

She nudges me towards promise by degrees

She is a perfect symphony of one

Our son is her most beautiful reprise.

We chase the melodies that seem to find us

Until they’re finished songs and start to play

When senseless acts of tragedy remind us

That nothing here is promised, not one day.

This show is proof that history remembers

We lived through times when hate and fear seemed stronger;

We rise and fall and light from dying embers, 
Remembrances that hope and love last longer

And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.

I sing Vanessa’s symphony, Eliza tells her story. Now fill the world with music, love and pride.

 Now this is a sonnet! 14 lines, rhyme scheme, and meter. The meter changes in the last two lines of the sonnet, but this is not unprecedented: Sir Philip Sidney's great sixteenth-century sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella, frequently moves from iambic pentameter in the first twelve lines to hexameter in the final couplet. Miranda's move is more dramatic, into duodecameter (twenty-four syllables a line, twice as many as Sidney's twelve-syllable hexameter), but it fits his aggressively innovative and over-crammed poetic style. The strictest form of the definitions I've introduced in my Introduction to the Sonnet (beginning here) would exclude it for the meter change, but as I've noted before in different contexts, as long as the poem builds up an expectation of consistent meter, the rhetorical effect of a sudden change towards the end can be very effective while remaining within the tradition of the sonnet.

Why does this matter? I'm sure, to many people, it simply doesn't. Lin-Manuel Miranda called it a sonnet, so it's a sonnet. But I believe that there is a reason we don't just call all poems, or even all short lyric poems, sonnets. There is a value to having standards and constraints within--and against--which to work. Writing a sonnet is different than writing a ballad, than writing an ode, than writing anything other than a sonnet, because of its particular constraints, its particular history, and its particular rules. In Lin-Manuel Miranda's sonnet (once properly set as a sonnet) we can see the particular ways in which he plays with those rules: by keeping fairly strictly to the iambic pentameter mode in the first twelve lines, the powerful expansion of the meter in the final couplet (and especially the moving "Love is love..." half-line, which begins the metrical change, going far beyond the pentameter restriction all on its own) is substantially heightened. Compare the Vanity Fair setting of the poem as a near-ballad with the sonnet setting above, and you will see that the final two lines of the sonnet are remarkable for their vitality and power in a substantially different way than the final quatrain of the ballad. This power comes not just from the words of Miranda's poem, but also from its context. Alexander Hamilton, the subject of Hamilton, was particularly known for writing "Non-Stop" (in the title of the first-act finale) and so the overstuffed last two lines are not just moving in their content, but in their Hamiltonian nature. The strong caesuras in these lines (after the last "love" and after the penultimate period, respectively) are what clearly suggested to the Vanity Fair editors that these should be line breaks, but both come more than halfway through their respective lines, which is a signal to us that they are in fact caesuras--and that this is in fact a sonnet.

Sonnet Analysis: Shakespeare II

This sonnet I am almost scared of analyzing, because it is one of my favorites and one I have had memorized for almost too long. But it deserves to be looked at, and so, without further ado, Shakespeare's Sonnet 130:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.


Triumphs:
This is a classic inversion of the blazon, turning the already-standard tropes of love poetry around in order to (still) finish with a declaration of love. It's not quite "negging" in the modern sense, as the poet ends with an affirmation of his love's rareness; it is more of an attack on others' poetry disguised within a love poem. And at that, it is highly effective, a virtuoso example of taking a style and using it to mock itself. The comparisons are all there, just turned around, and the fact that the poet avoids too much repetition in how he introduces them shows a stylistic variability that pleases the ear. There is a good use of the octave-sestet division at "I love to hear her speak," which follows upon the strong negativity of the previous eight lines (and particularly the ending "reeks" of line 8) with a positive image, which is immediately turned to still support the dominant message through "yet well I know/That music hath a far more pleasing sound." The rest of the sestet is beautifully done as well, and, as is frequently the case with Shakespeare, the couplet is amazing. It is strongly separated from the rest of the poem, yet draws on the previous lines for its effect, summing their effect up for its own purpose. The language is also gorgeous: the consonance of "white" and "wires" in lines 3-4, the power of the broad vowel in "reeks" in line 8, the return of "my mistress" from line 1 into line 12, just in time for the concluding couplet.

Imperfections:
Tempted as I am to say "this is my favorite, it's a perfect poem," it isn't. "In some perfumes is there more delight" seems a bit forced; the "by heaven" in the penultimate line seems like a filler; the double "red" in line 2 and "wires" in line 4 seem somewhere between filler and forced. But each of these can also be justified, which is what makes it hard to talk of imperfections here.

Sonnet Analysis: Spenser II

Today I have decided to look at another classic sonnet and see what makes it tick. This is from Edmund Spenser's Amoretti:

Fair is my love, when her fair golden hairs

With the loose wind ye waving chance to mark:

Fair, when the rose in her red cheeks appears,

Or in her eyes the fire of love does spark:

Fair, when her breast, like a rich laden bark

With precious merchandise she forth doth lay:

Fair, when that cloud of pride, which oft doth dark

Her goodly light, with smiles she drives away

But fairest she, when so she doth display

The gate with pearls and rubies richly dight,

Through which her words so wise do make their way,

To bear the message of her gentle sprite.

The rest be works of nature's wonderment,

But this the work of heart's astonishment.

Triumphs:

The anaphora is strong in this one. The repeated use of "fair" may start off as annoying to some readers, but it is powerful enough to lull that critical part of the mind and become instead simply a part of the structure, especially on repeated readings. It contributes to the sonnet's octave-sestet division, as the change from "Fair" to "But fairest" signals the poet's turn from contemplating multiple parts of his mistress in sequence to exploring one aspect in more depth. Spenser's distinctive rhyme scheme (ababbcbccdcdee) is in full flower here, and with the partial exception of "dight" (slightly archaic even in his own time), the words are common enough that they pass unnoticed except as a pleasant rhythm, which is, in my opinion, how that rhyme scheme should sound at its best, avoiding the cloying over-rhyme-y feeling it can sometimes fall into. The sudden change from one and two syllable words to the "wonderment" and "astonishment" of the final couplet is powerful as well, strengthening the importance of those two words in the imagination. This compensates for the weakness of the actual rhyme (using the -ment suffix as the only rhyming element in a multisyllabic word). 

