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).]