The Rogue Sonneteer Part 3

With All Due Respect

I hope there is never a baseline skill for being named "poet."

In other words, there should never be something external to the poem that makes your work "poetry" or not.

If being able to write a "formal" haiku or a limerick successfully, say, were the baseline skill -- Jack Kerouac would never have made the grade. As best I can recall, his many haikus did not fit any formal scheme -- they were what they were (and are). That's all that's ever needed.

There are lots of self-described "poets" out there. Like any similar self-description, they are made to give the describers a sense of self-importance they usually have not earned.

I like the definition I heard in Poetry 101 back in college: if someone whose opinion others respect calls something you wrote a poem, then you're a poet.

What that means, in effect, is that the work is what matters -- to you and to them. The label given to you for having written it is simply a means of identification -- a sonnet by Donne, an elegy by Tennyson, a haiku by Kerouac.

Your ability to write three balanced sentences in iambic pentameter that rhyme ABAB followed by a heroic couplet, for instance, does not necessarily make you a poet. It's something intrinsic, something at the core of such a work, that makes a given poem a sonnet. The form just reflects that essential fact. (And reflections can be very important!)

When you write one, someone else who loves sonnets (or elegies or haikus or whatever) is bound to notice, someday. If that person then calls you a poet, I think you can consider your dues paid.

P.S.: If this doesn't sound much like what I promised "next time" -- have patience. It serves as some necessary background. I believe baselines are vital -- just not in determining who's a poet! Or maybe, I just set one ... ?


First Base

One of the problems with being a self-proclaimed "poet" (and this is true of any self-proclamation) is that you can get together with other self-proclaimed poets and proclaim each other poets.

That is OK in itself. It's basically an informal club, at that point. Unfortunately -- after decades of cultural neglect, abuse or just uncertainty re: poetry -- these kind of "clubs" can become the baseline for what a poet is. That's when you've got a problem.

The problem gets worse when an otherwise good linguistic theory -- the one propounded by I.A. Richards that I mentioned in a previous post ("Ug! Fire!") -- is so open-ended that it lends a false vitality to this impoverished situation.

I made a comment on a blog post about poets and the end of summer (or something like that), and my comment was in verse. The blog wistfully quoted some contemporary poets on the seasonal subject, but one commenter found the whole thing wanting.

My verse comment followed his comment, as a response in agreement. Here it is (tidied up some):

To One Tired of the Tiring

"Mannered and obsolete," I can hear them now,
Smirking over words that form ocean drops
In stale modernist theories, which stops
Any effort past bland themes they allow.
Are there words with secret lives of their own,
Huddled, shrinking from a meek dread of love
In a cold, dripping cave? They cannot move
Beyond the clapping hand of Elite's koan.
Pure faith in the sweet pull of longing's ache
Reveals the lore each limbed harp holds within
Her sweet cascade of lissome Summer's chime.
There, I'd give more than I could dream to take,
In soft dalliance with firm rules' ken:
Every human touch pours out rhyme and time.

"Them" in line one refer to those poets, however sincere, who may be operating from this clubby "baseline," and who don't appear to realize that their work is suffering as a result, while "they" in line four refers to the "modernist theories" that have become a de facto standard.

Frankly, I don't think my effort at a Petrarchian sonnet (with a cheat) is a whole lot better. But it's what I felt at the time, as best I could put it in then, however mannered and obsolete the form may appear.

My cheat is that a true Petrarchian sonnet's octave usually rhymes ABBA ABBA, not ABBA CDDC. Oh well.

Petrarchian sonnets (as I mentioned a year or more ago) are much harder to write in English than their Shakespearian cousins because our language does not contain nearly as many usable rhyme words as Italian does. Sticking with traditional English rhyme patterns works far better.

However, I've tried a couple other ones, and maybe I'll go into some interesting facets of the Petrarchian structure someday. Some people really like them better. An English writer who was good at them (I've mentioned her before, also) is Christina Rossetti. Her brother's translation of Dante's "La Vita Nuova" may also be a good guide for them, if you're interested. I'm not a fan of his original ones.

Maybe I'll even fix the rhyme scheme on this one, if it can be fixed.


The Rhyme in Time

And I didn't even need a thesaurus:

Mannered and obsolete, I can hear them moan,
Smirking over words that form ocean's rove
In stale modernist theories that reprove
Any effort past bland themes they condone.