Imperfections:

As just mentioned, the last rhyme is weak in itself; like using a rhyme on -ly, a rhyme on -ment is strongest when the penultimate syllable would be a rhyme without the suffix. This is worse in the case of -ment because it is a less common sound and therefore draws attention to itself, whereas -ly is common enough that it can pass without inspection in most cases. This is definitely a sonnet that wants to be read repeatedly, so that the awkwardness of that rhyme, the initial resistance that can be posed by such extended anaphora, and the weakness of "dight" can all recede and the poem's strong concept and rhythm can rise to the fore. It also suffers from feeling trite in a modern context--although the existence of Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 should remind us that this sort of sentiment quickly became trite in the early modern period too--and  from using metaphors that are less recognizable to modern ears (pearls and rubies for the teeth and lips). The use of "fair" outside the anaphora may also be criticized, since it adds to the potential exhaustion of that term without contributing directly to the rhetorical effect.

On Stretching Meanings

Poetry has some flexibility with the language, naturally, in the service of art. Just how much can be a question though, obviously. For example, if you look one post before this, the sonnet there rhymes "ruth" with "truth." This in itself is not objectionable: they rhyme. But is "ruth" really the emotion demanded by, or even an emotion permitted by, the rest of the poem? Ruth means pity, compassion, sorrow, grief, the emotions felt by Ruth the Moabite towards her mother-in-law Naomi in the Biblical Book of Ruth after their mutual widowhood. The poem is about romantic love. How far can one stretch "ruth," with all its sorrowful, pitying connotations (and even direct definitions!) to fit that mold?

The first cast in that direction is grammatical: "ruth" is joined with "And tenderness" in the following line, which means that we must take a form of ruth that can join with tenderness. But all of the definitions I've placed above can do so: grief and tenderness may be the furthest apart, but they are by no means absurd when joined. Rather, the absurdity in all these cases arises from the sense that the poem wants "ruth" to mean something like a synonym for tenderness, not just a complement. So this move does not help, although in other contexts it might.

Building on that, though, we can ask if there is a fringe definition - archaic, obsolete, historical-linguistic - that is allowable but unintuitive and might make sense of "ruth." This is for instance how one most often deals with John Milton's excessive Latinism: go back to his Latin roots and define the parts until you see how it works beyond ordinary English usage. Here we are on firmer ground: if we take "ruth" in its formative sense as related to the sympathetic and self-effacing love Ruth felt for Naomi, we could make that work.

This, however, brings us close to the borderline of complete redefinition: taking the word Humpty-Dumpty-style and making it mean what you say it means. This should generally be avoided except when coining the word for the first time, and even then it ought to be a meaning suggested by the sound or component parts of the word. It is a real stretch, which can easily break a poem, to go too far out on the redefinition limb.

As for "ruth," you tell me: did it go too far? I am personally just barely satisfied with it: the difficulty of that rhyme compensates somewhat for the effort needed to define it (if the rhyme were something ending in an -ee sound, there would be no excuse since there are so many rhymes), and the root meaning is there, if somewhat faintly. Ruth's love for Naomi is the central motivator of the word, and it is that sort of overwhelming, non-self-oriented love - which sometimes seems like pity and can in fact be called compassion in one sense of that word - that the poem wanted and needed from the word. But I am not the arbiter of my own poetry: the reader is. So what do you think?

Sonnet Analysis: Barrett Browning I

A while ago, one of my friends said that this particular sonnet makes her vomit with how saccharine and overdone it is. As you could probably guess, this is not an opinion I share, given my choice to analyze it. I hope in this analysis to show why it should not be disdained, but rather is done a disservice by its iconic status, which causes people to underestimate it because of how famous its opening line has become. Without further ado, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnet 43 from "Sonnets from the Portuguese": "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways."

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Triumphs:
Look beyond the first line (which is actually a lovely line itself, but has probably become too cliche to stand on its own anymore). This sonnet sets up a question in the first line, and it answers that question beautifully. That first answer: "I love thee to the depth and breadth and height/My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight/For the ends of Being and ideal Grace" is gorgeous. The pacing of the lines - both of the line breaks and the feeling of near-end-stopping despite the enjambment - produces a tumble over of emotion from line to line as the reader looks for the answer. The initial line in this answer is simply wonderful: it expresses totality (the depth and breadth and height) while keeping the suspense built into the initial question by not answering the obvious "of what?" question. Barrett Browning here manages a tricky tightrope: having the set up only take one line, but not allowing the response to feel finished too early. By having that first answer spill over three lines, and with the pacing she establishes in it, she allows the poem to safely pass over the danger of turning into a mere couplet or quatrain. If she had jumped, say, to "I love thee freely, as men strive for Right," the poem would lose momentum; because she goes immediately into a long answer, and then further into another multi-line answer ("I love thee to the level of everyday's/Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight") she gives the poem the space to build that momentum up.

The turn is also highly effective: moving from general adverbial description (I love thee in this way or this much) to specific methodological description (I love thee using this passion), both of which answer the question "how" but in subtly different ways. The turn also builds towards the eventual finish of loving after death by allowing the move to "of all my life" which in turn moves towards death. So formally, the poem has a strong flow that has been very effectively managed.

Aesthetically, it also has strong appeal. There is a strong mix of end-stopping and enjambment throughout, as noted above. The diction is also extremely interesting: the mixture of abstractions (Right, Grace, Being, Praise) and then intensely personal moments (the breath/Smiles, tears of all my life) is effective in conveying the breadth of the affect being demonstrated, while the timely repetitions of "I love thee" anchor the poem. It is a powerful poem expressing its object of universal love.

Imperfections:
Most of the quibbles with this poem rely on two points: it is cliched, and it is saccharine. The cliched quality of the poem, however, is entirely a result of its success: "how do I love thee? Let me count the ways" was not a cliche when Barrett Browning wrote it, but rather has become one from this sonnet. As for the saccharine issue, it is a love sonnet, so there is always that risk. But personally, that overly sugary quality in poetry results primarily from chiming rhymes, too much end-stopping, and overly repetitive diction, particularly overly regular repetitive diction. All of these things are problems I may be guilty of in many of my poems, but are not things this poem is guilty of. Rather, I believe the issue with this poem is simply that it has been too successful: it has been imitated, quoted, and parodied so much that the fundamental beauty there is to some extent lost.

