I am truly sorry I couldn’t participate in the bake-off – unexpected and unavoidable travel and tumult kept me off-line.
Before the next event takes over, I want so much to thank everyone who commented here, as well as those who voted for the sonnet. I only entered it when Cathy made a plea for more women to send sonnets, and never imagined ‘Men’ would make the finals, let alone win.
The last line’s meter has been the talking point, and all I can say about it is, well, frankly, I’m not going to change it! Sorry! When I say it out loud, it sounds so right. That’s one ‘reason’. It sounds to me like FREEZE ya ARSE off – and then there’s a subtle tone shift and pause - the last part of the line almost sounds like she’s calling him a ‘romanticising sleet’, like an epithet, as well as what he’s doing – making something romantic and high-minded out of sleet.
I’ll let Mark Twain express the other reason I can’t change it: “You can straighten a worm, but the crook is in him and only waiting.” All those of you who have been frustrated by my metrical irregularities – I need you to know that I do understand what you’re saying, and I could do it, but the crook is in me. I just love it when the meter runs away. I can’t help it. I just do.
And I’d like to thank you, Petra, a lot, for being so accepting of the irregularities this time, because I know how much I’ve frustrated you in the past, and I don’t mean to. Truly. I am so glad you like those internal rhymes. The slant one I like most is “gall” and “girl”!!! Also for your explanation to John, which is spot on, and to which I would only add that I really hope readers can see that this sonnet is having a go at the ‘sweetheart girls’ just as much as the ‘cold men’! It’s a game of personas, an eternal power game, seducing personas, and it’s so funny! Really – when you get to a certain age, it’s such a giggle! And great fun to play the game once you’ve seen through it – seen through the self-images we identify with and present to the world. There’s nothing stable about it. It’s theatre.
Which brings me, finally, to Michael Cantor.
Michael, late one night, I did manage to grab a few moments at the computer, and read your original comments. I wish you hadn’t deleted them. They were deliciously cruel and outrageously misguided. It must have felt good to have a go at me. “Look at me, I’m free and I have emotions”? That’s how you see me? Hilarious. And when you said that my “body of work” is basically one-dimensional, well – firstly, I never thought I had a ‘body of work’, and so the really great thing you’ve done for me is make me do something that several people have been asking me to do for ages: look for the poems I’ve written so far, and keep them in one place. So after reading your comment, I did. And I can see small groups, three at any one time, that are clearly drawing inspiration from a particular experience, but then it all changes – suddenly I’m writing about dead dogs or whales or fishing or daughters or glass or Mark or just death. And the forms I use are always changing. This “Men” sonnet – god, it’s …what …the third sonnet I’ve ever written?
I do write from experience . I truly don’t know what else there is – I am not inventive. But it isn’t the actual experience. It’s transmuted experience. I see the poems I write as language objects. They are made. And any “I” in them is made, too. It’s a persona. The “poet “who steps in is a persona, too. My biggest fun in life is having fun with personae. If you believe I am some free-wheeling emotional hippie thing, you couldn’t be more wrong. If you are referring to my life – well, what can I say? It’s my life. I am homeless and un-housed. I wander about. I am almost always alone. I’d love it if someone loved me and let me share their roots. But nothing about my external life makes me “free”. The more I learn and learn is that the truest freedom, the only freedom with meaning, is ceasing to care what other people think of me.
So you are free to perceive me however you want. I love what you bring to this Sphere. I love your work. I used to be terrified of you, and would freeze when your name appeared on a poem thread of mine. And I am grateful for your original comment, because it showed me that things have changed. To use another fine Australian colloquialism, I couldn’t give a fat rat’s clacker what you think of me now. And thanks for overcoming your prejudices, and giving the poem a vote!
Thanks, everyone!! For all that I've learnt here at the Sphere. I can't know for sure, but I doubt I would ever have started writing if this supportive community didn't exist.
To personae!
Let seem be finale of be.
Cally
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