I don't use a rhyming dictionary, either.


A Labor of Love

I've made some other changes, so I guess this is final (maybe).

TO ONE TIRED OF THE TIRING

"Mannered and obsolete," I can hear them moan,
Smirking over words forming ocean's rove
In stale modernist theories that reprove
Any effort past bland themes they condone.
Are there words with secret lives of their own,
Huddled, shrinking from a meek dread of love,
In a cold, dripping cave, who cannot move
Beyond the clapping hand of Elite's koan?
Pure faith in the sweet pull of longing's ache
Reveals the lore each limbed harp holds within
Her sweet cascade of lissome summer's chime.
There, I'd give more than I could dream to take,
In soft dalliance with firm rules' ken:
Pulsing Nature's touch pours out rhyme and time.

by William Mark Gabriel
Copyright © 2009. All Rights Reserved.

I'll admit "moan" and "koan" remain a pretty broad slant, but it's the best I could do. You may also notice how, when you're just going through the normal process of revising, you can actually sharpen the poem's meaning by choosing a better rhyme word. I think I managed that in a couple of cases.

I posted on this last year (I think I called the post "Rhymes in Time" -- oddly fitting the last post. It wasn't deliberate.). Choosing rhymes and other formal aspects of verse are just parts of the writing process.

Yes, they are tougher to do than, say, fixing a comma splice in a sentence -- but that's what makes you a poet, right?

We enjoy the challenge, or we wouldn't be doing it in the first place.

Next time, I'll have some ideas on how to "watermark" a poem.


Written in Water

There's a great metrical poem by Cecil Day-Lewis that has him going on an art tour in Italy ("armed with good taste, a Leica and a guide"), and, for each famous painting that stirs his poetic imagination, he dedicates a section of the poem to a famous contemporary poet.

Not only that, but, as students of Old Masters have for generations in art, he writes each section in the style of that poet. He has verses imitating Auden, Yeats, Hardy and several others. Each one is in a rhyme scheme and line structure that suits both the poem and poet. Yet, the "in-between" sections by the late poet laureate of England are truly his own art -- as are his "imitations."

It prompts something worth thinking about: what does your "stylistic stamp" look like? I know a lot of modern writing teachers like to talk about "finding your voice," but I think that's just a starting point. Your work's individual stamp -- in which a reader pretty much knows a poem is by you without having to see your name under it -- is really a goal, not a mere point of departure.

I'm calling this goal a "watermark" -- implying both a stamp of quality for fine paper and a means of digital security for electronic documents. It's really like both.

"No way Joe Buzznow wrote that! That's definitely by [fill in your name]." Now, wouldn't you like that said about your work?

So, how do you get there? I think that's completely individual, don't you? How on Earth can anyone do that for you, or even begin to outline a procedure that will secure your work forever?

In my case, it was a long series of personal events that stamped the work for me. They made an indelible impression on my mind (both conscious and unconscious), and my poetic reaction in response created, bit by bit, my watermark. I think you can see it hiding like undertext in a palimpsest within previous posts.

In other cases, it might be something completely different. But even if yours comes from the same basic process as mine, your watermark still would differ. No two recollections of 9/11/01 are identical, even though we all remember the day.

Your poetry's watermark is like a medieval lord's coat of arms -- both his possession and his description, his signature and his seal, his word and his bond.

I wish you luck in forging yours.


Amends and Afterthoughts

Just because your poetry has a signature style does not necessarily make you any good.

I recall a line from (I think) Annie Hall in which Woody Allen's character calls some poem "McEuenesque." He did not mean it as a compliment.

Also, a signature style is not necessarily original. Your signature may well be that you imitate someone else (see "McEuenesque" above).

I think that goes for all of us, equally. Let the creator beware.

I'm not sure if the name Day-Lewis is hyphenated. I've seen it printed both ways.

My recollection of his poem comes from college. "Florence: Works of Art" was in that old Norton anthology, the one full of my scans of metrical poems (see "Pencil It In" in my May 2008 archive).

I now understand that the poem is a chapter in a longer poem, An Italian Visit. I assume it would be found in his collected poems.

"Florence: Works of Art" contains "pastiche" poems referring also to sculptures, as well as paintings, in Florence museums.