[Alessio Boni]

Forgive the archaism with 'thee', but I just thought it fit so well with the specific case of this poems' ending, all revolving around the actions of that 'thee'. What do you think?


Revised Version


I've said too much to try to oppose your spurns,
And weary of the nights I spent in the back,
As a flower that’s dying droops downturned,
I laid my head upon your charnel lap,

And cursed the day I first had seen you smile.
But resignation has already struck,
And as a fish by specks of joy is beguiled,
I bit the glittering fly and felt your touch,

That pierced my cheek, enforce perennial stay,
And since, you’ve hauled my flesh to every state,
And dragged my love with you through every way,
And when did I protest for pity’s sake?

But I must find my rest! Unlike the fish,
My trip throughout the loveless, lifeless sea
Has never had thee, love, fulfil my wish
Of resting, caught and killed, and safe from 'thee.'




Original


I've said too much to try oppose your spurns,
And weary of the nights I spent aback,
As a flower that’s dying droops downturned,
I laid my head upon your charnel lap,

And cursed the day I first had seen you smile.
But resignation has already strook,
And as a fish by specks of joy’s beguiled,
I bit the ripened fruit and felt your hook,

That pierced my cheek, enforce perennial stay,
And since, you’ve hauled my corpse to every state,
And dragged my love with you through every way,
Yet never once did I protest for pity’s sake,

But I eventually must rest. Unlike the fish,
My trip throughout the loveless lifeless sea
Has never had my ‘love’ fulfil my wish
Of resting, caught, uplifted, dead, but safe from 'thee.'

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Alessio—

Your poem is in the medieval troubadour tradition of the “complaint,” in which the speaker addresses his beloved, informing her (usually in a repeated refrain) that if she does not love him he will die. The form was so popular in the fourteenth century that Chaucer parodied it in his “Complaint to His Purse.”

The archaic language is appropriate in this context, but even though the dictionary might label a usage as “archaic” or “obsolete,” such usages might sound not ancient, but merely odd to modern readers. I have never before seen “spurn” used as a noun, and I have never before encountered the form “strook.”

Here are some thoughts as I read through the poem:

S1L1: You need to add a “to” in “try to oppose.” You could change “spurns” to “spurning” and change “downturned” to “downturning” to improve the rhyme.

S1L2: “Aback” is familiar to modern readers in the expression, “I was taken aback.” The older meaning of “to the rear” might be what you mean here, but it is not clear. Since later in the poem you mention her hauling his corpse to every state, I thought perhaps it meant that his body was stuffed in the trunk of her car. Also the “aback/lap” rhyme could be improved. How about “And weary of the nights we roamed the map,”?

S1L4: “Charnel lap” is a striking image, but also a bit confusing. Is she a zombie? “Charnel” means “relating to decomposing flesh” and is related to the word “carnal,” (which might make better sense here). Modern readers would be familiar with “charnel house” as an old-fashioned word for a morgue. Is she dead? I thought the N was the dead one.

S2L3-4: The possessive “joy’s” lacks mention of the noun possessed by joy. I don’t usually think of fruit being used as bait for fish. If you want to keep the /f/ alliteration, you might replace “ripened fruit” with “glittering fly.”

S3L1: “Enforce perennial stay” stumped me. I can’t figure out what you mean here. Does it mean that the hook in his cheek is forcing him to remain with her? “Stay” used as a noun can mean “a visit” (like a two-night stay in Las Vegas), but in modern usage it also means “a postponement,” like “a stay of execution,” so the line could also mean that the hook in his cheek causes an indefinite postponement of his ultimate fate.

S4: Has she killed him? Is she dragging his body around with her? Is he asking her to bury him? I like the sound of “loveless lifeless sea.” Maybe put a comma between “loveless” and “lifeless.”

Finally, I notice that you use hexameter alexandrines at the ends of S3 and S4. Could you make S1L4 and S2L4 alexandrines, too? Or, alternatively, could you make the alexandrines in S3 and S4 pentameter?

I hope some of this is useful.

Glenn

[Alessio Boni]

Hi Glenn,

I had no idea what a troubadour poem was, so thank you for the information!

