[KennethWhite]

The sonnet is one of the traditional poetic forms which I thoroughly recall from my high school and college days. Some of my favorite potent voices behind this technique include the likes of Milton (i.e. "On the Late Massacre in Piedmont," "When I Consider How My Light Is Spent"), Herbert (i.e. "Redemption")and Donne (i.e. "Holy Sonnet 10").

Whether Italian, English or nonce, it is intriguing how these literary innovators expressed their thoughts (many of them Biblically-based) while confronting the challenge of applying such formats. What are your favorite sonnets, if any?

[Alan Sullivan]

Kenneth, what we're doing in this portion of the site is posting particular poems---a bit of a nuisance unless you already have digital text in your computer---and then discussing them. In the hopes of getting something started here, I'll put up a sonnet, though one a bit removed from the period and themes that you seem to propose. This is a poem by Robert Frost.

Once by the Pacific

The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than water broken
Before God's last Put out the Light was spoken.

[Richard Wakefield]

Alan, Frost gets away with at least a couple of things here. A minor one: the traditional division of eight lines and six lines is reversed. A rather major one: all that anthropomorphism would get red-inked by most contemporary editors. The minor one doesn't matter much to me. The major one, though, fascinates me. All this thinking and looking that the waves do -- I buy it. Could it be that some hint of the child's viewpoint comes through (the poem recalls Frost's childhood in San Francisco), and that the poem is all the better for capturing the way a child looks at the world? But if that's true, then what about the adult-sounding "night of dark intent" and "Before God's last 'Put out the Light' was spoken"? And there's the second person "You could not tell," which sounds merely colloquial but that perhaps has the effect of distancing the poet a bit.
The form itself seems a good choice. The built-in closure of the sonnet form truncates the line of apocalyptic thought, or contains it in memory.
Richard

[Tim Murphy]

Whoso list to hount, I know where is an hinde,
But as for me, helas, I may no more:
The vayne travaill hath weried me so sore
I ame of theim that farthest commeth behind;
Yet may I by no means my weried minde
Draw from the Diere. But as she fleeth afore
Faynting I folowe. I leve off therefore,
Sins in a nett I seeke to holde the wynde.
Who list her hount, I put him owte of dowbte
As well as I may spend his time in vain
For graven in Diamonds in letters plain
There is written her faire neck round abowte:
Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I ame
and wylde for to hold, though I seme tame.

Here is our Ur-sonnet, written after Thomas Wyatt returned from Italy and before H VIII chopped off his head. It is an imitation of Petrarch, and I think it's one of our greatest sonnets, despite its roughness. Works on four levels for me: The courtier's pursuit of the idealized woman. The hunter's pursuit of the deer. The sinner's pursuit of his Christ. The poet's pursuit of the poem. "Sins in a nett I seeke to holde the winde" better describes the art to which I've given my life than any line I ever read. I've typed this from memory, so forgive me any errors in orthography, punctuation, etc.

[Len Krisak]

Tim, Kenneth, Alan, and all:

One of my favorites, too (oddly enough
--could it be telepathy?)I was re-reading
Wyatt Monday night. Re: the different levels
you mention, Tim, the thing that's always blown
me away about this one is the direct crib from
Christ in the New Testament--what is it, Matthew
something.something? Talk about your daring.

And though I did no textual double-checking,
it has also seemed interesting to me that Wyatt
is actually fairly "correct" in his approach to meter.
Elision and syncope go a long way to smooth out people
like him and even Donne.

For a not altogether abstruse discussion of metrics in this particular Wyatt production, try George Wright, "Shakespeare's Metrical Art,"
U. of California, 1989 (I believe). Has some interesting
things to say.

Would love to see others respond to this Wyatt.

[Kate Benedict]

Wyatt couldn't catch the dear or anything the dear represents -- but he catches something, doesn't he? His sonnet grabs you by the throat across a span of centuries.

And there is some wisdom here, for poets new and seasoned, isn't there? What's our job? The essayist reasons things out, builds a case, takes a stand. The poet knows the real stuff of life is uncapturable. We stand before it like weary hunters, pursuing an ultimately untouchable mystery. We write drinking songs, too.

Regarding the Frost sonnet, Richard, I also "buy" the anthropomorphism in this poem -- I who am usually such a stickler on these things. Perhaps the plain-style diction is one reason why the imagery works, the simple one-syllable words. And, y'know, the waves may be doing some seemingly odd things -- looking, thinking -- but they are doing them to another piece of the natural world, the shore, not the speaker. And Frost doesn't lay the anthropomorphism on with a trowel. And there is that "child's eye view" element you mention, which also informs the end of the poem with statements that sound as if made by a disciplinary grownup. "Put out the light," sounds like a parent enforcing bedtime; "Someone had better be prepared..." sounds like a strict papa or schoolmaster. It's an altogether extraordary sonnet, isn't it? Top Ten material.