That does not mean it is a perfect poem. There are slant rhymes that although they make the poem less sugary and chimey, are also less pleasing: faith and breath is I think the worst. The three straight lines around the turn beginning "I love thee" are a little overdone. But overall, the poem is extremely powerful, and I think only undone by being, in a sense, too good of an expression of its object.

Sonnet Analysis: John Masefield

I just ran across this sonnet that I think deserves some attention. So I'm going to give it that attention. John Masefield's "Life" was published in 1916 in The Atlantic.

What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt
Held in cohesion by unresting cells
Which work they know not why, which never halt;
Myself unwitting where their Master dwells.
I do not bid them, yet they toil, they spin
A world which uses me as I use them.
Nor do I know which end or which begin,
Nor which to praise, which pamper, which condemn.
So like a marvel in a marvel set,
I answer to the vast, as wave by wave
The sea of air goes over, dry or wet,
Or the full moon comes swimming from her cave
Or the great sun comes north; this myriad I
Tingle, not knowing how, yet wondering why.

Triumphs:
This is a poem about the uncertainty of what it is to live and to be alive, and the wonder that attends on that uncertainty. That effect is powerfully heightened by the words Masefield uses: his diction is heightened, and the Latinate words flow into and through the poem, increasing the sense of awe. The pseudo-Petrarchan organization of the poem (divided into octave and sestet, though the octave rhymes abbacddc rather than abbaabba) and the powerful move out from the individual's self-conception to the individual in the world at the turn also works extremely well to cultivate and express the sense of awe the narrator feels. The syntax of the sestet is also effective in creating that wonder: the sentences feel open-ended, and substantives like "the vast" and "this myriad" leave open the definition of the antecedents, opening the poem up to the enormous variety of the world. Finally, the sound-patterning is simply gorgeous in the mouth.

Imperfections:
That very openness can seem indecisive or highfalutin: "I answer to the vast" is a very difficult line to carry off without sounding pretentious, and, much as I like this poem, I am far from certain that Masefield does so. "The full moon comes swimming from her cave" is susceptible to the same problem, and also seems to dip the poem out of the modern scientific wonder that the rest of the poem invokes back to a more ancient sort of wonder, the mythological belief that the moon spends the day in a cave, and while that wonder is legitimate too, it seems retrograde within the context of the rest of the poem. And the same is true of the "great sun coming north." They're a little overdone, but the rest of the poem is beautiful enough to bring them along with it.

Sonnet Analysis: My Old Sonnets XIV

It has been a little while since I indulged in the analysis, rather than the composition or contemplation, of sonnets in this space. This ends now! Let's take a look at another old sonnet of mine, and see if we can't say something helpful about it.

I'm not allowed to say how beautiful
You looked tonight. I think I might go mad.
I looked at other women, but a pull
From your appearance took from what they had
All my appreciation. Look, I tried,
I really did, to look away from you
But I just couldn't. My own eyes defied
My every order - though I must admit they knew
What I desired better than my mind.
I know I shouldn't say it, but desire
Makes me incapable of being blind
And I must tell you. I could say a fire
Burns within me, but that's poetry:
Let's just say you look beautiful to me.

What Went Wrong:
There is one very awkward phrase here: "a pull/from your appearance took from what they had/All my appreciation" not only doesn't roll off the tongue smoothly, but is quiet convoluted when you look at it outside the context of the sonnet too. The ending feels a bit pat; I've noticed, and I expect anyone who has been reading either these old sonnet analyses or the new sonnets being posted here has also noticed, that I have a tendency to that sort of, well, not quite oversimplification, not quite sappiness, but perhaps (over)tidiness. The poem has so much enjambment that the neat unrolling of that last line seems perhaps trite, and certainly in tension with the rhythms that have come before it. The trope of refusing poetry in the middle of a poem is also overused, which contributes to that sense.

Not Too Shabby:
I like the rhythms here. There's a lot of enjambment followed by a half-line that creates an end-stop, and vice-versa, where a half-line leads into a one-and-a-half. That start/stop rhythm seems to reinforce the message of the poem, while also leading towards a certain degree of ambiguity about the sense, if not the sincerity, of the narrator. I really like a couple of the figures, particularly "desire/makes me incapable of being blind," which I find to be a neat aversion of the blinded by desire trope, and the first two lines. The visual emphases - even the "look" as an emphatic - also seem to be handled fairly well, without becoming overly belabored. And, despite what I said above, there is something redeeming about the last line and its setup: it refuses to go any further towards poetry than the initial desire at the top of the poem. In a sense, this poem is a spiral - a circle with progression - because it begins and ends with the desire to express how beautiful the love object is - in one case expressed through the refusal to express it, in the other directly stated. Rather than vowing eternal love, etherealizing the love object, or even elevating the diction of the statement, the final line simply achieves the desire posited at the start: "let's just say you look beautiful to me."

Sonnet Analysis: My Old Sonnets XIII

So this time we will look at a poem consciously, and intentionally, written to try to fit an older model. Obviously this involves archaism; but unlike some others we have looked at, this poem is not simply throwing archaism into an otherwise modern poem, but actually attempting to map onto those older expectations.

Ah, Muse, if thou wilt not stay for my sake
Nor listen to the reasons of my own,
And if hard-hearted towards me thou hast grown,
I charge thee yield thyself to my heartache.
Remain with me to sing my love awake
That she may see the seeds that she has sown.
Do not, O Muse, desert me all alone
And leave me that my heart may ever break.
Thy aid, pray lend to join me in this song;
Not spoke out loud, yet may its verses ring;
When that she reads, O, help her eyes along
That she may hear the love I have to bring,
And though around her other suitors throng,
Let her but hear my loving voice to sing.

