Volta project, week two :)

Okay, second week  J  Here’s sonnet eight:

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VIII

  Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?

  Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:

  Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,

  Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?

  If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,

  By unions married, do offend thine ear,

  They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds

  In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.

  Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,

  Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;

  Resembling sire and child and happy mother,

  Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing:

    Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,

    Sings this to thee: 'Thou single wilt prove none.'

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The first line shows you how beautiful an interrogative can be  J  The whole first quatrain is an interrogative, the second quatrain an indicative, the third an indicative lightly disguised by the opening mark how.  The closing couplet is a relative clause … where’s the volta?  I’ll go with the mark at the beginning of the ninth line.

And Shakespeare’s into Math again (he did that thing with the ten and the ten times ten on Saturday) … in today’s sonnet, he reminds me of the following bit from the first part of Goethe’s Faust:

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Du mußt versteh’n!

Aus Eins mach Zehn,

Und Zwei laß geh’n,

Und Drei mach gleich,

So bist Du reich.

Verlier die Vier!

Aus Fünf und Sechs,

So sagt die Hex’,

Mach Sieben und Acht,

So ist's vollbracht:

Und Neun ist Eins,

Und Zehn ist keins.

Das ist das Hexen-Einmaleins!

Volta project: One week down! :)

I made it through the whole of the first week without skipping a single day  J  Which is good, because I have 22 weeks’ worth of poetry and only five spare days.  Sonnet seven:

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VII

  Lo! in the orient when the gracious light

  Lifts up his burning head, each under eye

  Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,

  Serving with looks his sacred majesty;

  And having climb'd the steep-up heavenly hill,

  Resembling strong youth in his middle age,

  Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,

  Attending on his golden pilgrimage:

  But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,

  Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,

  The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are

  From his low tract, and look another way:

    So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon:

    Unlook'd, on diest unless thou get a son.

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The whole thing is really in the indicative, but the first word of the poem changes it all to one large imperative.  The volta is the but at the beginning of line 9, and he uses the closing couplet to drive home the metaphor.  More detailed notes some day …

Volta project, day six

Back from Ann Arbor.  Here’s sonnet six:

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VI

  Then let not winter's ragged hand deface,

  In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill'd:

  Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place

  With beauty's treasure ere it be self-kill'd.

  That use is not forbidden usury,

  Which happies those that pay the willing loan;

  That's for thy self to breed another thee,

  Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;

  Ten times thy self were happier than thou art,

  If ten of thine ten times refigur'd thee:

  Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,

  Leaving thee living in posterity?

    Be not self-will'd, for thou art much too fair

    To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.

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Hiding the indicative (and the math!) between a pair of imperatives and an interrogative  J

The volta is … the for in the penultimate line? 

And:  The last line really carries some serious weight!

The fifth turn

Driving to Ann Arbor to pick up my daughter  J  Here’s the fifth one:

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V

  Those hours, that with gentle work did frame

  The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,

  Will play the tyrants to the very same

  And that unfair which fairly doth excel;

  For never-resting time leads summer on

  To hideous winter, and confounds him there;

  Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,

  Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness every where:

  Then were not summer's distillation left,

  A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,

  Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,

  Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was:

    But flowers distill'd, though they with winter meet,

    Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

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The volta is the but at the beginning of the closing couplet.  The whole poem is beautiful in its slow build-up and understatement, but I have miles to drive before I sleep, so I’ll leave now  J

Volta project, day four

Survived this morning’s test  J  Here’s the fourth sonnet:

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IV

  Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend

  Upon thy self thy beauty's legacy?

  Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,

  And being frank she lends to those are free:

  Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse

  The bounteous largess given thee to give?

  Profitless usurer, why dost thou use

  So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?

  For having traffic with thy self alone,

  Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive:

  Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,

  What acceptable audit canst thou leave?

    Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,

    Which, used, lives th' executor to be.

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Okay, I think it’s misleading to read this one in terms of quatrains.  The whole idea of quatrains in a Shakespearean sonnet is based on rhyme scheme, but I think Shakespeare is undercutting end-rhyme in this one  J  but more on that below.

