[Lee Harlin Bahan]

During a discussion over at Translation, I realized that five stanzas of hymn meter theoretically have 140 syllables, just as a sonnet does. (8+6+8+6=28 and 28x5=140.) Immediately I had to find one of Emily Dickinson's poems of the correct length and experiment with turning it into a contemporary sonnet. My goal was to better understand the relationship between form and content, a consideration when translating one of Petrarch's sonnets in Italian into an Elizabethan sonnet in English, for example.

Suggested activities:

1. Sonnetize another of Emily Dickinson's poems consisting of five stanzas of 8-6 hymn meter and post the result. It would be great if you would describe the process and articulate the differences that you perceive between Emily's poem and your sonnet. Please also post the original. You can cut and paste from this site:
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/emilydickinson

The poems on the above site use the numbering of the Thomas Johnson edition of Dickinson's complete poems. (Please see Mary Meriam's post below that gives URLs of sites questioning Johnson's scholarship.)

2. I could not be more aware of how badly my sonnet sucks compared to Emily's poem. Rather than critique my effort in the usual way, please show me up by sonnetizing 607 (Johnson numbering) yourself and posting the result. I promise to be delighted.

3. Find a hymn, folk song, passage from the Bay Psalm Book, whatever, that theoretically consists of 140 syllables of hymn meter, and sonnetize it. Please post the original (or give URL) and comment, etc.

Have fun and thanks for playing in my sandbox!

Lee

**********

1. Emily’s 607 (Johnson numbering)

Of nearness to her sundered Things
The Soul has special times—
When Dimness—looks the Oddity—
Distinctness—easy—seems—

The Shapes we buried, dwell about,
Familiar, in the Rooms—
Untarnished by the Sepulchre,
The Mouldering Playmate comes—

In just the Jacket that he wore—
Long buttoned in the Mold
Since we—old mornings, Children—played—
Divided—by a world—

The Grave yields back her Robberies—
The Years, our pilfered Things—
Bright Knots of Apparitions
Salute us, with their wings—

As we—it were—that perished—
Themself—had just remained till we rejoin them--
And 'twas they, and not ourself
That mourned.

Note: The text (reproduced here) given online at the above URL is exactly the same as that of 250 in Final Harvest, an abridged version of Thomas Johnson's Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Last I heard (admittedly 20 years ago in grad school) Johnson's was the definitive text. (Editing in to draw attention to Mary Meriam's post below, containing URLs that argue persuasively against Johnson's text being definitive.) The linked website gives a 1955 publication date, which is the same date that Johnson's "three-volume variorum edition" of Dickinson came out, according to the back cover of my copy of Final Harvest.

Note to Emily: You mean the little ghost boy wasn’t wearing pants?

2.

Of nearness to her sundered things the soul
has special times when dimness looks the od-
dity, distinctness easy seems. The shapes
we buried dwell about, familiar in

the rooms. Untarnished by the sepulchre,
the mouldering playmate comes in just the jac-
ket that he wore, long buttoned in the mold
since we, old mornings, children, played--divi-

ded by a world--the grave yields back her rob-
beries, the years, our pilfered things. Bright knots
of apparitions salute us, with their wings.

As we it were that perished—themselves
had just remained till we rejoin them
and ‘twas they and not ourself that mourned.

3. Sonnet

The soul has special times of being near
what she’s been severed from, when dimness looks
peculiar, distinctness easy. Shapes we took
to graveyards live with us, familiar

in the rooms. Untarnished by his burial,
the now-decayed friend comes in the same old
jacket that he wore, long buttoned in mold
since mornings when we played as kids. A world

divides us. Casket and shoveled dirt return
their robberies, the years, our pilfered things.
Bright knots of apparitions with their wings

salute us—as if we were the ones who’d gone,
and they simply had stayed until we joined
them, and it was they, not we, who mourned.








[This message has been edited by Lee Harlin Bahan (edited February 26, 2007).]

[David Anthony]

Well, we haven't had a challenge like this before.

Lee, I took the liberty of fixing some incongruities in your layout of the last stanza of Em's poem.

I'm not a great fan of hers, but I know that leaves me in a minority.

I think your sonnet's metre ideally needs to be more regular, in deference to Emily.