What Went Wrong:
In modern terms, an invocation to the Muse makes no sense. It's just weird. But we'll pass that by for the moment, and look at the poem on its own terms: "listen to the reasons of my own" is faulty grammar, by which I mean that it doesn't actually make sense. The poem seems unwilling to decide whether it is a song or something to be read; it almost seems to alternate in the sestet, which can induce intellectual whiplash. Even for an archaic-styled poem, there are some harsh breaks - "not spoke out loud" and "leave me that my heart may ever break" are both perilously close to, if not over, the edge of too much syntactical telescoping, while "when that she reads" turns towards the other extreme.

Not Too Shabby:
Taking the invocation of the Muse as legitimate, it's actually not badly done. The Muse is invoked for a specific purpose, which animates the entire poem. The rhymes are strong, and the octave/sestet division clear. The (unrhymed) couplets in the sestet are, I think, effective, and other than the issue of read/sing confusion, they build effectively. I really like "I charge thee yield thyself to my heartache" as a surprise rhyme for "sake" and as a central line of the entire poem thematically.

Archaism:
This is a poem clearly written to be archaic. It does a good job of picking up the thee and thou correctly, rather than just sticking "-eth" on everything, but there are higher standards than that. The invocation of the Muse, the initial "ah," and the "thou" in the first line are all clear signals, front-loaded in the poem, of what this poem is trying to accomplish chronologically as well as artistically. This is substantially better than throwing archaisms in to make the poem work later after a start that implies a more modern sensibility. The fact that these elements remain used throughout helps as well. I would hardly call this a model of how to do archaism, but certainly it manages to leap the basic hurdles one should avoid tripping over if using archaism as an intentional effect: it does not misuse the constructions, it is formed around a conceit that is appropriate to the style, it continues the effect throughout, and it reads like a coherent whole once the conceit is accepted.

Parallel Poetry Demonstration

So occasionally a line arrives in my head, only to be followed quickly by another line formed almost exactly on the same lines (usually because I somehow temporarily forget the first and recreate it inexactly). Sometimes I like only one, sometimes neither, sometimes both. But I thought it might be interesting to create poems off of the two that just occurred to me, commenting as I go and showing (possibly) how slight initial differences in rhythm or diction can lead to different poems, as well as how I write a sonnet.

First Lines:
My poetry is parenthetical

My poems are all parenthetical

These are clearly almost the same line. The differences lie in rhythm - the first flows faster because there are fewer words that hit the stresses more firmly, while the second has that "all" that wants stress it can't have - and diction, where "poetry" implies the generality and "poems...all" emphasizes the discrete products.

Second Lines:
My poetry is parenthetical;
It hides inside the corners of my life

My poems are all parenthetical;
They hide inside the corners of my life

So we again have a singular/plural distinction: one is giving us a sense of immanence, with poetry hiding everywhere, the other of secrecy, with individual poems waiting to be discovered, or hoping not to be.

Now we speed up.

Octave:
My poetry is parenthetical;
It hides inside the corners of my life.
If I were settled, with a loving wife
And children, I think it is possible
I would not write it. My rhetorical
Flourishes exist to mirror strife
And flicker on the edges of a knife,
Not in a happy home, which is too full

My poems are all parenthetical;
They hide inside the corners of my life.
If I were settled with a loving wife
And children, I think it is possible
I would not write them. I would be too full
Of other thoughts, for happiness is rife
With great distractions, and it lacks the strife
That opens space for poems. As I mull

So first: yes, I pronounce all the A rhymes the same way. I was as surprised as you.

Now we really see the difference between the poems. While I will concede I could force either octave onto either opening, I feel these differences flowed naturally from the differences in the openings. "Poetry," which had a faster flow and a sense of immanent, immaterial poetry, slides easily into general thoughts about not writing "it" and about the "rhetorical/flourishes" that make up my poetry. It wants to talk generally, and talk about how I write, the characteristics of my "poetry." And it does so with only one sentence break, smoothly. "Poems" is jerkier, with an additional sentence break, and it takes a different tack. It is not as interested in broad poetic strokes, but in the "space for poems" and being "too full." Poems hiding in the corners need space; poetry can exist at the same time as whatever might fill those corners. "Poems" is interested in the mind and how it juggles multiple inputs; "Poetry" in the situations that produce different effects.

Beginning Sestet:
My poetry is parenthetical;
It hides inside the corners of my life.
If I were settled, with a loving wife
And children, I think it is possible
I might not write it. My rhetorical
Flourishes exist to mirror strife
And flicker on the edges of a knife
Not in a happy home, which is too full
Of other thoughts that dampen that raw sense
Which touches poetry. If all is light,
Where are the shadows which inspire song?

My poems are all parenthetical;
They hide inside the corners of my life.
If I were settled, with a loving wife
And children, I think it is possible
I could not write them. I would be too full
Of other thoughts, for happiness is rife
With great distractions, and it lacks the strife
That opens space for poems. As I mull
That possibility, I ask myself
If that could make me happy. Could I be
Satisfied with life too full to write?

Obviously the differences have widened, partly because the end rhyme needed for "Poems" threw it in a new direction, partly because "Poetry" had not actually caught up to "Poems" and it's thoughts about "other thoughts." Each is going for a three-rhyme sestet, but the themes have clarified their differences: one is about situations, and the other space, even as both are obsessed with when the narrator would not write a poem.

Finish:
My poetry is parenthetical;
It hides inside the corners of my life.
If I were settled, with a loving wife
And children, I think it is possible
I would not write it. My rhetorical
Flourishes exist to mirror strife
And flicker on the edges of a knife
Not in a happy home, which is too full
Of other thoughts that dampen that raw sense
That touches poetry. If all is light,
Where are the shadows that inspire song?
But if I were to penetrate the fence
Surrounding happiness, I fear it might
Make both the joy and poetry go wrong.

My poems are all parenthetical;
They hide inside the corners of my life.
If I were settled, with a loving wife
And children, I think it is possible
I would not write them. I would be too full
Of other thoughts, for happiness is rife
With great distractions, and it lacks the strife
Which opens space for poems. As I mull
That possibility, I ask myself
If that could make me happy. Could I be
Satisfied with life too full to write?
If all my poems pile on the shelf,
Or even lie unwritten? Such a sight,
I think, would scare the joyfulness from me.

