I agree with Tim's het-met idea. Going tet would lose too much, but as it is there's a bit of metrical filler that bogs things down. To me, a beginning like this would capture the mood better:
I'm five years old, a frosty autumn night;
my father wakes me, takes me by the hand,
and in our robes and slippers we stand
outside to see among the stars a light
that moves. It's 1957.
I didn't quite get the "baking bread" idea. Why should the Russians have been baking bread? Seems an odd thing for the father to say.
I agree that the experience is captured well, but the wistful ending strikes me as somewhat fuzzy and a disappointment. I wish we had a more precise sense of how the word "Sputnik" affects our speaker years later. A "shiver" and a "vision" of a "new star" doesn't work for me. They are vague cliches and pretty much repeat what we've already been told or sensed for ourselves. If it could be brought back to something more personal for the speaker, about his father or perhaps his own son, I think it would close more strongly. Overall, though, I enjoyed.
PS-- I'm not sure the punning title, irresistible as it might be, actually works with the content of the sonnet as written.
|