[Richard Wilbur]

The Pick-up Artist in Spring

To love that well which thou must leave ere long
Sums up the romance thing if you believe,
As some do, that the yellow leaves do hang
To leave no doubt that loving means to grieve:

One always leaves. Some stay for just a week--
Spring break, perhaps--but sometimes leaving takes
A lifetime: two, in fact. The browned leaves seek
Relief on the ground, then in: the yellow shakes.

Against the cold? Not quite. Against the leaves'
Last lingering green, the spring that cleaves to them
Even as autumn's leave-taking bereaves
Their branches, leaving hope no cold can stem.

So, leaving first is the best choice you have.
And leave that well which soon enough you'd love.

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The title makes plain that the speaker's "time of year" is cynical youth, an impression reinforced by the jazziness of "the romance thing" and "Spring break, perhaps." At the same time, though we believe in the speaker's aversion to grief, the poem betrays a respect for lifelong love, and for love's incorrigible hopefulness. It is not a heartfelt statement but a playful, often witty, treatment of love, leaves, and leaving. It works best when it flows easily, as in the first quatrain; it loses some of its elegance when we come to "the browned leaves seek...the yellow shakes" and the grammar seems to go haywire. The last line also requires a little more polish.


[This message has been edited by Richard Wilbur (edited May 12, 2008).]

[Rose Kelleher]

I'm not a huge fan of difficult forms. It would be fine if everyone practiced and practiced and practiced, and then threw out their practice exercises, saving their stamps for the excellent poems they eventually produced. Instead, it seems to me a lot of people say to themselves, "Eureka! I've successfully completed the technical requirements for a (villanelle/triolet/whatever)! Good for me!" and send the thing out to be published by easily-impressed editors. In general, I'm not fond of anything that smacks of the classroom, or clever-cleverness, or bored poets rummaging around for something to write about because they think they have to publish a hundred poems a year.

So, just to spite me, someone wrote this poem, which I shouldn't like (difficult form, Shakespeare allusions, cleverness up the wazoo), and dammit, I find it charming. It's an example of a sonnenizio, a form invented by Kim Addonizio. In a sonnenizio, you start with a line from someone else's sonnet; then you repeat one word from that line in each line of your own sonnet.

I'm sure all you former child prodigies not only know this one's first line comes from Shakespeare's Sonnet 73, but know all of Shakespeare's sonnets by heart. I'll post it anyway, for the benefit of my fellow dumbasses.

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
___This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
___To love that well which thou must leave ere long.




[This message has been edited by Rose Kelleher (edited May 03, 2008).]

[Janet Kenny]

For me, this poem is above all a triumph in sound. The word "leaves" is a lovely liquid and soft sound with a bright centre and the circular re-appearance of it is hypnotic. The clever variations of "cleaves" and "relief" add to the charm. It is also a touching meditation on the nature of love and survival after separation. And the autumn colour warms the whole poem.
Janet



[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited May 03, 2008).]

[Maryann Corbett]

As I'm observing this sonnenizio and Marybeth Rua-Larsen's take on the form (in the latest Measure) I reach the conclusion that the sonnenizio--at least the fully rhymed version--does what it does by wandering around.

Almost the only way to achieve all those repetitions AND the needed rhymes is to let the language go in a kind of nonlinear thought process, pulling in images here and ideas there. The poem we're looking at here picks up various pieces of the Shakespeare and tosses them around, playing acrobat in the way it juggles one and then the other. Ordered argument isn't what we look for; it's more like stream of consciousness: where will we go next?

So the fact that this one manages to pack self-contained ideas into the three quatrains rather neatly is a surprise strength.

The final line is the only thing that doesn't fully satisfy me--maybe I'm not reading correctly! Mostly I just admire the way this keeps all the formal balls in the air.

[Tim Murphy]

I liked the poem very much when I first read it, although I thought it was too liberally stealing from, playing off, and hewing to the Shakespeare. Of course, I didn't know what a sonnenizio was at the time. I suspect its author is the youngest successful entrant in our seven bake-offs.

[Alan Wickes]

Once you realise the rules of the form it is difficult not to admire this, not least because it takes a brave poet to take Shakespeare as their starting point for a sonnet!

This works well for me more or less throughout, apart from:

Relief on the ground, then in: the yellow shakes.

how do get that line to scan well within the poem?

Alan

[David Rosenthal]

Originally posted by Alan Wickes:
This works well for me more or less throughout, apart from:

Relief on the ground, then in: the yellow shakes.

how do get that line to scan well within the poem?

I think if "in" was italicized, it would scan more easily for you.

David R.

[Susan McLean]

I think it is clever, and one of the best examples of a sonnenizio I have seen. For the most part, it manages to keep saying different things, despite the repetition of "leaves." The syntax is somewhat crabbed, but still intelligible. I like the ending, with its implication that leaving first is a kind of cowardice. Like a sestina (which I also have reservations about), a sonnenizio risks saying the same thing over and over, and I don't think this one totally escapes the problem of overlapping ideas. Of course, its model, the Shakespeare poem, also can be accused of that.

Susan

[John Hutchcraft]

I'm not too big a fan of this one. Yes, it's clever in its way, well-phrased in spots - but under so much self-imposed duress, no wonder that it can't quite squeeze its thoughts into the form. The couplet feels tacked on. The IP wobbles every couple feet. I don't care for the slant rhyme in S1. And in L8, "relief" looks like a cheat.

The title makes no sense - is N a "rake"? Oy vey. Not only is that pun a groaner, but it makes light, I think, of what's at stake for N, who comes off as a whiny loner.

Form is its biggest strength, and biggest fault.

One man's opinion!

Take with the usual salt.

[This message has been edited by John Hutchcraft (edited May 05, 2008).]

[Quincy Lehr]

This would be a piece that would be very easy to make rather clever and glib, but it has an underlying seriousness that allows itself to be jaded, instead. Which is appropriate in this instance.

Quincy

[This message has been edited by Quincy Lehr (edited May 05, 2008).]