[Tim Murphy]

People, this is a horrific poem sent me by one of our few antipodean members, Peter Earsman. I thought it described Botany Bay, Great Britain's penal colony that founded Australia. But Peter tells me the true anecdote comes from Tasmania. Just as Alicia's lilting meters describe the bat, so Peter's martial iambic stomping of his prisoner breaks my heart.

Compassion

A fresh hand grasped the whip, the blows increased
in strength as lead-spliced leather hissed and came
in contact with the bloody back--the same
as knives might carve the carcass of a beast.
Full twenty strokes ago the thief had ceased
to struggle, scream or call his mother’s name.
He swung loose-legg’d within the wooden frame;
befouled and stinking as his bowels released.
Then through the blood and ruptured flesh was seen
the blue-white spine and ribs whipped clear and clean.
The warder raised his hand up high and said,
Enough! This man is very nearly dead.
So strip his breeks, and lay his arse-cheeks bare -
let no man say this whipping was not fair.

[Robt_Ward]

Yes, that's horrible. High praise indeed, as in Kurtz, "The horror! The horror!" The title is almost unbearably ironic.

If I had a nit to pick at all, it would be the "not-quite-turn" between the octave and the sestet, there's really a bigger turn between 10 and 11.

Very powerful poem.

(robt)

[graywyvern]

don't know if the word "horrible" can be saved, but
"horrific" it is...

[Tim Murphy]

Dear Gray, Horrible is replaced by horrific in my post above. Thank you for calling me to my duty, much as the captain calls the bosun to bring out the cat-o-nine-tails.

[Dick Davis]

This is a hard poem to comment on because of its subject matter, which leaves one feeling too numbed to think straight. It does raise the problem of the relationship of horrific subject matter to aesthetics though, which is a thorny one. I think our first instinct is to feel that aesthetics has nothing to do with it, it seems an irrelevance for a poem like this, but the fact that it is written as _a poem_ means I think that the aesthetic question has to be there. Technically this poem is very fine, clean and well made and strong: but it doesn’t quite focus for me sometimes. I think the reason is in some of the rhymes: the most powerful rhymed poems – if raw impact is what we are after, and we seem to be after that here – often rhyme on the most devastating words, the words that carry the most emotional content. This poem tends to rhyme on quite neutral, even bland words (came, same, name, seen, said . . .) and this somewhat diminishes its technical impact for me. I’m quibbling, I know, as it is very strong, and it certainly stays in the mind, which is the acid test for any poem. I was interested in Robert Ward’s comment about the turn/ volta. It seems to me the turn comes twice in a way – after line 12, which as it ends in a couplet seems ok (almost as if it were a Shakepsearian sonnet), but also at the traditional place for a Petrarchan sonne, when we start up again with "Then" and a new sentence. It seems to draw from both forms, the Shakepearian and the Petrarchan in this way.

[Jim Hayes]

Thank you for your insightful comments Dick, this is a very good poem indeed on a horrific and oft too repeated punishment in the past.

My take on the rhymes was that they had a statacco, whiplash effect and were well chosen for their purpose although I take your instructive point about the heightened effect of rhyming on more emotive, stronger words.

Personally, I don't consider it de rigueur that a volta should always be at the octave, feeling that it it should be, if it has to be at all, where the logic within the poem allows, no matter the line designation.

Jim




[This message has been edited by Jim Hayes (edited May 03, 2002).]

[Roger Slater]

One can't help responding viscerally to this poem! I'm not sure I entirely agree with Dick that a poem such as this should contrive to place its rhymes on the more "devastating" words, since the subject matter is already so devastating that the relatively "bland" rhymes may be a useful device to keep the poem from going too far over the top in a quasi-pornographic display of unfettered violence. Also, since the poem ultimately depends (thematically) on irony (the title is "Compassion," but the warder's cynical "compassion" hardly qualifies), the blander end-rhymes here may contribute to the irony by seeming to adopt a clinical or journalistic tone in depicting the horrors described in the middle of the lines. I think "was seen," for example, is just right in the way it journalistically reports the horrific news in the passive tense.

The only problem I had with the rhymes was "mother's name," since I can't imagine that a whipped person would call out his mother's name –rather than calling out simply "Mother!" or "Mom!", etc.

Perhaps they say "arse-cheeks" in Tasmania, but to my American ear this term sounds a bit too comical and Monty Python-esque, and I'd prefer "buttocks" or some other substitution because the "joke" is a tad too broad with the funnier word. I'd let the irony remain as understated as it wants to be, since it is nonetheless inescapable. The irony, I believe, is absolutely crucial to this poem, since otherwise it is just an extremely skilled portrayal of a gruesome whipping and the poem would be little more than a very well-made snuff-film. That the poem escapes this fate is one of its genuine pleasures and what, for me, justifies its selection as one of the master sonnets chosen for discussion.

[Tim Murphy]

I find myself siding with Roger on the rhymes. This is a hard subject to understate. Not sure about the idiomatic "cheeks," seems to go with the even more idiomatic "breeks." One of the glories of our language is its regional pecularities.

[Richard Wakefield]

I think "mother's name" is a bit of a problem, and to my eye so is "the same / as knives might carve the carcass of a beast," because an animal would be carved with care and for utility... All I mean is that in both cases I'm having to squint a bit to make it work. I suppose the rather prim "bowels released" seems at odds with the colloquial "arse cheeks," but the second is a quotation, so their coming from different registers of speech needn't be a problem.
But the point has already been hinted at: One feels somehow inhuman quibbling over a few slightly out of focus moments in a poem that none would really bear is it were any more sharply focused.
RPW

[Peter Earsman]

Hello folks,
I don't know whether it is 'good form' to comment on observations on one's own poem under these (competitive) circumstances, but since there seems to be no more offerings...

I was inspired to write the poem after witnessing a mock whipping carried out at a historic site. The 'actors' and, it must be said, most of the tourists, treated the whole thing as a joke. I did some research - a joke it was not. The sonnet was an attempt to show what a real whipping was all about. It was taken from a true account of a punishment (400 strokes, no less) for theft at a penal colony in Tasmania c 1850.

Volta. The iambic 'stomping' (thanks Tim) was deliberate, as most would appreciate, so I needed relief from what was a 'regimental' sonnet. I decided not to include a studied, single turn but instead to create a poetic climate where more than one could be detected if one had a mind to see it that way.

Rhyming words. As Roger suggested, I sought a matter-of-fact element, so chose to use bland commentary. After all, this kind of punishment was not considered unusual at all in those times. But having read Dick's comments on this subject, I'm now in two minds. Don't you just love it when that happens?

Idiom. No, we no longer say 'arse-cheeks' any more than we call pants, 'breeks.' But in those days they did. I thought (and still think) the quotation in the 'speak' of the day was appropriate.
But glad we have a Monty Python appreciation thing going here.

Style. 'Mother's name,' and 'bowels released' still bother me too. It needs work.

The main reason the officer ordered that the remainder of the strokes be given on the buttocks (and legs) is that he feared being reprimanded if the prisoner died. There was never any question of the punishment being stopped short of the required 400 strokes.

One of the true pleasures of Eratosphere is that the writer may be confident that the critique(s) will be honest, knowledgeable and free from rancour.
There are few poetry sites that can boast all three on a regular basis.


Cheers
Peter E