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