[Turner Cassity]

Waialeale Crater

Our helicopter hovers by the wall
Inside the dead volcano. Only half
A circle stands, a shattered stone carafe
Drained towards the sea. What made the east side fall--
A blast, an age's rain?--lies past recall
For creatures that crave pleasure, breathe, and laugh.
And yet this sheer cliff seems to telegraph
Deep human hurt; tears glisten down it all.
Clouds shroud the peak, the wettest spot on earth.
Streams lace the wall. Once sacred gifts were borne
Here for the god of life and lightning fork.
Why here, midst tears, not brash Olympian mirth?
Perhaps their god sees far, hears cries that mourn
From Dachau, Darfur, My Lai, and New York.



Comments:

As it stands, the ending is a cheap shot. It might work if the place names followed a timeline. Say, one of Joshua’s battles to something in the Middle Ages to Word War I, etc. The sound of the helicopter echoing off the crater wall would work better than “telegraph”, which in the poem is not prepared for.

[Catherine Chandler]

Waialeale Crater

Questions, questions.

Mr. Cassity questions the poet’s choice of name places and makes some solid suggestions for L14 of this Petrarchan sonnet. However, there are almost too many possibilities from which to choose, and the list lengthens almost daily. I personally didn’t find the ending an easy out, especially if one considers the mass graves of the concentration camps, manmade “craters”, and especially the very last place mentioned, New York. Ground zero is still a helluva deep crater and the mourning continues and will continue.

The poet poses two questions as well – what and why –, and muses over some possible answers. The when and where, then, are perhaps not nearly as important as the “who”, the victims of all of man’s inhumanity to man.

This sonnet, though a little bumpy metrically in its musings (perhaps like the helicopter ride) , conveys “with human yearning to sad thrones/The crash of battles that are never won.”

Sometimes there are no answers.

[Janet Kenny]

Oh I know who wrote this humane and surprising sonnet with the odd meter. The last line is a wail for human suffering.

Although I understand why Mr Cassity thought of "echo" I like "telegraph" because the weeping crater symbolises and signals tragedy and loss. The idea of a place where grief is concentrated is very Polynesian.
(As a New Zealander I remember the Tangiwai Bridge disaster which impressed the meaning of the name "weeping waters". The Maori and Hawaiian languages connect. Waialeale means rippling or over-flowing waters.)
Janet

[Tim Murphy]

I've been to Waialeale Crater, not by helicopter, but on foot. And this doesn't work for me for the exact reason it doesn't work for Mr. Cassity. I think it swerves into sentimentality and the ending is a cheap shot. The author has done a brave job of trying to describe the crown of Kauai. Thirty years ago I wrote a much worse sonnet about Mauna Kea! I just wish he or she had spared me the sermon.

[amacrae]

There is much to admire in this sonnet--I like how it "flexes" against the meter, especially. I agree that "telegraph" is not quite right. I also wonder about the "fork / York" rhyme, which stuck out as forced. Perhaps it would work better if L11 were enjambed, softening "fork"?

Austin

Edited: I wonder if "tears glistening" is a bit too much?

[Shaun J. Russell]

This sonnet doesn't do much for me at all. The meter is muddled, the meaning is murky, and the construction seems contrived and somewhat unnatural...which is a tad ironic given its subject matter. Muddled meter and murky meanings can be fine in some contexts, so long as there is a sense of depth to the poem. This, however, isn't one of those situations, in my opinion.

I do get the sense that the poet is writing in earnest about a subject he or she cares about, though, so there's something to be said for that. But this effort seems more like an "attempt" than a fully-realized vision.

[R. Nemo Hill]

Far from muddy or murky, I think the problem here is the contrary: too obvious. As pure description I don't find this evocative enough to be engaging, and I agree that the close is far too histrionic. I think the problem is that the interpretation of landscape begins too early in the poem, that natural violence too quickly becomes deep human hurt, that right from the start the visualization is ruled too forcefully by an editorialization which, were it to sneak up on the reader only at the last moment, could potentially devastate--with the caveat that devastate rhymes with understate.

I agree with Austin that the fork/york rhyme bangs a can, and may encapsulate what is lacking in the approach here.

Nemo

[Susan McLean]

I thought the conceit of this poem was interesting and I did not see the conclusion coming. In fact, my first reaction to "New York" was to think it was a jab at the city, though an instant later I caught the 9/11 allusion, so it did work. I feel that the Petrarchan form is forcing some awkward rhymes in the octave's second quatrain. Switching to a different set of rhymes for the envelope rhyme there might allow more content, instead of phrases that seem to be there mainly to carry the rhyme:

For creatures that crave pleasure, breathe, and laugh.
And yet this sheer cliff seems to telegraph
Deep human hurt; tears glisten down it all.

I would also say that "midst" in L12 comes across as being a rather musty word. A weeping cliff is a powerful image, one that I think is worth building a poem around.

Susan

[Kevin Cutrer]

Like many, I think that the problems here start with "telegraph," not only with the choice of that word but also because it puts the action of memory not on the narrator but on the crater itself. "Carafe," to me, is a wonderful choice. I agree with Nemo that the personal revelations should be delayed, to allow the landscape to speak for itself.

[Michael Cantor]

As soon as I read the last line, the exact same phrase that Turner Cassity used - "cheap shot" - came to mind.

If you're going to end a sonnet with, "...cries that mourn/From Dachau, Darfur, My Lai, and New York", you had damm well better make sure that that ending is preceded by thirteen magnificent lines - and this one isn't. The octave is a solid start - "a shattered stone carafe" is a huge image - and then the poem descends into an overheated gush which does not begin to support or justify the final line. The pompous initial caps (I happily note that this is the only poem of the six posted so far to use them) add to my sense of portentous staginess.

(Added in. I assume that "New York" refers to the WTC. It doesn't fit in. Neither does My Lai. As a matter of fact, if you start with Dachau, almost nothing fits. But a discussion of whether certain acts of murder are greater or lesser evils than others requires a different, and arguably more interesting, poem. As it now stands, the list appears metrically driven, which is unfortunate in that it detracts from the intent of the poem.)