Here's an exercise among similar lines by a Japanese poet, to render Keats as tanka:

http://p068.ezboard.com/feverybodystankatankaforum.showMessage?topicID=91. topic

Best regards,
David

[Lee Harlin Bahan]

Hi, David. I took the liberty of putting the poem back in *Emily's* layout--at least according to Dickinson scholar Thomas Johnson. I apologize for not providing appropriate notes in my original post and thank you for creating an opportunity for me to fix my sloppy scholarship.

Thanks for the link to Keats as tanka--I will definitely check that out.

Best wishes,
Lee

[Diana B]

681
Don't put up my Thread and Needle --
I'll begin to Sew
When the Birds begin to whistle --
Better Stitches -- so --

These were bent -- my sight got crooked --
When my mind -- is plain
I'll do seams -- a Queen's endeavor
Would not blush to own --

Hems -- too fine for Lady's tracing
To the sightless Knot --
Tucks -- of dainty interspersion --
Like a dotted Dot --

Leave my Needle in the furrow --
Where I put it down --
I can make the zigzag stitches
Straight -- when I am strong --

Till then -- dreaming I am sewing
Fetch the seam I missed --
Closer -- so I -- at my sleeping --
Still surmise I stitch –

The Emily Dickinson poem, as above, was the first poem I came across which matched the criteria for the exercise. I’m not sure if a better one could be found but, in trying to change the poem to the sonnet form, I found myself following the steps that you did, Lee. I’m not even sure how I would have attempted the sonnet version otherwise.

I found difficulties trying to get a rhyme scheme and keep the lines and words in the same order of the original poem as far as was possible. I’d have been chuffed to be able to achieve a ‘typical sonnet’ rhyme scheme, but just getting the form and meter to work for me was challenge enough.

Some of Emily’s lines caused me to think hard before re-forming them. I didn’t want to lose her original words, neither did I want to skew the original meaning. The lines, which seemed the hardest for me to deal with, were those in the 3rd, 4th and 5th stanzas of her poem.

The main difference that I perceive between Emily’s poem and the sonnet-ized version below is that hers appears to be constructed of thoughts ‘stitched’ together. The shorter sentences are pulled together with dashes – like threads. The sonnet-ized version hasn’t included the dashes, making the thoughts seemingly run on. I also changed "sightless knot" to "invisible knot", which probably skews its meaning a tad and might be possible to change back. Another difference between Emily's poem and the sonnet-ized version is with the ending couplet - mainly caused by me running out of 'lines'. Not sure if the sonnet-ized version's final couplet works the metaphor of the original quite so well.

I think that Emily Dickinson's version is far superior because its form and content appear to compliment each other. I believe that Emily’s poem’s form better creates the metaphor, the mood, and the disposition of the N. I've seen it mentioned somewhere that Emily's original poem had the word "sow" instead of "sew" in the 1st stanza, but that she was considered to have had problems with spelling. Some publishers use "sow", others "sew". The version I saw first uses "sew". It's interesting to note how the poem's metaphor would have greater depth when used with the word "sow".

My sonnet-ized version is as below:

Don’t put away my thread and needle. When
the birds begin to whistle I will sew
again with better stitches. And, as so
these were bent because my sight got crooked,

just when my mind is plain I’ll do the seams
a Queen’s endeavour would not blush to own,
and hems, so finely stitched, the lady shown
them could not trace to the invisible knot.

In tucks of dainty interspersion, like
a dotted dot, my needle: leave it in
the furrow, where I placed it. I will pin
the zigzag stitches straight when I am strong.

Now, thinking in my sleep I stitch; the seam
I missed, fetch close, to sew up in my dream.

==================

Thanks Lee, I enjoyed the exercise.

Di

(edited in further comparisons between the original and the sonnetized version - i.e. the change of "sightless knot" to 'invisible knot" and comments regarding the end couplet and the words "sew" and "sow")

[This message has been edited by Diana B (edited February 09, 2007).]

[David Anthony]

On a side issue, I "fixed" the last stanza of Emily's poem (above) and Lee changed it back, citing the definitive Thomas Johnson edition.
The layout seems to me self-evidently wrong, but I checked various versions of the poem and they are all the same.
Three questions:
-Are we bound by precedent, or should we fix obvious mistakes in the canon?
-Has anyone seen the original manuscript?
-Am I missing something that everybody else can see?
Best regards,
David

[Lee Harlin Bahan]

So glad you asked, David! (And I appreciate the email heads-up.) We're cruising toward a Musing on Mastery discussion, but you're the moderator here, so if you don't mind side issues, neither do I.

