[RCrawford]

While Listening to Bells


How odd to realize all thoughts within
the frame of opaque bones and fragile cells
wrapped up inside the stretched and prickled skin
will only live as long as we ourselves.

This remnant of a sea inside a sack,
this ghost of pressure balanced by the air
and tension from the water pushing back
that each of us has been condemned to wear

will break down into nothing, given time.
The shell that holds all grief and memory,
in chains of molecules that make a mind,
will turn back into atoms, hungry, free.

We’re spirits caught inside our skin and hair —
ephemeral our dramas, spun from air.

[RCrawford]

I really enjoy the development of this sonnet. An idea, an argument, is finely presented within the sonnet’s constraints. I like the fact that the final line refers back to the title—the sound of bells in the air. It leaves me with that expansion of thought that I like to see at the end of the sonnet; a connection to something outside of what has been described, but a connection that is not just slapped on at the end but earned throughout the poem. This sonnet has more than technical competence to recommend it, but I chose it, particularly, as an example of craft.

[E. Shaun Russell]

My first impression was one of "this has been done before." I've written several sonnets treading very similar terrain, and it strikes me that the trope itself is probably worn by now.

Having said that, second and third impressions reflect what the DG says about the craft. Tired trope aside, this is a beautifully assembled sonnet with excellent, stately progression. I don't much care for the slightness of "how odd" to start the poem, and the inversion of the final line is also a little suspect, but the general development and word choices are well-wrought. Maybe not in the "top three" for me, but an enjoyable reading experience regardless.

[Catherine Chandler]

I agree with Shaun about the use of "How odd". I don't think what N is expressing here is odd at all.

Also, when I see the word "within" used for its iambic properties I tend to cringe.

I also don't agree that cells are fragile. I also take exception to the preponderance of water references. Our total body mass may be 95% water but the water is contained in a body made primarily of carbon.

The final inversion, which is very problematic for me, can easily be fixed with no adverse effect to the lovely image in precedes.

The care taken to craft this sonnet is obvious. I just have too many reservations about it to place it in my top 3.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Time is shorter than hair on an egg, but I have to say that this poem seizes me. I think it is brilliant; that may be mainly because I think this way almost all day every day. I admire the craftsmanship. Lovely work, IMO.

[Pedro Poitevin]

Now this is a sonnet. Yes! (There is a typo in L4, though: it should be "will only live as long as we ourselves.")

[Roger Slater]

This sonnet leaves me cold. Its insight is true, of course, but not one that hasn't occurred to just about everyone at one time or another, and the sonnet doesn't bring any particular new slant to it or metaphor or deepening of understanding, nor does it ground itself in any particular situation that tells us what (beyond the sound of bells) provoked this reflection or who is speaking to us or why. And as others have commented, the obvious fact that we are mortal, physical beings is pointed out clearly enough, but all we are told is that it is "odd," which hardly means anything in this context.

I also quibble with the accuracy of saying that our thoughts will not outlive us. Our thinking those thoughts ourselves will not outlive us, of course, but the thoughts themselves will. We still have Pascal's pensees, after all, though Pascal doesn't.

And our brains won't change "back into atoms," since that's what they already are. I know what's intended is that they will change back into "mere atoms," or something like that, but that's not what it says. Also, I don't understand why those atoms will be "hungry."

L13's use of "spirits" seems vague to me, and possibly at odds with the rest of the poem that seems to be defining our thoughts mechanistically and saying that the death of our physical person is the death of all our experience as humans.

[Edmund Conti]

Well, Roger, if that sonnet leaves you cold, maybe it succeeded.

[Catherine Chandler]

It left me cold, too, Roger, and I'm used to weeks on end of sub-zero temperatures.

[Brian Allgar]

I liked this more than some, and less than others, which I suppose puts me on that most uncomfortable of places - the fence.

While I liked some of the images ("This remnant of a sea inside a sack"), and thought it an interesting reworking of an admittedly commonplace idea, I was put off by the false rhymes (cells/ourselves, time/mind) in a poem that otherwise uses perfect rhymes.

I also found the inversion in the last line made for a weak ending, and agree that it could easily be eliminated along the lines of:

xxWe’re spirits caught inside our skin and hair,
xxephemeral as [something] spun from air.