#4--Food
 

Food

Stiffening in dried blood, half a dozen swung
from his belt loops and a full dozen more
lumped out his crocus sack. He limped, foot-sore,
that gangly, felt-hat black whose thin coat hung
like something scarecrows wore, while evening dew
had soaked the legs of fraying overalls
beggar lice clung to. Sure, there were old walls
between us, but he nodded: "Howdy-do."
He froze, then; dead slow, he laid supper down.
I squatted with my .12 gauge, scanned the brush:
nothing—until his one shot .22
ripped up a leap of guts and furry brown.
He fetched his kill and tipped his hat, no rush,
then slipped back in the woods to skin and stew.

This is a masterful narrative sonnet, taut and economical, with a classic volta between octave and sestet. The opening is in medias res, without a wasted word. In the octave one hunter observes another—his belt and burlap sack evidence of his skill at rabbit or perhaps squirrel hunting, his threadbare clothes of his poverty—across the “old walls” of race, class and a painful history. I admire the way “old walls,” as in “Mending Wall,” have both literal and figurative force. While the octave is relatively adjective-heavy, it also has precise and vivid verbs (stiffening, lumped, limped). I wonder if “thin coat” could be replaced with a disyllabic noun to make that line a little less dense with modifiers and monosyllables. I also would suggest hyphenating “beggar lice,” as I initially thought that beggar was an adjective and wondered how the speaker could observe lice on someone’s clothes. Once I looked up “beggar lice” and learned that they are prickly burrs, it all made sense. The poet depicts this man’s appearance and character with remarkable clarity in the space of eight lines.

The variation in enjambed and end-stopped lines throughout seems just right. And the variation in the placement of caesurae is a marvel. Look at the turn to the sestet: “He froze, then; dead slow, he laid supper down.” The three caesurae slow down the line to match the hunter’s movement. The beat on “dead” hints at what the result will be for whatever creature he has heard moving in the brush. “Slow,” though an offbeat, takes heavy speech stress, the tension between meter and rhythm further slowing things down. The colloquial “laid” for “lay” lets us hear the speaker’s voice as well as seeing what he sees. He squats and scans the brush to no avail. And then the .22 rifle rings out. I take it that “one shot” means the rifle can only be fired once before it has to be reloaded, so he has one chance to bag this animal. “Ripped up a leap of guts and furry brown” made my own guts contract. Fetching his kill, the more skilled of the two hunters tips his hat courteously to the speaker—who, carrying a .12 gauge shotgun, appears to have the wrong weapon for small game hunting (thank you Google!)—before retreating to the woods to make supper. The quiet internal rhymes “tipped” and “slipped” contrast effectively with the violent “ripped” of the previous line.

One unusual thing about the rhyme scheme of this poem is that the rhymes on “dew” cross the volta. I’ve always thought it preferable for octave and sestet to have a distinct set of rhymes, to underscore the break between them. But here, in a poem where two characters acknowledge each other across “old walls,” I think it works.

A poem this good deserves a better title. I would have liked either the title or a subtitle to identify when and where the poem takes place.

I thought this looked familiar. This sonnet is so good it's made it to the Big Ten of the Bakeoff before.

Catherine and Susan, if this is deemed too big a leak, please tell me so and I'll delete this post!

Not my usual cup of tea, but definitely effective and masterfully arranged. Catherine's analysis of the lines and pacing is right on the money, though I disagree with her about the title. Best so far, I think.

David R.

Yes, this has starred here before, which is why when Catherine said she had firearms sonnets I asked if the author was hunting squirrels again. Memorable work, and a wonderful comment by Catherine.

The second reading of this makes all the difference. First time through, the level of detail almost distracted from the narrative. But, once I got the bloody thing under my belt, it really came to life. I love the close.

Rick

Well, I think it's the best on the board so far. It's very different and very well done. The voice is great, and it has such fine tension in it.
But it's also a little strange seeing this here. Firstly, some of us have a really good memory when it comes to bake-offs, and secondly others of us have recently been reading all the old bake-offs all over again. And both of those statements apply to both of me. (-:
So I'm not sure how to react to an old bake-off poem popping up on a new bake-off. I guess I'll just finish by saying that my very favorite from the same bake-off year as this one also had a gun and a coat in it, so maybe it will pop up here too, and all that stuff.

