Each Other’s Measure

Suddenly we heard the sound of barking,
the snuffling nose that pheasant hunters prize:
the labrador, quartering, flushing, marking.
I glimpsed the wolfish hunger in your eyes

as Feeney zigzagged through the rows of trees,
kicking out flustered hens on either side.
From the dry switchgrass whispering at my knees
two roosters vaulted skyward, and they died.

For my part I admired your untilled fields,
sunflower stalks, wheat stubble holding snow,
each drop of moisture that a winter yields
hoarded to make your desert seedlings grow.

I judged your farming as you judged my hunting,
and neither fellow found the other wanting.

Oddly enough, not much to say about this sonnet
(would anyone have any trouble identifying its author?),
but . . . “vaulted” is an unexpected delight, immediately
short-stopped as it is by “and they died.” Technically adroit, though the exact freight of “desert” seedlings threw me off. (I.e.,where exactly are these two hunting?)

Tim Murphy?

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Svein Olav (The poet formerly known as Solan )

Good guess, Svein. Huber's farm is on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation west of the Missouri. Hence, desert, and hence the wisdom of his ecologically sound no till farming methods.

That slant rhyme in the couplet is a good idea. Bypasses that - what was it Alan called it? - "curtsy effect"? of Shakespearean sonnets.

I'd have voted for "of us" in place of "fellow," but that's a small matter in a poem that evokes its place and events so fully and memorably. The "wolfish hunger" is a grand stroke all by itself, contrasted with the efficient and well trained dog.
RPW

(would anyone have any trouble identifying its author?),--Len Krisak

This is what I mean by identifiable style. Tim Murphy has accomplished this elusive feat. Had I put one of these stanzas in the four on my recent thread on general, people would have picked up on it immediately.

If I can add anything I would see if the four 'the's in the first stanzas could be fewer:

a labrador, quartering, flushing, marking?

TJ

Ummm....Feeney? Pheasants? Now let me think.....


I think I've seen this at another stage. Liked the couplet then too.

Janet

What Janet and Tom are saying is that the matter, not the style, are indubitably Murphy's. However, I'd like to think that the method of the writing is also distinctive, that whether I am writing about Pope John Paul II or Feeney, there is a way that I work my sentences through the easy confines of rhymed pentameter that "sounds" like me. Clive once forcefully argued this at Deep End, and I hope he's right.

Tim,
I'm no expert on hunting, so perhaps I should keep my snout out, but I do have a few nits. The hens and roosters give the impression that the birds are chickens rather than pheasants, I think, and I don't think that's helpful to the poem. Also, my first thought was that the two birds had died from shock, rather than being shot. In case this seems silly, birds are notoriously prone to succumb to shock.
Also, I wondered why you would admire 'untilled' fields, which sounds like neglect. Presumably they are lying fallow, so a good land-husbandry, but I wonder if another adjective might make that clearer?
Apart from those small questions, it's an very accomplished and atmospheric sonnet.

Regards, Maz

Maz, this is the fourth section of a ten part poem, Hunter's Log, all devoted to pheasant hunting. Hens and roosters are idiomatically correct, whether on the High Plains or the shooting coverts of Scotland. The only alternative to untilled I can think of is unploughed, and I prefer the former for the music with fields. See my comment on no-till agriculture further up the thread.

Tim,

I did not say that. I said, "This is what I mean by identifiable style. Tim Murphy has accomplished this elusive feat. Had I put one of these stanzas in the four on my recent thread on general, people would have picked up on it immediately. So I agree with Clive.

Your style is not prose-dependant, and has a patiste method of approaching subject, and is not dependant on props, as I call them. Think Matisse, for an artist analogy, where the image (and the voice) is always discernable and presented rather than captured or 'talked-out.'

TJ

Tim:
What Janet and Tom are saying is that the matter, not the style, are indubitably Murphy's. However, I'd like to think that the method of the writing is also distinctive, that whether I am writing about Pope John Paul II or Feeney, there is a way that I work my sentences through the easy confines of rhymed pentameter that "sounds" like me. Clive once forcefully argued this at Deep End, and I hope he's right.

Tim,
I thought that was too obvious to be worth mentioning but I mention it now.
I have always remarked on the inimitably dense diction of your poems. I tried to fake one once but couldn't.
I think Tom's comparison with the paintings of Matisse is wrong--apart from the element of certainty. I'd say if a visual comparison were possible --and I don't think it is--the sculptor Brancusi would be more apt and perhaps the painter Fernand Leger.
The sonnet form is less typical of your work. Shorter meters usually facilitate your most intense writing.
Janet

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited July 04, 2005).]

Janet, that is so true.

Of all the sonnets posted here, this one (even disregarding clues from content) is the only one which speaks in a voice I recognise immediately.

What an accomplishment, to achieve a voice!

And how is it done?

No one knows. It certainly can't be taught. All the courses and all the workshops and writing degrees in Christendom will not deliver it. It is truly "a gift" from above, and we are all grateful to hear its distinctive style when it speaks.

Treasure your gift, Tim.

We do.



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Mark Allinson

Very sweet of you to say so, Mark, but Greg Williamson had an absolutely sui generis, distinctive voice, when he was only in his twenties. "Fire" could have been written by nobody but Greg.

Tim,

when I say a distinctive voice is an accomplishment, it doesn't always follow that that accomplishment takes a long time to appear. Mostly it is an accomplishment of the muse, anyway. But some seem to almost leap from the cradle with a unique style, and I am sure you are right about Greg. You can hear the voice of Keats, for instance, even in his "Imitation of Spenser", written when barely nineteen.

Some take a lot longer to achieve a voice, in full throat, but I suspect that voice was already audible in early work. Sometimes the great achievement is to clarify that voice with age. The process of ageing seems to reduce capacity in all areas, except perhaps the poetic voice. The great Greek dramatists proved this principle long ago, not to mention recent famous examples. The unique voice clarifying. Muffling of a given voice has also been widely noted. Thus the need to serve (and conserve) the voice.



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Mark Allinson