Close Reading of Sonnet

[tariel]

Hello everyone. I posted this poem before with only a couple replies, so I'm going to try it again.

I've been trying to analyze/close read this poem by Dambudzo Marechera and am having trouble doing so. I'm trying to look at it without any history references. If anyone has any insight they can give, it would be greatly appreciated!

When Love's Perished
Here comes one who in silence
Howled a thousand torments;
One who behind polite phrases
Screamed terrible curses to the sky;
One whose slow measure pace to the altar
Raised more dust than buffalo stampeding -
The soft sweaty palm in limpid handshake
Hid a grizzly bear's hairy powerful claws.
But the mirror impassively denied it all.
The poem, sticky with centuries sleep
And anaemic from lack of discipline
And pallid from years' diet of political slogans
And wedged under the door between Europe and Africa,
The poem, in consternation, began to pick its stanza-lips.

Thanks in advance!

[stlukesguild]

The poem in question is a sonnet... and seemingly a poem upon the demise of the sonnet. Why not give us some of your thoughts... considering this is but your 4th posting... before we come to imagine that you are but asking us to do your homework for you?

[JBI]

I believe that is subject to copyright. Really though, the metre alone is enough to give you an insight into the poem. I think you need to try harder.

[tariel]

I'm sorry, but what is copyright? Should I edit the first post?

I wasn't going to start a thread just listing off what I think of it, I was just interested in looking for some input that wouldn't be influenced about what I had already written. I like seeing what other people have to say. Sorry if this was taken the wrong way.

[stlukesguild]

You didn't necessarily begin the wrong way... but we do get more than our share of postings from students who want nothing more than for someone else to do their homework. They are usually posted by someone with less than ten postings to the site and begin along the lines of "Hey, Guys! How do you think the the character of Hamlet represents a man of his time? Can you give me at least three examples (with proper citations) and make it three paragraphs in length."... Or something to that effect. I (and I am sure others) would be more than glad to discuss specific works of literature (something we need more of here). Throw out a few thoughts on the poem and I am sure you will have more responses of the sort that you are seeking.

As for copyright... if the poem was written post 1923... or the translation in the case of translated works... you cannot post the entire work without the author/translator's permission. The usual way around this is to post an excerpt and a link to a site where one can find the entire poem. In the case of a translation, you should also credit the translator as well.

[vagantes]

Astonish me!

Why is this poem a sonnet?

[mono]

Astonish me!

Why is this poem a sonnet?

This sonnet has recently appeared in a few threads, but seems a less-of-a-kind, unique sonnet. When most people think of a sonnet, they think of big names like Shakespeare, Petrarch, Barrett-Browning, or Spenser, but they wrote with popular structures, such as the English sonnet (Shakespearean) or the Italian sonnet (Petrarchan). A sonnet must only have 14 lines, usually addressed of/to some single idea, object, person, etc., but it does not necessarily have to rhyme; Auden, for one, wrote several sonnets without rhyme.

[vagantes]

There are in poetry fixed forms and those which are not fixed forms. A sonnet is a fixed strophic form which has elaborate scheme(s) of rhyme and logical relationships. It seeks to achieve balance between matter and form.

The various types of sonnet can easily be researched, but essentially it is constructed in a way which is analogous to the actions of inhaling and exhaling (not regularly but quantitatively unequal) in way which provides a moment of release for the reader as he or she reads the poem. Another way of putting it is that there is complication followed by resolution.

The fact that the poem under discussion has fourteen lines in no way qualifies it as a sonnet.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I would have thought that it was a sonnet based upon the Italian form, there is a clear break of 8/6 lines with the second part beginning "But the mirror..." offering some sort of resolution to the opening 8? If we take Stlukes angle on it being of the breakdown of the sonnet form (I have only read it quickly last week, no time now) then could we not make a case for this breakdown in form being apparent in the actually structure of the poem itself?

[vagantes]

So- if you wanted to write a poem about the failure of poetry then following the logic of the last poster the poem should be written in prose? or perhaps just doggerel?

The line beginning " But the mirror" is line 10 which makes a nonsense about the poem being divided in two parts (8 +6).

This is not a sonnet.

[stlukesguild]

According to whose rules? This is the twentieth century... not the 1600s. The poem in no way needs to conform to the strict rules of a Shakespearean or Petrarchan sonnet. Baudelaire turned the sonnet on its head creating a structure of 6 lines followed by 8. e.e. cummings scrambled the rhyme scheme all throughout... or eliminated it in total. Numerous modern poets have written sonnets with half-rhyme or no rhyme and even in un-metrical form. This poem of 14 lines most certainly follows the form of the sonnet... presenting an argument or problem in the first 8 lines and then a shift (volta) in tone presenting a resolution/solution or change in stance. By the way... the poem comes from the collection: Amelia: Sonnets and Other Poems, Cemetery of Mind... now I suppose that you might argue that the poet is wrong... or that this is one of the "other poems"... but somehow I doubt this.

By the way... the shift certainly does occur in line 9 (the final 6 lines). You have read "When Love's Perished" (the title) as one of the lines. The way the OP posted it threw me the first time I read through it as well.

[vagantes]

This is actually the twenty-first century.

The line (either 9 or 10) which you are emphasising indicates a change of tone does not function in this way. In fact, if I was being pernickety, I could say that I fail to see how it connects either with the lines before or the lines after.

A sonnet, as I carefully pointed out in my first posting, is a particular poetic form which depends upon structure for its effect.

There is a well known syllogism which demonstrates false logic as follows:

All tigers eat meat;
That animal is eating meat;
Therefore that animal is a tiger.

or if you prefer :

All sonnets have fourteen lines;
This poem has fourteen lines;
Therefore this poem is a sonnet.

And before anyone rushes for their revolvers, yes I do know that there are sonnets which have 16 lines and 12 lines (Hopkins's experiment which he called a curtal sonnet), though strictly speaking they are not sonnets at all and are (more to the point) not very good poems structurally.

In fact it might be instructive to read Hopkins's curtal sonnets to learn what happens when you break the rules. Bear in mind Hopkins's own perceptive remark about "downright prolapsus or hernia" that results from tying sestet to octave by rhyme.

Also try to understand Louis Macneice's remark: when he said: "In any poet's poem the shape is half the meaning".

Just one final peeve: what is the purpose of the apostrophe after the letter "s" in years?

[LitNetIsGreat]

For me there is a clear change in tone with the line "But the mirror impassively denied it all." Before this in the octet you have the almost animalistic aggression with words such as "Howled" "Torments" "Screamed" "Terrible" "Stampeding" "Grizzly bear's" "Powerful claws" contrast this with the calmness of the remaining lines. My angle of reading the poem would be centred around the theme of protest or rebellion, maybe looking at the differences between physical and written protests, which is where the "political slogans" comes in.

[vagantes]

The title presumably means that the place we are to consider is one without feeling or emotion.

Lines 1-4 indicate repression or a damping down of such states of being. The next four lines reinforce this thought with the ambivalence of the imagery used.

Up to this point in the poem the thinking appears weak and without complexity.

Line 9 says that reality is different from what we perceive. It says nay violently, but does it without passion thus summing up the first 8 lines, which to state the obvious are saying the same thing in reverse.

Attention in the remaining 5 lines switches to a poetic genre which seems to be suffering from a general lack of well-being, not to mention being some kind of immigrant. As a result of this condition it (the poetic genre) begins to look inwards in a critical process of self-examination presumably to determine how it has arrived in such a condition.

Where we go from there I really do not know except perhaps to say that (a) the poem is not a sonnet, (b) it is weak and and badly thought out and that (c) it is pretentious tosh.