Pasts

There was a moment when I thought you cared;
The world was full of possibility
Which reached with open arms, embracing me.
That fatal hesitation, which I dared
To think was positive, completely snared
My soul and made it undeniably
Yours to dispose of. And so, naturally,
You disposed of it, and I in turn despaired.
That was a long, long time ago by now
And yet I have to harp on it, because
I see the moment looming up again.
You're crushing me again, I'm not sure how -
And yet I'm certain as I ever was -
Just please don't leave me like you left me then.

Mess Hall

The scattered bottles with their missing corks
Spread across the table, wobbling,
Among the crusty spoons, blunt knives, and forks,
Should be reminders, somehow, of something.
Of course I can't remember what it is,
Or even if, whatever it should be,
It had to do with happy champagne's fizz
Or somber chardonnay; perhaps chablis.
I tried to find someone to tell me what
I should remember, but nobody could.
They all were just as ignorant. We shut
The doors upon the mess, and called it good.
And now when I recall that dirty hall
I wonder if we should have cleaned at all.

Sonnet Analysis: My Old Sonnets V

It's time for another trip in the wayback machine, this time with added profanity! This comes from one of the several protracted periods when I was struggling more than usual with how to express emotions simultaneously in modern words and sonnet verse (for evidence that I am always struggling with this issue, see here). This particular case involved attempting to use profanity and simpler sentence structures, as we will examine afterwards in the usual commentary.

Why the fuck am I in love with you?
It would be so much better if I weren't.
I wouldn't envy everything you do
With someone else. I might, in time, have learnt
To be a friend, a good one, and not be
Always desiring more. I love your smile,
But I could do that and not love you, see
You laughing and not feel that all the while
My heart was being torn. It would be nice
To be with you, and not to be in love.
And yet not loving you would be the price,
And that is something I'm protective of -
I love to love you; and that's why I do.
If only you reciprocated too.

What Went Wrong:
This sonnet starts off with a bang. There's "fuck," right in the middle of the first line. Is that a good idea? I'm still unsure. It definitely gets the point of the poem out there immediately, but it's also, I think, a sign of weakness. It says "I have to do this now for you to keep reading," and it says "I couldn't come up with a better way to say this." Now, it's arguable that, since the line is actually quite decent metrically speaking, there doesn't have to be a better way to say it. But certainly there is a measure of desperation there not only on the part of the poem's narrator, which is fine, but of the poet, which is bad. This is the blunt instrument way of incorporating "modern diction" into the poem: short words, and profanity, smacking you in the face really hard as soon as you start reading. Otherwise, there are a couple places where the interaction of the meter and word order seems unfortunate: "always desiring more" almost seems like an afterthought to complete the above rhyme, and "something I'm protective of" doesn't quite feel natural either. The word "love" gets repeated an awful lot; not necessarily enough for it to start losing all meaning, but fairly close. It's interesting to wonder how it relates to the "desiring" in line five or the being "protective" in line twelve, both of which deviate from the dominance of the singular verb love.

Not Too Shabby:
The English rhyme scheme I think fits the blunt Anglo-Saxon theme of this poem. Really only "protective" and "reciprocated" are not simple, everyday words, and they aren't exactly uncommon or out of place. "Learnt" instead of "learned" might go in that category too, although it's really easy to understand and, I personally think, actually a pretty good way to slip out of the rhyme trap of "weren't" while allowing the former, naturally contracted form to appear where it ought to. The poem does a fairly good job of examining the indecision inside its narrator's mind between the advantages of not-loving and the advantage (and apparent necessity) of loving. The balance between lines one and thirteen("Why the fuck am I in love with you" and "I love to love you; and that's why I do") in both sense and rhyme (and repeating the initial rhyme in the couplet is very effective here) not only brings a good sense of closure, or at least completeness, to the poem, but also punches up the effect of the final line, which is tied in with respect to sense and rhyme and yet also manages to stick out because lines one through thirteen have summed themselves up so well. That sticking-out effect in turn emphasizes that final line and gives the sense that it sums up the entire rest of the poem - which of course it does. On a smaller note, I like how the compliments about how pleasant the love object is are buried inside the complaining tone of the poem as a whole.

