[Jayne Osborn]

Revision 4: L13 changed from:
But every time he really makes me laugh,
to: but he knows how to really make me laugh.

Revision 3: L1 & 2 changed from:
"referred to" to "averred that".

A famous Royal personage averred
that “In this marriage there’s not two, but three.”
That’s how we are; from time to time a third
incumbent shows herself. She’s not like me.
In fact, we couldn’t be more different!
She’s miserable and cries an awful lot;
where I am placid, she’s belligerent,
and I’m the happy, loving one – she’s not.

My husband always brings me tea in bed,
and asks me (with a grin), if I know which
of his two wives I am today. I dread
the odd times that I’m ‘down’ and like a bitch,
but he knows how to really make me laugh.
We’re two once more – and he’s my better half.

Revision 2 was a complete re-write.

Revision 1:

Speaking about his other wife (not me),
he loves us both, but doesn’t like her much;
he wants to kick that bad one into touch
(and no, it’s not a case of bigamy).
I'd like to rid myself of her as well.
It’s not quite fair, though – she’s not really ‘bad’,
but when she's not around, we’re both so glad,
because, at times, she makes our homelife hell.

We don’t see much of her, just now and then,
but when she's here, she’s miserable and cries
an awful lot. My husband always tries
to make her laugh, and be like me again.
We don't know how this works; it simply does,
for which we're really thankful... just because.

Original:

My husband has another wife, and me.
He loves us both, but doesn’t like one much;
he wants to kick the bad one into touch
(and no, it’s not a case of bigamy).
I wish to rid myself of her as well.
It’s not quite fair, though – she’s not really ‘bad’,
but when she isn't here we’re both so glad,
because, at times, she makes our homelife hell.

We don’t see much of her, just now and then,
but when she comes, she’s miserable and cries
an awful lot. My husband always tries
to make her laugh, and be like me again.
It works, and then we both show her the door.
Peace and contentment rules the roost once more.

[Richard G]

Hi Jayne.

Excellent title. I liked the first stanza, but didn't feel things developed sufficiently in the second. The opening sentence of S2 isn't really adding much to what has gone before and I think helps to make the resolution feel rushed (not to mention that 'rules the roost' feels to familiar.) I'd like a bit more about the efforts involved in banishing 'bad'. Might S2 start with 'My husband always tries to make her laugh'?

RG.

[Jim Ramsey]

Hi Jayne,

The title is indeed a good one. There were two things though I found myself wishing for on readings. The first is a better understanding of what “he wants to kick the bad one into touch” can mean. I can’t figure out if it’s a UK idiom I don’t know…perhaps a phrase meaning in touch with reality? Into touch with the situation? Maybe this is just a newish idiom my antique brain is not in touch with yet? On first reading I kept thinking it must be a variant spelling of tush and that “in the tush” was autocorrected to “into touch.” I even wondered whether “Touch” was a place name that should have been capitalized. My second wish was that the ending line be different. Like Richard I did not much like “rules the roost.” For me, something simple and cozy/cosy would suffice. Here’s one idea:

It works and then we both show her the door
and share our pot of tea in peace once more.

All the best,
Jim

[Simon Hunt]

(aside to Jim: "kick into touch" is a football/soccer idiom, meaning approximately (American) "kick out-of-bounds". "Touch" is the area surrounding the playing field...)

Hi Jayne--

I'm not sure I'm ever going to be crazy for this one. Its gender-take feels uncomfortably old-fashioned and anti-feminist to me: the wife's occasional ("hysterical"?) excessive emotion (her only crimes are being "miserable" and crying too much) is not something to work on constructively, but a problem that both husband and wife wish to be rid of.

But I do think it has some clever turns, and I do have a few suggestions for it:

I agree with the others that the title is good.

At line 2, would "her" make more sense than "one"? If you change this, I think you would also want to rephrase "the bad one" in line 3.

I really think you should rework line 4. It seems to me that the charm of this is increased the longer you can delay revealing who the other woman is. The present line 4 rather gives the game away, if parenthetically.

In line 14, I agree with the others that "rules the roost" is too cliched to be a good use of those syllables. Even if you keep it, I think the verb needs to be "rule" since it has two subjects.

Cheers,

--Simon

P.S. I think Roger (below) and I posted almost simultaneously with very similar takes.

[Roger Slater]

I'm not really getting a sense of what sins the other woman is guilty of, other than that she cries and is miserable, and the "real me" laughs. Don't all people sometimes laugh and sometimes cry, even husbands? Unless I know more about what the weeping version of the speaker is like, I must resort to gender stereotypes of women being too volatile and emotional and men being steady and even-keeled.

I'd also go easier on stock phrases, "make...hell", "show the door,""rule the roost.

[Hilary Biehl]

My thought is that perhaps this other woman is the clinically depressed version of the N's self. If that is the case, it's not a matter of gender stereotypes, or of criticizing normal human emotions. Depression really does make one feel like a different person and is hard for both the depressed person and their family members to live with.

I do feel though that - if that is the intended reading - more could perhaps be done to make that clear.

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Jayne—

I enjoyed this sonnet. It does depend on a somewhat old-fashioned set of expectations for husbands and wives, but I am old enough to find some charm in that. As I re-read it, I find myself wondering if you didn’t slyly invite the reader to question whether the wife’s need to conceal her feelings is, in fact, a good thing. What happens to the “bad” wife when she goes away? Isn’t she really just imprisoned in the “good” wife? In that reading, the artificiality of the stock phrases “show her the door” and “Peace and contentment rule the roost” seem almost like a characteristic of the disguise that the “good” wife is required to wear in order to (as the saying used to go) “be a good sport.”

The expression “kick . . .into touch” was new to me, too. Thanks, Simon, for the gloss.

Thanks for sharing your poem and for all you do.

Glenn

[Jayne Osborn]

Richard,

Thanks for your thoughts on this. My husband can take the credit for the title – I always struggle to think of one!
As it’s a sonnet, I don’t think of it so much in terms of being stanza 1 and stanza 2, but more of a resolution to the problem. To drastically simplify the situation, I occasionally get very weepy and emotional (I prefer not to think of myself as ‘depressed’), my husband makes me laugh and I’m OK again.
I agree that “rules the roost” needs to go. It’s a cliché, so I’ll try to think of a better way of ending the poem.

Jim,
I appreciate your comments too. I didn’t realise that “kicking [something or someone] into touch" is a British idiom; it’s putting an end to/getting rid of…, as mentioned in L5, that I wish to do as well.
Yours is a 2nd note for losing “rules the roost” (see my reply to Richard).

Simon,
It’s interesting that you see this as anti-feminist; I’m not saying that all women are hysterical or over-emotional. It’s about me getting down in the dumps (to put it mildly) when certain issues occasionally become too much for me to bear.
Your suggestion for L2 (thank you) has made me change L1 instead. I hope that works. I want to keep L4 though, because there’s a need to be succinct in a sonnet, and I think it’s the right time to divulge that it’s one wife here, not two.
I agonised over ‘rules’ v ‘rule’ in the last line, but as I’m getting rid of the whole phrase I’ll come back to that. Meanwhile, thank you all for your helpful suggestions. Revision coming up.

(While I've been writing this, Bob and Hilary (and now Glenn) have posted. Thank you both all; I'll come back to you. )

Jayne

[Yves S L]

Hello Jayne,

My mind keeps comparing this sonnet to the Kate Bush Song "Babooshka": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xckBwPdo1c

In Bush's song, we have a disenchanted husband who falls in love with "the other woman" who happened to be his wife all along, who had tricked him to demonstrate his disenchantment was never what appeared to be, and that she was the woman who he really loved all along, at least a version of her. Now, I am taking the main conceit in your poem is that the other woman is N when she is not feeling that well, with the difference being that he husband wants to keep on trying.

The octect is written in a plain somewhat monosyllabic iambic pentameter, but I don't think the sestet also being written in that same style works, because there is not enough poetic surprise (language, imagery, situation, figuration, metaphor, specific details, and so on) in the sestet, so the sonnet does not turn as emphatically as I think it should.

It is not that the overarching rhetorical strategy of the sestet and the sonnet as a whole bothers me that much, since it is fine if you want the dissonance of the octet to resolve to domestic tranquility by the end of the sestet, but I feel that we need a more suprising and fraught journey to get there. If you don't want to up the stakes by creating too much tension in the octect, then, for me, the sestet has to do more work.

Yeah!

[Jim Ramsey]

Hi Jayne,

My opinion of the appropriateness of a poet's subject and theme is that it should always be left to the poet. Only the poet knows what market they are shooting for, be it a blog, contest, Christian magazine, liberal lit mag or other.

All the best,
Jim