TWO POETAGOGICAL VERSES

THE SONNET’S WAY

Sit down to write a sonnet and you won’t
Have any notion how your verse will end;
The many variables forthcoming don’t
Allow you knowledge where your lines may wend.

So, blindly you set out through trackless woods—
Some hunch or hint of where you hope to go
Compelling you ahead, the only shoulds
Being rhyme-and-meter, more your friend than foe.

For without them you’d bumble in the gloom,
No glint to guide you how you might go right,
No beat to lead you from your certain doom,
No hope to save you from a hapless plight.

Thank goodness then for liberating bonds,
As potent in their ways as magic wands.

~ ~ ~

THE SONNET’S GAME

Don’t think that writing sonnets ’s not a game,
Cold-blooded calculation, line by line,
To calibrate the measures to one aim:
To fit what its parameters define.

The form comes first; emotion follows after,
Though it should seem the other way around:
A clever turn of phrase provoking laughter,
A perfect rhyme to make good sense more sound.

That such complex machinery can serve
To move our passions and enthuse our hearts
Should seem no stranger than that blood and nerve
Can do the same, with other body parts.

Yet poems and bodies may incorporate
A subtle spirit they don’t regulate.

*

A CHARM

Now may this charm on you befall
That nothing might your eyes appall,
That all you see be beauteous
And all you hear euphonious,
That what you wish be granted you
Nor ever give you cause to rue.

*

WHY

Yes, we are animals and born to die,
And though we understand the reason why
By biologic logic, still we wonder
Why our precious fabric’s torn asunder.

A hundred years, at best, of consciousness
Is what we hope for, calling it success
If by that time our conscience is more bright
Than tarnished, and our weary heart still light.

But then at death’s door we may ask again
Why all our travails must be borne and when
If ever we may know with certainty
If there’s some reason we should ever be.

Why are we born, why do we live and die?
Let’s hope we’ll know by revelation why.

*

ON REREADING THE GREATS

There’s something about the ordinary processes of schooling (and colleging) that leads students to believe that the purpose of it all is to “get through” and be done with one course after another—signed, sealed and delivered to the transcript—and then forgotten.

Good teachers, however, believe otherwise. Since I teach literature and language skills, I’ll speak from my perspective, though I think teachers in other fields will make comparable cases in terms of their own disciplines.

When I introduce students to Chaucer or Shakespeare or Milton, for instance, I mean for them to begin a lifelong friendship with these authors, not a nodding acquaintance soon to be dismissed. Any such writer, established as a “classic,” has earned that status by delighting auditors and readers over centuries, even while challenging them to appreciate their complex and subtle artistry in language more fully with longer acquaintance.

“Been there, done that,” a checklist attitude, does not apply to great writing any more than it does to great friends, both of whom reveal more of their qualities and virtues through long and intimate association.

It’s true, though, that Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton, along with other “Greats,” present off-putting challenges to newcomers, though not so formidable as learning a foreign language. Chaucer’s Middle English, it’s true, does take mental labor to adopt, though it sounds more foreign than it reads. Two hundred years later, the Early Modern English of Shakespeare and Milton presents lexical novelty (lots of bygone words) but uses grammar and syntax we comprehend without much trouble. And all three of them are poets and thus wield language lyrically, language that sings with echoing resonance and meter, a physical delight to hear intoned.

Amazingly, great literature grows as you grow, and thus deserves revisiting throughout your lifetime. A poem or play you first met in school or college, if it’s great, will not seem quite the same once you’ve accrued more tender feelings and hard knocks with age, or just seen more of life’s variety through both direct experience and wider reading.

Hang in there is my point. After meeting any of these luminaries, add them to your library, befriend them on your mental Greatsbook, and check in on them from time to time throughout your life.

*

VATICLES

I never know when some unconscious urge
Will press a nascent notion to emerge
Into the forefront of my consciousness,
A hint of something later to express;
So always close at hand I keep a pen
And little pad for those occasions when
That unpremeditated impulse knocks
Or stymied stream of consciousness unblocks.

On summer breaks or long sabbaticals,
I’ll rummage through my stacks of vaticles,
The little three-by-fives on which I write
Those glints and inspirations of insight
Provided by my Vates or my Muse,
Unpacking what’s suggested in their clues.

*

OXYMORON


Topsy-turvy, inside out,
The oxymoron plays
Ass-backwards and preposterous
In tragicomic ways:

Dove-feathered raven, ravening lamb,
Wise fool of rhetoric,
The Bard’s best tool, besides iamb,
To make his verses stick.

*

THE PILGRIM CHAUCER


Among us on our pilgrimage was one
Who, long before our traveling was done,
Had come to know us each as if he were
Our dearest friend, so busy would he stir
Among our company, observing us,
Engaging us in talk, intent to suss
Our secrets out and know our very hearts,
Though we be knaves or nobles, nuns or tarts.

And yet himself we hardly came to know,
So curious he was for us to show
Our crotchets and peculiarities
That he laid low with no apologies
Or shame and seemed intent to memorize
What he observed—a poet in disguise.

*