And we're done. "Poems" ends frightened of the lack of space; "Poetry," worried that everything, not just the poetry might fail. Neither optimistic, but not nearly the same. The rhymes in "Poetry," which was always more direct, run CDECDE, where "Poems," always more jerky, is CDECED. Even the endings, each in fear or worry, differ according to how the beginnings did: one concerned with space, joy being "from me," and the other situations as a whole, with both "joy" and "poetry" being utterly spoiled. I think these changes flow logically from the initial small differences, and I think they are each a good reflection of the initial mindset of their first lines.

Sonnet Analysis: My Old Sonnets XII

I realized that I have not analyzed a sonnet that I had real issues with in a while. So it is time to do so! It's always more interesting, as a matter of craft, I think, when I can take one apart.

I wondered if I wandered by a star
Or built my house upon a fire-mount
The light was growing, greater now by far
'Til it had passed capacity to count
Or measure. All the senses were aglow
As if the eyes had vanquished all the rest
And, as the victors in the senses' row
Had all the other put under arrest,
That all of them did see the growing light.
So far surpassed this sweet event my eye
That I, bebaffled, did renounce my sight
Believing it must sure have told a lie
But true it was, now poor I must admit
For dark is here now you my vision quit.

What Went Wrong:
The horrible, horrible pseudoarchaism. "Fire-mount"? "'Til it had passed capacity to count" (a verb that would make no sense in that context anyway)? "That all of them did see"? "So far surpassed this sweet event my eye"? "true it was"? "poor I must admit"? "now you my vision quit"? And for the love of God, fun as it is to say, "bebaffled"?

Let this serve as an object lesson: if it sounds wrong, don't write it. Just because you, or in this case obviously, I, have some absurd idea about what might have sounded right several centuries ago, that doesn't mean you should inflict that vision on a poor defenseless sonnet. There are better ways to say it. Yes, in some slight pathetic measure of defense it might be said that all those terribly twisted inversions of syntactic order allow the important words to hit the stressed syllables, but that's hardly an excuse. It's best to look at a line with meter, rhythm (of the sentence as distinct from meter), and syntax in mind, and, if you decide there is no good way to say what you want to say and rhyme without violating at least one of the three, pick the way that violates the fewest (preferably none or one). In this case, I clearly chose to violate both rhythm of the line and syntax to preserve meter, which is a poor choice. The saddest part is that the answer to "where did you do that?" isn't a single line; it is, in a sense, the whole poem.

Besides that, of course, the archaism also shows up in the diction, with invented words. Bebaffled is at least fun to say, if a little pointless given that it clearly simply tacked on a syllable to baffled. Fire-mount is silly, and not in a good way. It sounds tacky, archaic, and yet unlikely to have actually been archaically attested. In short, it has everything negative about archaism and none of the positive.

Besides all of that, if this were a better poem I would comment on issues like the confusion that the syntactical mish-mosh introduces at the end of the poem. I would also note that "row" is a false rhyme, since that use of the word should really be "rauw" rather than "roe," but has to be "roe" to rhyme with "aglow." But there's just so much more to comment on...

Not Too Shabby:
So is there anything that can be salvaged? I like "I wondered if I wandered" for the use of those two echoing words together. If it were not surrounded by all the other archaisms and silliness, "bebaffled" would actually be a fun coinage. And for some reason "all the senses were aglow" appeals to me as an image, especially the implication that other senses than sight were involved. It should be "all my senses," but it still sounds good. Sadly, that's about all that wasn't too shabby for words.

Sonnet Analysis: My Old Sonnets XI

It isn't every day that I look through my poems and discover one I like and yet don't ever remember writing. That was, however, what happened this day, so here, without further ado, is the sonnet in question:

I look at you and I remember when
I wrote you poems; and you read them too.
They said what everyone already knew
But you were happy hearing it again.
I think I knew what I was doing then;
I wrote because I was in love with you.
I can't imagine what else I should do.
Sometimes I wish I were like other men
And not impulsive in the way I've been;
But then I think of what I used to write
And how it made you feel, and how we were.
It's times like that, I think, when I prefer
To be myself. I hope we can begin
To heal those wounds and make us both all right.

What Went Wrong:
I'm not a huge fan of rhyming homophones, much less having one such rhyme end a sonnet; but I did it here. I am not sure how "I can't imagine what else I should do" fits into the poem, other than as a vehicle for the rhyme. It would probably be better expressed as something like "And didn't know what else I ought to do," because that would avoid the following pitfalls it currently falls into: standing unattached to previous or following lines, having major stresses (particularly "should") fall on unstressed syllables (and the penultimate is a bad syllable to stress), and falling into the present tense when it should properly be in the past. The last problem is especially pointed because it is clear that in the present the narrator can imagine what else he should do, in that he has apparently stopped writing the poems. Putting the sentence into the past (with something like "didn't know") would solve this difficulty.

Not Too Shabby:
This is a poem that does not really reach for rhymes. The exceptions are above, but the awkwardness of the standalone line at seven has little to do with reaching for a rhyme and more to do with poor construction (I think the suggestion above would fix it) and the homophones are present precisely because the poem refuses to reach for any different rhyme than the one the sense presented, which happened to be homophonic. There is a difference between reaching for a rhyme (and thus twisting the sense, syntax, or both of the line) and picking a non-ideal rhyme that fits into the line, and this is the latter. I also like the flow of this poem. The initial quatrain hits one beat, the next three lines are another, then the next two, then the next five are all really one beat, although it could be divided into two and three. The rhythms of the ever-smaller groups followed by the larger, almost too-large, group seems to reflect, in my mind at least, how thought can follow small paths into ever smaller detail and then suddenly shoot up into a broader point, much as the poem does. Or if that's too highfalutin for you, which I think it might be for me, I find the flow attractive because it bridges the octave/sestet structure, allows enjambment between lines with different rhymes but does not break individual lines, and gives the poem a strong sense of narrative. Finally, I like the diction: the words are simple, they express meaning very straightforwardly, and they sound like someone might actually say them in the order presented. Yet the poem manages not to sound simplistic, because the rhythm, flow, and rhyme are all so strong.

