[Tim Murphy]

Here is one of Catherine Tufariello's graceful sonnets. Dick, what think you of the off rhyme at the close?

NO ANGEL

All that thou sayest unto me I will do.
Ruth 3:5

No angel stood there, only her mother-in-law,
Eyeing the bag of roasted grain and scheming,
Foretelling how she'd find him--sprawled and dreaming
Beside the barley sheaves, on bales of straw.
Like wings, she said, his cloak would cover them.
The plan risked everything. But as before--
While aisles of rustling wheatstalks whispered Whore--
Ruth walked alone through shuttered Bethlehem.

She stood above him. Started turning. Stayed.
The dozing reapers sighed but did not hear.
Watched by the neutral moon, she watched him stir,
Heard his stuttering snores, and was afraid.
A moment later, God did not appear,
And Boaz wakened to the scent of myrrh.

[Clive Watkins]

Dear Tim

I apologise for jumping in before Dick Davis - but for myself I should not want to describe the close here as marked by "off rhyme", as you do: "myrrh" is a full rhyme with "stir" in an entirely regular pattern - abcabc.

Catherine has, however, managed some very cunning rhyming in this sonnet. Look at the modulation in this sequence: "mother-in-law, straw, before, Whore, stir, hear, appear, myrrh". There are four pairs of rhymes here, each pair forming a half-rhyme with the other three. And then look this sequence - "scheming, dreaming, them, Bethlehem" - where something of the same kind occurs.

Such unobtrusive elegance!

Clive Watkins

[Tim Murphy]

Duh! How can I be so stupid? Thanks, Clive!

[Dick Davis]

Well Tim my first comment was going to be "There ain't no off rhyme", but this has already been pointed out . . .

I love this poem, which is sonnet lV of a sequence of six telling the story of Ruth and Boaz, printed by Michael Peich in Catherine's chapbook Annunciations. Telling a story, or half telling it, by means of a sonnet sequence, with the individual sonnets picking out highlights of the narrative while the in-between bits remain unpsoken, is one of the first things the sonnet was used for in English (The Elizabethan sequences tend to imply a narrative, as Shakespeare's sonnets do, though usually a hard one to tease out). Here Catherine has joined that 300 plus year old technique technique to the mythological/religious sonnet, a primarily twentieth century form. The result is I think a marvellous blend of the traditional and the immediate - as the feel of the poem itself is, breathing the kind of rapt attentive wonder one gives to a religious sceene, but also making the players in it as recognisable and human as we are. The creation of the tone is helped by the fact that Ruth herself feels something of the emotion we are meant to feel - a kind of wonder, and a waiting for revelation. I like too the way the poem mixes erotic feeling with religious feeling, a traditional and very potent mixture in middle eastern texts and stories of course, running from The Song of Songs to medieval Sufi poetry.
The only poem I know which treats this story with comparable sympathy and beauty is I think Victor Hugo's Booz Endormi, which I seem to remember reading somewhere was Proust's favorite poem. Would that Proust could read Catherine's too.

[Anthony Lombardy]

Till now I've only glanced at the many fine sonnets here, since I knew that I didn't have the time to comment with adequate appreciation, but this poem, since it is new to me, and since it is just so ravishingly beautiful, overcomes all my reticence. This is just exquisite.

[Tim Murphy]

The Aralia Press at West Chester University, home to the famed Forums on Form and Narrative, is an exquisite fine arts press. With kind of an unbelievable list: Wilbur, Hecht, Moss, Merrill, Gwynn, Gioia, Mason, not to mention some lowdown no-accounts like Davis and Murphy. Catherine's Annunciations is one of Mike Peich's most exquisite books, and you can call Aralia at 6104363235 to order it.

Master Juster has observed elsewhere that Catherine is on an unbelievably fast track. She first came to my attention when I awarded her a scholarship to West Chester. With her thank you note she included some very promising poems. The following year we sought each other out, and I introduced her to Gwynn and Davis. With her facility in pentameter, her interest in the Italian and the sonnet, she could not have found better mentors. And all of us old crocks are just delighted to see how swiftly she is mastering this ancient art. Robert L. Barth also brought out a Tufariello chapbook (which I like even better than Mike's), and a trade press book cannot be far away.

[Alan Sullivan]

Ah, a dramatic sonnet. Beautifully done...especially the sestet rhymes. Could this be the pick? If so, I shall not accuse Dick of partiality.

A.S.

[Robt_Ward]

Amazing sonnet. Just amazing.

I am tempted to mark the sestet rhymes as abb'abb'. Never seen anything quite like it...

(robt)

[Len Krisak]

Dear Catherine, if you're listening (looking?) in:

A number of us were debating the meaning of the penultimate
line--the one about God not appearing. Can you help us?

Best,

Len

[Catherine Tufariello]

Hi Len, thanks for your question. I was wondering if the penultimate line in particular might prove cryptic when this poem is read in isolation. Originally the sonnet was a companion poem to one about a Renaissance painting of the Annunciation. There are interesting parallels and connections between the stories of Ruth and Mary, both of which have key scenes that unfold in Bethlehem and involve “miraculous” conceptions (Ruth had been married to one of Naomi’s sons for ten years and remained childless, but she conceives a son and heir with the elderly Boaz in a single night.) Ruth turns out to be the great-grandmother of David and hence an ancestor of Jesus.

A couple of years after I wrote it, this poem became (as Dick has mentioned) the germ for a six-sonnet sequence about Ruth and Naomi. The first sonnet begins, “The story’s strange. For once, God wasn’t talking . . .” One of the many things that appeals to me about the Book of Ruth is how human and humane it is. God does not intervene or speak in it, at least not in any overt way. What I meant to suggest by “God does not appear” is that there is no revelation of divine presence in Ruth’s moment of crisis and decision. There is no Gabriel to tell her not to be afraid, nor does God strike her down for approaching Boaz’s bed as she does, alone and under cover of darkness, and claiming his protection. Whereas Mary is obedient to God’s will, as Gabriel reveals it to her (“Let it be done to me as you say”), Ruth embraces her fallible but beloved mother-in-law’s very risky plan for how the two of them can save themselves from abject poverty (hence the poem’s epigraph).

I think the poem works better in the context of the sequence, and for this reason I hesitated about whether to send it to Tim. But I’m very grateful for the appreciative comments it’s received, and I want to thank everyone who responded to it here and in the ballots thread.