Myth of Arrival

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)

1. Crouch, E. H. (ed) Sonnets of South Africa. A. C. Fifield, London (1911) [back]
2. Feldman, Paula R., and Robinson, Daniel (eds) A Century of Sonnets: The Romantic-Era Revival. Oxford University Press, New York (1999) [back]
3. 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]

Pan took his hatchet, went to the forest
to cut a flute. A lewd flute. Mew Gulls mewed
near the shore. Spirits in the trees argued
about mildewed leaves, bedewed disgust. Lust,
for Pan, is the greenest of hewed green oak,
holiest wood. When he makes his flute sing
he calls all who'd be crude, rude and willing
to be nude to him. His tattooed kinfolk,
lush tribes, hear that roughhewed song. Even now
some cringe. For them, it is tabooed; passion
a feud with flesh. But we hear Pan's fluted
song, this mood prude's call shameful. It's a vow.
Why be a boorish virgin? Somehow, one
day, we shall be blessed, too, wicked, naked.

Today I have been thinking of the great god Pan, a fitting subject for a Petrarchan sonnet. Not Pan Jin Lian, the Chinese goddess of fornication and prostitution (though they probably hung out in the same discotheques), but Pan, the Greek god of woods, pastures, shepherds and sheep with his legs of a goat and body of a man. On his forehead rest two horns and his hairy body was filled with lice. He played wild carnal songs on a reed pipe and legend usually had him chasing nymph-girls through the forests and mountains. Oscar Wilde wrote in his poem, Pan:

Then blow some trumpet loud and free,
And give thine oaten pipe away,
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!
This modern world hath need of thee!

Oaten pipes? Nuts and honey. Still, as I said, Pan is today's subject matter. An Italian theme for an Italian sonnet. White and Rosen¹ have this to say about the sonnet:

Despite its name, the sonnet is not a song. It is dramatic in nature, rather than lyric. Characteristically, it begins with a scene or image drawn from the external world, compares it by statement, implications, or symbol with some state of mind or emotion, and through analogy thus reflects upon or presents an insight into some particular or universal situation. Essentially it objectifies an inner conflict of some kind, commenting on or resolving it in brief compass. It is far more logical in structure, more precise in thought, more concise and unified in both substance and design than the ordinary lyric. In symmetry, its very life, is the internal logic, intellectual and emotional, that governs the balance and relationship of its parts. The qualities of a good sonnet are found not in its conformity to some external pattern but in its unity of design, condensation of thought, exactitude of language and image, and — even at its most meditative and abstract — its essentially dramatic nature. (White and Rosen, pages 2-3)

Perhaps this is where we need to start with our understanding of what makes a sonnet different from, say, free verse or other forms? This understand that it is dramatic, it tells a story of some sort. Stories are looked down upon in poetry right now. To follow a narrative flow, to go from point A to B to C is seen as hack work. Much better to create perplexity, confusion, discomfort in your work. The argument is that if the reader is confused, then the work must be deep. This is what you call a self-deception, fallacy, wishful thinking. It is the middle class assumption that readers need that discomfort to confront some struggle of the soul they had hitherto failed to understand. Like ugly public art, if you have to stare at it every single day, you might be forced to draw some conclusions. Perhaps that your tax money was spent on horrendous eye sores? Perhaps a Molotov Cocktail would be useful? Or, simply, that your public officials have ghastly taste in art? As The Onion put it, Artist Starving For A Reason.

But back to the Italian sonnet, Pan's sonnet:

The origin of the sonnet has been a matter of much speculation and controversy, but Italian writers of the thirteenth century … were the first to give it definite, permanent shape and character. Once devised, the form rapidly became popular in Italy and was brought to its perfection by Dante and Petrarch … Of the two, the influence of Petrarch was by far the greater … in his individuality, subjectivity, and curiosity [he] seemed like a modern … by the [time of the Renaissance in the ] sixteenth century "Petrarchismo" — a term applied to imitations of the poet more artifcal than artful — was at its height (White and Rosen, pages 4 - 5).