Sonnet Analysis: My Old Sonnets X

It's been a while since I analyzed a sonnet here; and longer since it was my own poetry I exposed to my glare. So I thought it might be nice to pull a random sonnet out of my sonnet sequence and give it the treatment. So here we go:

The night I met him, I was going to tell
You everything, and ask you on a date.
But something in me prompted me to wait
Although I strained against it. I could smell
That something wasn't right, and so to hell
With all of that. I wish that I could hate
One of you two, or destiny, or fate
For doing this to me, but no. O well,
Life is what it will be. I'll wonder though
While smiling and making conversation
What might have been, if on some other night
Not stopped by that incisive realization
I'd asked you, and you'd told me yes or no
But I guess it's better this way - right?

What Went Wrong:
Cards on the table: I kinda like this sonnet. But it's definitely not perfect. There are a couple lines that fall afoul of what I'd like to be a convention but isn't actually: they're all monosyllables, or all but one, which I really prefer not to see in iambic pentameter (this includes the first line, but particularly "With all of that. I wish that I could hate"). There are also a couple of lines with really awkward moves towards the rhyme; I'm thinking particularly of "For doing this to me, but no. Oh well," which seems to have realized midway through the line that there needed to be a rhyme at the end of it and just finished up the sentence ASAP and gone running on to the rhyme. Indeed, the entire insertion of "Oh well/Life is what it will be" feels strained, like a bridge that can't quite justify why the two parts it connects are connected. I could also point out the clear disconnect between the end, with its suggestion of the need for a yes/no answer, and the rest of the poem, with its implication that a no answer has in fact been received in some sense, even if not explicitly by words.

Not Too Shabby:
The rhyme scheme here, despite the reach described above, works well; the octave/sestet division is strong (and partly justifies the "oh well," as part of the turn) and the ebb and flow within the octave is also strong, with the rhymed pairs date/wait, smell/hell, and hate/fate encapsulating somewhat the modulations that section undergoes. I like matching the feminine lines ending in "conversation" and "realization," and along with that I like the interwoven (rather than simply cookie-cutter) rhymes of the sestet. My basic impression of this poem as a whole is that it is one of the (few) sonnets I have written in an Petrarchan mode that really takes advantage of the octave/sestet division and the ability to move on from a problem established in the octave and expand and clarify it in the sestet. The enjambment between the two sections works well for that. Combining that effect with the sudden turn at the end of the poem, with the monosyllabic question "right?", feels, well, right, and does a good job of expressing the uncertainty and indecisiveness in which the poem wallows. As a final thought on form, I also like the endstopping of the second line, as it clearly expresses the issue being explored, and allows the remainder of the poem to work itself out in two paired and enjambed sestets, yet another expansion of the possibilities of the basic octave/sestet design.

Sonnet Analysis: Spenser I

For all that my sonnet analyses have primarily come from my own work or the nineteenth century, the modern period and even the eighteenth-nineteenth century sonnet revival are merely reflections of the first major period of sonnet writing in English, the Renaissance, and particularly the sixteenth century. Therefore it is high time I analyze poetry from that period, and not just Shakespeare either (Shakespeare's sonnets were actually relatively late to the game). So for that reason I present a sonnet by Edmund Spenser, from his famous sequence "Amoretti."

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
Vain man, said she, that dost in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalize!
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eek my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name;
Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.

Triumphs:
The rhythms of this sonnet are admirably prepared. I would be tempted to say they ebb and flow like the tide mentioned in the sonnet, but that's probably a stretch. Suffice to say they are extremely regular, pleasingly so, and the end-stopping contributes significantly to the effect. The speech within the sonnet is well-integrated, without confusion or disruption of the meter. The conceit is also, in my humble opinion, a pretty one, particularly the way it subtly draws a distinction between the fame of a name and the fame of the verse. And I happen to love the two lines "One day I wrote her name upon the strand,/But came the waves and washed it away:" because I have a soft spot for lines that seem like they could actually have been said (remembering this is slightly archaic due to the time of composition, not due to intentional archaism).

Imperfections:
Despite what I have said about the conceit, it's a little strange that it is her name that disappears in the sand, and therefore which implicitly is a "baser thing" which will "die in dust" (although of course given the anonymity of the "her", one could argue that this is simply accurate). The final couplet is also slightly confusing: how exactly will the poem bring them back to life, as implied by the final word "renew"? Far be it from me to suggest commonplaces are superior to invention, but the commonplace (as alluded to in Spenser's "eternize") of the time was that poetry could provide perpetual life, not resurrection. It may be that I am reading too much into Spenser's line, but the implication seems to be that the "love shall live" on despite death and that will somehow "later life renew." I also find the contrast of the literal writing of the name in the sand, the literal writing of the poem, and the figurative writing in the heavens a little strange, as the third term seems to unnecessarily complicate the first two. But still, I find very little wrong with this sonnet, particularly on a technical level; my only quibbles are with the ways in which the conceit is worked out - as is indeed typical of my quibbles with Spenser.

Sonnet Analysis: Horace Smith

I here present analysis of a historical oddity. The poem below was written by Horace Smith at the same time, and under the same title, as the infinitely more famous poem "Ozymandias" composed by his friend Percy Bysshe Shelley. The poems were written on a single theme and published in the same publication (albeit a few weeks apart). I do not at this time feel prepared to present analysis of Shelley's "Ozymandias," which for purposes of full disclosure I should admit I consider to be my favorite of all the sonnets I have ever read, but Mr. Smith's poem (originally titled "Ozymandias" as well, but later published as "On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below") is I believe unduly unrecognized, and therefore I present it for your pleasure and my analysis below:

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows.
"I am great Ozymandias," saith the stone,
"The King of kings: this mighty city shows
The wonders of my hand." The city's gone!
Naught but the leg remaining to disclose
The sight of that forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, and some hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the wolf in chase,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What wonderful, but unrecorded, race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

Triumphs:
Smith may not be Shelley (and who else was?) but he has a gift for individual phrases that lilt perfectly into the meter and reinforce the sense of loss and emptiness in the poem. "The sight of that forgotten Babylon" and "Once dwelt in that annihilated place" are both very strong, particularly in the last two words (apparently Smith liked two word, six syllable endings to his lines, or they liked him). The execution of the octave/sestet division is handled very well, with the classic Italianate turn and end-stopping of the last line of the octave. The rhythm is extremely strong, particularly in the sestet - the line "Where London stood, holding the wolf in chase" has a delightful trochaic substitution in "holding" that launches into the "chase." A similar effect comes from the trochaic substitution of "Wonder" in "Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness," as the hiccup in the line seems to correspond to the stupefying effect of the wonder.