If I read it two lines at a time instead, here’s what I see:

Lines 1–2 are a question;

lines 3–4 are a statement;

lines 5–6 are a question based upon the statement in lines 3–4, i.e. if A (statement), then why B (question)?;

and then:

lines 7–8 are a question;

lines 9–10 are a statement;

lines 11–12 are a question based upon the statement in lines 9–10, i.e. if C (statement), then how/what D (question)?.

See a pattern here, anyone?  J

And now about the rhymes:  If I look at each of those six couplets individually, then there’s no end-rhyme at all within any one of the six couplets!  Zero! 

That’s what I meant when I said Shakespeare is kind of undercutting end-rhyme in this one  J  This might even be related with the fact that three of the lines—lines 1, 5, and 7—are not even end-stopped (that each of these three is the first line of a couplet and enjambs into the respective second line of that couplet).

Of course, he is putting end-rhyme to a different use:  The couplets are linked to each other because each line rhymes with a line in a different couplet.

And the closing couplet is an exception to all of the above, but I think that serves to make the volta stand out:  I think the volta here is as late as the used in the last line.

He does it with mirrors

Hard homework day.  Taking a test tomorrow a.m.  Let’s make this short+sweet.

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III

  Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest

  Now is the time that face should form another;

  Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,

  Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.

  For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb

  Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

  Or who is he so fond will be the tomb,

  Of his self-love to stop posterity?

  Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee

  Calls back the lovely April of her prime;

  So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,

  Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.

    But if thou live, remember'd not to be,

    Die single and thine image dies with thee.

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Lesson in the first quatrain:  Hide the indicative inside an imperative.

Second quatrain:  Interrogatives always work.

Volta:  The but if at the beginning of line 13.

More tomorrow p.m. (after test).

Volta project, day 2

The second sonnet:

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II

  When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,

  And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,

  Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,

  Will be a tatter'd weed of small worth held:

  Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,

  Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;

  To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,

  Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.

  How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use,

  If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine

  Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,'

  Proving his beauty by succession thine!

    This were to be new made when thou art old,

    And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

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So:  A time travel to the future in the first quatrain  J  And, in the second quatrain, a statement—in the indicative—of a problem that would assume shape at that future time, then a resolution in the subjunctive in the third quatrain.  The couplet is just a summary of the resolution, but does have the nice oppositions new/old and warm/cold in the two lines.  The volta is the if in line 10.

Minor aside:  The same time machine is used very differently by Yeats in this beauty:

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When You are Old

By W.B. Yeats

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

The volta project

In 2012, Jim told us, “A sonnet is all about turns.”

Then I realized—late in 2012 and early in 2013—that I didn’t quite understand what constitutes a turn in a sonnet, so I asked Jim this summer, and so he showed me his copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets.  That book had obviously seen a lot of use  J  Among other things, Jim had gone through all 154, marking the places that he might call turns.

So I thought I’d do that this year, marking the turns, taking note of the prosody (since iambic pentameter is also something I’m trying to learn), and generally paying attention to what exactly can be done in a sonnet (and how).

There are 154 sonnets, and there are 159 days left before poems for next summer are due, so I think I’ll start now  J  Here’s the first one:

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I

  From fairest creatures we desire increase,

  That thereby beauty's rose might never die,

  But as the riper should by time decease,

  His tender heir might bear his memory:

  But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,

  Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,

  Making a famine where abundance lies,

  Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:

  Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,

  And only herald to the gaudy spring,

  Within thine own bud buriest thy content,

  And tender churl mak'st waste in niggarding:

    Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

    To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

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Okay, so first a quatrain in indicative that’s indicating what the “we” desires (and why), then another quatrain in indicative saying what the “thou” does (which is in conflict with what the “we” desires), then a third quatrain—in vocative!—that’s pretty much repeating the second quatrain with a different set of metaphors, then a couplet in the imperative.  The “or else” in line 13 would be the volta. 

A secondary (minor) feature that catches my eye:  The “we” of the first line becomes the “world” of the ending couplet, i.e. “We are the world”  J

From "Much Ado About Nothing"

"Sigh No More"

By William Shakespeare

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more.

    Men were deceivers ever,

One foot in sea, and one on shore,

    To one thing constant never.