Diction:
As mentioned, obviously this poem is an attempt to go into more natural or everyday speech rhythms and diction while retaining the sonnet form. I'm not entirely sure how successful it is; metrically it seems to work, although that may be partly because monosyllables are easier to group into iambs than polysyllabic words, and it certainly provides the poem with a punch that can sometimes be lacking, but as I mentioned above there is a sense of a blunt instrument about the means in which it is achieved. Too many monosyllables can weaken a line by undermining its rhythms (after all, a full word receives in a sense full stress, unlike the unaccented syllables of longer words) and too strong of a commitment to avoid longer words can be as stilted as too strong a commitment to include them. I think that overall this is a successful effort, but the weak half-lines mentioned in the first section of analysis in lines six and twelve look like aftereffects of too many monosyllables, which in turn often increase the sheer number of words and push meaning into those enjambed overflow sections. The fact remains, though, that the meter and rhymes both manage to escape largely unharmed by the intended change in rhythm and diction, and the directness of the poem is certainly improved, which seems to me to signal a successful experiment within the terms in which it was created.

Light

A faint electric glow still clings to her
Outlining shadowed spots against the black
Permitting thoughts of things that never were
But inchoately live inside the lack
Of definition in the humming sheen
Which tingles not-quite-yellow drawing me
With shaking hands and thoughts not all unclean
Beyond the bar of my timidity
And yet not fully into open voice;
The flickering discernment it permits
Cannot quite force from me a clearcut choice
Between inaction its opposites.
Yet someday I will break through that, I know,
And bathe myself in her delicious glow.

Train Wreck

It's moving slow enough it shouldn't crash;
I mean, there's so much time to turn away.
This isn't some insane, last-second dash
That goes awry, and makes what once was play
Seem deadly real. No, this was planned ahead,
The path was scouted and the way assured,
But even as it gathered to a head
Before, it seemed, it could not be deferred
The end was obvious - yet it went on,
Into a clear and devastating turn.
Before the flying embers were all gone,
Even before the first small spark could burn
I could see it coming. But no force
Could alter or amend the settled course.

Move On

The hour is late, and yet not late enough
For my desires. Were I master here,
The very clock itself would feel my rough
And forceful grasp, and I would quickly peer
Into the motion of the minute hand
Ordering its march to quicken through the day
That every hour should hasten 'round the band
And time flow faster than right now it may.
Alas, I do not rule the pace of life,
Nor may I bend its passage to my will;
So I am subject to uneven strife
And in my terrors, time seems to stand still.
Move on, move on, and do not look at me;
For I am not what in time I might be.

Mutability

If summer ended before spring began
With winter once again upon its tail;
If evenings ceased to consequently trail
The final moments in which sunshine ran;
If winds would not inevitably fan
The deep-sea trades, and lacklusterly fail
To push ahead the cry "A sail, a sail,"
If Scotsmen should forget their native clan
And league with Englishmen against their kin;
If all of this should pass, and men should be
Discouraged and distempered by the change,
Still I despair that it would rearrange
The painful future that envelops me:
I cannot do what you will not begin.

Help

Is failure to do everything a sin?
Does every moment that we eat, or sleep,
Indulge in simple pleasures, or let in
A moment of calm contemplation, keep
Away true holiness, because we fail
To reach out to our neighbors? If we spend
A moment for ourselves, are we but pale
And lifeless imitations of the end
We were supposed to reach? Must we exist
To solely aid our fellow-creatures, or
Can we excuse the chances we have missed
To help them by suggesting that the more
We cultivate and grow as people, we
Will be more help in our futurity?

Aridity

What is a thunderstorm if no rain falls,
And nothing washes down into the sea?
If nothing changes, can it really be
A thunderstorm, whose very echo calls
On memories of sudden waterfalls
Exploding on the unprepared? Can we
Imagine thunder without rain, or see
A dark, uncloudy sky, within which crawls
No streak of lightning, while we hear the crash
And still believe the thunder that we hear?
Or must we think it is imagination
That conjures up the noise without the splash
Of raindrops on the street? There is elation
In empty thunderstorms - but also fear.

Mint

Unreasonably, the place still smells of mint.
I told you that that scent gets everywhere.
It isn't overwhelming, just a hint
Of memory, that says you once were there.
It whispers in my nostrils as I pace
Whole evenings out because I cannot rest
While it reminds me of the missing grace
Which you supplied. This almost welcome guest
Still haunts me, though the cause of it is gone,
And yet I smile as I sniff it out;
It's nice to think, while you are moving on,
That something of you lingers with the doubt
Which will not leave me. So I do not clean
To keep the smell where it has always been.