Imperfections:
It is perhaps unfair to attempt to gauge the imperfections of a poem whose greatest imperfection may be said to be "not to have been Shelley's 'Ozymandias'," but I shall do my best without reference to Shelley's poem. Schematically, I find the greatest imperfection to be Smith's choice to describe the leg as "all alone" in the first line: it rather spoils the reveal of "the city's gone!/Naught but the leg remaining," because we already know that it is there solus. The grotesqueness of the "gigantic Leg," while possibly an intentional effect to alienate the reader, is regrettably rather off-putting towards the poem as well, and also rather distracting: why does the leg have an inscription? This is somewhat ameliorated by Smith's alternate title, but it is still somewhat nagging. There is also a bit of a cough in the line ""I am great Ozymandias," saith the stone," which seems to want to have twelve syllables (Ozymandias must be only four and saith only one to make it scan as pentameter, but each seems to want to have one more). In that same line the "great" seems almost unnecessary, since its insertion actually makes it more difficult to throw the stress in the first foot on the "I," which seems like it should have it instead of the "am;" without the "great," the line scans as iambic pentameter with an omitted first unstressed syllable, but with it one is forced into a trochaic substitution to get the stress onto the "I," leading to two consecutive unstressed syllables, but not ones that can be slid over smoothly (especially since "great," as a monosyllable that is not an article, preposition, or conjunction, wants to take emphasis itself).

Contrast to Shelley:
While I do not intend to fully analyze Shelley's poem here, it seems worthwhile to point out to the casual reader a couple of points where Smith's poem seems weak only in contrast to Shelley's, as explanation for why it has been so disregarded. First, Shelley does not locate Ozymandias in any specific place, unlike Smith's "Egypt," which gives it a more haunting, unlocalizable feel, which allows Shelley to also dispense with Smith's explicit "This could be London" moral, because Shelley's poem already presents the statue as something that could be anywhere. Second, Shelley words the statue's inscription more simply and yet more impressively than Smith: "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings/Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair" seems both more dignified and more elevated than Smith's inscription. And finally, possibly because of the space saved by avoiding an explicit moral, Shelley is able to spend much more time on the statue itself and its implications for the world it inhabited before its destruction, which paradoxically allows the poem to have more impact than Smith's explicit declaration can. None of this is Smith's particular fault - as mentioned above, his greatest failing in this regard is simply not to have been Shelley, and who is? - which is why I have not placed these points above in the list of imperfections of this poem as it stands on its own. But given the poem's unique place in relation to Shelley's poem, it is reasonable to give some consideration to why the one has survived so strongly and the other has not.

Sonnet Analysis: My Old Sonnets IX

This is a sonnet I go back and forth on, regarding how good I think it is; and therefore I thought it would be a good topic for an analysis. When I originally wrote it, the gender of the subject kept switching back and forth, although I think it has now settled on a "he." For now; who knows what tomorrow might bring. But here it is in any case:

He'll never leave her. You should realize that
Before it hurts you. Don't be stupid, let
Me advise you. Watch from where I sat
And see his head rest on her shoulder. Yet
That's not the worst - his hand is on her knee
And hers on his. He's resting in her love
Because he is secure in it. You see?
I know they may not be the model of
A perfect couple, but they're happy, and
They will not split apart. Accept it. You
Might be important to him, but you stand
Between them, and that simply will not do.
He'll say goodbye someday - and you will grieve.
Prevent that now - I'm telling you, just leave.

What Went Wrong:
So one of the reasons I sometimes think I don't like this sonnet is the way it constantly runs into itself and sticks emphases in odd places. The lonely "Yet" and the lonely "let" in lines four and two respectively feel weak; the same might be said of the "you" ending line ten or the "and" ending line nine; even the internal emphases can feel off, as in line nine as a whole. It feels almost like a prose monologue slightly shifted in order to make it fit the sonnet form. The enjambment is probably too heavy, and the internal pauses ("Accept it" in the middle of a line, the dashes and the interjections) are overmarked. Yet for something that sounds like a prose monologue, the sentences are awfully poor: "Watch from where I sat/and see his head rest on her shoulder," "He's resting in her love/Because he is secure in it," and "I know they may not be the model of/A perfect couple, but they're happy, and/They will not split apart" all seem extremely stilted when written out. The bad side of this poem is that it gets caught up in the urgency and desperation of the emotion it is trying to convey and ends up tripping heavily over the formal aspects of the sonnet.

Not Too Shabby:
The flip side of that perspective is that the emotion is strong; the enjambment in particular shows the urgency - almost no line is willing to let the reader pause. The couplet is strong, although perhaps the dashes should be a comma in the one case and a period in the second. The short, punctuated feeling of many of the sentences reinforces the urgency shown by the enjambment and sets up that final couplet for maximum force; as does the enjambment which gives way to two of the few end-stopped lines in lines twelve and thirteen (line seven is end-stopped, but only with the two-word phrase "You see?" rather than as the end of a larger buildup). The incessant repetition of the third person pronouns at the start seems effective to me, as it draws "her" and "his" (and their other forms obviously) closer and closer through rhetoric alone even as the narrative draws them closer as well; it gives way to a "they"/"you" contrast in the second half of the poem, which seems equally effective, and the separation of the "he" and "you" in line thirteen is made the more poignant by those patterns. Finally, the rhymes seem almost accidental at times, at least to me, which I find to be powerful; this effect is bolstered by the enjambment which place the rhyme words not at the (obviously premeditated) ends of sentences, but in the chaotic middle where they seem more effortless. This is the counterbalance to the occasional stretch for a rhyme: even the stretches look like they occurred as the result of muddled thinking by the narrator rather than a reach by the author because of the hurried internal reality of the poem.

