Sonnet 6 - Streetlight
 

Streetlight

Outside the circle of the globe streetlight
beside a corner on the thousandth street,
a shade approaches, always out of sight—
late for appointment at the dim retreat
in the brownstone storefront halfway down the block
where pale night shadows come sometimes to meet.

At last inside the doorway—the loud knock
pounding unanswered on the wooden door,
the rattle of the unrelenting lock,
the unread papers scattered on the floor—
there, posted on the glass in black and white,
the final notice: Nothing Is In Store.

Now hear the silence of the thousandth night
outside the circle of the globe streetlight.


I was struck by this poem’s dreamlike ambience, its evocative images and eerie music – which reminded me a bit of Poe, but of no one so much as Walter de la Mare.

The sense of the mysterious presence, the brownstone storefront, the loud knocking, the unread papers, the final notice with its ominous double meaning. "The corner on the thousandth street," "the silence of the thousandth night." What does it mean? And why a globe streetlight, rather than a regular one?

I don't know. All I know is I find the poem, with its cryptic imagery, its dreamlike atmosphere, its sense of an unseen yet ominous presence, both haunting and compelling. And cinematic. (In fact, I'd be willing to bet the poet is a David Lynch fan!)

I can see why the TSDG likes this one--the allusions in his/her write-up seem apt to me. I don't like it as much in large part because of lines 13 and 14. When you've only got 14 lines to work with, giving one away to sheer repetition seems a shame unless the repetition really packs a punch. Here the final couplet for me doesn't add much; indeed it's equal parts didactic telliness, needless repetition, and anticlimax. The strong ending is the weird and cryptic and ominous nothing is in store!

A couple other thoughts:

The absence of "an" in "late for appointment" is distracting to me. Did ever a native speaker of English actually say I am late for appointment? Tontoism?

Line 8's metrical sub works for me, but I have a hard time saying 7 because my ear wants to emphasize LOUD...

Yes, they do that over there, trans-Atlantic.

I do see the reference to de la Mare's The Listeners http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177007

and my belief that this is one of our British cousins writing is reinforced by the reference to globe lighting.

http://livedesignonline.com/site-fil...Embankment.jpg

I love the sonics of this line.

the rattle of the unrelenting lock,

My guess here as to the author is the same one who wrote its companion sonnet today, but of course the same person can't have done both since only one submission was allowed.

So I'm furrowing me brow.

But both of them are excellent sonnets, IMNSHO.

This does have a nice creepiness to it, though I agree with Simon that it is really complete after line 12. (I think some of us, including me, spend a lot of time writing sonnets instead of trying to think of other forms because the Bake-Off and the Nemerov are always in our minds...)

I suspect that, after that 12th line, the Shadow falls like a vampire on the person pounding at the door...

L10, “the unread papers scattered on the floor—” is hauntingly perfect for this poem! I love how “scattered” echoes rattle, though I did pause—isn’t a rattle more for the chain lock? Perhaps those can be unrelenting (?), but at least it made me think of a chain which seems appropriate to the theme.

I love all the words of indistinction in this poem: Outside the circle, shade, out of sight, dim, halfway, pale, unanswered, unrelenting, Nothing, silence. Broken by the crisp words: loud, pounding, black and white.
And the words of time: always, late, sometimes, At last, final, Now; and even night and unread.

I question the title—so many words could have been chosen that would add more to the poem. And then there’s the sonnet’s odd pattern, abab cb cdcd bd aa. The couplet doesn’t really seem to fit; it’s almost more like a song’s refrain, not a resolution

Would the chilling, “Nothing Is In Store” be a better ending to the poem? What is added by repeating the first line? Well, to answer my own question, it does contribute to the endless-circle feeling. (But not a sonnet’s construction?)

I also wondered about the use of “globe,” but perhaps it’s meant to make us think of ‘circling the globe’? And does the Thousand and One Nights fit here at all? Couldn’t help thinking of it.

Marta

FYI: Missing italics, in original post, added (S2L6 the phrase "Nothing Is In Store" italicized, as provided by the author).

...Alex

I also thought 'globe' odd, it's not sonically pleasing, and globe streetlights signal for me either another era or street furniture, globe as world , well a cliched symbol. Very Poe in plot..perhaps a bit old hat for reminding me of him.

Globe streetlights are certainly not limited to the UK, or to earlier eras. We've got them in downtown Saint Paul, and I think of them as fairly standard in the parts of the city with older buildings.

My confusion is with different details: does the shade get in, or not? "Inside the doorway" conflicts with that unanswered door and that unrelenting lock.

But the poem consists mostly of mood painting; I'm still trying to decide whether it's entirely successful.

True, Maryann, they exist in many places. Here is St. Paul for instance.

http://www.stpaul.gov/images/pages/N...be%20style.jpg

But I thought the circular light thrown by the image I selected was illustrative of the light described in the poem.

I love doing a little sleuthing, though I sometimes end up with only red herrings in my net. :o

I love this.

It feels like a Holly Martins poem to me, for whatever that may be worth. And if it's NOT a Holly Martins poem, my comment should be taken as a compliment...

Anyhow, this is the first of the bakeoff poems that set up an atmosphere and don't just delve into show and tell. I can feel those streetlights like the lighting in a noir film.

My only minor suggestion would be to switch the order of "come sometimes" in L6. Other than that, this easily jumps to the top of the chart for me.

This is successfully atmospheric, but sometimes confusing, and often metrically bumpy. And "Nothing Is In Store" seems like an odd "final notice."

jlk

Jean, might not that be an attempt to prevent break-ins? Like "Big Watchdog Inside"?

