Earnestness

I could deny it I liked. I could.
But doing so despite the evidence
Would be to do some wrong and little good
A choice that, of itself, makes little sense.
I could go on and on, declaiming lies
To throw you off the scent of what is true,
Or hoodwink you with overzealous cries
That claim I did not do what I did too.
I might, perhaps, a little off my theme
Declare that I was not then what I am,
And therefore did it in a kind of dream
Where what might seem consent was but a sham.
I could; but I will not, because you're right
I must apologize about last night.

Night

These quiet hours might just be the worst;
When night-time threatens to destroy my mind.
The gains I made in day are all reversed
And where the light of happiness once shined
There's only introspection and despair.
On better days, I might find reason there,
Or logic, or good sense, but neither thrives
In darkness, and the light that flickers on
To try to push away the dark contrives
Only to make me wish the night were gone
But not to make it go, and so brings out
The sadness and the angst which threaten
And plant the seeds of anger and self-doubt;
But with the day, I think more happily.

Onions

The secret to it all, my father said,
Is to burn the onions just a bit.
Of all the wisdom I have ever read,
I think that might have been the best of it.
In every situation I explore
I try to find the onions I should burn;
In some, I know, and therefore wonder more
What burning means for them, which, when I learn,
I do. Now, this might to be too trite,
And useless, since it's liberally used.
But still, the method always steers me right,
And never fails me, nor has it abused
My trust in it. Therefore, as I look
About at life, I do so as a cook.

Friends

I wish that I could make my friends all know
There's a pleasure just in listening to you;
In knowing that you trust me, trying to
Help you however possible. I'd go
To greater lengths than I have gone to show
That I am here for you. That feeling grew
Out of our friendship. Whatever you do
I'm here to listen, if you just say so.
And if I ask you questions, they are there
For you to answer only if you feel
Completely comfortable with them, and me;
I'm only here to help, because I care,
So everything I ask you to reveal
Is just so we can talk more helpfully.

On Sincerity and Inspiration

I wrote the same poem three time today. Or rather, to my annoyance, I did not write the same poem three times today. The initial poem (whether it is the best I cannot say, but it will serve as an ideal for the rest of the process) was lost in the obscure workings of an inexplicably failed upload; the second iteration, composed immediately after in a vain attempt to recover the first, was lost to a sudden crash of a program; the third, a memorial reconstruction of the first two following closely on their heels, appears for now to have succeeded in that it may perhaps pass on beyond its initial composition in the memory of man as assisted by computer.

It almost goes without saying in the context of this blog that these were sonnets. The rhyme scheme (in this case ABBACDDCEFFEGG) was an undoubted aid to memory, as was the meter (iambic pentameter). Yet I could fundamentally feel the sonnet shifting as I attempted to rewrite it from immediate memory. Some of these changes were no doubt improvements that I should rather have preferred to retain in the poem; most were likely neutral; some few may have impaired it. Yet unquestionably and perhaps unreasonably I was annoyed. I wanted that first sonnet, and I wanted to make any changes deliberately and with due consideration, not by the force of a faulty memory. But most of all I wanted my authentic reaction to the stimuli that produced the sonnet, and so I thought its loss might be an excellent reason to discuss, or at least begin discussion of, two topics I have been looking forward to treating here: sincerity and inspiration.

To treat them in the reverse order just mentioned: the inspiration for a sonnet can, of course, come from anywhere. Anything associated with any of the common themes of poetry - or anything not associated with those themes - can serve as an inspiration for a poem. Young love, the flowers that bloom in the spring (tra-la), and death, but also garbage collection, an odd crack in the sidewalk, and a lightbulb can be inspirations for poetry. But that's not particularly useful to hear is it? It's practically a commonplace. What's more interesting, at least to me, is what to do when inspiration does strike, whatever it happens to be triggered by, and the relationship between that inspiration and the final poem-product (or at least the initial poem-product; editing is an issue for another day).

For the former, I am a great proponent of writing right then as the moment strikes. This may be because I used to try to bottle up the feeling and express it later, and failed; you may find a different process better for you. But I believe that attempting at least some initial expression of poetry as soon as the inspiration comes tends to produce a result that is substantially different from doing so in later repose (whether better or worse is almost beside the point; after all, you can recollect at leisure, well, at your leisure, and having written initially should never stop you from doing so). The quicksilver nature of that instant expression is unretrievable, and therefore, even if only therefore, worth preserving. The immediate turn to poetry also strengthens, in my opinion, the poetical instinct: you are more likely to find inspiration the more you react to the inspiration you already find.

The relationship between the poem and its inspiration is complex, and I will only scratch the surface here. For me, a poem is in some way intended to crystallize the feelings that inspired it, to take a moment, real or imagined, and preserve it for others, not to marvel at, but to experience or re-experience in the reading of the poem. Whether that moment and those feelings come from a grand high sense of purpose or a fleeting glance at something interesting on a wall is hardly material to this process, although not every moment is one I would prefer to reproduce. The key is an attempt to make subjective experience communicable, to take a thought, a feeling, or even an action and translate it into a form someone else can take and retranslate back into their own life. That's a high aim, and a hard one to meet - and it is part of why I value both the instant flash of inspiration as it turns into poetry and the later recollection in repose; without both forms it can be very difficult to properly digest and present one's own subjective experience. It is for this reason that I was so unhappy about failing to find the original words, because I was losing the link to my initial subjective experience even as I was trying to recast the poem out of memory, because my focus was turning on the poem rather than on the moment I was attempting to capture itself.