I'll try give a summarized definition of what S1 is,

Spurn as a noun can mean an act of rejection, and in the case of V1, it would be "I've said too much to try oppose your acts of rejection" (rejection of the narrator's will), and then the subsequent verse with "aback" would be the narrator's fear of digressing further because it might lead to his love putting him to the back of her interests, her mind, and he's weary of the times because he spent them there usually. This is also shown in S3L4. Therefore, as if resigned to just live out his fate, he lays his head metaphorically on her "charnel" lap to signify, as an adjective, sepulchral, and then be dragged on as occurs further in the poem. The adjective related to his wish for death, seeking to find it in his grim fate of being tied to her with an eventual rest coming per his wish. His bones will remain with her. Your proposed correction would cancel the meaning above although I can see mine being largely unclear.

S2L3: Should I change it to "And as a fish by specks of joy is beguiled" though it would give an extra syllable without place? By joy I just meant the feeling of instant pleasure a fish has when finding food, a lover's initial minute happiness. For "fruit", I completely agree with you, "Glittering Fly" is a great correction and more logical.

S3L1: The perennial stay is the continuous dragging of the narrator's self wherever the toxic lover goes, and thus, the narrator being forced to be a constant and inseverable presence in their lover's life, mirroring the metaphor of the fish being dragged by the hook.

S4 is just the description of his state throughout life "loveless, lifeless sea" being continuously dragged by his lover, and never being granted, at least until this piece was logically recited or written, his wish of death, when fish, on the other hand, are allowed to have such since they are eventually pulled off the hook and killed.

I will change the Alexandrines to pentameters, I had some unspecific and incorrect notion of the Spenserian Stanza in mind.

Yes, "Strook" also needs to be corrected as that's just plain wrong, (when I wrote that stanza I was hellbent on the fourth verse and probably overlooked it) and by the travelling of states, I meant the mental states of the lover dragging.

I hope I was clear in my explanation, if there isn't anything clear let me know!

Thanks for the comment,

Alessio.

[Matt Q]

Hi Alessio,

I think you have a potentially interesting metaphor here: the N comparing themself to a fish who is lured and caught, and would then rather be dead than hooked.

However, the faux-archaic language distracts me too much from the rest of the poem, and so that any emotional impact the poem might have doesn't really reach me: "strook" and the "aback" and the rest serve mostly to distance me. I think you can have it sound old-fashioned and songlike without employing archaic words and grammar, and it would be more effective for it.

I've said too much to try oppose your spurns

There's a "to" missing here after "try", I think, unless this is an archaic construction I'm not familiar with.

And cursed the day I first had seen you smile

Seems off in its use of the pluperfect. Why not "first saw you"? "first had seen you" would seem to be after the N first saw the beloved so that the seeing was already in the past.

"like a fish by specks of joy’s beguiled"

has me a bit confused. Is that a typo so that "joy's" should be "joy"? Otherwise "beguiled" is functioning as a noun, "joy's beguiled" being those who have been beguiled by joy. But I'm not sure that reading makes sense in context.

Just noticed you've posted a revision since I started writing this. The above relates to your original version.

It looks you wanted to indent lines in your poem. Adding spaces doesn't work for this, as you'll have discovered. If you click on the "Go Advanced" button in the editor, you'll see indent buttons at the top of the editor. Alternatively, for more precision on the indent size, you can use full stops (or any other character) to indent the line, then select the full stops and change their colour to white, so that they're no longer visible.

best,

Matt

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Alessio—

Wow! That was fast!

Originally Posted by Alessio Boni

Therefore, as if resigned to just live out his fate, he lays his head metaphorically on her "charnel" lap to signify, as an adjective, sepulchral, and then be dragged on as occurs further in the poem. The adjective related to his wish for death, seeking to find it in his grim fate of being tied to her with an eventual rest coming per his wish. His bones will remain with her. Your proposed correction would cancel the meaning above although I can see mine being largely unclear.
The problem I have with “charnel” is that it evokes a strong smell of decomposition. How about using “sepulchral” or “icy” to describe her lap as a resting place for their dead love?

