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  #1  
Unread 05-19-2015, 05:29 AM
RCrawford RCrawford is offline
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Default Bake-off Finalist Sonnet #10: Lines



Lines

I see them in the country road we took
into the limestone hills, above a mass
of purple rows outside the village Grasse,
and trace their path in every place I look:
the tartan spread, the marching ants, the brook
of beaded bubbles rising in each glass,
between our lips, the blades of tender grass
that mark a page, our last unfinished book.

But now I see them in your hands and eyes
(the rays of sun, the feet of passing crows)
and there beneath your muslin dress, which hides
a line of skin—the one your surgeon closed—
and toast the day from this enduring sphere
so all their pointed ends might disappear.
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Unread 05-19-2015, 05:30 AM
RCrawford RCrawford is offline
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Default DG Comment on "Lines"

I will make a brief comment on each “finalist” as I post it but I will keep the comment limited to the positive aspects of the selection and save any critique for later.

I like sentiment, and I feel it at the end of this sonnet. I think, I hope, I get the end (though I’m uncertain why or how a line’s ends might disappear) and that’s usually not a good uncertainty at the end of a sonnet, but the obvious love the narrator has for his companion (established in the sestet), makes me think I understand: he doesn’t want to see there/his/his wife’s end of the line, so to speak.

The sonnet has some nice sounding lines like L4-5, “the tartan spread, the marching ants, the brook/ of beaded bubbles rising in each glass.” I also like the fact that it is straight up Petrarchan sonnet with no attempt to get out of the demanding (in English) ABBAABBA of the octave
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Unread 05-19-2015, 10:15 AM
Susan McLean Susan McLean is offline
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I thoroughly like this one. The one place I had to strain to understand was the final couplet. I am assuming the "enduring sphere" is the Earth, and the pointed ends of the lines are an allusion to time's arrow, which moves in only one direction, toward death. I don't mind having to work a bit to make out the conclusion, but it does delay the aha! moment that a perfect ending can provide.

I disagree with the DG about this being a Petrarchan sonnet. Such a sonnet never ends with a couplet, so the octave is Petrarchan, but the sestet appears to be Shakespearean.

Susan
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Unread 05-19-2015, 10:33 AM
Birthe Myers Birthe Myers is offline
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The first eight lines are exquisitely beautiful. The purple rows – of lavender – the hills, the blades of grass. The next six lines are also beautiful, but it is more difficult to handle the subject one now knows is so very personal. There is great love in this, and art and craft. It will be harder now to choose one favorite sonnet.
I can not grasp what is meant in the last two lines. What is ‘this enduring sphere?
and toast the day from this enduring sphere
so all their pointed ends might disappear.

Thanks to Susan I have the answer - the earth. Rather obvious, though not until I was told. I am not yet comfortable with the pointed ends.
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Unread 05-19-2015, 10:51 AM
Brian Allgar Brian Allgar is online now
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I like much of this, but I too was baffled by the last two lines. Although Susan's explanation is a possible one, I don't find it by any means compelling, and I can't make the syntax work. "[i] toast the day [...] so [...] pointed ends might disappear". Eh?

"Beaded bubbles" is still as good a phrase as when Keats wrote it.
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Unread 05-19-2015, 10:59 AM
Susan McLean Susan McLean is offline
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Brian, I read the couplet as implying "I toast this perfect day, on an earth that will go on without us, in order to forget that our time together is running out." I think the implication is that the woman is dying of something related to the recent surgery.

Susan
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Unread 05-19-2015, 11:13 AM
Mary McLean Mary McLean is offline
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Another possible reading of the end is that the scar is from a C-section, and the pointed end of themselves will be carried in in a bloodline through their new child. Susan's reading is probably likelier, but the couplet is vague enough I'm not sure. I think I'd prefer it if it were a bit clearer. I like the octave very much.
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Unread 05-19-2015, 11:28 AM
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Catherine Chandler Catherine Chandler is offline
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Beautiful octet, though the phrase borrowed from Keats is quite an appropriation! Lovely sestet as well, though I'm still mulling over possible interpretations.
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Unread 05-19-2015, 01:33 PM
ross hamilton hill ross hamilton hill is offline
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The pointed ends are the stitches. A sphere is a perfect solid, so a perfect world.
Well written. What a sonnet should do, talk about love.

Last edited by ross hamilton hill; 05-19-2015 at 01:42 PM.
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Unread 05-19-2015, 04:40 PM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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Well, of course, the poet is referring to Eratosphere, and the immortality of lines of poetry....

Seriously, could the sphere be a wine glass? Perhaps one of the ones "between our lips" earlier? Repeatedly toasting the beauties of this lovely day would be one way to blot out the finite nature of those beauties. But the adjective "enduring" isn't one I'd associate with a wine glass, so perhaps not.
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