That was the way I read it: telegraphese for "There's nothing in this store," but with a double meaning, "There is no future." The extra edge on the statement is that in a run-down part of town, with vacant buildings, where people sneak around to keep certain appointments (drug dealing? worse?) there may literally be no future.

Nice piece, perhaps over-adjectival, but then so is Poe.

It's portentous, and choked with adjectives:

globe streetlight
thousandth street,
dim retreat
brownstone storefront
pale night shadows

loud knock
wooden door,
unrelenting lock,
unread papers
final notice

thousandth night
globe streetlight.


Twelve in fourteen lines!

Additionally, I'll bet $20.00 that this was originally written as a twelve-liner, and the last two lines were added to make it a sonnet and enter it in the contest. It's far better without them - and you eliminate two modifier/noun pairs.

If I had written this I would claim Michael's $20 forthwith.

I'm drawn to this, though it strikes me as more Conan Doyle than Poe. Is this 221 Baker St?
The carefully constructed density seem entirely apt to its carefully constructed dense atmosphere.

I think the doorway refers to the alcove forming the entry way to the closed door, hence outside the door. In this piece, I see the adjectival feast as elemental to the atmosphere construct.

I wish I could fathom it, though that may rob it of part of its intrigue. Nonetheless, it's on my vote list as a placeholder at present.

*Afterthought: googling "late for appointment" revealed 93700 hits.

I took the line "nothing is in store" to mean, by allusion, that there is no future, only the past, as represented by the shades, shadows, etc.

So, in the final couplet the "Now" suggests that we should go back and reassess the original image. This is a picture of a dying town.

I fully agree with Maryann and Ann that the sign is meant to have (in the poem) a double meaning.

Atmospheric terza rima sonnet. I like the way the opening line is also the closing.
Reminds me of Frost's Acquainted With the Night.
Enjoyed.

I had the same reaction as Michael Cantor, i.e., the last two lines sound like they were added on to sonnetize the poem.

I also think the similarities to Poe, Eliot and Frost actually work against any sense of originality one might accord to the poem.

I also take issue with "late for appointment". I always want to hear "an", "the", "his", "her", etc.

I would prefer "sometimes come" over "come sometimes".

The Nothing Is In Store is clever.

Overall, enjoyed.

I don't have much enthusiasm for this. I can puzzle out the apparent contradiction that Maryann points out here...

My confusion is with different details: does the shade get in, or not? "Inside the doorway" conflicts with that unanswered door and that unrelenting lock.

...but in a poem this short I think the need to work out the logistics of the scenario is a waste of precious time.

All in all the scene seems too much of a stock one, the language too expected, and there is no pay-off at all. For me a sonnet is first and foremost a contained poem, and this one seems more like an introduction to something longer. The sonnet's sense of compression is missing here, and the arc of thought and description seems too languid for the form. In an effective sonnet I could imagine this entire poem taking up about two lines.

Nemo

I'm with Michael and Catherine; the last two lines do seem tacked-on. And Nemo is right, there is no payoff. Unlike Michael, however, the abundance of adjectives did not trouble me — at least on the first reading. And the bits of rocky meter were a jarring in the otherwise smooth iambics.

I found myself inserting narrative to this piece. Realizing that there aren't enough clues to warrant it, my mind wants to believe Shakespeare is going back to rattle the Globe's doors and witness the unread papers on the floor. Of course there are more than a thousand nights he's been gone,more than a thousand pages and his plays are still on stage, but that is what the poem conjured up for me anyway.There is a lot of evidence that this is not what the poem is about. I like the mystique of the poem and it's music the moving light and shade, but something is not satisfying as a reader. I like to contemplate poems but I can't sink my teeth into this one.

Favorite so far
 

This is my favorite so far. I can't be literal in any reading, so I'm willing to give myself up to the weird moodiness.

That line "Nothing Is In Store" is amazing. I have to think the poem was inspired by an actual sign that said that.

Whether the last two lines were tacked onto a 12-liner or not, I'm a sucker for that type of repetition, as I've noted before. It gives the poem a certain timelessness.

I actually like the atmospheric quality of the poem. It's different than the "The Hoarder" which pulls me in immediately, but this one had a quality that I admired enough to read several times as well and still find something I enjoyed.

It could be interpreted as a dream; it seems too surreal in quality to be real yet not far from subconscious wanderings.

As far as the "late for appointment," I might not have noticed it at first but have read enough British work to discern that it wasn't a grammatical error.

I actually like the streetlight referred to a "globe." "Outside the circle [...] of the globe [...] streetlight, if dissected seem to give the poem a sense of detachment from the beginning, and the atmosphere is sustained throughout. There was never a mention of a moon here, so I read it as a scene with a new moon or globe streetlight as almost a symbol for a full moon.

I like the overall sonics of the poem, and the overall meter has been a lot less bumpy than most of the first 6 sonnets, and the handling of the meter doesn't bother me as much as it did with the first 4.

I somehow get the feeling with the competent use of sound, atmosphere, and obscure (but okay to my ears) rhyme scheme, that this is no amateur poet.

The use of the modifiers don't bother me. I think the poet has deliberately chosen them for effect.

As for L13 and L14, and the debate about whether the poet has added the lines just to make it a sonnet is still open, but I also think that the intention was to come to full circle and not a dead end. To me, the atmosphere and intention would not feel right coming to a close at "Nothing is in Store." IT could, but in the opening, we have several specific articles. NM. I don't remember how I was going to tie this in, but I thought "thousandth street" and "thousandth night" might bring the poem more to a full circle.

Definitely a placeholder until I read the other half of them.