Rhina has served Able Muse ably as Guest Lariat, and scarcely needs to be introduced. Let me wryly observe, however that Newburyport's Powow Poets, of whom Rhina is the presiding genius, have accounted for five of the thirteen sonnets we are reviewing here. It is said of Ireland that it maintains a standing army of 3000 poets, but these days Newburyport is where the action is.

Moods

I'm learning the subjunctive, mood of choice
once the indicative has slipped away
that seemed to say it all once. Active voice,
yes, all the tenses--I need those to say
act and remembrance, why and how we live--
but now, subjunctive and conditional
("If that should happen") and obligative
("Let this be said") feel truer than "I shall,
he did, we are." A ripening to speech
spiced and complex and tart, past what I'm sure
of--or was sure of--or set out to reach;
how to acquire a taste for the impure
provisional, that's what I need to know,
before the last imperative says "Go."

This is that rare thing outside of Rhina's books, the perfect sonnet. And a sonnet that takes a dry matter of grammatical usage and turns it into an elegantly emotional (yet humorous) trope to illustrate something of the process of getting old, confronting mortality, etc., is rather miraculous. The poem's metaphor is more than just a convenient analogy but one that seems grounded in an article of faith that many readers of sonnets would subscribe to, i.e., that language itself embodies some of the philsophical underpinnings of human consciousness and awareness. This poem is at turns whimsical, humorous, clever, precise, poignant, insightful, and sad. It achieves many of these effects, I think, by being strictly true to its metaphor and working it out as a systematic, logical conceit rather than as a starting point for more abstract or disconnected reflections.

Dear Roger, Your comment strikes me as exactly right. This poem resonates more profoundly for me than any other we shall consider during Davis' Lariat, perhaps because I employed a similar strategy in a little verse I wrote when I was much younger:

Poem for Noam

What grammars we contrive:
the infinitive 'to give'
is the active of 'have'
whose passive voice is 'save'.
The irregular 'forgive'
is the perfect tense of 'love'
whose antonym is 'leave',
while 'grief' is the possessive
of either 'life' or 'love'.

What strikes me about Rhina's poem is how very much more mature is the sensibility of the narrator. And in fact that is what so strikes me about all of Rhina's work. When I first met Rhina, I thought "Blue haired old lady." Which she is, by the way. But she is in a league with Wilbur and Hecht, teaching us youngsters how our seniors can convey with great power and admirable reticence, the simple truths their juniors have yet to learn.--Tim

I feel abashed by this poem, as it so beautifully made, seems effortless, and is also so wise and modest. I especially admire how it begins with "I’m learning" ( Not "I’ve learned") and then shows you that process by the tentativeness of the rhythm, the way it gives you the impression of exploration going on as the poem goes forward. There’s also a lovely paradox in it, because the poem is a closed form about opening up, and it’s a (formally) pure poem about impurity. I guess what makes it so moving is the way the poem’s movement seems to give us the speaker’s sensibility, and then that it is such a sympathetic and modest sensibility. I also like that it’s about language: poets have to love language if they’re to be any good as poets, and though it can seem like talking incestuous shop sometimes (to mix metaphors thoroughly), if badly handled, I like it when good poets give in occasionally and talk about something so close to the center of what they do. I think I’m waffling a bit, but as I say I feel abashed.

I agree with Dick that a poet needs to love language and can be pardoned now and then for singing its praises. What makes this poem special, to me, is that it's about language as something intrinsic to our experience of the world and of ourselves. It insists that language, far from being an utterly arbitrary system of "signifiers," stitches our inner and outer lives together -- and more, perhaps our afterlives as well. Hence the stunning turn in the last line.
RPW

Poetry of ideas is viable - not a lot of people know that.

Peter - in awe.

To see a rule (in this case, the rule against an abundance of modifiers) skillfully broken is more of a delight than to see it skillfully upheld. My heart soars like a contrarian hawk as I savor that succulent triple treat of adjectives -- "spiced and complex and tart" -- in line 10. The poet turns words on the tongue to tastes on the tongue, all the while talking neither about language nor about flavor, but about a philosophy for living, a way of apprehending the world.

And that final line, which smacks of both a cri de coeur against and a graceful acceptance of mortality, resonates for me like Wilbur's "The world will swim and flicker and be gone" at the end of "This Pleasing Anxious Being."

Just to see this poem from the other side, that of a grammatically challenged individual:

One doesn't have to know the subjunctive from the nearest subway stop to feel (key word) the wisdom in this poem.

But if one listens, along with said wisdom, one gets a very nice lesson in grammar. Nifty!

Every line is charged! And then you get to that last one...

wowed,
~Greg

Nothing to say, except (perhaps) I would that I were she, my heart...

