Some sonnets, and icing on top

As I'm sure many people can relate to, it is not my greatest desire that people should read any poetry that I've written, since it is naturally such a personal thing. But because I was asked by the good doctor himself, I have posted my first few sonnets here just to provide some reference material for anyone who wants to write a sonnet, but doesn't want to be intimidated by Shakespeare. These sonnets are labeled with respect to the order in which I wrote them (which seems natural, when apposed to numbering them arbitrarily) so please excuse the shaky lift-off, as Sonnet 1 was the first sonnet that I have ever "completed" (though I am a firm believer in the Leonardo Da Vinci quote "l'arte non e' mai finita solo abbandonata [art is never finished, only abandoned]"). I may, by spring break, have a more advanced piece to send, but if not, it can be assumed that I mailed sonnet 5 if anyone were particularly curious.

Sonnet 1-  (not perfect iambic pentameter in line 3 [ending on what would be an unstressed syllable] and not, perhaps, my most eloquent effort)

So those who call to question of my love

may know the depths from which I draw them hence,

I'll sing them as a fountain's flowing of

the sweetest water ev'r upon their sense.

But never ceasing 'til they all but sink,

all so that then they cannot question more

the love I have which none shall dare to think

would fail to fill the seas from shore to shore,

and full as this would soon forsake their tides

for turning back when still they'd fill it more,

until at last the mountains love would hide

and prove this world a most unworthy store.

Let no man dare to think my mortal heart

could love you so without some deathless part

Sonnet 2 (this sonnet is what some might consider "unconventional")

Oh yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.

What errant words are mine so often mean.

So nothing holding, faction fiction, dressed

to make the part listen just to glean

some right decision that does not exist,

so all I say is all my saying seems

just yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.

What points I've missed have sharpened other dreams

which nothing are, so nothing also hold,

dissolve upon my tongue like sugar cubes

and so I drink the thoughts I've never told

and drink away the drowning drunkard blues.

This love of dreams has often lead me toward

a hope of happy ships I'll never board.

Sonnet 3 (This one I was unable to finish, so the last few lines are simply improvised)

When next you ask me why I love you so,

I'll start by humming songs in winter wind.

The whistle high, the beating cold and low, 

and little wasps of snow that sting within.

and why the wind, the cracked and whispered song?

because these are my thoughts when I'm alone

and promises are carried on them long,

and you have kept them, ev'n as winter's gone.

So finishing my hymn to earthly woes

I'd pick the song up with a chirp and charm

to give you just a sense of how I go

from stone to song-bird with you on my arm.

I let the breeze of spring restore me to

the me you've come to know as just for you.

Sonnet 4 (The iambic pentameter in this sonnet is contingent on the pronunciation of "natural" which I pronounce with two syllables [nat'ral] instead of three [na-tu-ral] and as Dr. Sexson might notice, this is a very revised version of the fourth sonnet I sent to him. I hope he finds it improved.)

To know my face might make this hard to read.

You do not know my mouth to birth such thoughts.

I'm not a natural poem in body breathed,

but purpose bent against my nature's lot.

My voice will lack a lyric's steady course.

It waivers with tremendous things to tell

when nothing yet important begs its force,

the anxious boy untimely tolls his bell.

But sickened having held so long my tongue,

against what reason fools like me posses,

and even though this bell be best un-rung

I'm speaking now, despite what might seem best.  

I love you, truly, swear by life I do.

no truer thing could any say to you.

Sonnet 5 (Which I just completed as I arrived home, working with the original line and sentiment from the 2nd 3rd and 4th)

Come, and let's on grassy hilltops meet,

and let me tell you things that make no sense,

so you can laugh at me and run your sweet

young fingers, dipped in polish, 'long the fence.

I would that I could ever make you smile

and dance within your'n eyes as you do now,

but well I know that after aging while

you'll grow too tired for games and straining vows.

But even then I'll love you just as much.

Of all my dreams you're still the only one

that, ere I gave it breath of life, as such

sweet air, like sugar, melted on my tongue.

So often I have wished us both to be

but figures in a dream of you and me.

Sonnet 6 (Which I have added so that Dr. Sexson also has something entirely new to read, and because I told him about one of the lines in this previously unfinished sonnet [which is, much like sonnet 3, not exactly finished, but meets the structural requirements])

The beat of painted wings is in my chest;
The tremble of the troubled heart in bass;
the thrumming threads of thought have come to rest
while sounds from deeper recess take their place.
I wish that poems could give my love a score;
the beat of skipping feat that drum the grass,
But nobody reads sonnets anymore.
The more I write, the more I play the ass.
I'd like to sing to you and you alone
but one is too much audience to ask
when all I have to offer is a poem
and I've been told you have no time for that. 
Instead, much as I'd like my poems to speak,
they often linger stagnant in my cheek.


Let us remove the second sonnet for a second, since it is not about love. The remaining sonnets all seem very different, clearly, but they don't actually represent any difference in feeling. It is less accurate to say that I feel all of these different takes on one emotion at various times than to say that I generally feel them all at once, from the lighter 5th sonnet, to the more self conscious 4th, and all the way across the spectrum to the somewhat violent 1st, I feel the same, but it is necessary for me to view the same feeling through different lenses. Perhaps it is more accurate to use the analogy of a brain, since each part or regioin represents a different sub-function of one entity which must necessarily function as a whole. But I don't like analyzing myself much more than I like other people analyzing me, so I'm going to stop there. I hope somebody enjoyed something of it. 

