That Sonnet - Remember?

That sodding sonnet has obsessed me now

For nigh on ninety days - maybe it's more.

I still can't get it finished, don't know how.

My fingers, not to mention brains, are sore.

I struggle with each rhyme, each assonance,

And try to fit each iamb into the verse;

I strive with mangled metre's consonants

And end up with a mess. Then sit and curse.

I don't know why I started all this crap,.

Or arrogantly tried to ape the Bard;

Or why I threw myself into this trap.

Oh, give up, man, it's just too bloody hard.

So, budding poets, leave Will on the shelf.

Forget him, guys, write prose and please yourself.

Poetry and prose

On returning to Sonnet 2 yesterday, somewhat despairingly, I asked myself if I actually had anything to say or if I were merely piling up phrase upon phrase to no real purpose.

I decided to write it all out in prose, but not prosaically. I though that what I ended up with was better for being without artifice. Or more accurately for being without 'artificial artifice'; for being art hiding art.

It may also have shown up the banality of my thoughts. Can it be that prose shows up the banality of poetry, but that poetry adds beauty to the banality of prose? Maybe it can refresh the tired cliche.

Wordsworth's Daffodils is very popular, and so it should for it is delightful. Kipling's If likewise, but are they saying anything profound or original? I don't think so, but they are saying it so well. Poetry cannot always be To be or not to be, or Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, or Ode: Immortalilty, or Do not go gentle.

I'm not really sure that I'm coming to any conclusion here, except that I seem to be disagreeing with Keats and his 'Truth Beauty' idea. Maybe I should try poetic prose.

Maybe I should stop using analysis to delay action. Maybe I should just write the damn poem.

And maybe I should stop using the word 'maybe' so bloody often.

Sonnet 2 - quatrain 2

I'll leave the first 4 lines in the slow cooker and jot down a first stab at the second quatrain.

It's afternoon - better, noon - the hottest part of the day. Sweat Heat. The height of the affair. From now on it's downhill until evening and the parting.

Something like this:

At noon the throbbing sun has reached his height

And spreads itself across the rumpled earth

Thrusting aside the clouds with shafts of light

And blazing forward into dark sluggish death.

It will improve. It will improve.

Today I showed some of my preparatory thoughts to a friend - I use the word in a spirit of generosity. He compared the fuit of my labours to those parts of the male anatomy which are two of the most precious and moreover the very spring of life itself. What could I do but express doubts about his parentage, and secretly agree.

Sonnet 2 - back to work

I've kicked ideas about and they seem to have gelled into one basic image. Days are like women; they come and go with a sad inevitability.

But take that a stage further and the cycle of the day becomes a simile for a relationship, a love affair, an act of love-making. The overtures of dawn, the torrid afternoon, the regretful evening, the little death of night.

I'm sticking with the opening lines I came up with a few days ago, but I've altered them a little -

The day creeps in across my crumpled sheets,

Unbuttoning night's sombre, convent dress

I didn't like 'dress of night' very much. This way I drop a couple of non-contributory words (of, the) and I've got in 'convent' with its connotations of celibacy. 'Sheets' is slightly less unoriginal than 'bed' and besides I might want to rhyme it with 'heat'. I think I've broken that rule I set myself.

I could go on like this -

Cover'ing my body with caressing heat

Rubbish! 'Covering' is weak. How about fluttering fingertips? 'Caressing heat' won't do. In any case, 'heat' is wrong. Heat is for the afternoon. This time of day is warm, gentle, teasing. I've also got to use the double meaning of the word 'rouse' somehow.

With teasing fingers rouses me from sleep

or

With teasing warmth she rouses me from sleep

Needs working on. It's all a bit poetic, isn't it? I'd really like it to be more conversational, more like the original quotation I started with. I'll carry on like this though and then maybe recast the wole thing.

I'd heard a story once about a novelist and a poet who met up for a drink after a day's work.

'Had a good day?' asked the poet.

'Not bad,' was the reply. 'Two thousand words. How about you?'

'Well,' said the poet, 'this morning I took a comma out. And this afternoon, I put it back in.'

Five-minute sonnet

I wonder would you like a cup of tea
From sunny India where the tiger roams;
Or cocoa from that land across the sea
Where elephants and lions make their home.

I've Kenyan coffee, some from far Brazil,
And sugar from the beets of Lincolnshire.
And if your tender nerves are prone to thrill
I've even got decaffeinated here.

No, what I want's a pint - and make it snappy -

With frothy bubbles foaming at the brim

- regards to Keats the great -I touch my cap.

I wish I could have shared a round with him.

See, sonnet-writing isn't quite so hard,

Affectionately, Bolingbroke the Bard.

Celebrity is the mask that eats the face of those who wear it.

John Updike

Sonnet 2 - spadework

I've got 3 sections for the sonnet- morning, afternoon, evening. The basic image is already there, namely days are like women.

Morning is the time of hope, enthusiasm, promise, anticipation, etc

Afternoon is fulfilment, satisfaction, heat, sunshine, sluggishness, etc.

Evening is decline, disillusion, loss, regret.

What I need to do now is a little brainstorming, jotting down words, phrases, possible rhymes, alliterations, similar sounds. I might find ideas developing as I do that.

Morning

Morn/ing, dawn/ing; day break > bragging, boasting, bouncing, brazen, breasting the horizon, brassy, flashy > lashes (eyelashes). Pretty dawn (also a girl's name). Warmth, welcome, soft.

Dawn is seductive, flirtatious, insidious, false hope.

