[RCrawford]

The Hunt
-or-
Where I Slid Down the Muddy Bank


He bawls, it seems, some two long miles away.
The track he scents is quick with taken breath
and I am trekking, pacing night with day-
light far from breaking. I am chasing Death,
a coon too old to tree, with Blue. He's fast
as blazes, my best dog, and I can hear
his mouth throughout the wood hammering past
these hills and hollows headed toward my fear:
Cane Creek, so clear and deep, the current swift
enough for time to lag behind its wake.
And there are Blue and Death, two souls adrift
and fighting, thrashing… I lie here awake
remembering my dog, my life, the fight,
my inability to set things right.

[RCrawford]

My eyes were wide open at the end of this one! I could see myself lying in bed going over and over a tragic event, immobilized and unable to stop it. The last line makes this sonnet for me but I enjoy the story that gets me there. Naming the big coon Death is a dangerous poetic move for the connotations it hauls into the poem, but here it is completely justified and I believe it. There are problems with a few word choices—and I’m sure this tough crowd will point them out—but it does not distract from a good story, and a good sonnet .

[Catherine Chandler]

At first I thought it might be Tim's, but then looked up Cane Creek and saw that it's in North Carolina.

As for the sonnet itself, it's brilliant. Just listen to the sonics! All those "k" sounds throughout, like a choking, which N is, in fact, doing in his horrible nightmare.

If you had to twist my arm to find some nits, I would mention the cliché "fast as blazes" and the word "so" in line 9, not really needed and perhaps added for metrical reasons. At first I wondered whether the "it seems" in L1 was added to make the line IP, but then realized, at the end, that because this is a dream sequence, it's placement is logical.

My #1 choice so far.

Loved it.

[Catherine McDonald]

Powerful and skillful in its delivery. The one part that hung me up was:

And there are Blue and Death, two souls adrift
and fighting, thrashing… I lie here awake

"Two souls adrift" is too existential for me and undercuts the action. I'd think in terms of something with more definition and agitation, like two wills that drift/ in thrashing battle...something that conveys more of a sense of a floating fight for the finish. But, overall, I like this very much.

(I'd just go with The Hunt.)

[Sharon Fish Mooney]

Agree with prior comments—and very timely. Last night for several hours the dogs were were in our woods after a coon who had apparently been after the chickens by the sounds – terrible sounds for several hours and the sound of Death was certainly the predominant one

I can hear his mouth seemed too tame and not the right image-..the dog’s mouth? I can hear his howl?

The Hunt seems enough for the title

[Toni Seger]

Definitely exciting and engaging. What it needs is some smoothing.

"I am chasing death..." is very effective. It sends a chill down your spine and proves the poet is capable of creating very memorable lines, but the rest of the thought is not there yet, it's lumpy and bumpy with placeholders. He's fast as blazes, my best dog, etc.

Still, the ending is tight and concise and, once again, effective.

"I lie here awake
remembering my dog, my life, the fight,
my inability to set things right."

[Susan McLean]

I like this one. It has some ambiguities, but those are not necessarily a problem. I couldn't decide whether this is just a dream about losing the dog (which I am reading as having died fighting the quarry in the creek) or whether that death and fight are working as metaphors of other fights that the speaker is also losing. But that kind of open-endedness is an asset, not a flaw. I like the paradox that what the speaker is hunting is also what he fears. Isn't that often what dreams are about?

Susan

[Mary McLean]

This has tremendous brio and a great turn. I love when the sonnet structure fits a narrative so well, it's very satisfying.

I dislike the line break in day-light, though I'm sure that if I heard it being read, the energy would carry me through and I wouldn't notice. Similarly wake and awake aren't a great rhyme, and pairs like breath/death have been done before, but the whole is so skillfully conversational that it works. This is certainly in my top 3 so far.

[Brian Allgar]

I very much like the last three lines, and I like moderately well the preceding lines, with the provisos already mentioned by others.

Like Catherine Chandler, the subject-matter brought Tim to my mind too. Perhaps he was on holiday in North Carolina?

I agree with Mary about the awkward line-break on 'day-/light', and would prefer something such as

xxand I am trekking through the night, with day
xxstill far from breaking.

It is, after all, day that breaks, resulting in daylight.

[ross hamilton hill]

Agree with new member Toni's assessment, certainly needs some work. Some of the condensing leads to unintended ambiguities.
Exemplifies the fact that a traditional sonnet is very difficult to write (in English).
I liked a lot of it.