“Petrarch Sonnet” part 3
Upon a day Apollo met the Muses and the Graces in sweet sport with earnest Memory, the grave and noble mother of the Muses, was present likewise. Each of the fourteen spoke a line in verse. Apollo began; then each of the nine Muses sang her part; then the three Graces warbled each in turn; and finally, a low, sweet strain from Memory made a harmonious close. This was the first Sonnet; and, mindful of its origins, all true poets take care to bid Apollo strike the keynote for them when they compose one, and to let Memory compress the pith and marrow of the sonnet into its last line.
A Talk about Sonnets1
It is a bit sad to read E.H. Crouch in South Africa, 1911, state so assuredly, "how rapidly sonnet-writing, once having taken root, grew … [until] … it is now probably the favourite form with at least two-thirds of the younger poets and versifiers in America." (Crouch, page 14) Perhaps a hundred years ago, a hundred and ten, but today the sonnet is seen, along with most other poetic forms, as a skill hardly worth studying. After all, why devote talent, energy and time to mastering complexities when you can simply mimic John Cages' 4.33 minutes of silence and say nothing at all and call it art?
Perhaps it is our short attention spans, perhaps it is our inability to learn from our mistakes, but whatever the reason when we talk about poetry as art (instead of poetry as psychotherapy) it is rarely with historic background. Or it is with the same humorless dogma that we butcher William Carlos Williams' observation that: "Times change and forms and their meanings alter. Thus new poems are necessary. Their forms must be discovered in the living language of their day, or old forms, embodying exploded concepts, will tyrannize over the imagination." New forms, old forms, in my lady's chamber, the important thing to remember isn't that we all must form our own personal school of poetry by the age of 27, it is, as Williams himself pointed out: “… not what you say that matters but the manner in which you say it; there lies the secret of the ages." In other words, we can take anything and make it fresh with a little creativity.
I think a little historic background will help us all. Who would have guessed that a form that has been around for over 500 years would be seen as dangerous and edgy? As Feldman and Robinson2 point out:
Petrarch's sonnets established a mode for both style and substance in the English-language sonnet, echoes of which are audible in the sonnets of today. Petrarch's Canzoniere, or "Songbook," which consists of many different kinds of lyric poems — chief among them sonnets — is the primary text that established the sonnet tradition. The standard Petrarchan subject is erotic love, highly intellectualized and symbolized, of a male lover for an unattainable and idealized woman. Petrarch's love for Laura (in Italian also l'aura — the light, or the air) transcends earthly passion and contains oxymoronic speech express (his love for her is "bittersweet," giving him both joy and despair); his sonnets express the hopelessness of his ever consummating his erotic desire … Petrarch also embeds in Laura's name a pun on "laurel," the emblem of Apollo, the god of poetry, l'oro, Italian for "gold." (Feldman and Robinson, page 4)
So it seems that every hundred years or so a new generation of poets discover this form and realize the powers that lie within. How lucky to be one of the few who see form as not a fixed tool of the colonizing oppressor but a continuing flux for expression! They adapt it, making it at once their own and something new. I say again in all camp seriousness, how marvelous is that? For example, to dismiss the sonnet is to dismiss the rise of "WOM-PO"3 for the very reasons that make the sonnet one of the momentous, pivotal, significant forms in poetry:
Just after the middle of the eighteenth century, sonnets became fashionable and respected again at the hands of a new class of poets, many of them women. But why did these poets choose an essentially outmoded form? Their choice of the sonnet had a great deal to do with the poetic and philosophical climate of the day and the cult of Sensibility, with its heavy emphasis on feeling and mood, and with the need to find a poetic form that was both demanding and accessible, to convey thoughts and feelings in a more natural way than poets previously had attempted … They wrote sonnets deliberately, with aspirations of joining the ranks of the great writers who had gone before them. Anna Seward (1742 - 1809) calls this attempt at self-canonization "the sonnet's claim." In fact, the sonnet revival of the late eighteenth century is the first period of literary history in which women poets showed they could match skills with male poets in an arena earlier closed to them … (Feldman and Robinson, page 10)
"The Sonnet's Claim." I like how that sounds. Feldman and Robinson point out that to master the form is difficult, "due to a fewer number of similar word-endings — of creating the same intertwining rhyme scheme in English that exists in the Italian … [thus] those English authors who [could] manage the rhymes, most authorities believed, showed a stronger verbal aptitude and a greater command of English vocabulary than those who practiced [in lesser forms] …"(page 12) or so the argument went. Again, I do not like the idea of singling out certain forms simply because they are in or out of vogue, to say one form kicks ass over another. As Rumi put it, It's all praise, and it's all right.
So, versifiers, I want to see some experimentation on your part. Language Poetry has given us a rich possibility in using The Word as a jazz musician uses a saxophone, and so far not a lot pleases. Why does most of it sound like tuneless, 25-minute flute solos featured in the out-takes from repugnant The Mammas and The Pappas concerts? Perhaps because the formlessness of most Language Poetry needs a form to direct and drive it? Perhaps after honing your words to a point we find, indeed, less is more? Feldman and Robinson point out that even the most wild of our Modernists, e.e. cummings, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, John Barryman, wrote powerful sonnets. The anthology's introduction, A Century of Sonnets, ends with these comments:
The sonnet remains an important part of any good poet's training. Even a contemporary poet such as James Dickey, who is not known for sonnets, made the sonnet an integral part of the teaching of poetry composition because he believed poets should learn the received forms of the craft. (Feldman and Robinson, page 18)
- Crouch, E. H. (ed) Sonnets of South Africa. A. C. Fifield, London (1911) [back]
- Feldman, Paula R., and Robinson, Daniel (eds) A Century of Sonnets: The Romantic-Era Revival. Oxford University Press, New York (1999) [back]
- For a very interesting discussion on the cryptic subject of WOM-PO (women's poetry) see the chain-letter/ discussions of Ostriker, Rosser and Wilner in the January issue of Poetry magazine. It is worth the price of admission alone. [back]