The sonnet tells the business well enough

b''h

12 Oct 2013

The sonnet tells the business well enough

That little enterprise need to be done

By the writer with his pen in hand -- someone

Who's almost unnecessary -- the stuff

Of poems somehow survives the dust

Of personality and suffers none

Of the wrestling with emotions too numb

To get themselves felt -- nor is there any love

Between the effort and the final verse;

Nor is there connection between the soul and

The word...  It's not a lovely proposition

Nor is it any sort of union -- but worse

Situations have become: understand!

The mirror is not it, but reflection.

Firestone Feinberg

Reviews

[John]

An interesting experimental reflection on the relationship between expression and form. The first four lines are fairly typical of the standard sonnet and then it seems to undergo a kind of meltdown (metre goes awry, the rhyming scheme is unorthodox) as it rehearses the argument between form and content. The couplet, which in the traditional Shakespeare sonnet brings everything to a neat conclusion, is here quite obscure, but full of possible meanings. Does the poem mirror the emotional state of the writer, the reader, conventional responses to literature, the poetic form itself, etc? We are left in a state of tantalising doubt.

[Firestone Feinberg]

The thing gets written despite the writer's ambivalence or antipathy or even his arrogance. The relationship between the producer and the product is not always as intimate as we think. Beneath the words lies the self -- not always helpful, not always benign, and, not uncommonly -- adversarial. It is not an ideal meeting. Tempers are uneven, wits are shorn. But. It's not war, neither is it famine nor tempest. It is verse. There are worse things that happen here -- on this earth. I wonder if we who write don't attach too much importance to ourselves when confronting the earnest pen. And I wonder if the pen itself doesn't do the same. Thank you John for your astute appraisal of an enigmatic thing that arose from personal conflict.

[bobc]

D...yes to this one. Very well done...bobc

[Firestone Feinberg]

Thanks Bob... in a way your last comment inspired it... --D

[bobc]

D...maybe a little nudge is a good thing. You're welcome.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

the mirror is but reflection but our pens are also a reflection of ourselves...

that is what we write, why we write...and we constantly question the importance of us, of our poetry.

[Firestone Feinberg]

Thank you Jacob for you wisdom and your counsel. At times I get lost, and it helps to see a little light. I said it before, but I'll say it again: you are a real teacher. There are so few. --David