I tend to agree completely with Turner's terse summary: Competent, but this poem does not really attempt much.

Very often on the Sphere, because of the nature of who we are, and of the workshop process, I think that critiques can read far more depth into a poem than the author intended, give the author credit for layers of meaning that were never intended. I've been the happy recipient of such critiques myself (and sometimes confess, and sometimes don't), and I feel that may have happened here. My gut sense is that more is being seen in the poem than the author had in mind.

I like this a lot. The details make the poem for me. The enjambments in L4-6 really gave me the sense of unpacking and unfolding the pieces. I only wish the closing had a bit more bite.

David R.

What I like best is how visual this sonnet is. It's so easy to picture everything, even the auction which is conveyed with such deft strokes. I like the circularity that others have mentioned. There's an irony in it that's appealing but somehow a little sad: For some reason the linens were never used by their maker, and now that they're antiques they'll never be used by their buyer.
The enjambment on place/mats bothered me a little.
The line with "trousseau" worked fine for me because I always pronounce it as "trousseau". And putting a very slight stress on the word "a" goes with the territory:

a country homestead, maybe a trousseau

The opposition set up between "quaint" and "trousseau" on one hand and fine handwork on the other is significant. Having bought and sold antique handmade textiles on rare occasions, both from the East and Europe/the Americas, I know they have increased considerably in monetary value as women have become more financially independent. Yet in most cases they are still (and were before the recent crash) undervalued compared to other types of handcrafted work. The poem evokes international memories for me and no doubt for others who have seen or owned and pondered the time and reflection spent in the making. Not just memories, but the imagining of history and biography.

One is still torn between making "everyday use" (be sure to read Alice Walker's story with that title if you haven't already) of these items and putting them on display or storing them away in the bottom of a closet. Which I think affirms the importance of the sentiments here expressed. Consider that fragments of textiles thousands of years old have been recovered from sites on most continents. The first link below shows a 7,000-year-old fragment of Egyptian linen.

http://blog.ounodesign.com/2008/10/3...-in-the-world/

http://www.comp-archaeology.org/Jakes_rmizreport.htm

http://www.adireafricantextiles.com/...textintro5.htm

http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~kbruhns/textile.htm

Also, Alicia's suggestion to move L12 to the end is crucial to the power of this poem.

I don't like the place/mats enjambment because it doesn't surprise like a good enjambment (especially in a rhyming poem) often should. The hyphen would help.

The close is wonderful, and I agree with Alicia about moving around those lines.

My gut feeling is that a poem with girly subject matter is more likely to be read superficially and dismissed as trivial than one about [insert manly theme].

Petra said
I thought perhaps I was pronouncing it incorrectly so I asked my AmHer pronouncing dictionary which renders it as TRUE-so. But I looked a little closer after Petra's comment, and see that opinions differ. Although the preferred pronunciation seems to be (ahem :p) my way, I suppose it varies regionally (Louisiana and such areas may come closer to the French pronunciation).

At this pronouncing site both variants are given.

http://www.answers.com/topic/trousseau

So that is just a personal stumbling block that proves again how much our little idiosyncrasies have bearing.

The tense shift is signaled by "later" in line 3; the auction (past tense) precedes the unpacking (present). What's the problem?

This poem has a lot going for it in its specificity of focus & its quiet attention to detail, but that in itself is not enough. Nor is the poem vocal in telling us What It Means. If it were ONLY about an auction and a chest with some doilies, it would not be a good poem; a poem needs some doubleness or resonance which sets it in tune with our own experience. We then as readers can be uncharitable and dismissive, a la Cantor & Cassity; or we can be charitable, assume that the poet MUST have meant more than a trivial object description, and start to think. What we come up with will be half the poem, and half us; but that's how poetry works.

So I say that Nemo is right, this poem is an Ars Poetica, but we won't see it unless we read with the same quiet attention which the poet has turned upon the box she describes; we read the poem as the poet reads the box. The careful craftsmanship of the sonnet parallels the intricate handiwork of the napkins and doilies, the chest is the book in which this sonnet presumably appears, the doubtlessly female author is a sympathetic familiar to the dead embroiderers, and the auction is the accident by which 100 years later these quiet testaments of labor fall into the hands of succeeding generations. The sonnet is about the connection between the writer and the wordless workers before her; in its quiet we feel both sadness, that all of this finery need be hidden away, that individuals can evaporate, leaving only such few and mute traces behind, and consolation, in the affirmation that such connections do happen; we even hear the poet's tentative hope of her own words being stored up in the "chest" (or heart) of a few readers "ages and ages hence."

If I read it like that, it's a poem. If I read it as about one thing and nothing else, it's not. Gee, what should I do?

Chris

Janice,
I loved reading your little essay. Beautiful! Thank you.
Janet

PS: As is Chris's piece above this post.

I like the too-good-to-use theme, with the philosophical questions it implies. I find many of the line breaks rather uncomfortable, but I enjoyed the poem