Sonnet (1979)

(American Treasures: Gee's Bend, Alabama, Quilts, U. S.
postage stamps, 2006)

In her review of The Complete Poems (1927-1979) of Elizabeth Bishop, the poet Adrienne Rich wrote that “Bishop left behind, in the last unpublished poem of the last year of her life, her own last word on division, decision, and questions of travel.”

Bishop’s own title for this poem (below) insists it is a sonnet.

It may not look like a sonnet. It is much too narrow. The lines are short, without the traditional iambic pentameter of five pairs of short/long, unstressed/stressed meters, of ten syllables per line.

It may not sound like a sonnet, either. The rhyme is eccentric, with only three pairs of rhymes, each irregularly spaced between the rhyme of one line and its mate. For example, the word “level” of line 2 rhymes with “bevel” of line 11.

And its two stanzas are reversed, with the sestet preceding rather than following the octave.

But its length is the required fourteen lines. Most important, it does follow the structure and intention of a sonnet in establishing its theme, in this case first posing the problem, “Caught,” then proposing an answer, “Freed.”

SONNET (1979)

Caught — the bubble
in the spirit level,
a creature divided;
and the compass needle
wobbling and wavering,
undecided.
Freed — the broken
thermometer’s mercury
running away;
and the rainbow-bird
from the narrow bevel
of the empty mirror,
flying wherever
it feels like, gay!

~ Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), American poet

**********************************************************

As promised, here are the answers to yesterday’s sonnet-riddle.

SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET

by R. S. Gwynne

A man is haunted by his father's ghost.
Hamlet

Boy meets girl while feuding families fight.
Romeo and Juliet

A Scottish king is murdered by his host.
Macbeth

Two couples get lost on a summer night.
A Midsummer Night’s Eve

A hunchback murders all who block his way.
Richard III

A ruler's rivals plot against his life.
Richard II

A fat man and a prince make rebels pay.
Henry IV

A noble Moor has doubts about his wife.
Othello

An English king decides to conquer France.
Henry V

A duke learns that his best friend is a she.
Twelfth Night

A forest sets the scene for this romance.
As You Like It

An old man and his daughters disagree.
King Lear

A Roman leader makes a big mistake.
Julius Caesar

A sexy queen is bitten by a snake.
Antony and Cleopatra

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I Am in Need of Music

(Four Musical Angels by Bernardo Daddi, circa 1280-1348,
Early Italian Renaissance painter)

As we see with Millay’s “On Hearing a Symphony of Beethoven” yesterday and today’s verse by Elizabeth Bishop, the sonnet, the “little sound” or “song,” is particularly well suited, with its length and rhythm and rhyme, to celebrate the magic made by music.

I AM IN NEED OF MUSIC

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

~ Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), American poet, appointed poet laureate 1949-1950

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Letter to N.Y.

(Elizabeth Bishop, poet laureate, 1949-1950)

LETTER TO N.Y.

For Louise Crane

In your next letter I wish you’d say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays, and after the plays
what other pleasures you’re pursuing:

taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,

and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you’re in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,

and most of the jokes you just can’t catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,

and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.

— Wheat, not oats, dear. I’m afraid
if it’s wheat it’s none of your sowing,
nevertheless I’d like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.

~ Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), American poet

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A Word with You

(Bright Objects Hypnotize the Mind,
the poster for the celebration of this
year's National Poetry Month, by
Stephen Doyle, found at www.poets.org)

We begin this month’s festivities with the source of the line quoted in the poster above.

A WORD WITH YOU

Look out! there’s that damned ape again
sit silently until he goes,
or else forgets the things he knows
(whatever they are) about us, then
we can begin to talk again.

Have you tried playing with your ring?
Sometimes that calms them down, I find.
(Bright objects hypnotize the mind.)
Get his attention on anything —
anything will do — there, try your ring.

The glitter pleases him. You see
he squints his eyes; his lip hangs loose.
You were saying? — Oh Lord, what’s the use,
for now the parrot’s after me
and the monkeys are awake. You see

how hard it is, you understand
this nervous strain in which we live —
Why just one luscious adjective
infuriates the whole damned band
and they’re squabbling for it. I understand

some people manage better. How?
They treat the creatures without feeling.
— Throw books to stop the monkeys’ squealing,
slap the ape and make him bow,
are firm, keep order, — but I don’t know how.

Quick! there’s the cockatoo! he heard!
(He can’t bear any form of wit.)
— Please watch out that you don’t get bit;
there’s not a thing escapes that bird.
Be silent, — now the ape has overheard.

~ Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), American poet laureate 1949-1950

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One Art

(Lark’s Wing, Encircled with Golden
Blue, Rejoins the Heart of the Poppy
Sleeping on a Diamond-Studded Meadow
by Joan Miró, 1893-1983, Spanish painter,
ceramist, and sculptor)

This poem is a villanelle, named after the Latin villa or country estate or farm. It is a lyric poetic form believed to have started as the round-songs of farm workers. The rhyme is set in lines one and three and then repeated in each three-line or tercet verse, until the last stanza, a quatrain with an added refrain line.

ONE ART

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

— Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

~ Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), American poet

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