A Dalliance (Or: A Random but Awesome Bunch of Sonnets)

Today's Notes from the Ivory Tower come straight out of general Poetry, with an emphasis on Sonnets.

For those of you who aren't fans of poetry or sonnets or Shakespeare, I'm just going to leave this here:

Why yes, yes that IS Professor Snape reading Shakespeare, and yes, we are going to look at that, and other sonnets more carefully.

Logistics first: What is a sonnet?

A Sonnet (Sonnetti, for "little song" in the original Italian) is 14 lines of poetry, with a rhyme scheme from either the first, second or third circle of hell, depending on whether you were English, Italian or Edmund Spenser. English sonneteers (Read: Shakespeare) wrote sonnets using 3 quatrains and a couplet. In plain English, that means the poem can be divided up into three sections of four lines, and one section of two lines. These sections are delineated by the rhyme scheme. Italian sonneteers (Read: Petrarch) wrote using an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines). Edmund Spenser, being English, used three quatrains and a couplet, but if you look at the rhyme schemes of the three, you'll see the difference:

 

Sonnets were also written in iambic pentameter, which is a kind of metrical time. Basically, each "foot" of time has a stressed and an unstressed syllable in it. Aurally, this makes a heartbeat sound with the rhythm.

The next logical question is: Why were sonnets written? According to this article, sonnets were odes to beautiful women. This is true for Petrarch, and for Shakespeare and Spenser to some degree, but as time progresses, forward, we'll see that this does not necessarily continue to be true.

Ok, enough background details, let's look at some sonnets!

Starting, of course, with Shakespeare Sonnet 130:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

   And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

   As any she belied with false compare. 

This sonnet is an ode to a woman, certainly... but no gal is going to love being told that her hair is wiry, she's pale (before sparkly teenage vampires somehow made it cool?) and her breath stinks. What Shakespeare is doing here is reacting to the tradition of sonnets where the object of the poet's affection is held up as superhuman and therefore unattainable. An example of this kind of pedastaling of a woman is here is Petrarch's sonnet:

Sonnet 90
She used to let her golden hair fly free.

For the wind to toy and tangle and molest;

Her eyes were brighter than the radiant west.

(Seldom they shine so now.)  I used to see

Pity look out of those deep eyes on me.

("It was false pity," you would now protest.)

I had love's tinder heaped within my breast;

What wonder that the flame burnt furiously?

She did not walk in any mortal way,

But with angelic progress; when she spoke,

Unearthly voices sang in unison.

She seemed divine among the dreary folk

Of earth.  You say she is not so today?

Well, though the bow's unbent, the wound bleeds on.

 Petrarch is very much idealizing the woman in this sonnet, using adjectives associated with wealth as well as aesthetic beauty. For a Spenserian sonnet in this tradition (for those of you who want to dabble in some middle English; think Chaucer!), I'll leave this here:

Sonnet 64

Comming to kisse her lyps (such grace I found)

Me seemd I smelt a gardin of sweet flowres

That dainty odours from them three around

For damzels fit to decke their lovers bowres

Her lips did smell lyke unto gillyflowers

Her ruddy cheeks lyke unto roses red;

Her snowy browes lyke budded bellamoures,

Her lovely eyes lyke pincks but newly spred,

Her goodly bosome lyke a strawberrry bed,

Her neck lyke to a bounch of cullambynes;

Her brest lyke lillyes ere theyr leaves be shed,

Her nipples lyke yong blossomd jessemynes.

Such fragrant flowres doe give most odorous smell,

But her sweet odour did them all excel.

Basically, Spenser took a woman and compared her to a flower shop back before spelling counted.

You might be noticing a trend here: all the sonnets so far seem to cover similar ground. That was very much a think for great poets, and since sonnets were written in cycles, it's pretty easy to match up sonnets by subject.  The Spenser, Petrarch and Shakespeare sonnets above all focus on the love aspect of the sonnet.

Once we get to Milton though, we see things getting a little more weighty:

When I Consider How My Light Is Spent

When I consider how my light is spent,

   Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

   And that one Talent which is death to hide

   Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

   My true account, lest he returning chide;

   “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”

   I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need

   Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best

   Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

   And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:

   They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Milton is considering how time is spent, and since light is often a metaphor for sight, he is also considering how his time with his sight was spent (by the end of his life, Milton was blind). Compare that to John Keats's famous sonnet:

When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be

When I have fears that I may cease to be

   Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,

Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,

   Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;

When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,

   Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

   Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,

   That I shall never look upon thee more,

Never have relish in the faery power

   Of unreflecting love—then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

 Few things are weightier than considering one's own mortality, and here we have Keats's oft-assigned sonnet doing just that.

But, you may say, Keats and Milton are still old and stodgy, sonnets can't possibly be fun.

I'm just going to put this here:

Fairy-tale Logic

Fairy tales are full of impossible tasks:

Gather the chin hairs of a man-eating goat,

Or cross a sulphuric lake in a leaky boat,

Select the prince from a row of identical masks,

Tiptoe up to a dragon where it basks

And snatch its bone; count dust specks, mote by mote,

Or learn the phone directory by rote.

Always it’s impossible what someone asks—

You have to fight magic with magic. You have to believe

That you have something impossible up your sleeve,

The language of snakes, perhaps, an invisible cloak,

An army of ants at your beck, or a lethal joke,

The will to do whatever must be done:

Marry a monster. Hand over your firstborn son.

This sonnet was written by A.E. Stallings in 2010, and is possibly my favorite poem ever. It's modern enough to appeal to today's readers, is loyal to its poetic roots, and takes the genre in a new direction by flying into fancy.

Finally, I'm going to leave these here:

 

Why Petrarch Hates Shakespeare

 

Irreverent phrasing! Insouciance!

He writes to his Mister, his “Dark Lady”;

He takes this poetic form, makes it shady!

I’ll throw him into Mount Vesuvius!

He writes of love in a way most dubious,

No blondes, eyes of blue or matters weighty,

But dun breast and black wire; the “Bard” is crazy.

A young man clearly less than studious,

Mistaking sheer volume for quality,

To read his sonnets puts me in a malaise.

With brass, earth, sea, it speaks of frivolity

Which denies me give any sort of praise

To this man in his writer’s fantasy.

He should have stuck to simply writing plays.

This is an original piece by me, written for an intro to poetry class in 2011.

 

Shakespeare’s Zombie

 

Shall I compare thee to a zombie Hoard?

Wrinkled grey skin falling from rotten bones,

The entrapping scent and discordant chords.

Craven creatures munching children and crones.

Shrieked cries of hunger edge the northern wind,

While the south wind whispers “wherefore art brains?”

Beautifully bright blood bleaches snowy hill’s skin

While the lovely bones line the silent plains. 

But thou, my Zombie queen sublime surpass

Infrequent lovers, the dead mortals past. 

Your cries for brains intrigue and tease in blasts

I stumble close for true love at the last…

Entrapped in your arms, together at last

My brains ripped out, your final repast.

This is another (slightly better) original piece by me, for a mixed-genre creative writing class in 2010.

Hopefully you've enjoyed these Notes from the Ivory Tower! We'll be back next time!