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

    And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

    Into hey nonny, nonny.

Sigh no more ditties, sing no more

    Of dumps so dull and heavy.

The fraud of men was ever so

    Since summer first was leafy.

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

    And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

    Into hey, nonny, nonny.

Shakespeare, again

From the last act of As You Like It:

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"It Was a Lover and His Lass"

By William Shakespeare

It was a lover and his lass,

   With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,

That o’er the green cornfield did pass,

   In springtime, the only pretty ring time,

When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;

Sweet lovers love the spring.

Between the acres of the rye,

   With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,

Those pretty country folks would lie,

   In springtime, the only pretty ring time,

When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;

Sweet lovers love the spring.

This carol they began that hour,

   With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,

How that a life was but a flower

   In springtime, the only pretty ring time,

When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;

Sweet lovers love the spring.

And therefore take the present time,

   With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,

For love is crownèd with the prime

   In springtime, the only pretty ring time,

When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;

Sweet lovers love the spring. 

More Shakespeare

Ariel’s song from the end of The Tempest:

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"Where the Bee Sucks, There Suck I"

By William Shakespeare

Where the bee sucks, there suck I:

In a cowslip’s bell I lie;

There I couch when owls do cry.

On the bat’s back I do fly

After summer merrily.  

Merrily, merrily shall I live now

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

A personal Shakespeare favorite :)

From Two Gentlemen of Verona:

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"Who is Silvia?"

By William Shakespeare

Who is Silvia? what is she,

    That all our swains commend her?

Holy, fair, and wise is she;

    The heaven such grace did lend her,

That she might admirèd be.

Is she kind as she is fair?

    For beauty lives with kindness.

Love doth to her eyes repair,

    To help him of his blindness;

And, being helped, inhabits there.

Then to Silvia let us sing,

    That Silvia is excelling;

She excels each mortal thing

    Upon the dull earth dwelling;

To her let us garlands bring.

Shakespeare!

From Twelfth Night:

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"Come Away, Come Away, Death"

By William Shakespeare

Come away, come away, death,

    And in sad cypress let me be laid.

Fly away, fly away, breath;

    I am slain by a fair cruel maid.

My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,

             O, prepare it!

My part of death, no one so true

         Did share it.

Not a flower, not a flower sweet,

    On my black coffin let there be strown.

Not a friend, not a friend greet

    My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown.

A thousand thousand sighs to save,

             Lay me, O, where

Sad true lover never find my grave,

             To weep there!

Rhyming on Black Mountain

Here’s Creeley with endrhyme:

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A Wicker Basket

By Robert Creeley

Comes the time when it’s later

and onto your table the headwaiter  

puts the bill, and very soon after

rings out the sound of lively laughter—

Picking up change, hands like a walrus,  

and a face like a barndoor’s,

and a head without any apparent size,  

nothing but two eyes—

So that’s you, man,

or me. I make it as I can,  

I pick up, I go

faster than they know—

Out the door, the street like a night,  

any night, and no one in sight,  

but then, well, there she is,

old friend Liz—

And she opens the door of her cadillac,  

I step in back,

and we’re gone.

She turns me on—

There are very huge stars, man, in the sky,

and from somewhere very far off someone hands me a slice of apple pie,

with a gob of white, white ice cream on top of it,  

and I eat it—

Slowly. And while certainly

they are laughing at me, and all around me is racket  

of these cats not making it, I make it

in my wicker basket.

Creeley

How to write “the light at the end of the tunnel” and not sound clichéd  :)

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The Tunnel

By Robert Creeley

Tonight, nothing is long enough—

time isn’t.

Were there a fire,

it would burn now.

Were there a heaven,

I would have gone long ago.

I think that light

is the final image.

But time reoccurs,

love—and an echo.

A time passes

love in the dark.

Things to see on Black Mountain

What Black Mountain poet Robert Duncan saw:

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What I Saw

                

By Robert  Duncan

The white peacock roosting  

might have been Christ,

         featherd robe of Osiris,

the radiant bird, a sword-flash,

         percht in the tree

and the other,    the fumed-glass slide

       —were like night and day,

the slit of an eye opening in

         time

vertical to the horizon