Aftermath


Enough. I have no stomach to defame
his memory. The man died well. Set men to prise
his blazons from the walls and doors. My name
will over-write his wealth, my lordly rise
will soon rub out his lineage and his line.
Bring in my hounds, my hawks, install my pages.
Unlock his stores, uncask his finest wine.
His treasury will pay my army's wages.

My sword is stained with blood, indeed. No, leave
it so. They say good brands must drink their fill
before they sleep. That steel was forged to cleave
the armour of my foes, to carve and kill.
His family? Safe passage to the North,
except that one fair daughter. Bring her forth.

A genuine taste of Browning in “Aftermath.” This is a
very strong piece of work, and would have been even
stronger had line 2 not strayed into a hexameter. It features a compelling last line—maybe not a “killer-diller” of the sort they accuse Wilbur of employing so often, but at least a diller.

Power comes from the direct, unfussy syntax and the often
monosyllabic plain diction. All this is accomplished without
any really exceptionally striking metaphors or jewelled
phrasing (which is true of many of the sonnets in this
group of nine—a curious thing Aristotle might want to
contemplate).

That L2 hex bothered me too. It is the combination of an elision with an anapestic substitution that makes it very hard to read the line as pentameter. It should be easy to fix, such as by changing "Set men to prise" to "Now prise." It is the one instance in which the order is delegated to someone else than the person(s) addressed, so that also stands out. I was a bit surprised that the blood was supposed to be left on the sword. I recently read that blood can actually harm the finish of a weapon if it is not cleaned off promptly, and this speaker didn't seem like the sort who would want his weapons getting rusty. The closing couplet is very effective.

Susan

"mem'ry" - could be a regional thing. :)

I admire poets who can speak convincingly in voices from history and myth - characters who are completely different from themselves. That takes real imagination.

I liked this sonnet very much (obviously).

To try my hand one more time at pedantry, though:

"memory" pronounced "mem ' ry" would not technically be a case of elision, which is ordinarily thought to require two short vowels collapsed to one syllable. The classic example is Shakespeare's "the expense of spirit" 's becoming "thex pense," if you follow. A case like memory's or, say, turning a word like "threatening" (3 syllables) into 2 ("thret ' ning") is an example of syncopation, or syncope' . Stephen Booth's edition of Shakespeare's sonnets has some excellent notes on this practice in many of the sonnets.

Sorry to be such a fussbudget !

Browning, indeed! A poem that purports to be all about someone else but is really, of course, all about the speaker. The word play is subtle but striking, and there's lots of good sound, like the voice of someone confident enough of his power to feel no need to show off.
RPW

Here the poet is just doing an outstanding job of stepping outside herself and giving us a damn fine dramatic monologue in 14 lines. One of our finest sonneteers, to be sure.

That damn Maz.

Jamie, ain't she aMazing? Reminds me so much of that poem on hawking and falconry which I choose either for a previous bake-off or for Rhina's Deck the Halls festivities.

It's getting worse Timmo, I've just read a saucy sonnet of hers which bids fair to head the poll on the next SBO.

As well as that she's perfecting a piece paying tribute to her estimation of the greatest unsung heroes of all time.
A work of genius. If we're not careful she could become a poet of note.
Keep her down I say.

Jaime

The best I've read so far in the bake-off.

Maz, you make me proud to be a woman. Keep up the pressure on the arrogance of power, please!

Terese