Sonnet Analysis: My Old Sonnets VIII

Because I have a lengthy back list of sonnets, I think it's time to move through them a little more quickly than I have been. Particularly, since I'm trying to move randomly through various periods of my previous work, rather than simply chronologically, I think it's valuable to put sonnets from different periods up close to each other. So without further ado:

Sometimes you want a friend, sometimes you don't;
I never quite know what you need from me.
Sometimes you'll open up, sometimes you won't;
I try to help you, be there patiently,
But also let you have your space. I know
Enough about you that I want to be
Your friend, however you want me to show
That friendship. I admit I cannot see
The future, and I don't know if someday
We will lose touch; or if you, finally
Will realize you don't need me and say
You'd rather we were friendly distantly.
But I'll say this; as this year nears its end
I'm very glad that you have been my friend.

What Went Wrong:
I am not quite sure where to put this observation, so I'll front it: this poem has a lot of enjambment (that itself is not a problem). But it specifically has a couple lines that fall into a trap I often fall into, which I cannot decide whether I like or not, which is that I tend to make either the first or last foot completely distinct from the other four. So there are lines like "But also let you have your space. I know" or "Your friend, however you want me to show," with strong breaks after the first or before the last foot. I'm not really sure how effective that style is; on the one hand it represents strong enjambment, which can be a very positive thing because it ties lines closely together, but on the other hand it breaks the fundamental unit of the line at an awkward place, and when they are run together it can look like the entire poem is simply two syllables off from where it naturally wants to be (which of course could be a desired effect, but honestly usually isn't in my sonnets). I'm also unsure here about the mirror between the first and third lines; it gets the (cheap) don't/won't rhyme and hammers it home, the lines are good meter, and the sentiment is crucial to the poem, but it feels like a cop-out. The couplet also feels a little flat; I don't think most of the syllables in this poem are wasted, but those that are are in phrases like "this year nears its end/I'm very glad that you have been my friend." Finally, the reuse of the -ee rhyme (me/patiently, be/see, and finally/distantly) seems a little sloppy; although its appearance in every quatrain does do some good work tying the poem's first twelve lines together.

Not Too Shabby:
Overall I think this poem fits the label directly above pretty spot on: not my best poem, but not too shabby. As noted above, before the couplet I'm actually very happy with the syllable usage, as not much seems wasted. It could almost read like prose, except that it happens to hit the meter and rhyme very well as well, and the line breaks are, I think effective. I really like the wording "you'd rather we were friendly distantly," and whatever may be said about the wording of the couplet (as above), the slight turn it effects is one I really both enjoy and think works in the context of the poem. I'm also happy with the caesuras, which fall irregularly within the line but are fairly strong, an effect I don't usually manage to create, but one which here I think emphasizes the way the narrator is describing being pulled in two directions at once. Other than the couplet, I have very few actual problems with this sonnet, and it manages to convey exactly what it wants to (or at least I think it does), so I would call it, as above, not too shabby on the whole.

Sonnet Analysis: My Old Sonnets VII

Today we will consider a sonnet with some qualities that I consider strange - and one of the few that can simultaneously swing me back to the immediate moment when it was written and make me laugh, without being written about anything particularly humorous in and of itself (unless you are one of those who find the emotions portrayed in this poem amusing; I have been there as well). Without further ado, the sonnet:

Electric shocks that ripple through my soul
Down to my stomach, which I almost lose
And paint the floor, and cover my nice shoes
With dinner, and my former sushi roll,
And maybe breakfast too. Was that your goal?
Or did it do the same to you, that wooz
Y feeling in the nether bits? You cruise
On by me with no backward glance. The whole
Of me is shaking. Yet I breathe, relax
And think it doesn't matter. And I'm right.
I'm done with you, I've played it to the max
So I am done with wilting in your sight.
I'm ready now, until you pass again
We'll see if I am really ready then.

What Went Wrong:
The first sentence, um, isn't grammatical. It would be without the "that," or with another verb to make an independent clause after the dependent clause. But as it is, the sonnet starts with a dependent clause all on its own. Which is not allowed. There is no reason for the shoes particularly to be "nice," other than that a syllable was required there; "nether bits" is particularly awkwardly phrased (although an argument could be made that it is intentionally awkward, and/or an attempt to conjure up both the aforementioned stomach and the other nether bits at the same time); "played it to the max" has both a technically undefined antecedent for "it" and a feeling of being there solely to rhyme "relax;" for some reason, "with dinner, and my former sushi roll" seems like a weak line - I think it's the fact that it could basically be elided, plus the oddness of the specificity included in the "former sushi roll." All these are problems, and I think together they work in common to make the poem - and indirectly, the speaker - seem a little out of sorts, which is not inappropriate to the subject of the poem, but does seem overdone; one should not be able to claim that all errors in a poem are simply to make it seem awkward. That's weak sauce as criticism and as writing.

Not Too Shabby:
However, the overall effect of discomfort is, I think, effective. Why? Because it's carried out throughout the poem, not just in what seem like the weak points. The rhymes (the scheme is ABBAABBACDCDEE) are just unexpected enough to conjure up that same discomfort, but other than the slight stretch for "to the max," they are solid; lose/shoes/wooz-/cruise and soul/roll/goal/whole do very nicely at avoiding both predictability and repetition while keeping the rhymes going, and wooz/y is particularly apt, given the discomfort of the whole poem, the meaning of woozy, and the helter-skelter effect of running the word over two lines. That is an effect I do not suggest using frequently, but I feel like it works here; one might almost say that the first line vomits the end of the word onto the second, which is perfectly in line with the emotion being presented. I really like the turn in this poem as well, or rather the two turns, one at "Yet I breathe," and the other in the couplet. Between them they keep the poem a little on edge, and they avoid predictability, even while leading to a slightly predictable end point, which is a neat juggling act. I also like a lot of the word choice in this poem, not just in the rhyme words but throughout; and I like the variation in sentence and clause lengths, from the long first sentence to the short staccato of "Was that your goal?" and "And I'm right." Overall, I feel this poem teeters on the verge of not working, but rescues itself from that brink repeatedly, reenacting the narrator's own struggle in a way that ultimately presents an excellent encapsulation of the emotions of the moment being portrayed.