The Rogue Sonneteer Part 2

Just in time!

As for "My Mandolin Sings," I think this is going to have to be it -- for now:

Brooks babbling and firs swirling,
My mandolin cries --
Tails twitching, wings unfurling,
Their spirits arise!
As woodland winds are twirling
By day or by night
When there are dancers whirling
My mandolin cries.

Came up with the "u/irling" slant rhyme at the very last, when I was just about to give up. It felt great, because thinking of words in that rhyme gave me ones with visual images. Hooray!

To me, the first version posted May 6 works OK as a poem in "songform." I just thought, why not sing it? I did in my head, and it didn't work as a song lyric well in verses 2 and 3 -- particularly 3.

So, unless I come up with something better for verse 2, I think this is it.

But, what about a bridge or an intro? Hmmm ... .

Patience, readers. Patience.


The Song Remains the Same -- But Do We?

When we write a poem, just what is different? Is our world different, or are we? Is there a difference? How do we know and relate to that difference, if any?

I guess this sounds like nonsense. Maybe it is. But I think it's worth examining: I've posted before on how the poem may affect society, and how the poet can be the vehicle. Which I think is why so many chase our talent, try to tame it or steal it or what have you.

What I'm asking now is, is the poem's effect reciprocal?


Done.

MY MANDOLIN SINGS

Like a thrush on the heather,
My mandolin sings.
Dancing as a tiny feather,
The joy that it brings!
If times be weighed by weather,
I'm lonely or sad --
Whatever my heart's tether,
My mandolin sings.

Her strings fly 'neath my fingers,
How happy our days.
Her high note chirping lingers
In air as she plays!
Deeply as a kitten purrs,
Her low notes uncurl.
Whichever part she prefers,
How happy our days.

Brooks babbling and firs swirling,
My mandolin cries --
Tails twitching, wings unfurling,
Their spirits arise!
As woodland winds are twirling
By day or by night
When there are dancers whirling
My mandolin cries.

by William Mark Gabriel

This poem is covered by a Creative Commons license that permits commercial use, but no modifications, under United States copyright law.

For practical purposes, I am OK with people setting this to music, but my words must remain unchanged and be used with my name.

I would be happiest to see the words set to a tune already in the public domain, but adapted (if needed) as appropriate to the rules for a musician used by the organization publishing his or her work.

I am not doing this for profit, but as a shared learning exercise. Have fun.


Afternote: It has occurred to me that, for practical purposes, the Creative Commons copyright applies to all previous versions of this poem published on this blog. You can use any of them for the purposes stated above, provided you note that it's my variant (var.) version.

After-afternote: It has also occurred to me I ought to make a technical note that the Creative Commons license is the Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. It is so registered with creativecommons-dot-org.


The Song Remains Never The Same

I understand there are now attempts by scholars and scientists to preserve some of the world's dying languages.

I hope these folks will remember to record the language's poems. Usually, in nonliterate traditional cultures, the poems are narrative: the Iliad, Beowulf, the verse Edda, etc. And these poems likely contain the language at its richest and finest. I remember in Greek class (I was no class hotshot, trust me) hearing that Homeric was really a collection of several regional Greek dialects, and I also read elsewhere since that "crafted" narrative epics like the Divine Comedy were also made from several regional dialects in Italian.

Maybe I'm still a Poundean (-ian?) at heart, since "poet as protector of the language" was one of his more prominent critical dicta. I do think it's true to some extent, though a lot of it would depend on the poet.

Still, I hope these language scientists don't forget the poems. They may tell the most about that culture of anything they might find.


My 'Paceful' Reading

Paradise Lost was, like Moby Dick, one of those works in the high school literary canon that high schools were rejecting by the time I came along, so I'd never read it before now.

My Viking Portable edition cost me all of 7 dollars (not used, but the copy had some cover fading). It has a very helpful glossary at the end.

It took me a month (reading in bits) to get through Book III (of the twelve), and I came up with some early observations.

For one, it's not that hard to read, once you get past the introduction ("Sing, heavenly Muse," is the verb and subject of the first sentence, found six lines into the poem. You don't hit the first period until line 16).

Younger (and faster) readers will want an Oxford Concise at their elbows and then maybe hold off researching the full context of the more obscure references to classical mythology. Older folks like me also may want Bulfinch (I think I paid a dollar for mine years ago -- a megabookseller's reprint) nearby.