We're having pun now!

forgive the most awful pun in the title, had to make it as cheesy as possible, because I am about to take all of the fun out of puns for you by explaining a few I made to my friends this weekend, and we all know that the fun is lost when you have to explain the pun.

I started off my weekend by thinking about Dr. Sexon's pun "the pun is mightier than the sword" and I decided I would reconfigure it a little to say "The pun is mightier than these words." I will now explain this little manipulation to the fullest, thereby sucking all the joy from it. as one can see, the original statement is still there in "The pun is mightier than these words." but it is clearly "translated." What I have done here is as such: in punning off of the original phrase, which is "the pen is mightier than the sword" I have brought to the readers mind the power of language. Simple enough obviously. Now let's look at the more refined part. This is in itself a pun is it not? so how then can the pun be mightier than these words? These words are a pun. The implication I'm making here is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Then all we have to do is put those two things together, and we've got the meaning of the pun. Language is most powerful when the work produced is greater than the sum of its rhetorical devices. Any hack can throw allusions and puns and metaphors into a piece, but what is special is when these things serve a purpose that cannot be dissected with the rhetoric, but rather works on a sort of subconscious level. It has to explain itself, but most indirectly.

Next joke I made I was very happy about, because it involved making fun of one of my friends, and I did so by manipulating her into saying more or less what I wanted to say just so I could make a joke. How did I do this you ask? We were having a conversation, and she, being the stereotypical bio-major, was complaining about all of her homework. I told her, "I think you should just become an English major so that you can stop complaining about homework all the time." She was quick to tell me that that was a "dumb" idea. I then told her that "Science is dumb" knowing full well that she would say "you're dumb" or something to that effect. Even better. She said "You're dumb for saying science is dumb." Oh man, excited. my response was as such: "No, dear Erin, that is a contradiction in itself. If I were dumb I could not have said anything for, dumb meaning mute, and mute meaning unable to speak, Simply by saying 'science is dumb' I have disproved you. Moreover, by the same logic, I say that science is dumb because, unlike English, it just doesn't speak to me."   Yes, this is a two layer joke. English speaks because it is a language, and because I like it. Science, conversely does not speak to me, quite obviously, because I don't like it as well. Or at least that is the joke, though I do have a rather strong appreciation for science.

On to word play number 3, which came about just today. It just so happens that I love to think about the "positive" actions of negatives, such as the effects silence on a conversation, or how vacuums suck, despite the fact that a vacuum is in itself not a thing, but a lack of anything essentially. Things like this are quite entertaining to me, so Shakespeare and Fred Turner discussing the fact that "Nothing matters" with such attention to it's "positive" applications really struck a chord with me. I was thinking about why Bottom calls his dream "Bottom's dream, because it hath no bottom." and I reasoned it out thus: do your dreams have you, or do you have your dreams? You have your dreams, not the other way around; therefore, Bottom's dream hath no Bottom because Bottom hath it. Truly, Bottom is not in his own "dream" because instead of Bottom, there is an ass (gotta love those synonyms). Then I started thinking about bottomless things (bottomless being the nothing I was discussing earlier), and my friends again pulled through for me, one saying "my professor's knowledge about [something that I've already forgotten regarding anthropology] is seriously bottomless." and then I said, being the ass that I am, "we are all bottomless with regards to knowledge. The only difference between us is that some of us are bottomless wells, and others bottomless vessels. Some of us have infinite storage space, and others can't retain a thing." I was pretty proud of that one for being as on the spot as it was.

 And that about sums up my exciting weekend.

What's so wrong with that?

        Our discussion about the relationship between engagement and detachment in class on Friday kind of had me thinking about something Dr. Sexson brought up in mythologies a couple autumns ago. It was a small piece of the Mahabharata in which Arjuna was sort of communing with his god, and he was learning the nature of those very things: engagement and detachment. In this little excerpt Arjuna is about to go into battle against a band of his relations, and he doesn't want to have to kill them all. However, it simply has to happen. As Arjuna is talking to the god, it is made clear that all outcome is irrelevant, and everybody will just be reincarnated anyway, so there is no reason to fear action (engagement). The whole point is to act for the sake of action, and DETACH one's self from the outcome, since it is ultimately inconsequential. Sound familiar? Like maybe, if all the world was a stage, and all the men and women merely players? How inconsequential one's actions seem when one realizes that he or she has had their entrance, and will have their exit soon enough, and the only thing that is really worth doing is putting on a good show for the audience, and the other players. So Arjuna looks upon the face of his god, and he understands that he must go kill his cousins, not because of fate necessarily, but because it is action! It is the engaged course that is necessary, and if he does not engage, then he has not detached himself from the outcome, and if he is not detached, then he has not even achieved the second stage of enlightenment (there are four stages). In other words, just to break the cycle of reincarnation, one must necessarily learn this lesson in the buddhist tradition, despite how impossible it may seem to a western culture.
          This idea is actually a bit scary for many people. What are it's implications? There is another quote that I like that is tenuously related to the subject, by a man named Stephen Jenkins, from a band called Third Eye Blind (the song is called Good Man) in which he says "Life is pointless, but what's so wrong with that?" I find this to be quite insightful, despite the dismal feeling it may give many people, it just means that one must act for the sake of action; one must play his or her part on the stage to the best of their ability. That's all really. It might seem to conflict with the religious views of many, but I think it would just be a slippery slope to touch upon the subject, and unnecessarily insensitive at that, but what is important is that, despite what people believe, they may as well get to acting, and portray whichever type of character they want to be! Pointless or not, we will all have a legacy for at least a generation or two, most likely, and who really wants to go down as the antagonist?
          The point I'm trying to make is...there's simply no point.