[Janice D. Soderling]

Like L.M. Price I stumbled first read on "before". But on a second read I realized that the "your" in "your body" translates to "one's", "one's body". The "your" was chosen I think because one can't write (in the next line) one'd.

Before your body is a nuisance more
than a delight, before you'd welcome death

But one could write

Before the body is a nuisance more
than a delight, before one welcomes death
sooner than one more catheter, before

or something similar that this skilled poet might come up with.

However, the grammar is correct and I am still utterly delighted with it.

[Catherine Chandler]

I enjoyed this one a lot. The only nit I have is the second reference to skin in line 13. There are two iambs available that can be used for one more reference to the aging body (or soul!).

[R. Nemo Hill]

Yawn. A sonnet made to order for Eratosphere if you ask me. Sorry, but it's the kind of poem that [too] often wins the bake-off. A light polite musing, with a frisson of novel description, and a little bit of darkness but not too much. For me this is a purely paint-by-number exercise. I can't deny it is somewhat seamless, slightly amusing, nor that the writer has a facility with language and formal technique. But it's been written a thousand times before and will be written a thousand times again, and I will forget it completely in a few moments. An uninspired trifle.

Nemo

[Roger Slater]

Interesting criticism, Nemo. "It's the kind of thing people at Eratosphere like." I suppose it's not ad hominem if you insult everyone at the same time.

[Golias]

"Before" as used in sestet rather than "when" says that even before one suffers the latterly described conditions of old age, but "when" one has suffered the maladies mentioned in the octet one may come to love cats. So "before" not only fits the rhyme scheme, it avoids implying that the entire syndrome of such conditions must occur before one is justified in loving cats. A skin problem is mentioned under the "when" conditions as well as under the "before" conditions, which to some might seem illogical, but the author clearly intends two different skin coaditions, first the crepey texture then the subsequent (and more germane) coldness of the skin.

A very good sonnet though somewhat complicated in rhetoric.

G.

[R. Nemo Hill]

Maybe meta-ad-hominem, Bob.
Or a simple acknowledgment of elephant-in-the-room boundaries. Someone needs to hold the mirror up occasionally.

Nemo

[Marta Finch]

LM makes a good point about the “before.” The change from “they” to “you” bothered me somewhat but I guess the poem overall was so much better than the sonnets that had come before (ahem), that I accepted it. Now, on the tenth-or-so reading, I wonder if the “your” might mean “one’s”? I suppose “my dears” would no longer fit, but something like: [It behooves one to learn to] “love what sits on [one] and purrs.”

It ruins the poem the way I have stated it, of course, but it’s the sense of the sestet I’m trying to get at.

I started this late last night and see this morning that Janice has said the same thing above! I’m posting anyway in case this adds something a bit different and to thank Janice for the warm welcome.

Golias, what about “my dears”?

And how do people feel about “unlovely skin” in L13? A bit anticlimactic after all the detailed description above?

Marta

[Woody Long]

Picking up on Wiley's comments in Post #35, I guess the poem says that, as long as you can sit up and have a lap, you'll love the cat sitting on you. But not so much when you're bedridden.

Yes. When I had a cat back in Texas, I kind of liked it for a while when she would sit on my chest purring as I lay flat on my back. But after a bit I would have to lift her off and place her elsewhere. Nowadays, it would be more difficult for me to wait...

— Woody

[Maryann Corbett]

Am I alone in wondering whether this has enough of a turn to qualify for real sonnet-ness? It seems to me to go in one undiverted direction.

Editing back: Okay, so maybe the change from third person to second--addressing the children directly--is the turn. Mulling.

[Golias]

Marta, you are probably right that"my dears" changes the yous" and "yours" back to the children, but that in no way changes my observation about t the validity of "before."a poem is not like a game of chess in wich one can capture a piece, or a word in this case, which appears vulnerable.


G.