Grrrls! (And guys after a brandy or two...) Come hither and listen to our lovelorn sister, Edna St. Vincent Millay:

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,--so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

[Tim Murphy]

Len, I would never discount the possibility of telepathy between the likes of you and me, but I didn't consider Kenneth's sonnet thread until this morning. So if you were reading Wyatt Monday night, it was anticipatory. Donne and Wyatt can both be excused their metrical infelicities by elaborate theories of elision. As can Shakespeare, but what excuse is needed when the matter of what they say, and the moment, is as great as theirs?

[robert mezey]

Here's a beauty, little known and almost never
anthologized, the work of Henry Howard, Earl of
Surrey:

Norfolk sprang thee, Lambeth holds thee dead,
Clere of the County of Cleremont though hight;
Within the wombe of Ormond's race thou bred,
And saw'st thy cousin crowned in thy sight.
Shelton for love, Surrey for Lord thou chase:
Ay me, while life did last that league was tender;
Tracing whose steps thou saw'st Kelsall blaze,
Laundersey burnt, and battered Bullen render.
At Muttrell gates, hopeless of all recure,
Thine Earl halfe dead gave in thy hand his Will;
Which cause did thee this pining death procure,
Ere Summers four times seaven thou could'st fulfill.
Ah Clere, if love had booted, care or cost,
Heaven had not won, nor Earth so timely lost.

* * *

note: The cousin crowned in his sight was Ann
Boleyn. Surrey is saying that although his squire
is named Clere, he claims him for the Howards: he
was born in their seat, entombed in their chapel,
took Surrey for his lord (and died in his service),
was an Ormond (an allied house), and his lady
Mary Shelton was of another family close to the
Howards.

[Richard Wakefield]

Tim, Wyatt's another poet who was long dead by the time he was my age. "Sins in a nett I seeeke to holde the wynde" works not only as a commentary on the difficulty of composing poetry, but also on the trouble of writing it down. Wyatt himself probably wasn't aware of how much the English language was in flux in the sixteenth century -- that's a lot easier to see in hindsight -- but he certainly still thought of poetry as primarily sound, as good poets and readers still do, of course, and yet knew that publication, that is, edited and printed distribution, was the coming thing. I can't help thinking he recognized the difficulty of getting marks on paper to represent sound, "the wynde."
Kate, although I'm not lovelorn at the moment, I have had a recent loss and am just returned from a long morning ramble on muddy paths along the Nisqually River delta (just north of Olympia, Washington), and I hereby proclaim Millay's sonnet as more than a fine bit of craft: it's true. I don't suppose one needs to be a connisseur of overcast skies and pastel landscapes to appreciate her work here, but it helps.
Richard

[This message has been edited by Richard Wakefield (edited January 30, 2001).]

[Len Krisak]

My fellow sufferers in the great art:

What a rich thread (or board) this has become. Before it
turns too much into a love fest, some scattered comments.

Kate: I both teach and love Millay. She is one of the GREAT sonneteers (and poets), savagely neglected. Everywhere I go on chat boards, poetry sites, etc., I discover that non-academics instantly see her great talent, understand her,
and resonate to her. I suspect this has been Mr. Mezey's
experience, too, as her treatment seems to mirror that
afforded Hardy--all is out there for all to see, so Lit Crit Theorists pay him no mind.

On the elision in both Shakespeare and Wyatt (oh, what the hell--throw in Donne while we're at it): there need not be
any "theories" at all. These three work perfectly simply with what I would call straightforward garden-variety elision. I do strongly agree with Tim, though , that the great burdens they carry are more important than their immediate metrical problems. Don't know what Caleb would say about that!

In fact, I think Shakes' sonnets are as regular as Pope's
couplets. Check out the pronunciation of "Cassio" and "Romeo" in different places in both plays and I think you'll find it almost embarrassingly obvious that each name gets
pronounced TWO ways.

Back to Wyatt: something was naggging and nagging at me last night till I finally looked it up. It was Surrey who was beheaded (by Hen VIII 's command). Wyatt spent time in the tower (over an unrelated matter--a feud with some noble) but lived on until 1542, when he died of a fever (!) at Sherborn. Yes, he undoubtedly had his way with Ann Boleyn, but he also took a gamble by telling Henry just before the King's marriage. Ann got it in the neck in 1536, three years after the marriage and 6 before Wyatt's death.

For some other poems in here: people like Surrey and Millay still have riches waiting for us. Shall we move on to Mr. Mezey's choice, or stay witht the Frost or Millay?

(P.S.) I STILL recommend Alex Pepple for a medal for having created this site--along with campaign ribbons for Mike Juster and Alan for moderating. This is better talk than you're going to find in a lot of faculty lounges.