Aftershocks

We are not in the same place after all.
The only evidence of the disaster,
Mapping out across the bedroom wall,
Tiny cracks still fissuring the plaster—
A new cartography for us to master,
In whose legend we read where we are bound:
Terra infirma, a stranger land, and vaster.
Or have we always stood on shaky ground?
The moment keeps on happening: a sound.
The floor beneath us swings, a pendulum
That clocks the heart, the heart so tightly wound,
We fall mute, as when two lovers come
To the brink of the apology, and halt,
Each standing on the wrong side of the fault.

The somewhat loose meter, yet always under control (like L6, which teeters on the brink of tetrameter yet still sounds right in a pentameter poem), combined with the smart puns (terra infirma, shaky ground, the fault), combined with my knowledge of the likely suspects to be found in this bake-off, make me bet my nickle this is by Alicia, though I'll hedge my bet by saying that the people in Alicia's poems are generally more delineated than the stock character lovers in this poem.

Anyway, I'm wondering how many of the rest of us would dare start a line "We fall mute," with the second foot being monosyllabic.

If I cast about to raise questions, I'd question how, toward the end, the floor can still be swinging yet the scene is likened to the moment when two lovers "halt."

Anyway, a very strong poem indeed.

Ah, this one is an old and dear friend, this poem! It's been alive in my head since the first reading, and has never lost its force.I love the way it begins with a space metaphor, a series of "place" words ( mapping, cartography, terra, legend--in the map sense--and so forth) but then, at "shaky ground," which suggests human tremors, shifts into "time" language: the moment, pendulum, clocks. By the time we reach that three-line killer ending, the focus is on time, the agent that alters relationships. That kind of way with metaphor is a joy to watch in action.

I too recognize this one--the metaphor is unforgettable. How beautifully that 'fault' does double duty. In the hands of someone else, it could have been a heavy-handed clunker.

What a poem.

There's much to admire here, but for me the master stroke is this enjambment:

We fall mute, as when two lovers come
To the brink of the apology, and halt,
Each standing on the wrong side of the fault.

That "come" suggests orgasm -- and we indeed "halt" right there, as the next line says, but it turns out to be an altogether different kind of coming. It's a heartbreaker.
RPW

It's awesome, and indeed Richard I had read something similar into this wonderful poem, of course we know the author, who is also now as unruly as both of us by definition.

Jim

OK, everyone knows from the liberty of meter, the mastery of trope, who wrote this. Earthquakes are very Greek! Sonnets are pouring in (thick and fast they came at last!), and I may just start plastering them all over the board. Perhaps it is jejeune for me to be posting these without attribution, but I think that's part of the fun. God help Rhina when she picks the winner.

I also greatly admire this sonnet. The figures are ingeniously developed and the close is stunning.

I suspect the ending may have come to the poet in a flash of inspiration, but she may have worked harder and longer with the transition from octet to sestet. I would even guess she is still not entirely satisfied with line 9, which seems, to me at least, somewhat abrupt and incomplete owing to the full stop at the end and because there's no room left in the line to explain or to qualify "a sound."

It may be presumptious of me to make such a suggestion to a poet so very accomplished, but a little more working room might be gained in L9 by shortening the first part with the packed and euphonious word "recursive."

"The moment is recursive: DAH di DAH"

But the sonnet is outstanding, this small problem notwithstanding.


W/G



[This message has been edited by Golias (edited March 17, 2003).]

I wonder if "recursive" would feel at home in a poem whose diction is much closer to the daily and almost domestic, in which "keeps on happening" sounds right.

The question is clearly answered: yes, we have always stood on shaky ground. The poem embodies shakiness of the spirit, yet "tightly wound" is understood to be part of that; still I find l11 particularly courageous in the way it circles back on itself (clocking the heart and the heart as a clock, as well as the repetition of "the heart"). I find the poem disturbing, as "aftershocks" must be (never having felt one, or much of any earthquake, but dreading them none the less), as all terra infirma can be; yet the most hopeful line is L7: the "stranger land, and vaster" comes to me as the great hope of spaciousness. On the other hand, the poem is about darkness primarily, and fear. From this the reader may gain.

Terese

I just wanted to chime in, belatedly, with my own admiration for this marvelous poem, which certainly would have made my top tier if I had been forced to judge. In addition to the masterful use of metaphor, I love the way it blends elements of the Shakespearean and Petrarchan sonnet structures to create something powerful and original. This poem about shakiness never loses its footing, and there's not a word I can imagine changing.

I'd love to hear Alicia talk a bit, if she would care to, about how the poem was written. It feels all of a piece to me, as if it must have been conceived and written in an intense burst, but of course that impression can be deceptive.

I prefer this scenario: Aliki had a little tiff, Mount Hymettus quivered, she spoke the lines, and the columns beneath the mountain shivered.

Wow! I like that scenario too.

Thanks all for your kind words and astute comments. If I had realized these were supposed to be judged anonymously, I wouldn't have submitted this sonnet, as I know many of you all already know it and recognize it.

On the dull literal plain, there was a deadly earthquake in Athens some six months after we'd moved here. It was my first such experience, and I found it traumatic. Particularly so were the aftershocks--a moment that kept on happening, as it were. But the poem turned out to be about something else. The ending sneaked up on me.

I also have a fascination with similes--we are taught, I think, that metaphors, being more direct, are more powerful. But similes can do different kinds of work--sometimes subtler or more complex.

As for the form. I write loads of sonnets--too many--it is my default mode. And they can become glib, automatic. (I try not to publish those!) So I wanted to try a different model, and had never written a Spenserian sonnet before. It was a lot of fun to try, and had a different feel because of the structure. So I think that challenge helped me.

The bake-off has been great fun and inspiring and instructive. So much that can be done in one little form!

PS--for the curious, this first appeared in the Yale Review.

Silly me, not to have recognized this poem as a Spenserian sonnet! Luckily I don't have any stars yet, as I should lose one for that. I wonder why it is that contemporary Petrarchan sonnets (also fiendishly difficult) are more common than Spenserian ones.

Thanks Alicia, for commenting. It often seems that the most exciting poems to write (and read) are the ones that announce their true subjects during the process of writing, sometimes very late in it.

I don't think it matters that "Aftershocks" was known to many 'Spherians, as we all would have recognized the author immediately anyway!