Ah, Petrarchismo! Something we will have to learn to avoid. So, in a nutshell, here are the basic concepts of the Petrarch love sonnet:

* Love is a frustrating though inspiring experience that suddenly drops into the poet's (startled) lap and changes the world forever.

* Poets are a melancholy yet obsessive bunch when it comes to love, alternating between a balance of lust and indifference, possibility and disillusionment.

* The speaker of the poem is usually a long-suffering (male) lover mulling over a Beloved (some chilly female) who cannot stand to be in the same room as the poet.

* The poet hopes that from deep devotion to the Beloved's rejections that somehow love will show itself again. This is called "stalking" in today's modern lingo. It was called "Courtly Love" in Petrarch's time.

* Because the poet's "devotion" rarely worked the mood of the sonnet can change from fainthearted, feverish, amorous, idealized, euphoric, despairing all in the first stanza.

* The Beloved usually dies in some horrid way and the poet then gets to write about meeting the Beloved in heaven, where she forgives him for making her life miserable while on earth.

* Petrarch's Beloved was named Laura; he apparently saw her while she was at church one day. Petrarch thus set the standard for our current glorification of fraudulent, unrealistic, problematic views in women, beauty and relationships and male poets since have only been too glad to go along.

But, you say, the Petrarch sonnet is not in vogue as it once was. What happened? To answer that we must thank the forefounders of American culture. By that, I mean, of course, the Puritans, who apparently could not stand Courtly Love or bad rhymes:

[With] the death of Elizabeth in 1603, the fashion of the Petrarchan love sonnet had burned itself out. The conditions, social and cultural, that had produced and encouraged it had changed, and a new age had begun for England and for poetry … Humanism, which spread the idea of Platonic love, had given way to an increased Puritanism and the growth of a critical attitude toward love … as immoral or trivial … Revulsion against Italy and things Italian fed on religious bigotry, fear of the Inquisition and … to associate the homeland of Dante and Petrarch with all manner of vice and immorality (White and Rosen, page 11).

Ironically, that we even have a debate at all as to the usefulness of the sonnet as a form in poetry just goes to show how influential the Puritans were in throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The 1960s habit of prohibiting anything that hinted at bourgeois sensibilities has produced a large number of poor sonnet writers. Regardless of what the editors of the Penguin Book of the Sonnet tell us, Billy Collins' attempts at sonnets ("We do not speak like Petrarch," page 276 and "All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now," page 277) do not please. Which is too bad, since much of the rest of his poems do.

Still, what is curious to me about the Petrarch sonnet is not what others have or have not done with it, rather what we can do with it now. That with it, somehow, we too shall be blessed … wicked, naked.

1. White, Gertrude M., and Rosen, Joan G. A Moment's Monument: The Development of the Sonnet. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York (1972) [back]

My friend from Gijon, Spain, sent me this translated version of "Narcissus' Lament." Thank you so much!¹

No te puedes ver
reflejado en estas
olas, todo se mueve
demasiado rapido
mi cara, nublada
por las flores
flotantes del mar.

1. The original being:

   You can't look
   at yourself in these
   waves, everything
   moves so fast. My
   face, marred
   by floating
   sea flowers. [back]

I don't like everything but Debussy's L'après-midi d'un faune ("The Afternoon of a Faun") is spinning away on the stereo. It is a ballet and seems interesting enough. The Encyclopedia Mythica says this about satyrs and fauns:

[Satyrs are] deities of the woods and mountains. They are half human and half beast; they usually have a goat's tail, flanks and hooves. While the upper part of the body is that of a human, they also have the horns of a goat. They are the companions of Dionysus, the god of wine, and they spent their time drinking, dancing, and chasing nymphs. The Italian version of the satyr is the faun, while the Slavic version is the Ljeschi.