That, a "good posture" reading chair, some imagination and some more patience may well see us through. My favorite of Book I was Satan waking up, floating around on a stormy lake of fire (with the construction of Pandemonium a close second). Book II's highlight for me were the speeches of the demons -- each intended to fit a cardinal sin. Book III's description of the world between Heaven and Paradise was as clear as an etching.

The trick so far has been reading 80-120 lines at a sitting. Old Miltie conveniently set his poem into paragraphs (or groups of paragraphs) about that long, so -- there you go!

This paragraphing could be more than convenience -- maybe the poem was set that way, in part, to facilitate public readings (!).

I've had fun reading as The Ham Actor In My Head declaims to me his version of the poem, bit by bit.

By the way, my earlier reference to an "etching" was not coincidental. If you've got the 'scratch' (sorry) for Dore's plates to the poem -- you've got a (kind of) 17th century graphic novel.


Could it be ... ?

The back-cover blurb to my copy of The Portable Milton is a statement that claims the notion of Satan as a "radiant usurper" is more due to "Paradise Lost" than either the Old or New Testament, says the blurb.

That got me to thinking. The "backstory" of Satan's battle with God over Adam's creation is clearly related in the Koran.

So I checked online. Yes, the first (slanted, I'm told) translation of the Koran in the West was in 1143. This same Latin translation was published in Switzerland thirty years before Milton was born in three editions, each with a preface by no less than Martin Luther!

Milton toured Europe, staying a while in Italy, as a young man, impressing all with his skill at Latin. He surely would have seen this translation in some form. Whether it influenced him as a poet is another matter.



Ug! Fire!

I'm not an academic.

While I've made that clear many times in the strict sense of the word (in that I don't have an advanced degree or a job in academe), what I mean by that now is, even if I read an academic work, I have no way to interpret it through the lens of academic discipline. I read it just as anyone else would, and I apply it as I see it amid the general hubbub of the street.

This is a proviso to what follows: that is, you agree to read this, knowing I'm not qualified academically in this (or any other) subject.

And the subject today is language philosophy. Last spring, I dove into a series of lectures given by I.A. Richards at Bryn Mawr College in the 1930s. The collection is called, appropriately enough, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (OUP, naturally, and pricey). The book massaged some brain muscles that hadn't been rubbed in some time, so I guess I can say (adjusting my pince-nez), "I found the book stimulating."

But in it, I really didn't find much I agreed with, which is an odd feeling: "I respect you tremendously, Dr. Richards, but I don't agree with you at all."

Richards taught that (and here's where I get unsteady) words themselves have no meaning other than what we choose to give them, but that "meaning" itself exists in something he referred to as an "ocean" or "sea." Of course, that latter reference is metaphorical, which provides a link to the heart of his "meaning of meaning" -- it's in metaphor. As far as Richards was concerned, all words are metaphoric in some way. The importance of this theory to poetry is obvious.

Clearly, you should read this book for yourself and not depend on my half-witted summary. I'm just trying to point out where the book went for me, personally. In a basic sense, Richards's theory just didn't "take." What did was a book I'd read a few years ago -- Language and Myth by Ernst Cassirer. I read the eight-dollar Dover edition with the English translation by Suzanne Langer.

Cassirer taught that (again, the previous proviso remains intact) language comes from myth -- not myths as we know them from "dead" religions, but from their root experiences.

In other words (this is my summary, not his, specifically): Unname the Caveman is out hunter-gathering one day as a storm brews up, and lightning hits a tree right in front of him. He runs off, as any other scared animal would, but he comes back later to watch the tree burn, fascinated.

Unname brings back to his cave the memory, and three things get invented in that cave: a (mostly sign-language) story, a particular grunt that means "fire," and a name for himself.

Unname is now Ug, the Fire Seer. From that, this Promethean experience eventually brings warmth (a sacred feeling), cooking (a sacred act), a sense of family (a sacred cultural essence) and, as the experience spreads from cave to cave, a tribe (the sanctity of shared experience -- the essence of "myth"). By then, it also makes Ug the Fire Priest. With great power ... .

Do I need to point out how firmly that book "took?" Perhaps equally obvious is the need to read that book for yourself, too. I can just about guarantee that both books will benefit you. But one of them benefitted me more than the other one did.

And that (apparently) puts me at odds with the majority. More on that in Part 3.