Sincerity is an even more vexed topic than inspiration. To what extent should poetry truly mirror life? To what extent should it be a faithful record of truly felt emotion or truly experienced experience? To what extent is it fiction? To what extent is it the imaginative extension of the poet into feelings he or she may or may not have experienced in life and filters through a process of invention (ie fiction again)? I myself have wavered back and forth on this. Clearly, what I said above about crystallizing experience has a strong tinge of the belief that poetry should be an honest reflection of genuinely felt emotion. But I also believe it is possible to attempt to solidify and translate emotions one only imagines; harder, but possible. Somewhat easier is the presentation of an emotion that has been genuinely held in circumstances different from the one in which it was held; emotion redirected is still emotion, and partakes of the same register of human experience. Thus the strong association between sincerity and my views on the process of translating inspiration into poetry is not airtight; and I definitely believe that there is a place for what I would hesitate to call "insincerity," and should perhaps rather call invention or fiction. There have most certainly been times in my life when reading my poetry would have directly followed my emotional state as surely as that of the most stereotypical angsty teenager ever; but there have equally been times when I wrote completely from imagination, and everywhere in between on the spectrum. What is crucial regarding sincerity for me is that the poem, in the moment it is created, should feel sincere to the poet - the emotions, thoughts, and experiences being communicated may be altered, or invented, or even in the original, but they should be communicated in such a way as to communicate how they are making the poet feel in the moment of creation of the poem. This I find solves the crisis, because even the altered or invented emotions can only be said to have been actually altered or invented if they are affecting the poet in the moment of creation. For example, I may not feel the sadness I am attempting to convey; but thinking of the sadness should be invoking a sympathetic response of sadness within me that I can then place into the poem. If my imagination is not strong enough to conjure up the feelings within my breast that I am attempting to convey, then the poem will fall flat. Thus sincerity comes not in its relation to how the poet might feel at a moment of not writing poetry - hence fiction is not only acceptable but standard - but in its relation to how the poet feels in the moment of writing, a moment in which even invented feelings should be making their impact via the keen edge of imagination. Again, this is why I wished for the first poem that I tried to write, as the experience it was intended to convey was slipping away due to my focus on the recovery of the poem rather than the primary experience itself.

Poetry relies on a focus outside of the poem itself, both for inspiration and for the sincere expression of emotion and experience. In losing the first poem, I lost those points as well, and it became difficult to recreate the poem on its own terms. That is the cause of annoyance - not only the loss of the first poem, but the loss of its connection to the initially sincere expression of inspiration.

Pretty as a Picture

A gust of wind and all the leaves fall down;
Another spurt but there is nothing left.
The naked trees are finally bereft
Of what was once a green and growing gown.
The smaller and less vigorously grown
Still cling to stubs of greenery and yet
They must permit the larger trees to set
Their wasted leaves upon them. Freshly thrown,
The dried and curling carpet will arise
With every whisper of the wind. So these,
That fell so statelily down from the trees,
Now reach in vain back up into the skies,
Only to fall, forever tumbling.
Behind their fall there's winter's rumbling.

Askew

Most people won't admit there's beauty there;
She's got the kind of face they do that to:
A slender smile a little bit askew,
A framing fringe of slightly sloppy hair,
A never-vacant, yet not piercing stare
That always made me wonder if she knew
How long I've looked at her, an inch or two
Of dainty cheekbones, in a matching pair,
But not so much as to inspire songs;
Yet when I look at her, they all combine
Into a pattern I cannot deny;
And everything seems right. Her face belongs,
Inside my heart, as well as in my eye,
And when I cannot see her, they both pine.

Sonnet Analysis: Shakespeare I

Well, it's time to go into the bowels of literature and dig out the metaphorical entrails. By why I mean, it's time to tackle (one of) Shakespeare's sonnets. The big 154; the "sugar'd sonnets" circulated among his private friends; the sonnets famously "begotten" by a Mr. W.H. Those bad boys.

Let's start with sonnet 138: "When my love swears that she is made of truth."

When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might thinks me some untutored youth
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although I know my years are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;
On both sides, then, is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says not she she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love's best habit is in seeming trust
And age in love loves not to have years told.
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults, by lies we flattered be.