It's already getting sexual. Obviously, you're in bed at dawn and the day arrives in your bedroom unexpectedly, with promise in her eyes, which rhymes with rise, and size, and dies. Better keep it clean.

How about

The day creeps in across my crumpled bed

Unbuttoning the sombre dress of night

This is good stuff, isn't it? Well, it's a start.

* * *

On a different subject, I like the comment of a Radio 4 listener who e-mailed the BBC about a Church group's plea for the white poppy to be treated with the same respect as the red at this time of year. He said,

There's only one word for this idea - Poppycock!

Sonnet 2 - thinking about the structure

'Sonnet-writing for dummies' says that a sonnet is a lyric poem of 14 lines, each a iambic pentameter.

In the Shakepearean form (also Spenserian), the poem contains 3 quatrains and a final couplet. The rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

As a rule the quatrains deal in turn with an opening idea or idea, followed by a development, then a shift, with the couplet summing up or providing a punch-line or a surprise. My theme - that days and women are both precious, but that both desert you, fits neatly into this scheme.

Namely: morning, afternoon, evening. And I've got surprise of sorts. So far, so good.

A few things to remember:

• I mustn't let the iambic pentameter become boring. 14 lines of dee-dum, dee-dum, dee-dum will not do. Shakespeare would often start a line with the emphasis on the first syllable of the line. For example, 'Now is / the win / ter of . . .' And, 'Shall I compare thee . . .' where the first two syllables are pretty even in strength.
• Enjambement gives variety and force, as in: 'Like to the lark at break of day arising / From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate.'
• In this day and age poetic ellisions like 'ope' and 'oe'r' are inappropriate, although the iambic pentameter cries out for them. 'Open' and 'over' waste syllables.
• Beware 'poetic' cliches, such as abstract nouns, too many adverbs, putting the adjective after the noun, etc.
• On the other hand, don't be afraid of long words, if they are natural to me.
• Don't let the need for rhyme dictate the content. Substitute with assonance and para-rhyme if you like.

Now I'd better get on with it.

Remember that all glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Sonnet 2 - choosing the theme

I once contributed to a message thread on IMDb which was devoted to quotations from movies that had passed into our everyday conversation.

I suppose it shows a lack of original thought or eloquence on my part that I seemed to have a fund of them, and not just from the movies. I often quote Tony Hancock's 'Stone me, what a life!' Or, if someone has just come out with a cliche designed to clinch an argument, I will reply, 'Yes, and a dog is a man's best friend.'

Pete and Dud provided my first wife and me with material for in-jokes. If a visitor were to say something like, 'Well, I love gardening,' one of us would reply, 'As indeed who doesn't.' The other would take it up with 'I don't particularly,' and elicit the response 'Oh, really?' Well, it made us laugh, anyway.

Laurel and Hardy provided material for me and my children particularly. I suppose Stan and Ollie were just big kids, and so fitted very easily into father/child dialogue. 'Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into' was often appropriate, as was 'Why don't you do something to help me?'

In later years I've found useful quotations from Assault on Precinct 13. Recently, standing at the bar, apparently ignored by the staff who were rushing to serve everybody but me and my companion, I turned to him and said, 'Life just seems to pass us by.' And when deferring reluctantly to a fellow crossword-solver who insists on an answer, 'You can't argue with a confident man.' (Of course, it's better if you've seen the film).

And, after that roundabout journey, back to the theme for my sonnet, which I take from Assault. Napoleon Wilson, convicted murderer and awaiting possible execution, says, 'In my situation, days are like women. Each one is so damn precious - and they all end up leaving you.'

Now there's a poem in that.

I'm not going bald. I'm just getting taller than my hair.

Oh, Muse, where art thou?

Courting two women simultaneously calls for great skill, for it is dangerous work. But I have no choice, because I cannot decide which I need more. One is named Erato, the muse of love-poetry; the second is Euterpe, the muse of lyric poetry and music.

Both have made eyes at many a man, whispered honeyed words into his ear and stirred him to powerful feats of creativity. Both ignore me, the *******.

I'm told they might visit in the night, creep into my bed and share my dreams, but each morning the notebook by the alarm clock has remained virgin white. Some say they arrive punctually at 9 o'clock each morning, after a hearty breakfast, and leave promptly at lunchtime. Or that they like to be wooed on bracing country walks at dawn. Others say they enjoy a drink and that the way to win their favour is to treat them to long sessions in the pub. Now that is certainly preferable to early morning walks, but whatever record of their words I find in my notebook after such interludes is usually rubbish, even when legible.

So I'll live without them. As Richard Widmark said of women in The Law and Jake Wade, 'They sure do slow a man down.'

Yes, I'm trying to write a poem, another poem. Don't ask me why. You can't sell poems. Hardly anyone will appreciate them. And in any case, when you think of all the great poets who have gone before, you know you're not going to be any good.

If I were to hazard an answer to that 'why?', I'd have to say that we all have an urge to create. To produce something uniquely ours. Making up a joke, preparing a meal, playing a tune on the guitar, writing a decent letter or a blog, producing a film or painting the Sistine Chapel.

So I want to write 150 sonnets. More than 150 would be arrogant.

Sonnets, because they are short and deal with just one idea. As a form they are simple, which of course doesn't mean easy. Because they have a structure and I like a framework within which to work. I don't like a lot of modern free verse. I get the impression that the writers think that a poem is a few random words higgedly-piggedly set out with lots of white paper around them and line breaks in odd places. Prose dressed up in borrowed clothes.

It might be interesting to log my thought processes as I compose this thing