After posting the exercise I received my order of a copy of Don Paterson's selection of 14-line poems, entitled 101 Sonnets. Paterson includes this quatorzain by Emily (copied and pasted from URL above):

412

I read my sentence -- steadily --
Reviewed it with my eyes,
To see that I made no mistake
In its extremest clause --
The Date, and manner, of the shame --
And then the Pious Form
That "God have mercy" on the Soul
The Jury voted Him --
I made my soul familiar -- with her extremity --
That at the last, it should not be a novel Agony --
But she, and Death, acquainted --
Meet tranquilly, as friends --
Salute, and pass, without a Hint --
And there, the Matter ends --

Paterson comments on this poem, "Despite the occasional absurd claims made on her behalf as a great metricist, Dickinson was almost incapable of conceiving of poetry in anything other than ballad meter; a formal naif she may have been, but she combined this with the intellectual power of a John Donne" (114). I disagree with Paterson's calling 412 a sonnet, but I do want to point out those two lines where Dickinson breaks hymn meter form exactly as she breaks form in 607. Better, 412 is a pun/conceit on "sentence" which may be that of Judgment Day or of the literary critic. One wants to be careful making form/function remarks, but the lines with "extremity" and "Agony" are the ones that get really long; they contain the lines of extreme length and emotion of the poem. (As another aside, John also has been criticized as breaking meter more than he ought to have Donne.) Looking at 607 and 412, I'd say Emily purposefully broke form.

Perhaps a better way to check would be if someone with Johnson's three-volume variorum edition of Dickinson would look up poems 607 and 412 and post on this thread what he/she found. That at least would give us more information about whether or not Emily intended to break form in these specific instances.

Final caveat: my turning Emily's 607 into a sonnet was *not* intended as a correction; I am clear (and vehemently crude) that my poem sucks compared to hers. Further, my sonnet/translation exercise does not keep Emily's original, intended poem (according to Johnson's scholarship) from existing; they exist side by side. Read my typescript: I do not in any form or fashion intend to replace Emily's original. "Correcting" Emily's poem (or any other dead poet's work) without consulting all available manuscripts is a different and dangerous matter, I think. The problem is, of course, "correct" according to whom? Formal poets will "correct" differently than free verse poets will, for example. I think it is fine, however, for anybody from any camp to get access to Emily's manuscripts and argue, based on Emily's manuscripts taken individually and in the context of all her existing manuscripts, against Johnson's scholarship and to propose a different one of Emily's drafts as the canon version for 412 or 607, say. But you have to label what you're doing--as you *do* on this thread, David--not just change things silently to suit.

An interesting crosslight on this discussion may be found in the interview with Tony Barnstone on the Drunken Boat website where he discusses turning Christopher Columbus' journals, and oral histories of Hiroshima survivors into poems. In one sense, Barnstone Jr. "messes with" an individual's words, just as I mess with Emily's, and in another sense, I don't think it bothers me one bit that Barnstone Jr. "elevates" informal forms of writing into art. I'd be a good deal more precious about changing literary fiction and poetry, I think. Where's the line?

Best,
Lee

[Mary Meriam]

Hi Lee,
I sonnetized this. I think it's submitted somewhere, so I'll just leave it up for a little while. Let me know when you see it. Thanks
Mary

I do not miss you Susie - of course I do not miss you - I only sit and stare at nothing from my window, and know that all is gone. Dont feel it -no - any more than the stone feels, that it is very cold, or the block, that it is silent, where once 'twas warm and green, and birds danced in it's branches.

I rise, because the sun shines, and sleep has done with me, and I brush my hair, and dress me, and wonder what I am and who has made me so, and then I wash the dishes, and anon, wash them again, and then 'tis afternoon, and Ladies call, and evening, and some members of another sex come in to spend the hour, and then that day is done. And, prithee, what is Life?

[This message has been edited by Mary Meriam (edited February 26, 2007).]

[Roger Slater]

Mary, that's excellent. I think you may have posted it before, but I don't remember liking it as much. Maybe it's been revised since?

As for sonnetizing Emily's poems, I'm afraid I don't come close to seeing the point. The one benefit of doing so, in my view, is to show quite clearly that line units do, in fact, matter greatly, and that 140 syllables are very different when set out as a sonnet than when set out as five quatrains of hymnal. Since even Lee hastens to say that her sonnetized example "sucks" compared to Emily's, I'm guessing she agrees that sonnetizing Emily is only a pedagogical technique, perhaps, for showing something about the function of line in metrical verse.