I don't have the memory for old bake-offs that others have, but I have to say I don't much like the idea of previous finalists appearing again. It's one thing to re-enter sometihing that never made it to the boards, but it seems odd and unnecessary to me to re-enter one that already received the DG treatment and went up for votes. I suppose there is nothing in the rules prohibiting it, and there may be more gut than brain in my reaction, but I don't like the idea.

David R.

What David said.

I feel abashed. My observation wasn't meant to create this awkwardness, but to stress that the sonnet is indeed very good. Nevertheless, the objections are duly noted for the future.

L4 isn't quite idiomatic. If I may be racially crude for a moment to explain my point, one might refer to "a black", or to a "coal black negro", but would it be natural to say "a coal black"? For the same reason, "... that gangly, felt-hat black whose... " doesn't sound quite right. I had to read the sentence a couple times before it clicked that "black" was being used as a noun.

I'm not sure I understand the title. Is it to underscore that the black man hunts for food what the white speaker hunts for sport? Or is it intended to suggest "food for thought?"

Other than that, I like this one a lot.

Definitely the best so far. I agree with Brian's critique of the "felt-hat black" image.

I agree that the title doesn't do much for this one, and if it is meant to suggest that the better hunter here hunts for food while the narrator hunts for sport, as Brian suggests, I'm afraid I was too dense to pick that up on the first couple of reads.

Anyway, I love this one.

Yes, a powerful sonnet and a very acute analysis by Catherine. Just one grammatical curiosity as regards Catherine's comment: surely "laid" is the correct form for the past tense of the transitive verb, rather than a colloquial form? Or is this another Brit/US difference?

Damn good. I just wonder with the others why it's appearing in a bakeoff for a second time. Maybe a book-keeping mistake by the author (whom I don't need to guess)?

Chris

Great descriptive writing.

Though I do question the ethics of re-run.

Nemo

"Skin and stew" are simply awesome there at the end.

The one thing that doesn't sit well with me is the same thing Brian mentioned: the word "black" to mean "black man." Can't say I've heard this in regular parlance; "blacks," yes, in the plural, but not the singular; "black," yes, as an adjective, but not a noun. Maybe it happens in redneck country, but why would a cultivated poet want to sound that tone? (And who would say "that white"?)

I strongly suggest adding an extra sonnet to this bake-off to compensate for this one's having appeared twice. If indeed it has; I remember it from a different thread too.

I strongly support Kate's suggestion.
.

So do I. I do think this is the best sonnet of the first four. (I haven't yet read the later threads.)

To respond to the suggestion made by Kate, and seconded by others: I will post thirteen sonnets, instead of twelve, and there will be three new "medalists" at the end as well. I understand from Susan that the reappearance of this sonnet was indeed the result of a bookkeeping error or failure in memory on the poet's part, as Chris guessed. I'm happy to have had the chance to comment on such a fine poem, but no one else will lose a finalist slot because I did so.

Carry on! I'm enjoying these discussions very much. And Gregory, as long as I'm here: you're absolutely right that my grammar analysis was faulty, and much as I would like to attribute the error to national differences, I'm afraid I must take the blame. I treated the verb as if the hunter were lying down in the brush, instead of laying down his sack. My bad! (Do they say that in the U.K.?)

I remember this poem. I have been thinking about it and I will bet some stale doughnuts that the author has revised it to deal with some of the critical points from before.

It is not exactly the poem that I remember from an earlier bake-off, it is revised and improved.

But I have been wrong before. Once.

What I like in this one is the specificity of the details, the conciseness of the narrative, and the way in which "old walls" becomes such good shorthand for the racial and social divide between the speaker and the "he" of the poem. What I am missing is any real sense of the speaker, except as a white hunter, or his attitude toward the "he." So it's a vivid and memorable anecdote, but I keep wondering "Why are you telling me this?"

Susan

A little touch up would make this more easily understoood. I spent two days puzzling over the felt-hat black before I realized black referred to a person of color. I spent three days wondering why he laid supper down and then went off into the brush to skin it and stew it and presumably eat it by himself, though 18 squirrels/birds seems like a lot of food for one person. Then I realized he "laid" supper down with the .22. I would have said he "brought" it down, and I would have had him slip off home with the game to skin and stew it so he could feed his 12 kids.

Carol