Quote:
Originally Posted by Julie Steiner
My main nit with the sonnet is that although it clearly has a turn, the poem doesn't really end. It just sort of stops. I'm left unconvinced that the curmudgeonly narrator has a change of heart from an Apollo-like sense of law and order to a more Dionysian anything-goes vibe. Perhaps there could be a confession of the "I once sowed wild oats as well" variety.
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The affable tolerance is ultimately unconvincing, but that’s the movement of the poem: from Apollo to Dionysus to Jehovah. Tolerance fails when bombs are bursting in air, black holes are eating stars, and kids are having rough, stoned sex on the beach. I’m not sure this is what Tony means, but it’s what I get.