[Mary Meriam]

Thanks for making my day, Roger/Bob. The poem never changed, but there was a lot of fussing with the title and epigraph. I did post this exact version, finally, in Met.
Mary

[Lee Harlin Bahan]

As Margaret Warner says, "Welcome to you all," Diana, Mary, and Roger. Diana, I am grateful to you for having had such a wholehearted go--I could not have hoped for more illuminating feedback. I'm thinking Emily meant "unseen," which would give you an Emily-like slant on "seams." However, you may want to stick to your guns because I really like your "solution" of running three modified envelope quatrains, the rhymed couplet sandwiched between the unrhymed lines, and ending with a rhymed couplet. That device stitches(!) your sonnet together. I don't know, but you may have invented a new sonnet form! In any case I'll certainly index your strategy and store it in *my* bag of tricks. If you had fun and are satisfied with what you learned, then you make me feel like putting the exercise up was worthwhile. Thank you.

Thanks, Mary, for re-sharing your "found" sonnet. I especially like how you incorporate the characteristic dashes. That prose is utterly incredible--I am tempted to turn it straight into hymn meter. The paragraph break suggests the sonnet turn, of course, but is there some other reason why you decided to sonnetize rather than go straight for hymn meter? Do you just love sonnets (as I do)? Or would using Emily's trademark form on her prose not create enough aesthetic distance, a distinct enough frame? What you left out is interesting, too. Emily's remark about men coming to visit was telling, in my opinion. I would have kept it and dumped something else. You are a very good sonnet writer, so I know you did not just run out of room. I have a suspicion as to the nature of your well-thought-out reasons, but I would rather you explained your thinking on this, if you will, and I'm sorry if you already went through this over at Met. Must have been before my time!

Ah, Roger. A couple of days ago, I might have been inclined to agree with you, but I have been reading Willis Barnstone's The Poetics of Translation in which he quotes "first century ... Roman rhetorician ... Quintilianus" regarding translation. Summing up the Roman's position, Barnstone Sr. says, "Quintilian saw translation as an art whose duty is to be an art by means of the translator's inspired re-creation, which not only interprets but rivals and replaces the original" (108). The italics are mine. In my opinion, Barnstone clearly personally favors close translations that are nonetheless works of art in their own right, but he is totally fair and scrupulously scholarly in showing the historical basis for, and defending the excellence and right to exist of, the translations/imitations of Lowell and Pound. At present, the prevailing fashion is for the translator to be transparent, but Chaucer is all over the tissue of translations that comprises Trolius and Cressida (Barnstone, 97), and 800 years from now the Quintilianian(!)-Chaucerian-Lowellian-Poundian approach may be in vogue. So, yeah, I would love to see somebody "rival" Emily, write a sonnet that is better than the hymn meter poem whence it rose. (And David clearly thinks she needs improving!) Mary's use of dashes go a long way toward preserving the flavor of Emily, just as simple language would preserve Sor Juana's flavor, according to comments at Translation. But I doubt anybody today is going to take the kind of time "translating" Emily's *verse* into another verse form that you and I are going to spend on a foreign language poet, a "real" translation to be published. (I spent an hour sonnetizing Emily, put it away for a day or so, spent another hour touching it up before posting. I have Petrarchs that have simmered for years.) But Barnstone Sr.'s book, coupled with what I learned doing the Emily exercise myself, make me believe that my work with Petrarch tends toward the Lowell-Pound end of the continuum and helps me interpret the crit I've been getting over at Translation. That's worth the price of admission.

Other thoughts:

If I'm not inspired or revising a specific piece, any time spent exercising the writing muscles is good. My exercise is exactly as useful in this regard as the other exercises currently on this board.

I hope I am wrong in hearing disdain in "only a pedagogical technique," Roger. I have taught creative writing and poetry as literature at every level from third grade to that of the college sophomore, and any exercise that is fun and that aids learning is worthwhile, to put it modestly. I also hope I have explained that I learned a whole lot more doing the exercise myself and from Diana's and Mary's work than "something about the function of line in metrical verse," though that is one major thing to examine and certainly something that comes out in discussion. No, Roger, you guess wrong.

Cheers,
Lee




[This message has been edited by Lee Harlin Bahan (edited February 24, 2007).]