S2L3: Should I change it to "And as a fish by specks of joy is beguiled" though it would give an extra syllable without place?
“Joy is” elides to “joy’s.” I see now that your use of the apostrophe was meant to show this. I would recommend removing the apostrophe, writing it as “joy is” and letting the reader elide them to avoid confusion.

I like the revisions you made. I was confused into thinking that the N was already dead by the words “charnel” and “corpse.” A corpse is always dead. If it’s still alive, it’s a body. A bodybuilder would never ask his girlfriend, “How do you like my corpse?” Thus I misread your poem as a murder mystery.

It’s coming along nicely. You have taken a well-worn trope—the comparison of two lovers in which the woman is an angler and the man is a fish—and breathed new life into it. It reminds me of John Donne’s poem, “The Bait.”

If you want to keep polishing, my suggestion is to work on the first stanza.

Glenn

[Hilary Biehl]

Hi Alessio,

Perhaps I am missing what you are doing here, but this poem is totally uninteresting to me, and perhaps problematic beyond my personal tastes.

Does the worn out cliche of the woman who's trapped or seduced a man really need to be resuscitated? If you're going to use it at least make it somehow new in form or content. Instead you've given us archaic language, a self-pitying narrator, and a conceit that doesn't really develop at all over the course of the poem.

I'd rather just reread "The Flea" (which I always enjoy, in spite of the "please sleep with me" content, because it's so unapologetically weird).

[Alessio Boni]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the corrections. You share a similar opinion with Hilary, although you seem to be more fond of the metaphor I used. Some of the corrections you proposed have been applied, as per Glenn's help, and I hope the revised version is less distanced from the 'feel' compared to the first, although it still does include some 'faux archaisms'.

To be specifically considered 'Fake' would it just entail the mixture of occasional old words in the verse with others words and phrase formats that were not used then, or is there another criteria?

Cheers,

Alessio


Hi Hilary,

Thanks for your opinion regarding the piece. It could be considered 'common.'

Why do you include conceit in your critique? I don't see much pride in the narrator's recitation of events, nor in the way the poem is written, or maybe I'm just misunderstanding your comment.

Cheers,

Alessio.


Hi Glenn,

I like Sepulchral, but then wouldn't it just be a synonym for Charnel? I don't mean to be difficult but sepulchral could also insinuate a rotten smell per its meaning, so wouldn't it be the same either way? I guess maybe it is more gloomy in an ethereal sense compared to a physical one (charnel).

I included the word corpse to showcase the degradation of the body no longer controlled by the narrator, being hauled everywhere by the lover, but if that wasn't clear by its usage then maybe I should change it.

Thanks for the encouragement in the revision!!! I think I'll be polishing S1 shortly.

Cheers,

Alessio!

P.S

Hilary, I didn't know about the definition of Conceit in the way you use it. It's clear now. Scratch that question of mine.

[Alessio Boni]

Also, Matt,

I forgot to say on your suggestions for indenting, Thank you! I didn't know anything about the 'Go Advanced' thing.

[Matt Q]

Hi Alessio,

I'd intended "faux archaic" to apply to the language of the poem overall, rather than any particular word. What I mean is that the poem seems like it's intended to sound like pre-modern English, as if it had been written long ago, but it doesn't seem to stick to the vocabulary and grammar of any one particular time period, so it doesn't convince. So, to me it sounds like a poem that's trying to sound old-fashioned, rather than sounding like an old-fashioned poem. Does that make sense? That was the impression I got anyway. I'm not expert on older forms of English, so maybe I'm wrong.

best,

Matt

[Yves S L]

Hi Alessio,

At this point, it is not even a poetry problem.

You need new inputs: try a diet of only 21st century formal verse for about 6 months. Pining about joining Coleridge's utopia in modern times is a sort of absurdist stance which might make a sort of postmodern ironic play centered around student life when it becomes excessively detached and inwardly.

Right now, what is happening is as if a boy who was not allowed to play outside, then spent his life locked in his father's library, reading old books of verse.

The great thing about A.I. is that it shows that one does not even have to have lived a life to imitate older styles of poetry, doing so is just a dumb computational task doable by dead machines: it is a pattern matching exercise which does not require one to understand what the words mean.

Too much bookish imagination, not enough life.

Yeah!