I'm Back With a Sonnet...

Sorry for disappearing without a word. Life has been hectic lately... Anyway, this was a piece I produced out of a night of absolute torment. It's pretty meaningful to me... hopefully others will get something out of it (forgive my liberal screwing with the sonnet form):

Moving Mountains

I swear I saw the mountains move, if just
An inch, but maybe more. But does it matter
To the moors, asleep on valley’s floor?
That river dines on empty dreams. It’s fatter
Now, or though it seems. It loves to lust
And smell the scents of flower-honeyed whores.
The wind winds down the rolling hills to touch
The planes of grass that tremble to their roots
And spirits come at leisure, when it suits
Their pleasure. I swear, I know, it’s all too much.
And nature hears the gods and bend their wills
To becks and calls. While silence reigns in man’s
Own mind: in winter light and buried sands
That dim the darkening glass of Autumn’s chill.
Oh, I believe in what I see and hear and smell
And taste: And yet I fear to fall, and feel your hell

First, welcome back. Second, I loved this at first it was hard to read aloud, I kept getting the hickups and what not, but after re reading it I really enjoyed it.

"I swear I saw the mountains move, if just
An inch, but maybe more. But does it matter
To the moors, asleep on valley’s floor? "

that was my favorite part of it. Something about the word "moors" tends to drag me into poems.

Welcome back Morpheus! :angel: it has been long (for us who waited for you!) and your voice is powerful as always.

Your daunting sonnet reads to me as one great metaphor of N's inner state of being, full with kept passions and dreams: not empty, for beauty is present though the N is aware of beauty dangers: the moor in N's desire becomes a lustful plain intoxicating with irresistible scents and colours, and N is tempted to live fully while afraid to discover hell (utter disappointment) instead...

But do I have it all wrong?... Well, let's see what others say.

I immensely enjoyed reading your sonnet, it has a strong effect/impact - and for me:

"And nature hears the gods and bend their wills
To becks and calls."

made the poem for me!

Thank you for this and for coming back!

Warm regards - Bar

wow this one was really beautiful Morph.

"That river dines on empty dreams" that line really resonated with me.

Hi Morpheus and welcome back.

On the whole I like this poem, as a poem. It scans and reads well but I’m afraid that it does not communicate a coherent message to me. I’m not in touch with the essential Morpheus!

Also it seems to contain contradictions:

“But does it matter
To the moors, asleep on valley’s floor?”

To me moors are associated with uplands and high ground. While there may be valleys on moors, in context, moors asleep on valley’s floor produces a linguistic dichotomy which confuses rather than elucidates.

“And nature hears the gods and bend their wills
To becks and calls.”

The expression, ‘beck and call…’ I have never seen pluralized. Therefore the extraneous esses confuse meaning. As a 'beck' is a dialect word for stream I am wondering if this is a deliberate play on words. Are you saying nature bends its will to streams and calls, or are you saying that nature repeatedly beckons and calls?

I’m afraid that I always have trouble with the more metaphysical poems, being of a somewhat literal turn of mind, hence my queries, so please bear with me.

Regards, H

Morpheus, Welcome back!

I have forgotten how visual your writing is; you have created very many vivid images to conceptualize your abstract notion of the dichotomy between nature/God and man's limitation in this realm? Something like that.

Loved this line:
It loves to lust
And smell the scents of flower-honeyed whores.

Again, good to see you around here. It was kind of quiet.

Let me join the chorus of those who welcome you back - and back with this triumphant poem. I don't get the "you" in the final line: is it all of us who read it, as in Baudelaire's famous "Et toi, hypocrite lecteur - mon ami, mon frere"* or rather, thanks to the references to "whore" to some woman who embittered you? But if so, there's no other preparation for reading it that way, but what magnificent meter and rhyme.

*The Baudelaire line is as I googled it, though I had remembered it as "Et toi, hypocrite lecteur - mon semblable, mon frere" (Emphasis added)

I had forgotten how much I love to read the commentary of posters on here. It's always so varied in terms of tastes, criticisms, and readings. I think I knew when I was writing this it would be one of my more subjective and abstract pieces that people would probably read very differently. I was only vaguely aware of a few core ideas I wanted to run through the whole thing.

@Revolte: Those lines were the first that came to me and they essentially inspired the rest that followed.

@Bar: Oh, how I've missed your eloquent and insightful readings of mine and others' poems! Your reading is actually quite closely related to some of the things I wanted to express so it's certainly not irrelevant or in any way "wrong".

@Alex: Thanks very much. You, probably more than anyone, knows how much work I put into my sonnets.

@Hawkman: Actually, I'd commend you for your almost piercing insights! The dual meaning of "becks" is one I didn't think many would get, so good catch! Actually, the very theme of paradox is kinda at the heart of this piece. Lately I've been absorbed in the films of Krzysztof Kieslowski and his cinema is all about pondering the co-existence of conflicting forces; chance VS destiny, spirituality VS reality, the world as we experience it tangibly VS the world that we sense intangibly. So I tried to play with different paradoxes and extremes throughout. I will admit that I simply didn't know moors usually rested in highlands, so that was just a mistake.

As for "becks and calls", I've also only ever heard it singular, but I simply liked the phonetics of the pluralization.

@jersea: Thanks very much, and I'm flattered to know I've been missed.

@Prince: I'm debating on whether just answering who the "you" is whether it's better left unsaid. I guess I can say it's not someone specific - though I wouldn't mind that reading since I do think this could be taken as a very abstract lament of a lover - but rather a group or, perhaps more accurately, the embodiment of an abstract group of ideas. Really, the penultimate line is the key to understanding who the "you" is.

