XXXIV

Don February 11th, 2009

XXXIV 

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

 

            What is it about the Sonnet that has fascinated almost ever poet worthy of the name since Petrarch?  The Shakespearean quatrains are just the right amount of exposition to set up the punch line of the couplet with maximal effect; the Petrarchan octave and sextet rise and fall like an ocean wave when you get them just right.  Getting either is like the feeling of hitting s baseball on the nose with the sweet spot of your bat and driving it over the fence in a perfect laser shot.  Once you’ve know that feeling, you’ve got to keep swinging until you get it again.  Even if you just have a base hit to show for it, that’s something.  Is this one a pop up, a homer, or something in between?  You must be the judge.  The bat I was swinging was several new Latin words that just needed sentences around them.

 SONNET X Might Magister Merlin, sapiens,

 Of Arthur’s court, mysterious counselor, chief,

In lore more learned than all the sons of men,

Intimate, he, of water, stone, and leaf.

Moses, who on mount received the Law;

Solomon King, princeps among the wise;

Jonah, saved from out great fish’s maw,

Magi of the East who searched the skies.

Long they sought, but could not understand

Fully how their Lord had overthrown

Sin, Death, fell Satan’s rule in fallen man

By making his body the true Philosopher’s stone.

What alchemy, that!  To touch a human soul

And there to turn base mettle into gold. 

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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