The Duke A-Hunting
("E'en then would be some stooping" - Robert Browning)

Today we step out for his sport and pleasure
across the wide estate, trout-streamed and wooded,
The Duke calls for his pets, his feathered treasure,
and cadge-boys bring the birds, gold-belled and hooded.
My lord extends his leathered arm, his eyes
as bright as gold-clasped gems that stud his fist.
He scans a perch and picks the sleekest prize,
a full-summed peregrine to grace his wrist.

She cuts the morning wind, a grey-fletched arrow
dispatched to strike the prey. She stoops, kills cleanly,
then mantles jealous wings to claim the sparrow.
A merlin stirs and snites. He eyes it keenly.
"Hush, sweetheart, hush", he whispers, maiden-mild,
and strokes it like rich silk, a coin, a child.

--Maz

This sonnet is the work of someone to whom the form comes natural. The lines move easily, there is no stretching or cramming, the rhymes are unforced. The logic of the form is observed and obeyed: the octave is all preparations, the sestet is the hunt proper. I don’t know all the terms of falconry; to “snite” is normally to blow one’s nose, and I don’t think falcons can do that, but I can guess what is meant. The poem ends very strongly with “maiden-mild” and “child,” making the point that whatever tenderness the Duke may have is misplaced. This does not surprise us, since the tone has been adversarial from the beginning, but it does drive the point home.

~Richard Wilbur

The word "stoops" in l.10 is the key to this poem; all the Duke's tenderness is for the emblems of his power, the executors of his commands, who do his dirty work for him while allowing him to remain upright, at least in his mind--as Mr. Wilbur says, his affection is misplaced.

I wonder if when this was workshopped no one else was bothered by the syntactically similar rhyme pair of "trout-streamed and wooded" / "gold-belled and hooded," combined with the appositives "his feathered treasure" and "a grey-fletched arrow" (of which the last is the best). One might argue that the patterning reflects the artificiality of such a royal hunt -- the way everything is done for the Duke, so he does no stooping himself -- but even granting this, it grates on my ear a little bit. All in all, though, a fine sonnet.

Chris

I remember this when it was workshopped and I love the polish and final jeweling Maz has put on this lush piece. It's like one of those silk gobelins where you're always looking at another corner and spotting another perfect detail.

The parallel structure of "trout-streamed and wooded"/"gold-belled and hooded" is actually one of my favorites because each, aside from paralleling each other, is so well linked into the words in their lines before. "trout" echoes the "-tate" in "estate," "belled" echoes "birds."

The "snite" hadn't bothered me because I'd looked it up during the workshopping and I'd found it meant "sneezed" as well as "to blow one's nose" and I suspect with the cognate in "snot" the ancient meaning is "to sneeze with snot flying out your nose" which in human is generally covered with a handkerchief, but with animals... Well, I've certainly had my dog snite on my leg before, and I've seen birds do it too. It's nice to see the old words used, low as well as high, though on the high end, I always find it a pleasure to see "fletched" in use (and not just because it's also in my poem) and "full-summed" is good to see as well.

Ditto all the praise. It's not just well-crafted, it's as layered as a plate of baklava. The multiple female birds compete for the male Duke's attention; he treats them with affection, but they are ultimately objects to him, possessions. Anyone else see parallels here to some human relationships? That's just one possible reading; the beauty of this is that it supports several different interpretations, but also holds it own on a purely literal level.

What Chris is bothered by is to me the poem's greatest virtue. In my typically short lines I have no room for modifiers, and I probably have the highest Golias' Razor scores across my ouevre of any Spherian. But that has nothing to do with my love for the lavish which this poem deeply gratifies. I felt the same way about Maz' poem for the eagle.

My (tentative) objection is actually not to the modifiers per se, but the repetitive syntax, to which the adjective-noun pairs contribute. But hey!--if no one else feels that way, Maz shouldn't worry; it's just my reaction.

Chris

Maz -

This poem reminds me of a Faberge easter egg - meticulously crafted, multi-faceted, glittering with both language and meaning. It absolutely shimmers with good words, and the lovelies like "fletched" and "snite", and the creations such as "cadge-boys, "full-summed" and "maiden-mild" both set the context and give it life. It's very finely done, and I really have no nits.

Michael Cantor

Richard Wilbur has said it better than I could Maz. Unforgettable tapestry of arrogance, courtesy of Tintoretto.
Janet