(robt)

The poem is brilliant in its broad metaphor, witty and all too true. I deeply admire Rhina's work, but there's a grammatical glitch here in L3, and for that reason I get a little pang when I read this. The phrase "that seemed to say it all once" describes "the indicative," but "has slipped away" interferes with the flow there.

I'm also wondering if there were italics on "act" and "remembrance": as is I'm not sure how to read this.

Everything else here is magnificent, as noted by so many. I wonder why I'm the only reader to notice these trivial bits? In spite of them, however, I think of Rhina as one of the most admirable formalists writing today. Forgive me for bringing up these infelicities (Rhina especially!), but I don't know how everyone else managed not to notice, and would like to understand that.

So I'm a nitpicker, so sue me! I'm trying to learn something here.

Terese



[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited May 06, 2002).]

The force of the last line is not just a matter of the sentiment expressed and the fitness of the metaphor employed: it springs as much from its formal qualities, too. It is the only line in the poem where two conditions occur: perfect coincidence of the syntactical unit with the line, absolute metrical regularity. (Of course, being the last line, it also shows the strongest degree of end-stopping.) In every other line there is either some metrical variation from the poem’s normative IP, or the line is broken by the patterns of syntax, or both these things occur. Furthermore, the sense of closure which couplet rhyme naturally tends to give is strengthened here by contrast with the handling of the quatrain patterns of the first twelve lines. In every case these are broken by strong enjambments, weakening any feeling of completion after the second rhyme-pair. Thus it is in the formal qualities of the last line that the striving for "the impure conditional", as mimed in the searching and unsettled syntax, in the unsettled metre, and in the rhyming of the previous lines, is finally resolved.

This is, by the way, an effect Rhina employs elsewhere, in - for instance - "Voyeur" in Where Horizons Go or "Pig" in Lapsing to Grace.

- Fine poem, Rhina!

Clive Watkins

I'm the one who is "abashed." Thank you, Dick, Tim, everybody, for the generosity of your comments! This is an old English teacher's poem, as much as anything else: I suppose the grammar gets into the poetry the same way the cooking and child-rearing and gardening do, as part of the "vocabulary" of my days.

Terese, what I meant in line 3 and maybe didn't say clearly is that the indicative seems to do the whole job when you're young, but once it has slipped away (by becoming inadequate)the subjunctive becomes "the mood of choice," in both senses: the "right" mood, but also the mood that reveals the choices, such as they are. I'm not sure that comes through, but it was in my mind.

The trouble with words is that they're the only nails we have, but they don't nail reality down perfectly or permanently! In two languages I've never once succeeded in making a situation or a feeling or an insight sit still completely, but only partially. I appreciate your comment. And what a pleasure it was to ride crosstown in that taxi with you! You made that otherwise frantic experience fun.

Hi Rhina

First I must say you couldn't possibly have enjoyed the crosstown taxi more than I did! Such serendipity...I still love your line which included the words "I" and "remember." [Sorry folks, the joke is private but suffice it to say Rhina is a witty lady in person!] I'll be sending you an email soon to recap, so don't block my emails just yet. ;)

About L3: Yes I understood your meaning perfectly, and a very fine point it is! That the subjunctive (as in "if it were, should it be, then it would or could" and so on) is the friend of age and wisdom, whereas the indicative is tailormade for youth and spontaneity. Quite true indeed.

I simply meant that in the best of all possible worlds, "has slipped away" would have come at the end of the sentence and "that seemed to say it all once" would be set off with commas. But forgive this annoying intrusion please: it's a poem and your poetic license carries full validity! Not to mention that Clive Watkins liberated the nit happily and with great finesse just before your post.

Rhina, you're a dream and an inspiration, and I mean that in the best possible sense!

Terese

You jumped from IV to IX. What happened to the sonnets inbetween?

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Svein Olav

Five through eight are the Double Headers, Barnett, Warren, Wakefield, and Crawford. Let me enthusiastically endorse Clive's technical analysis of this poem, which exactly accords with my own.

The comments in this thread are a pleasure worthy of the poem.

Another reason I find this sonnet so effective and affecting, in addition to the reasons mentioned by others above, is that before reading it I would have associated the subjunctive (used to express hopes, dreams, wishes-against-fact) with youth, but Rhina shows instead how the "mood of choice" belongs to age.

Beautiful poem. Thanks, Rhina.

Very carefully contrived, but I am stopped briefly by "say/act and remembrance." The relationship between the verb and the two nouns is just not clear to me, and I feel troubled by this, in a poem using grammar as its principal trope. Italics would not really solve the problem.

The beginning is fine, and the ending superb, but l. 4&5 detract somewhat from the overall effect, at least for me.

A.S.