Triumphs:
I should say up-front that this is probably my favorite of Shakespeare's sonnets, although I can never decide if I prefer this one or sonnet 130 "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun." In either case, I adore this sonnet, and so I think there are many triumphs in it. One of the greatest is the use of multiple meanings of the same word within the poem - or more impressively, even in the same use, where the word makes sense in two or more of its potential readings, thus allowing multiple readings of the same line. This effect occurs in line eleven, where "love's best habit" can mean either the best action to which love is accustomed (one sense of habit) or the best (metaphorical) clothing for love (another sense of habit). The latter sense even shades over towards devotional implications via the associations of the word "habit" for clothing with religious orders. That definition of habit is also strengthened by the "seeming trust," which implies some form of alteration or disguise - such as putting on different clothes - but either meaning remains possible, delightfully. The crowning glory here though is line thirteen, where "lie" splits into both "telling a falsehoods" and "having sex with." Obviously, the sense of "lie with" tends towards the latter - it's Biblical, after all - but given the entire sense of the preceding twelve lines and the connective "therefore," it is impossible to dismiss the former in the sense of "tell falsehoods in conjunction with;" that is, that together they are conspiring to lie, and therefore they are lying with each other. It is a glorious double-meaning, and it allows the sonnet to simultaneously turn, by moving slightly away from the theme of falsehood, and stay straight on tack with it.

A related bit of brilliance is represented in the phrases "age in love loves not to have years told" and "vainly thinking that she thinks me young," in which words reappear in slightly different forms with different uses in the sentence. In both cases, this serves to emphasize the importance of that word both in the line and in the poem as a whole; and "lie" (repeated over and over throughout), "love," and "think," echo through the poem with immense power. The implicit negation of one of the two in each of the pairs quoted at the start of this paragraph is also extremely powerful, as it pushes towards, but not does not fall into the trap of, paradox, and draws strength from the association.

I also adore the end-stopped rhythms of this poem. It is not purely end-stopped, of course; the first line is arguably enjambed, so that would be a difficult accusation to make stick. But it manages to feel end-stopped because the couplets are most definitely so, and even what seems like it should be enjambment between those first two lines is also freighted with a little pause for effect, almost enough to call it end-stopped as well. Yet unlike with much end-stopping, which can feel heavy-handed or harsh (and I will have a post on this in the near future), the poem instead draws strength from it. The sense flows so clearly that the end-stopping does not halt the poem, but instead gives weight to the sense of each line individually, nicely balancing what would otherwise be an absolutely blistering pace of rhetorical speed. No line or even word seems wasted; the closest that comes is "simple" in "simple truth," and to call it unnecessary is really to second-guess what was in the author's head to a degree even a critic should shy away from; it fails both tests that I would use in this case, which are as follows: does the concept being modified by the adjective does always possess the property of the adjective (no, there are complex truths) and is the meaning of the poem enhanced by specifying that property (yes, as it is important that the truths they are each denying are indeed simple and obvious to anyone). It also hits the "simply" of "simply I credit" for added emphasis. So even that "simple" is doing its bit to improve the poem, and a poem with no wasted words is one to treasure; and in this case, that lack of waste causes the poem to skip rapidly on its way to the end, only slowed down to a reasonable speed by the weight of the end-stopped lines, which produces an excellent tension within the poem.

Imperfections:
There are few imperfections with this poem; most of what might appear to be imperfections can be more clearly understood as archaisms (for which see below). But sadly there is one point I think appears as an imperfection even in Shakespeare's day, and it appears in the last line. "By lies we flattered be" completes the rhyme, and it is not unusual in Elizabethan or Jacobean poetry to see inversions like this or the replacement of the "are" in "we are flattered" by the infinitive "be" within those inversions. But within a poem that has otherwise avoided any such hiccups in normal word order, even when this was not an archaism it would have seemed a slight blemish, as the resort at last to poetic convention after such a strong beginning cannot help but seem a little forced.

Archaisms:
The greatest archaism is that mentioned above, that "by lies we flattered be" should seem only slightly and not massively discordant with the rest of the poem. Also, the rhyme of "lies" and "subtleties" would have been full in Shakespeare's day rather than slant at the current moment, and the need for "unlearned" to be trisyllabic is definitely archaic. Finally, of course, "lie with" itself has fallen out of use, but it is still definitely recognizable enough to hold its own within the poem. Aside from these minor points, however, the poem holds up quite well to a modern ear; and I think even those imperfect archaisms cannot undermine the ultimate beauty of the poem.

Heat of the Night

A little swelter goes a long, long way
And yet I almost wish there had been more;
To feel as if I'd never felt before
And, in the heat, feeling your waist sashay
Hoping to stretch a little more today
Out of the unforgiving night, to soar
Within the warmth, pouring from every pore
Not sweat but laughter. I would hardly say
That I love boiling, but when I see
You swaying in the mist that's risen from
The smoking bodies that surround us, I
Cannot, though I might wish I could, deny
That you - and this - are everything to me;
And if we're sweltering, well, let it come.

Wondering

When I was smaller, as I used to be,
Wondering was always so much fun;
I'd let my pure imagination run
Across the fields, and then return to me
Delighting me with such inanity
As it might choose; an unignited sun,
A dandelion grown so large that one
Gigantic seed embraced reality
And dwarfed the universe. A silly game.
But as I aged, imagination grew,
And thought of better fictions to invent;
That someone, deep at night, whispered my name.
But I was older, so of course I knew
That truth was one thing that it never sent.