[Turner Cassity]

A Visit on All Saints Day


Hello. I’ve brought your favorite flowers again.
How is it going under there, my dead?
On this side, we’re no better off than when
you walked beside us. (Yes, I know I said
the same last year.) The human race is not
improvable. Ask any saint you meet.
We’ve gone to war again without a thought.
Our leaders shuffle bribes, our heroes cheat.
Your children haven’t turned out awfully well,
but who expected it? You’re not to blame.
They'll manage, and nobody burns in hell.
Goodbye for now. I’m always glad I came.
I make no promises about next year,
but one way or another, I’ll be here.


Comments:

A wonderfully unsentimental poem.

[Catherine Chandler]

A Visit on All Saints Day

I chose this dispassionate, almost too-dry, one-way “conversation”, with its playful, witty ending, not only because of its excellent craftsmanship, but because of how it is able to disguise the mind-heart match-up under the mask of objectivity, in its matter-of-fact approach to the #1 theme of the 61 sonnets I received: the universal theme of death. Of course, there is nothing wrong per se with expressing feeling and sensibility in a sonnet, as long as it isn’t maudlin, mawkish or mushy.

Although Mr. Cassity describes it as “unsentimental” in the context of the definition of sentimental as “weakly emotional”, the sonnet nevertheless expresses a sentiment, in that, via the words, acts and gestures of the visitor, an attitude towards death -- and life -- is perfectly conveyed.

A very down-to-earth poem, pun intended.

[Janet Kenny]

This sonnet has been a favourite of mine for some time and I won't breathe a word, although I'm sure everyone will know who wrote it.

It's poignant, touching and funny and honest. It even slightly reminds me of Auden's letter to Byron.

[Tim Murphy]

All Saints is more central to my calendar than Halloween was when I was a sugary child. One false note to me. Heroes cheat. I earn a plenary indulgence every year, tending the graves, going to confession, and taking communion at All Saints. The indulgences are for friends. Three that people here would know are Tony Hecht and Mikey Donaghy and my Dad, author of the fifth chapter of Ploughshare. You needn't believe in indulgences to pursue them. It is a spiritual exercise. Whoever wrote this is a spiritual athlete, and I applaud.

[David Anthony]

Very fine sonnet.
The tone of wry acceptance is carried off perfectly.
Excellent closing with its unpromised promise: one way or another N will be back in the graveyard next year.

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

I'm not sure this is unsentimental. N is visiting the graveyard with flowers after all and is commemorating the fact in the form of a sonnet, which is elegiac by nature.

The message can be summed up as: "The human race is not/ improvable." Underlying this statement is an unspoken agenda that the human race should be improvable. In its fight to be unsentimental this sonnet betrays sentimentality.

Not that I'm averse to sentimentality.

Duncan

[Kevin Cutrer]

My favorite little touch in this one is the epithet "my dead." I think what rescues this from maudlin sentimentality is the line: "Your children haven’t turned out awfully well." Writing an effective graveside monologue such as this is not easy.

[R. Nemo Hill]

I agree with Kevin that the poem's strongest device is the double-take that L2 engenders, with the expected my dear shifting to my dead.

How is it going under there, my dead?

That's brilliantly witty.

It seems I am on an anti-expository title crusade during this bake-off. Once again I find the explicit scene-setting title too flat and deflating. I don't want a full frame before the pencil even touches the sketch-pad, and feel a title that is wittier would be more effective. In the end I sense that the plainspoken conversational tone of this, while wryly warm, needs to be laced with a bit more of the wit displayed in the line above.

Nemo

[Shaun J. Russell]

I'm very mixed on this one. I want to like it. Hell, I want to love it...but there are a few stumbling blocks for me.

I was immediately thrown off in the second line with "my dead." I suppose others may like it and find it cute, but I find it to be unforgivably unnatural. Who in the world would ever stand at a grave and call his or her beloved "my dead"? I know it's likely a play on "my dear", but for me it doesn't work. I almost stopped reading the poem there, actually...but I'm glad I didn't. There are some very powerful lines in here, especially L7 - L10. Those are brilliant, and exactly what I love to see in a sonnet like this.

With L11...I have to question the "and nobody burns in hell." The meter is a tad rockier than I'd like to have seen, and also I think it's a tad ironic (and not really in a good way) that the person above ground is saying that nobody burns in hell. I'm an atheist and even I can't make such a claim as an absolute. Especially to someone who is dead and would, presumably, be in a better position to judge. I'd rather see that line as something like: "They'll manage, though. I trust there is no hell?"

Overall, however, this is my favorite of the first four in the bakeoff. I think it's a good poem that could become a GREAT poem with very little work.

[Rick Mullin]

This certainly is unsentimental, and that quality is heightened by the fact that N has the accoutrement of a sentimental grave visit with the flowers. “my dead” is tremendous—a curveball on “my dear,” and one that, for me, establishes a kind of endearing link between the N and his or her dead…while remaining unsentimental. The only thing that rubs me the wrong way is the stretch on war, politicians and heroes. It almost goes off course there. We’re kind of taken out of the scene. It would be better if the world the two shared in an exclusive manner--things such as their children, a topic that admits the rest of the world as well yet remains intimate--ran straight through.

RM