Welcome! Please read some of my poetry while you’re here. Even if a post is two years old, they’re being read every day. They’re all current. Feel free to join the conversation. Lastly, treat this post as a Guest Book. Offer suggestions, improvements, requests or just say Hello! If you have a question concerning poetry or a poem, click read more at the end of this sentence and fill out the form. Continue reading →
[The Vermont Poetry Newsletter is not issued by me but by Ron Lewis, by whose permission I post this. PLEASE NOTE: I have edited his newsletter so that links are provided rather than text. If I cannot find a link, I will either omit the relevant portion of the newsletter to avoid copyright violations, or I will provide an alternate link. Please contact Ron Lewis if you would like to receive his Newsletter in full. All images are linked.]
•
Vermont Poetry Newsletter
Your Poetry & Spoken Word Gateway
In The Green Mountain State
Young Writers Project 3rd Friday Poetry Slam & Open Mic
YWP/Young Writers Project Workshops
Nikky Finney’s Award Speech
Bloodroot Reading
Craft Tip From Diane Lockward
Book — The Poetry Gymnasium: 94 Proven Exercises to Shape Your Best Verse
Books Recommended by Valparaiso Poetry Review
Programmers Make Time to Rhyme in Silicon Valley
The Art of Elizabeth Bishop: Poetry in Paint
Curbside Haiku
Peter Reading Obituary
Singer Jessica French, People of Walmart Lyrics
Poet Frost’s Home Illegally Converted to Apartments
Sonia Sanchez Becomes Philly’s First Poet Laureate
Bukowski’s 1971 Letter Outlines Terms for Poetry Reading
Burning Deck: Introducing an Appreciation
A Poem A Day: Portable, Peaceful and Perfect
Politics and Poetry: Do They Really Ever Meet in America?
A Poetry Reading by Kay Boyle (Audio)
A Poetry Reading by Clark Coolidge (Audio)
What Rhymes With ‘Undead’? Some Poets Know
Poetry Pairing: January
Urban Beat for Poetry Festival
Poetry Magazine Celebrates 100 Years
7 Recommendations by Ron Lewis: Books and Music
Great Poetry Links: Wordle
Poetry Quote – Robert Frost
Poem: I’m Explaining a Few Things (Pablo Neruda)
Copper Canyon Press Poem
Linebreak Poem
American Life in Poetry Poem
US Poets Laureate List
Vermont Poet Laureates
US Poet Laureates From Vermont
New Hampshire Poet Laureates
US Poet Laureates From New Hampshire
Contact Info for Editor/Publisher of VPN: Ron Lewis
Vermont Literary Journals
Vermont Literary Groups’ Anthologies
Vermont Poetry Blogs
State Poetry Society (PSOV)
Year-Round Poetry Workshops in Vermont
Other Poetry Workshops in Vermont
Year-Round Poetry Writing Centers in Vermont
Other Writing Groups in Vermont
Poetry Event Calendar
1.) About the Vermont Poetry Newsletter Network
The Vermont Poetry Newsletter Network is made up of people of all backgrounds, ages and skills who appreciate the craft of poetry and want to promote it in the beautiful state of Vermont. The network consists of a free e-mail list, an eventual web site, workshops, open mics, poetry performances and other literary events. The network provides opportunities to meet local poets, talk about and enjoy poetry, and motivate and inspire yourself in whatever writing projects you are involved.
The mission of the Vermont Poetry Newsletter is to foster the poetry arts community in the Green Mountain State, home to more writers and poets per capita than any other state in the nation. Its goals are to serve as a resource for and about VT poets; to support the development of individual poets; and to encourage an audience for poetry in Vermont.
Dating from 2009, the Vermont Poetry Newsletters are being archived on a blog maintained by poet Patrick Gillespie at PoemShape.
When Shakespeare was authoring plays, his play along with those by any other playwright, had to be approved by the master of revels—the Queen’s censor. The cost of doing so was born by the production company. Writing a play that flirted with morally or politically subversiveness was a dangerous game that could lead to torture and imprisonment.
At a time of unrest, when the Earl of Essex was challenging the Queen’s [Elizabeth's] authority and armed bands terrorized the streets of London, the Chamberlain’s Men [Shakespeare's company] were forbidden to perform Richard II, a play already licensed and performed, because it contains a scene in which a king is compelled to renounce his crown; in 1601, the queen’s counsellors believed that this might encourage her enemies and spark off a revolution. The theatre was taken very seriously by the authorities and was allowed to deal with political issues only if they did not refer too obviously to current affairs or seditious ideas, but were set, safely, in an earlier century or, better still, in ancient Rome or foreign countries. [John Russell Brown, Shakespeare and His Theatre (New York: Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, 1982, Page 31]
The comparison is not between “piracy” and moral and political subversion (though comparisons can be made) but the near absolute power exercised by the Master of the Revels. The bill presently being pushed by powerful industry and corporate interests is a similar, extra-judicial power grab. As the saying goes: Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Passing this bill would give industry and corporate interests the same powers (over me and you) that the Master of the Revels (and government censors throughout history) have enjoyed and exercised. Art and learning thrives through the sharing of ideas and, yes, even the theft of ideas; but a balance must be struck. There are far better ways to control piracy.
A key provision of the bill would give copyright owners the power to stop online advertisers and credit card processors from doing business with a website, merely by filing a unilateral notice that the site is “dedicated to the theft of U.S. property” — even if no court has actually found any infringement.
The immunity provisions in the bill create an overwhelming incentive for advertisers and payment processors to comply with such a request immediately upon receipt. Courts have always treated such cutoffs of revenue from speech as a suppression of that speech, and the silencing of expression in the absence of judicial review is a classic prior restraint forbidden by the First Amendment. [Laurence Tribe, Constitutional Scholar]
The freedom of expression found on the internet is unique in human history; and because of that freedom, powerful interests, both private and public, are threatened. The bill gives the U.S. government the ability to block sites using methods similar to those enjoyed by the Chinese Communist Party, and for this reason the bill is opposed by human rights organizations and a variety of legal scholars.
For now, the Internet belongs to you and me. Help keep it that way.
I’ve never been an ardent fan of Byron, even though my great grandfather, one generation removed from the Irish and Scotts, was apparently so moved by poetry and Byron in particular, that he named his son (my grandfather) Byron; and my grandfather, in his turn, named his son (my father) Gordon.
One of the reasons I don’t read more Byron is that I think of him as more of a novelist who happened to be expeditiously good at rhyme and meter, rather than as a poet. That’s absurd, of course, but you will rarely find in Byron the stunning imagery that makes you pause and linger. His imagery is, almost entirely, perfunctory and rudimentary. He uses stock phrases and poeticisms (whatever it takes to keep the narrative moving). You might as well read Jane Eyre if you’re looking for evocative imagery.
What Byron possessed was an unerring sense of phrasing, rhythm and rhyme. He was capable of using phrase and rhyme with a skewering and deadly precision. One never gets the sense that he was at a loss words. He almost never resorts to anything like metrical filler. His lines are (if there was ever a time to use the adjectives) rugged and masculine. There’s no prettiness to his poetry, but the lean, no nonsense, muscularity makes his poetry memorable and powerful. Byron is an object lesson in the sheer power of meter and rhyme, as distinct from the lineated prose of free verse or just plain prose. Great and memorable poetry doesn’t always need the unsurpassed imagery of a Wallace Stevens, Keats or Shakespeare.
When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.
The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow–
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.
They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o’er me–
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well: –
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.
In secret we met–
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.
The Scansion: No really, it gets interesting.
The “scansion” that follows departs from my usual method. Rather than use the standard accent marks, I’ve simply bolded the accented syllables. I thought this better represented what Byron was doing. The poem, as a whole, is accentual, meaning that Byron’s primary concern is with the number of accented syllables per line. The number of unaccented syllables varies from stanza to stanza. Interestingly though, if we go stanza by stanza, then one could call Byron’s verse “accentual syllabic”. (Iambic Pentameter is accentual syllabic meter because boththe number of accents andsyllables is regular.) With the exception of the last stanza, Bryon maintains a regular number of accented and unaccented syllables.
The way I divided the feet isn’t cast in stone. There are different ways to do it. When I read the poem, I hear anapests, so that’s the way I scanned it. In this sense, the second foot of the first line |we two parted would be an anapestic foot with a feminine ending. The first foot with the word When would be a headless Iambic Foot, meaning that the first unaccented syllable is missing. So, but for two lines, the underlying accentual/syllabic meter of the poem is an Iambic foot followed by an anapestic foot, as follows:
The spiral is a high level metrical symbol. I would have to shoot you if I revealed its meaning.
Some of the anapestic feet are followed by an extra unstressed syllable, so I’m calling those feet anapestic feminine endings – something that doesn’t appear in Iambic Pentameter until Robert Frost (anapestic feminine foot in green):
One could | do worse | than be |a swing|er of birches
None of this is information you really need to know, but some of us enjoy these little niceties. There is one line in which knowing the meter helps us know how Byron probably imagined the poem. Knowing that each stanza is internally consistent and that the first stanza maintains two stressed syllables per line and an anapest, we won’t be tempted to read the third line as follows:
Half brok|en-hearted
Or:
Half brok|en-hearted
Most modern readers would probably be tempted to read the line in either of these two fashions and move on. The first reading changes the line into an iambic one, with an iambic feminine ending. We can eliminate this reading because it breaks the metrical pattern in the rest of the stanza. The second reading introduces three stressed syllables. We can eliminate that because it breaks the accentual pattern of the stanza. If we honor the pattern set by the rest of the poem, we put the emphasis on half.
Half |brokenhearted
This is a very curious emphasis and, if it were to be acted, suggests a wee bit of a sneer. In other words, they weren’t broken-hearted. They were only, half broken-hearted. As I like to say, a masterfully written metrical poem has two stories to tell – two tales: one in its words; the other in its meter. In this case, the meter is telling us this isn’t just another poem about heart break. There’s a touch of sarcasm, if not contempt and cynicism, that turns the meaning of the rest of the poem flatly on its head. I’ve seen readings of this poem on Youtube that play it straight, as a kind of self-pitying poem by the rejected lover, but when Byron was self-pitying, it was usually heavily seasoned with self-righteousness. The meter hints at something else. Once we learn some of the history behind the poem, we might find the opposite of what we expected.
So… what’s going on?
I’ve got two sources for the story behind this poem. They don’t agree. Sort of. The first thing to know is that the word scandalous is never far from Byron’s name. In Famous Poems and the Little Known Stories Behind Them, Ralph L Woods gets right down to business. He writes:
Admittedly Byron was arrogantly seflish and impulsively generous, aware of his rank and quick to abuse its priviledges. He bore the marks of his dissolute, unstable and spenthrift ancestry, and of a mother who alternated between tantrums and penitential calms. Given the restless age in which he lived, it is not suprising that the brilliant, undisciplined and strikingly handsome poet with a clubfoot had numerous amours, some of the backstairs kind. [Famous Poems and the Little Known Stories Behind Themp. 21]
By backstairs, Woods is presumably referring to Byron’s alleged affair with his sister. According to Woods, the poem is about Lady Frances Annesley, the wife of James Wedderburn Webster. When Byron first met the newly wedded couple, he remarked that Lady Frances “is very pretty” but that she was already treating her husband with “conjugal contempt” and predicted she would betray him within three years. Woods goes on to write that Byron visited the couple two years later and wrote, initially at least, that he “behaved very well”. Later, though, when writing Lady Melbourne, he confessed that “I have made love [flirted amorously], and it is returned”. The expression “making love” didn’t mean sexual intercourse until early in the 20th century. Before then, it essentially meant flirtation and courtship. Byron also wrote that “he spared her.” “Poor thing–she is either the most artful of artless of her age I ever encountered.” Woods writes that Byron lost interest but that when, several years later, he heard of her affair with the Duke of Wellington, he recalled his former emotions in the, as Woods puts it, “tender yet cynical” poem When We Two Parted.
In another book, though, Byron and the Websters: The Letters and Entangled Lives of the Poet, Sir James Webster and Lady Frances Webster, John Stewart tells a fuller and slightly different story. He begins by quoting a letter Byron wrote on June 10, 1823:
As to yr. chevalier W Wne *** to be sure I learnt from himself all about his [?] surprise — but there is some little doubt of his accuracy. — At least it is very strange that he could never prove so public a voyage of discovery. — She– poor thing — has made a sad affair of it altogether. — I had the meloncholy task of prophesying as much many many years ago in some lines — of which the three or four stanzas only were printed — and of course without names — or allusions — and with a false date — I send you on the concluding stanza — which never was printed with the others. –
Then – fare thee well — Fanny –
Now doubly undone –
To prove false unto many –
As faithless to One –
Thou art past all recalling
Even would I recall –
For the woman once falling
Forever must fall. –
There’s morality and sintiment [sic] — for you in a [?] — but I was very tender hearted in those days. — If you want to know where the lines to which this stanza belongs –are — they are in I know not what volume — but somewhere (for I have no copy) but they begin with
When we two parted
In silence and tears
&c.&c.&c.
So here is a treasure for you in honour of our relationship — rhymes unpublished — and a secret into the bargain — which you wont keep –.
[Byron and the Websters p. 173]
As you can see, the final stanza, never included with the anthologized poem (and probably for the best) keeps the meter and rhyme of the others. With this scathing final stanza, the cynical emphasis on half-broken hearted begins to make more sense, while the line With silence and tears sounds more sarcastic and a little less tragic. There’s undoubtedly some tenderness in the lines, but also contempt. Stewart closes his brief two pages on Byron’s poem with a letter from Miss Frances Williams Wynn in her Diaries of a Lady of Quality (1864):
In England we are apt to exclaim with Byron, in his suppressed lines
Then, fare thee well, Fanny, thus doubly undone,
Thou frail to the many, and false to one.
Thou art past all recalling, e’en would I recall,
For the woman once fallen for ever must fall.
These lines about which frequent enquiry has been made, were given me by Scrope Davies. They originally formed the conclusion of a copy of verses addressed by Lord Byron to Lady Frances W W to whom he was devotedly attached until she threw him over for the Duke of Wellington, then in the full blaze of his Peninsular glory. ‘Byron,’ said Davies, ‘Came one morning to my lodgings in St James Street, in a towering passion, and standing by the fire, broke out, ‘D— all women, and d— that woman in particular.’ He tore from his watch-ribbon a seal she had given him, and dashed it into the grate. As soon as I left the room, I picked it up, and here it is.’ He showed it to me, and allowed me to take an impression of it, which I have still. It was a large seal, representing a ship in full sail, a star in the distance, with the motto, “Si je la perds, je suis perdu.” Two or three days afterwards his Lordship presented himself again with a copy of verses addressed to his fickle fair one, from which Davies with some difficulty induced him to omit the four concluding lines. [Byron and the Websters p. 174]
So, armed with this information, we can conclude that Byron didn’t write this poem in a fit of self-pitying dejection, but self-pitying rage; about a married woman who dared to dump him, not for her husband, but for another cad and aristocrat who was not Byron! Now that takes a very special kind of delusional self-righteousness. That and the fact that Miss Wynn, a quote-unquote “Lady of Quality”, was busily gossiping about the whole affair tells you just about everything you need to know about the era. If I were to sum up the tone of the poem, it would be the hypocritical rage of righteous self-pity. When Byron writes about “tears”, don’t be fooled. It’s one thing for Byron to gad about, but if a woman falls, she falls forever.
Well, maybe I’ve ruined the poem for some, but somehow I think the squalid truth makes it so much better, keener and cutting. When you see youtube videos characterizing the poem as one of “loss and longing”, you know they’ve missed the point. They haven’t read the poem all that carefully. This is the poem lovers write and read to one another when theyshould have known better but bear a grudge anyway.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.
For the philandering Byron to write that her “vows are all broken” is the pot calling the kettle black. And what is he crying about? — Her? — Or is it all abouthim — that he must “share in its shame”?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well: –
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.
Does he rue because he longs for her? — because of his loss? — or does he rue that he met her in the first place, and now shares in her shame?
In secret we met–
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.
These last lines, and a line like Thy spirit deceive, are written in anger, not sorrow. The cutting rhymes and driving anapestic meter add to the poem’s succinctness, momentum and memorability in a way that free verse just can’t match, and in way that Byron mastered. (The line Long, long shall I rue thee is a master stroke of metrical gamesmanship. If not for the meter, we might be tempted to read the line Long, long shall I rue thee , but we know that Byron’s means us to only read two strong accents in the line. Strongly emphasizing the second long, if done right, gives the line a little touch of disdain.) Fortunately, Byron was convinced to leave off the final stanza (the final twist of the knife) and so, to a certain degree, it remains just possible to read the poem as a heartrending expression of loss, longing and sorrow.
Here’s a good video that subtly hints at the petty anger behind the lines:
Note: For some reason, there appears to be a WordPress bug that insists on linking to Erlkonig. If you don’t see the right video, click here.
When things turn out badly, after having your affair with another man’s wife or another wife’s man, this is your go to poem. If you manage to avoid that scandal, then enjoy the poem however you will.
Troy asked me to review his blog, Thyme and Time Again, and, by extension, his poetry. The first thing to say about Troy’s blog is that it’s well-presented. Nothing can be more off-putting than a slipshod blog (doesn’t encourage readers to take a blogger seriously). His brief little autobiography tells us that he has a Ph.D. in the Humanities from UT-Dallas, an M.A. in English from the Univ. of S. MS, and a B.S. in Recombinant Gene Technology. He writes: “I specialize in spontaneous order and self-organization theory (from the brain to cities), network theory, Austrian economics, aesthetics, and cultural studies. I also write plays and poems.” Wow.
The libraries of poetry are filled with books by educated and well-heeled Ministers, Physicians, Diplomats, Aristocrats, etc… They had a love of literature, poetry and some spare time. John Donne is the most famous. There are also poets like John Collop and Edward Taylor. Edward Taylor was a minister but it’s John Collop who would be Troy’s spiritual and professional antecedent. Collop was a physician who didn’t suffer fools gladly, including other physicians. The editor writes that Collop “rejected as ignorant folly the most popular remedies of his time — phlebotomy, purges, fontanels — and the accompanying theories of defluxions and bodily humors. His poems attack quacks in all varieties: the astrological quack who assigns each herb to a house in the Zodiac and reads its properties in the stars…”
Hillberry, the editor of The Poems of John Collop, writes that Collop was no John Donne (a poet who Collop admired and imitated in some ways) but his poems are nevertheless rugged, avoid sentimentality and are intelligently alive with observation and wit. Camplin writes in this tradition – the gentleman poet. If he doesn’t already, Camplin should have some Collop on his shelf.
Camplin is doggedly prolific, writing one poem a day, and they range from free verse to traditional. No creative artist, can keep that pace and produce lasting work unless they possess surpassing ability. Since today is today, and that would be December 29th, let’s take a look at his current poem:
I know when roses fill her breath,
This morning she’s been drinking tea.
I wonder then what were her thoughts -
Of house, of work, or even me.
As honey drips slow off her spoon -
An amber made, not trapping bees -
Under the shade of old live oaks,
Her chair well-set on roots of trees,
She dips her spoon into the cup
To stir the light brown liquid sweet
And closes eyes to hear the air,
Relaxing back in plastic seat.
I see a smile spread through her eyes
As any fear within her dies.
Morning Tea is safely representative of the kind of poetry you will find — accomplished but showing the hallmarks of quick writing. The imagery is fairly straight forward and moves line by line. One doesn’t find the carefully planned imagery or conceits of more considered poetry. All but one of the lines are end-stopped. This is commonly the mark of haste – get the lines out and get them to rhyme. However, in fairness to Troy, I actually find this poem to be atypical. Many, if not most, of his other poems show greater freedom with enjambment and end-stopping. Another mark of speed, perhaps, is a willingness to invert grammar for the sake of rhyme:
To stir the light brown liquid sweet
One’s not sure whether we’re to treat liquid as the noun, or sweet as the noun. Troy has chosen not to punctuate the line so we’re left to our own devices (and this may be deliberate). I think most readers would read liquid as the noun and sweet as the adjective. There’s some grammatical awkwardness earlier in the poem as well:
I know when roses fill her breath,
This morning she’s been drinking tea.
Normally, we would probably say: She’s been drinking tea this morning. We would also, probably, more normally order our thoughts as follows:
She’s been drinking tea this morning,
I know it when the scent of roses is on her breath.
Something like that, but Troy has a rhyme scheme to keep. His lines aren’t exactly ungrammatical (though they flirt with poor grammar through their lack of punctuation), but there’s frequently something a little off kilter about them. They don’t feel organic. Rather, it frequently feels as though the form wrote the lines rather than the lines writing the form. A poet who isn’t writing a poem a day might be less willing to let such lines slip by. He might not close the line with the inverted grammar of:
As any fear within her dies.
Rather than:
As any fear dies within her.
Another mark of haste is Troy’s willingness to discard articles for the sake of meter (rather than re-write the line so that standard English is preserved). Poets up to the 19th century had the luxury of synaloepha when they needed to keep their lines iambic. These days, about the only shortcut left to poets is the omission of articles, but it’s not really an effective shortcut. It almost always risks making the lines sound amateurish.
And closes eyes to hear the air,
Relaxing back in plastic seat.
Should read:
And closes (her) eyes to hear the air,
Relaxing back in (the) plastic seat.
Haste can also be revealed by logical oversights. In the lines just quoted, Troy observes that the woman, as she sips her morning tea, has just closed her eyes. And yet, two lines later, he tells us that he sees “a smile spread through her eyes”. I’m not sure how this is possible since her eyes are, presumably, still closed. It’s possible that he’s speaking rhetorically and figuratively, using eyes as a catchall for closed eyes, eye brows, facial expressions, etc.; but in either case the lines don’t feel thoroughly thought out. All these little flaws, to a greater or less extent, can be found in all his poems.
But it wouldn’t be fair to leave it at that. Just as with Edward Taylor and John Collop, Camplin’s better poems show a poet’s grasp of metaphor and imagery. Consider the following:
In all my travels I have noticed God
Is fond of filling fields with yellow flowers.
There’s blue and red and pink and white – how odd
It’s golden yellow glowing after showers
Sow fields with water blown in flowing sheets
To dew the sod anew. No matter where
I look, I note that God both greets and meets
The eye with golden threads He’s sewn with care
Into the blooming fields. Indeed, in fields
He fills with lupines, blue in sun and shade
Of pines, some yellow shines. The yellow yields
A sharp define to all the mellow grades
Of blue and green that wave as warm winds blow.
It seems He couldn’t help Himself – He felt
He had to throw in just a note, to show
That sorrow’s blues and greens would always melt.
And even when I tried to plant a plot
Of only purple flowers, God slipped in
A golden dandelion that would not
Let me get lost within the purple din.
So now I look upon the yellow glow
Of God’s gold fingerprints upon the earth,
And know I owe him all I own – I grow
And glow with yellow petals from my birth.
Now, compared to the broken glass of a poet like John Ashbery, this is going to feel simplistic, mawkish and sentimental but, for all that, the poem is well put together. And, to be honest, it’s no more mawkish or sentimental than the free verse of Maya Angelou. I’d rather read Camplin than Angelou. Complin works harder. There’s nothing safer or easier than free verse – like putting up the frame of a house and calling it done. Meter and rhyme is the finish work. Even if his efforts aren’t always successful, I know far more about his stature as a poet than Angelou. I know that if Camplin took just a little extra time he could, potentially, write some spectacular stuff:
····················Indeed, in fields
He fills with lupines, blue in sun and shade
Of pines, some yellow shines. The yellow yields
A sharp define to all the mellow grades
Of blue and green that wave as warm winds blow.
The sense of rhythm and structure in these lines is strong. I’d like to see him think twice about the alliteration and internal rhyme of words like lupines, shines and define – mainly because they feel contrived. I’d like to see him loosen the meter. If I were to re-think the lines, here’s how I would do it:
····················Indeed, in fields
Filled with the lupine and the blueish shade
Of fir, there’s a yellow of the kind that yields
Nothing to any of the mellow grades
Of blue or green blending where the warm winds blow.
To my sensibilities, this gives the lines a more vernacular, less halting feel. The meter, while still strong, feels less forced into the mold.
All in all, I find Troy to be one of the stronger traditional poets on the Internet. The inquisitive reader will find poem after poem by this prolific scientist/poet, all in need of comments. I encourage any reader with a taste for traditional poetry to visit his site and comment. Interaction is the artist’s life blood. If you like his poems, say so. If you think they can be improved, share your thoughts. Camplin writes in the same tradition as a Taylor, Collop, or a Thomas Traherne, who, as they made their living in other ways, wrote poetry for the sheer joy of it. Traherne would have immediately appreciated Camplin’s more devout poems, and shared Camplin’s child-like contemplation of God. The accessibility of so many voices on the internet is as promising as the self-published poetry of an earlier ra. Take a look and see if you like it.
And why not end the post with a poem by John Collop, the poet who Troy most reminds me of.
On the Atrologicall quack.
As th’Colledge of the stars he did commence,
And Statesman-like will speak the houses sense,
Each house for mans use stranger herbs hath got,
To them they essence property, seed allot.
But is’t not strange; when they so numerous be,
How all do with a fewer stars agree?
Each pil and potion too hath diff’rent sign:
Nature ith’ stomach sure now can’t refine.
Or ist since Heav’n stands still, and earth turns round,
We here are giddy, there no truth is found?
The Heav’ns a book is, where men wonders read,
The stars are letters, most a Christs Cross need.
I love erotic and love poetry and have several collections; some are good, some are not.
This is a big post, overdue, and the books are given in no particular order (I made a pile on the floor).
I thought readers might enjoy a post giving an overview of what’s available—something which I’ve already done for Erotic Haiku. First, the question: What makes a good erotic poem? Here’s what I wrote in my opening to paragraph to Erotic Haiku:
Just as the haiku is the art of indirection, so too erotica. Whereas the explicit is an imaginative endpoint, the best haiku are a suggestive starting point for the imagination. Suggestiveness is all – allusion, inference, and association. And when haiku fail because they were made too explicit, eroticism fails for the same reason: eroticism becomes pornographic.
To me, the best erotic poetry is an imaginative starting point, not an endpoint. The best erotic poems are like the best metaphors; which is to say, to paraphrase the great poet EA Robinson, erotic poetry “tells the more the more it is not told”. When poems become too explicit, they lose something.
After each review I’ve added a rating – 1 to 6 ♥’s, 6 being the best.
Sex ~ Sex Art ~ Illustrations and Artwork Romance ~ Passion & Love Poetry Look & Feel ~ Typography, Layout, Readability Poetry ~ Its Quality Index ~ Content, First Line, Title, Author
Note: If you are a poet or publisher who would like me to add your erotic book of poetry to this list (as some publishers have requested), please send a review copy. I’m too poor to buy. Seriously (having spent it all on erotic poetry). I’ll update this post with your book the day I receive it.If you think a book should be on this list, and isn’t, let me know. If you disagree with anything I’ve written, comment. More books will be added over time and I’ll notify those who follow the blog that I’ve done so with a post.
Kevin Maclellan, over at Reviews and Responses has reviewed what I think, perhaps, is my best poem to date – Die Erlkönigin. As I wrote him, I don’t often get much comment on my poetry; and that makes his reading all the more enjoyable. Without seeming too conceited I hope, visit his blog (the links have been corrected) and see what you think. Even if you don’t agree with what he’s written or his estimation of the poem (or anyof my poems), he’ll still appreciate your thoughts. ❧
[The Vermont Poetry Newsletter is not issued by me but by Ron Lewis, by whose permission I post this. PLEASE NOTE: I have edited his newsletter so that links are provided rather than text. If I cannot find a link, I will either omit the relevant portion of the newsletter to avoid copyright violations, or I will provide an alternate link. Please contact Ron Lewis if you would like to receive his Newsletter in full. All images are linked.]
•
Vermont Poetry Newsletter
Your Poetry & Spoken Word Gateway
In The Green Mountain State
Jerry Johnson/Jon Gailmor/Pete Sutherland Collaboration CD
The Prose-Poem Project
e-poets.network/Book of Voices
PennSound
The Poetry of Herman Cain
Everything Moves To Live
Great Poetry Links: Noun Project
Poetry Quote – Charles Baudelaire
Linebreak Poem
Copper Canyon Press Poem: Taha Muhammad Ali
American Life in Poetry Poem
US Poets Laureate List
Vermont Poet Laureates – Updated!
US Poet Laureates From Vermont
New Hampshire Poet Laureates
US Poet Laureates From New Hampshire
National Book Critics Circle
Contact Info for Editor/Publisher of VPN: Ron Lewis
Vermont Literary Journals
Vermont Literary Groups’ Anthologies
Vermont Poetry Blogs
State Poetry Society (PSOV)
Year-Round Poetry Workshops in Vermont
Other Poetry Workshops in Vermont
Year-Round Poetry Writing Centers in Vermont
Other Writing Groups in Vermont
Poetry Event Calendar
1.) About the Vermont Poetry Newsletter Network
The Vermont Poetry Newsletter Network is made up of people of all backgrounds, ages and skills who appreciate the craft of poetry and want to promote it in the beautiful state of Vermont. The network consists of a free e-mail list, an eventual web site, workshops, open mics, poetry performances and other literary events. The network provides opportunities to meet local poets, talk about and enjoy poetry, and motivate and inspire yourself in whatever writing projects you are involved.
The mission of the Vermont Poetry Newsletter is to foster the poetry arts community in the Green Mountain State, home to more writers and poets per capita than any other state in the nation. Its goals are to serve as a resource for and about VT poets; to support the development of individual poets; and to encourage an audience for poetry in Vermont.
Dating from 2009, the Vermont Poetry Newsletters are being archived on a blog maintained by poet Patrick Gillespie at PoemShape.
This post is a request. Since the sonnet is relatively straightforward, thought I might be able to squeeze in a “quick read”.For a brief overview of Sidney’s metrical practice and the types of sonnets he wrote, you can try my earlier post: Sir Philip Sidney: His Meter and his Sonnets. The present sonnet is a kind of hybrid between what would become the Shakespearean Sonnet (with it’s closing epigrammatic couplet) and the Patrarchan sonnet, with its less argumentative closing sestet. As to Sonnet 64, I’ve copied it from an edition of Sidney’s selected writings by Richard Dutton. First, in plain text:
Sonnet 64
No more, my dear, no more these counsels try, ··O give my passions leave to run their race: ··Let Fortune lay on me her worst disgrace,
Let folk orecharg’d with brain against me cry.
Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye, ··Let me no steps but of lost labour trace, ··Let all the earth with scorn recount my case,
But do not will me from my love to fly. ··I do not envy Aristotle’s wit,
Nor do I aspire to Caesar’s bleeding fame,
Nor aught do care, though some above me sit,
Nor hope, nor wish another course to frame, ··But that which once may win thy cruel heart, ··Thou art my wit, and thou my virtue art.
Next, the scansion. The lines are space so that I can insert scansion markings. All unmarked feet are iambic. If you’re unsure of scansion, my post on Iambic Pentameter (The Basics) might help you.
A Note about the Scansion
There are modern readers and poets who make the argument that meter doesn’t exist. Then there are others who grudgingly admit that English is an accentual language (sort of like admitting the earth is round) but that scansion is arbitrary. And then there are readers and scholars who argue that we should scan poems the way we read them, now, without regard to the poet’s intentions or how language was spoken in the poet’s day.
I disagree with all of them.
In the scansion above, I try to take into consideration the era in which Sidney was writing. Iambic Pentameter was brand-spanking new, Elizabethan poets were excited to have a meter comparable to that of the Lain poets. Poets weren’t yet interested in how they could break the rules. They were still making the rules. With that in mind, I’ve scanned the sonnet with the assumption that Sidney intended his poem to be Iambic Pentameter throughout. In the first foot of the third quatrain, one can easily read |Nor do I| as an Iambic foot if one slurs the vowels. This, in fact, was standard practice in the day and is reflected in the punctuation of a poet like Donne (when modern editors don’t blithely edit it out). So, Sidney probably would have read the first foot: (Nor d’I). Modern speakers of English do the same thing on a daily basis. We slur our words when it suits us.
The poet Sydney Lea (and my state’s Poet Laureate) rightly points out (in my Guest Book) that Chaucer wrote Iambic Pentameter. As a historical matter, Iambic Pentameter was not new to the English language. However, Chaucer’s innovations were not adopted by the poets immediately following him or in the centuries that followed. By the time Sidney and his circle settled on Iambic Pentameter, their experimentation shows little, if any, of Chaucer’s influence. Iambic Pentameter was essentially new to the Elizabethans. They rediscovered it, in a sense, and reinvented it, making it the verse form that we are now familiar with. As to the Elizabethans’ opinion of Chaucer, Donald R. Howard writes:
Between Chaucer’s time and Shakespeare’s, the pronunciation of English changed, so much so that Chaucer’s poems no longer sounded right. He was admired for his rhetoric and his “philosophy,” his skill as a storyteller, and as the “first finder of our fair language,” but his rhythms were a puzzle and his rhymes did not sound true. People tolerated Chaucer’s “rough” verse and assumed he had a tin ear. Henry Peacham, writing in 1622, found “under a bitter and rough rind,” a kernel of “conceit and sweet invention.” Dryden said there was in his verse “the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune” — “natural and pleasing, though not perfect.” (p. 513Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World)
•
On the other hand, in the first line line of the closing couplet, I’ve read cruel is disyllabic: cru|el. I can’t swear that Elizabethans, normally, pronounced this word disyllabically, but even among modern speakers of English, we sometimes can hear two syllables in the word. What is certain is that Sidney, knowing full well how to write an Iambic Pentameter line when he wanted to, was treating cruel as a conventionally poetic, two syllable word.
Sidney’s Argument
Nearly all Elizabethan sonnets were displays of argumentation and Sidney’s, earliest among them, are a prime example. Addressed to Stella, his imaginary mistress, they try to cajole, persuade, dissuade, convince, argue, concede, and manipulate with all the rhetorical cleverness and inventiveness expected from a brilliant Elizabethan soldier and lover..
No more, my dear, no more these counsels try, ··O give my passions leave to run their race: ··Let Fortune lay on me her worst disgrace,
Let folk orecharg’d with brain against me cry.
Sidney may be playing on the sense of a lawyer, a counsel, who pleads a case. In Sidney’s day, the word could mean, advice, consultation, deliberation, one’s secret and inmost thoughts or to one who gives counsel in law. Sidney is saying, enough with your arguments. There’s a sense, possibly, that he’s personifying the woman’s arguments as if they were, themselves, like lawyers attempting to persuade his better nature. If you’ve seen the old cartoons, think of an angel on Sidney’s right shoulder, a devil on the left, and the woman’s “counsel” attempting to persuade them. Sidney won’t have it. Try no more counsels (lawyers), my mind is made up. The devil has decided.
Let my passions run their race, he says. Putting it politely, that translates into: Let me make love to you! Damn the consequences. If “fortune” (reputation) disgrace me, then so be it. The fourth line, “Let folk orecharg’d with brain” refers to the Elizabethan commonplace contrasting the corrupting lusts and passions of the body with the ennobling pursuits of the mind. He says, let those orecharg’d with “high-brow” self-regard (in the sense of an explosive being “too charged” with powder) cry against him. Sidney was the Elizabethan ideal – the nobleman of good birth who is both brilliant (he was an accomplished man of culture) and an accomplished soldier.
This stuff was in the air. The protestants had redefined the meaning of chastity, making it no less upright than celibacy.
In this light, a man or woman could still claim chastity so long as sexual intercourse occurred within the sanctity of marriage. (Catholics considered chastity to be lesser than celibacy.) The essence of chastity pertained to the purity of mind and body, and the absence of carnality. The above quote comes from Society and religion in Elizabethan England
by Richard L. Greaves. Greaves continues:
Chastity was not associated with sexual abstinence, but the suppression of sexual lut, unnatural sexual desires… and sexual affections for someone other than one’s spouse. To be chaste, a single person must not burn with sexual desires, engage in sexual relations, or sexually abuse his mind or body. pp. 122-123
And all this is the background to the fourth line of the first quatrain and to the entirety of the sonnet in general. The argument of Sidney’s sonnet is a refutation of chastity.
Just a few years later (perhaps less), Shakespeare would write a play poking fun at the pretensions of noblemen who pompously agree to forgo the company of women for the sake of “higher” pursuits: Love’s Labour’s Lost. Did I mention that the play is a comedy? Here’s how Wikipedia sums up the plot: “The play opens with the King of Navarre and three noble companions, Berowne, Dumaine, and Longaville, taking an oath to devote themselves to three years of study, promising not to give in to the company of women – Berowne somewhat more hesitantly than the others. Berowne reminds the king that the princess and her three ladies are coming to the kingdom and it would be suicidal for the King to agree to this law.“
Naturally, rejecting chastity was ruinous to ones reputation. Sidney acknowledges this, and this gives more force to his plea. Reputation was everythingto a well-heeled Elizabethan man. The Earl of Oxford (erroneously claimed to be the author of Shakepseare’s plays by “Oxfordians”) reportedly bowed to Queen Elizabeth and cut a fart that must have brought down the house and has survived the ages. Oxford was apparently so humiliated by the episode that he promptly exiled himself from the entire island nation known as England. These were a people who took reputation seriously. Here’s how the 17th historian John Aubrey, in Brief Lives, tells the story:
“The Earl of Oxford, making of his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth happened to let a Fart, at which he was so abashed and ashamed that he went to travel, seven years. On his return the Queen welcomed him home and said, ‘My Lord, I had forgot the Fart.’”
It’s no small matter that Sidney is claiming he “doesn’t care” what others think. Obviously he does, or he wouldn’t claim that he didn’t.
…I would suffer for you…
Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye, ··Let me no steps but of lost labour trace, ··Let all the earth with scorn recount my case,
But do not will me from my love to fly.
In the second quatrain, Sidney offers up boilerplate proofs of his love. Let clouds bedim his face or, as Shakespeare would later write, let him suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Clouds, akin to weather, is offered as a metaphor for life in general. Let life’s misfortunes (like a storm) break “in mine eye”. (Break in the sense of a storm cloud finally releasing its rain.) In other words, let me see (mine eye) nothing but misfortune; let all my labour (efforts and undertakings) be “lost labour” (counterproductive); let the earth, the world’s population, recount my story with scorn. So long as you do not will me (demand me) to fly (to leave) I will willingly suffer all these misfortunes.
…because you are everything to me…
I do not envy Aristotle’s wit,
Nor do I aspire to Caesar’s bleeding fame,
Nor aught do care, though some above me sit,
Nor hope, nor wish another course to frame,
Aristotle’s wit • Aristotle was considered the exemplar of reason and the rational. Aristotle’s “wit”, in this case, refers to the “charge” of a his brain but, as Sidney closes his sonnet, his take on “wit”, will take a bawdy turn.
Caesar’s bleeding fame • refers to Caesar’s reputation as a great military leader of a great empire (not an insignificant reference in a country itself on the cusp of empire). But matters didn’t end well for Caesar. He was murdered by Brutus in a conspiracy that involved nearly the entire Roman Senate (painting below). Brutus accused Caesar of being too ambitious and of being a threat to representative governance. Caesar was stabbed 23 times.
some above me sit • Sidney doesn’t care that others may have a higher station and rank.
nor wish another course to frame • He has no desire to reconsider (to re-frame) the object of his ambition. “Give my passions leave to run their race…”
··But that which once may win thy cruel heart, ··Thou art my wit, and thou my virtue art.
If you read the last line of this poem and think to yourself, what a sweet thing to say, then the joke’s on you.
The last line, in fact, is more like the punchline of a joke (and the whole sonnet has set up). This gets good. Let’s begin with the word heart and a visit to A Dictionary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Puns and their Significance. To quote the editor, Frankie Rubinstein, “heart is no sentimental metaphor”. There’s a pun at work having to do with the Hart and the Hind. A Hart was a male deer and a Hind was a female deer. The joke, in Elizabethan times, was on both words. The word heart became a pun on hart and all that the male deer signifies — fertility, erection, etc… The word “hind”, which was too close to “behind” (read arse or ass) for poets (especially Shakespeare) to pass up, evolved into a pun on a woman’s behind along with all that that signifies — fecundity, her womb, and chastity. As the pun evolved, a “woman’s heart” could be understood as a pun on her hind (read hind-end), womb and chastity.
From this, Sidney proceeds to the inevitable pun: “Thou art my wit,” he writes. The word wit was a pun on genitalia — his and hers.Here is how Rubinstein defines the pun:
Wit/whit/white Puns on each other and on genitals. Jonson, The Alchemist, ii, iii: Mammon spies Dol Common (each part of her name means a mistress – F&H; P), a ‘brave piece’: ‘Is she no way accessible? no means/No trick to give a man a taste of her — wit — /Or so?’ In archery, 15th cent., the white or target was placed on a butt and was called the prick (LLL, iv.i.134: ‘let the mark have a prick in it’).
This is followed by an example from Shakespeare:
RJ, I.i.215 With reference to hitting the ‘mark’ (vulva – C; P). Romeo says Rosaline will ‘not be hit/ With Cupid’s arrow; she hath Dian’s wit’ — the wit or chaste white mark of the goddess of moon and chastity cannot be with/ wit (K) the arrow (‘the dribbling dart of love’- MM, I.iii.2).
So, Sidney’s puns work at various levels. Stella is a cruel heart — pun on arse. This is followed by a pun on wit. She is his white mark, ‘his wit’, the thing that he aims at (vulva) with his ‘wit’, his erection. In this sense, she is both his target and his erection. “Thou art my erection,” and “thou art the wit I aim at”. The pun also works because it stands in contrast to his earlier assertion that he does not envy “Aristotle’s wit”. That is to say, Aristotle’s wit is that of the “orecharg’d brain”. That’s not the “wit” he wants.
“And thou my virtue art…”
Here too, Sidney plays on meanings. As I’ve written elsewhere, in discussing Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, virtue had a double meaning. For women, virtue referred to chastity. In men, predictably enough, virtue meant the opposite: potency, virility, manhood and prowess (again from A Dictionary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Puns). So which meaning, exactly, is Sidney using when he states that Stella is his “virtue”? To the gullible reader, she is everything that is good in him; but, to the Elizabethan reader, she is also everything he claims to give up earlier in the sonnet – his potency, virility, manhood and prowess. By gaining her, he gives up nothing. He looses nothing. This is both the pinnacle of flattery and the height of seduction. She glorifies him, not the other way around.
Puns on the hunt, marksmanship and male prowess abound.
…and in conclusion…
Anyone who reads Sidney’s Sonnets as platonic and ethereal professions of love is being played for a fool. The Elizabethans weren’t a sentimental crew and Sidney’s sonnets are full of double meanings. They loved language and prided themselves on their “wit”, in every sense of the word. Sidney’s sonnets are, addressed to Stella, full of sly and lascivious subterfuge. This was expected and enjoyed by an Elizabethan audience who lived in an age of spies, subterfuge, deceit and intrigue – political and sexual. If you detect a sly and not-to-be-trusted subtext in Elizabethan poetry, trust your instincts. The fun in Sidney’s sonnets is in reading between the lines. Read them in the spirit with which they were written, not as distant and fusty works of dry and elevated ambition. They are full of brilliant wit and sparkling jest.
Welcome! Please read some of my poetry while you’re here. Even if a post is two years old, they’re being read every day. They’re all current. Feel free to join the conversation. Lastly, treat this post as a Guest Book. Offer suggestions, improvements, requests or just say Hello! If you have a question concerning poetry or a poem, click read more at the end of this sentence and fill out the form. Continue reading 