There are paintings of different artist's ideas of what they might have looked like. The famous Russian ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky made L’Après-midi d’un Faune famous in Paris (1911) by dancing as satyr.

Here is some art I find interesting, the first is a painting by the Art Deco painter Leon Bakst. The ballet was a great scandal, the people of the time thought it terribly pornographic and rude. One critic wrote, "We have had a faun … with vile movements of erotic bestiality and gestures of heavy shamelessness." Yes, I want to be bestial and shameless, too. Instead I became self-indulgence and reflective. That is how Narcissus' Lament came about. Still, I found an actual photo of Nijinsky taken years and years ago, my! What fun!

I never told you, but when I was much younger I wanted to be a ballet dancer. Of course I never did, I ended up working with words instead of muscles. My friend Marco De Ambrogi translated my little poem into Italian for me. Now if I could only get Nijinsky to dance it:

"Lamento di Narciso"

Tu non puoi
Guardarti in queste
Onde, tutto
Si muove così veloce. La mia
Faccia, sciupata
Da galleggianti
Fiori marini.

I am becoming interested in the Italian (also know as the Petrarch) sonnet lately. I have been writing sonnets, but not classical ones. By that, I am thinking of what Strand and Boland stated:

Few modern poets have been willing to commit themselves to the major, architectural sequences of a Petrarch or a Shakespeare [sonnet]. Instead, the sonnet — with either the couplet at the end of the or the octave/sestet structure — has become a part of speech (page, 58)¹

By that, I assume they mean that poets have kept the sonnet's basic outline but no longer bother with the structure that once made it a sonnet, thus it simply "a part of speech" in rhyming 14 lines. Perhaps this is the difference between the concept of "dabbler" and "ingenious" poets? One uses a form they never mastered. It's as Frost once quipped, "writing free verse is like playing tennis without a net." I don't know, I am not happy with that critique, either.

The last 100 years in poetry have been an active rebellion against everything that hints at Establishment² but instead of taking the old forms to new heights poets seem to have just lost the abilities their predecessors once took for granted. While I do find Modernism interesting 90% of Post Modernism seems rather juvenile with its justifications and sycophantic insistence on its own blandness.

Perhaps every generation has seen most of its poets as bland, Byron certainly said so of the Poet Laureate Southley. But when we live in an era when awards are being given to strings of words you can't sing, you can't dance to, that dull the brain with their affected posturing something is wrong. I am all for savoir-faire, but I need to rollick and rejoice too, folks. I find it odd I have to go outside the realm of poetry to find the sonnet's influences on our culture. Who would have thought of ice skating and Petrarch?

September 11, 2000, saw Russian ice skater Ekaterina Alexandrovna Gordeeva perform her ribbon routine, Petrarch Sonnet No. 104, at the Spirit of Gold show in Simsbury, Connecticut. The routine is called this for the music played, Franz Liszt's Petrarch Sonnet No. 104 (Sonetto 104 del Petrarca) as performed by Vladimir Horowitz.

Perhaps that is what I like about "the little song." You can be both a Language poet (I am still not sure what that really means) and a Formalist (ditto) in a sonnet. That is what I want to do. This is where I am heading. I want a funk sonnet, a hootenanny sonnet, a hip hop sonnet. I want music in 14 lines that sets the page on fire.

1. Strand, Mark and Boland, Eavan. The making of a poem: a Norton anthology of poetic forms. WW Norton & Co.: New York (2000) [back]
2. I wonder if anyone finds it ironic that the same poets who claim this privileged stance are now the Establishment themselves? Is it simply a case of "The Emperor Has No Clothes? Sort of like Johnny Rotten/Lydon endless self-important posturing, refusing to appear on Saturday Night Live because the show couldn't pay the outrageous fees the band demanded (ah, anarchy, ka-ching!) at the time and then recently quipped "we're not your monkey," when they turned down their place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Talk about privileges … [back]