I read it about three more times to try and squeeze some meaning from the torrent of lyrical images, and I can only guess that it has something to do with society or classism? There are these repeated references to heights, like mountains, gods, winds, and lows like valleys, rivers, grass. The mountains move, but don't seem to care how that effects the lowly moors, and then this river, which I assume is running through the valley, seems to be parasitic. It eats dreams and lusts for whores, right? It seems to be a cynical mockery of the dichotomy between upper and lower classes, or maybe that's just me seeing the world through Rand tainted goggles? It might not even be about separate entities drifting apart, it might be about a single person torn and spread, an internal structure, like an ecosystem, a fundamental whole is slowly unwinding itself. Well, whatever it is about, it still one of my favorites.

It is good, a message from the mountains. I have heard of them.
It is also good to have you back. Must I, on faith, believe that
mountains move? I have not seen it...peace...

Morpheus, thanks for your reply, I now have a much better idea where you're coming from and can better appreciate a very artful peice of writing. H

Good to have you back Morpheus.

So, when is a sonnet not a sonnet? This 16-line poem has an usual, inverted, rhyme scheme. The first six lines open as a standard sonnet sestet could end, before two enveloped, Petrachan quatrains, volta at line 10, and a rhyming couplet of iambic hexameter to finish. It flows nicely, helped by the enjambment, although there are some bumps: 'the becks and calls' as Hawkman mentioned; the 'wind winds' slows the reader; and I wasn't keen on the internal 'leisure - pleasure' rhyme.

There is clearly an air of desperation to this, which comes through the emphatic, exclamative lyrical interjections, particularly at lines 10 and 15-16. And, with it being an 'extended' sonnet, I suppose you could say it's as if the narrator is forcing his way out of the conventions of traditions, or isn't aware of his emotions overflowing, like Lear raging in the storm.

But for me, the emotion of the piece is the problem. I think it's just too abstract and 'scattergun' - with its religious, mythical and natural allusions - and not concrete enough. Reading it, it seems odd that you find 'mountains', 'rivers', 'wind wind[ing] down the rolling hills' etc, 'all too much'. This means the narrator has to tell the reader his emotions too directly, so the reader has some idea of what's going on - particularly at line 10, which I think is the poem's main weakness.

Other minor issues: the opening has unfortunate connotations of a cartoon canary being harassed by a black and white 'puddy cat'; I don't know why you've missed out the definite article before "valley's" in line 3; and saying 'that' river (line 4) is slightly problematic in that you've not mentioned a river before.

But still, it's formally inventive, as I've come to expect form your writing, and an imaginative piece.

I appreciate the intricate in-and-out rhyme structure here. Very impressive. Some of the lines here are very effective, such as the lines about the sea feeding off streams and becoming fatter. I'm afraid I can't figure out the meaning, though! Maybe my brain's just turned to mush.

Some sods can say I'm soppy, but I've always been a sucker for sonnets!

@Muggy: Hehe, I love your interpretation. I wouldn't want to spoil it by saying I hadn't intended those things, because I actually think most are rather abstractly related to what I was going for anyway. You certainly caught the contrast between "highs and lows", which, obviously, a ton of polar opposites could fit into that archetype. But I love that you were even willing to put so much thought into my manic musings!

@hack: In the brief span of a mere 13 words I think you've rather summed up the core of what I intended with this. :)

@Hawkman: Thanks!

@Il Dante: Thanks for reading. I love sonnets; mostly because of expressive possibilities that the form provides. There's so much that can be done in 14 lines and mixing sestet/octet in tercets or quatrains, rhyme schemes, volta, closing couplets, etc.

@blank verse: I've truly missed your eloquent, insightful, and constructive criticism, my friend! You are a tough cookie to impress and you always help me to be more aware of what I write.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blank|verse

the 'wind winds' slows the reader; and I wasn't keen on the internal 'leisure - pleasure' rhyme.

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I didn't think the spondee of "wind winds" would interfere that much since it's the start of a new tercet (or the second half of the sestet, if you prefer). I think "slowing down" is more a problem if it comes in the middle of a thought rather than the beginning or ending. Of course, it can be used for various purposes in the middle too, but I think it's it simply punctuates when at the beginning or ending.

Besides the cheap rhyme, I actually thought "leisure / pleasure" were integral in getting across what I was saying there.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blank|verse

I think it's just too abstract and 'scattergun' - with its religious, mythical and natural allusions - and not concrete enough. Reading it, it seems odd that you find 'mountains', 'rivers', 'wind wind[ing] down the rolling hills' etc, 'all too much'. This means the narrator has to tell the reader his emotions too directly, so the reader has some idea of what's going on - particularly at line 10, which I think is the poem's main weakness.

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Well, I almost always prefer the abstract to the concrete. Probably because when you move towards the abstract you really open up room for interpretation. And I often think trying to pin abstract feelings into things more concrete often doesn't work to create the feeling of what you're trying to express.

FWIW, it's not the nature itself that's "all too much", but what the speaker sees or feels behind it all. Pretty much every section introduces an element of perversity into the natural beauty/order of things. And I also thought the "too much" was less an expression of the speaker's feelings and more a self-conscious commentary of what's being described.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blank|verse

the opening has unfortunate connotations of a cartoon canary being harassed by a black and white 'puddy cat'; I don't know why you've missed out the definite article before "valley's" in line 3; and saying 'that' river (line 4) is slightly problematic in that you've not mentioned a river before.

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LOL! I honestly never, ever thought that the opening would evoke Tweety and Sylvester! Wasn't his "I thought I saw"? I left out the article mostly for rhythm, but I also liked how it enhanced the idea of the valley's "ownership". Good call on that. I guess I was thinking that it made it feel as if the speaker was pointing it out visually to the reader who's also present.

Very impressive. I loved the imagery and way you painted with the words

Thanks Greymure.

A worthy sonnet from 2010... and the incredible feedback it generated.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY