[Turner Cassity]

After She Left


After she left her absence filled the place.
For months her perfume lingered on the air,
The mirrors held a memory of her face,
Her quickening shadows lengthened everywhere,
No door he tried but opened on his sorrow,
No window but a picture of his grieving,
No day held out a promise of tomorrow
And each tomorrow brought no dreams of leaving.
Leaves, they were falling too. He wished to fall,
To fall and fade and die, a sweet transition
From more to less to least to bugger all,
Such was the gravity of his condition:
Squaring the books and shining up the cross,
Executor and Parson of his loss.




Comments:

The mixture of masculine and feminine rhymes may be a mistake. He should have said “bugger all” from the first.

[Catherine Chandler]

After She Left

This sonnet is reminiscent of Millay’s great Sonnet 02 (“Time does not bring relief; you all have lied”), athough in “After She Left” no one is blamed for lying about the length of the mourning process or the extent and effects of human suffering.

In image after image, each listed in the purposely deadend-stopped lines of the octet (albeit stopped with commas), the depth of the man’s grief is unmistakably portrayed. Admittedly, some of the rhymes in the octet are conventional, yet I like the blend of masculine and feminine rhymes, and think that this mélange plays an integral role in the desired tone.

Lines 9-12, where the mental deterioration is likened to falling leaves, form a stark and hauntingly accurate yet eloquent description of a deepening depression, culminating in the death wish. The passage brought to mind Dickinson’s:

This is the Hour of Lead —
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow —
First — Chill — then Stupor — then the letting go —

except that here there is not even a “quartz contentment.” The use of the word “gravity” in L12 is a shrewd and subtle choice. There are at least three levels of meaning in that word alone, as it applies to this passage.

As the sonnet is written in the third person, the reader is left to wonder whether “he” has now recovered and is perhaps retelling the event more objectively, or whether, in fact, an executor and a parson were needed, in the end.

[John Beaton]

I like this one.

The turn on "leaving. Leaves" is elegant.

Then it bites at L11.

L12, following the falling, feels like a coup de grace.

But the couplet, with its aligned secular and spiritual management of quasi-death, nails it.

I'm not keen on the way the poet allows the opening sentence to run on, especially through L4-L8. But, when I get to the sestet, all is forgiven.

John

[Janet Kenny]

The first line is brilliant. Launching straight in like that with a trochee we are confronted by her leaving as the main event. Very musical and expressive. The falling of the poem's phrasing to the weight on "bugger all" is beautifully judged.
Janet

[R. Nemo Hill]

Like John, I felt all faults with the octet were forgiven by that hard-hitting final six-pack of lines. Though I don't agree that the run-on sentence could be anything other than it is. In fact, I think that run-on quality is the only thing that saves the octet. If those lines had been end-stopped they would have been hopelessly cloying; and rhyme pairs like sorrow/tomorrow and leaving/grieving would have been emphasized to their own detriment. As it stand now, there is a sort of breathlessness to the passage, as if the poet were falling through all the old time-worn-but-still-true tropes of grief. And then landing. Brought to a standstill--only to find that such tropes do not satisfy the depth of grief through which he must continue to fall, heavier now, now more on his own terms: terms which are decidedly less fancifully sentimental. Suddenly these tears of grief are tears which do not run-on and flow forth, but just drop straight down. This is where gravity gets more brutally re-defined, where the poet baldly states the bugger all which an impatient cliche-wary-and-weary reader might have been whispering to himself all during the octet. This is where the poem grabs one by the throat.

Nemo

[Kate Benedict]

I find myself swept into a sort of reverie by this poem, whose author describes an experience of trance almost, a trance of loss. It's an effective poem, and affecting. After several readings, I'm only disappointed by a couple of images in the octet, wondering if it woudn't be more honest to admit that there's no memory of her in any mirrors, and though there may still be a slight scent of perfume on her clothes, it isn't wafting around the house anymore. She's really gone.

[Tim Murphy]

I think the leaves falling is de trop, but that otherwise this is excellent

[Gail White]

Agree with preceding remarks. This may be my favorite so far.

[Chris Childers]

Extraordinarily elegant, but too pretty to really convince us of the depth of despair. Feels like a transitional passage from a longer work, maybe a novel--the next sonnet in the sequence should describe how his feelings start to mellow, some subtle change that takes place in them, and then, some new plot element would need to be introduced. The closure here is not the closure of an isolated utterance. High marks, though, for the management of syntax, and the transition from octave to sestet.

Chris

[David Rosenthal]

Each time I read this, I can't seem to keep it from rushing by too quickly. The first eight and a half lines essentially make a list, which is fine in theory, but this list has too much cliche (L2, L3) and stilt (L5-7) to convey a real emotional impact for me. I like the play with "leaving" and "leaves," but not the subsequent play with "fall." L10-11 are great lines, but don't seem to me to fit this poem. This one did not work for me.

Davdi R.