Why Is a Poem a Poem?

SONNETS

Shakespeare: My Mistress' Eyes  /  Shakespeare: Let Me Not  /  Millay: I Being Born a Woman and Distressed

Oakley: Watch Repair Shop Window  /  Kumin: Purgatory  

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My Mistress' Eyes
William Shakespeare

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go:
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
  And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
  As any she belied by false compare.

A love poem satirizing other love poems, in which women's lips are compared to coral, their hair to gold, their cheeks to roses, their breath to perfume, etc. Notice, too, how simply the poem is made, how congruent are lines and phrases, lines and images.
What statement about poetry itself is made by this poem?



My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;            a
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;                 b
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;    a
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.    b
I have seen roses damasked red and white,           c
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;                   d
And in some perfumes is there more delight           c
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.      d
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know               e
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;            f
I grant I never saw a goddess go:                          e
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.  f
  And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare         g
  As any she belied by false compare.                    g

A formally perfect English or Shakespearean sonnet: three quatrains of iambic pentameter, rhymed abab cdcd efef, finished off with a couplet rhymed gg. Equally important, we expect to find the sonnet's content organized in units that coincide with the formal divisions. This one marks that convention with its punctuation, each sentence spanning a quatrain and no more (as I've marked with the horizontal lines). One could as well divide it up into single lines and pairs of lines encapsulating individual statements and images. In any case, we know we're headed for closure when we reach the little rhetorical turn "And yet" at the start of line 13.




Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
Oh, no! it is an ever fixèd mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
  If this be error and upon me proved,
  I never writ, nor no man ever loved.




Let me not to the marriage of true minds       A THESIS
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:                                
Oh, no! it is an ever fixèd mark,          ELABORATED WITH A
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;      METAPHOR
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.       
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;    AND ANOTHER,
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,   PERSONIFYING
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.         TIME & LOVE
  If this be error and upon me proved,            A CALM
  I never writ, nor no man ever loved.           CONCLUSION

This sonnet uses its 4+4+4+2 structure more complexly. I'll talk about the meter and the rhymes in this one.





I Being Born a Woman and Distressed
Edna St. Vincent Millay

I being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity, -- let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.

This 20th c. satirical poem illustrates the marriage of formal and rhetorical structure in the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, its older form. Here the first eight lines, called an octave, present and develop a situation or problem. The last six lines, called a sestet, then resolve or alter what has been presented. The "turn" at the 9th line is often marked by some overt speech tag signalling a change of argument -- "then," "therefore," "but," "no," "and yet," or, as here, "however."




I being born a woman and distressed               a
By all the needs and notions of my kind            b
Am urged by your propinquity to find               b
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest            a
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:     a
So subtly is the fume of life designed,                b
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,            b
And leave me once again undone, possessed.    a      
Think not for this, however, the poor treason     c
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,  d
I shall remember you with love, or season          c
My scorn with pity, -- let me make it plain:        d
I find this frenzy insufficient reason                     c
For conversation when we meet again.              d

Note that this form calls for two "envelope quatrains," rhymed abba, and that the rhyme sounds are repeated, so the octave employs only two rhyme sounds. This also creates couplets of the last and first lines of the quatrains (e.g. zest/breast). English is a rhyme-poor language, so it's not surprising that English poets adopting this form in the 15th century also adapted it, evolving several alternate versions with more flexible rhyme schemes. The Shakespearean is the most common and enduring of the English forms. I'll talk about rhyme and meter in this one, too.




Watch Repair Shop Window
Evan Oakley

White pants in the dark mirror of the glass,
faint two-limbed flame, substanceless noon day moon;
pausing, she studied her transparent ass,
its shape haunted her, as always.  Soon
she would stop eating, smoking, stop it all.
An open timepiece swirled where her womb
would be, wheels spinning hot and whimsical
behind the window in their silent room.
O then a ragged streetside vendor raised
his torched newspaper up--no, a bouquet,
into the pale halo and I appraised
the clockwork among the petals among
the loins; a casual end-time vision.
A meter clicked beside me: violation.

Another 20th c. sonnet, this one written by a GMU student who now teaches English in Colorado. Like many sonnets, it incorporates some structural features of the Shakespearean form and some of the Petrarchan. It also takes part in other sonnet traditons: a man looks at a woman, and speaks of what he sees in a series of dense and elaborate images and metaphors. Its final line critiques the speaker's own "vision" as a "violation." Does this poem rewrite Shakespeare's critique of hyperbolic metaphor in "My Mistress' Eyes?"



White pants in the dark mirror of the glass,                   a
faint two-limbed flame, substanceless noon day moon;  b
pausing, she studied her transparent ass,                       a
its shape haunted her, as always. Soon                      b
she would stop eating, smoking, stop it all.                   c
An open timepiece swirled where her womb                d 
would be, wheels spinning hot and whimsical                c
behind the window in their silent room.                        d
O then a ragged streetside vendor raised                     e
his torched newspaper up--no, a bouquet,                   x
into the pale halo and I appraised                                e
the clockwork among the petals among                       x
the loins; a casual end-time vision.                               f
A meter clicked beside me: violation.                           f

The rhyme scheme is Shakespearean (allowing for one "rhyming pair" to be an unrhymed pair; I've marked them "x"). And yet, the closeness of sound between "moon/soon" and "womb/room", plus the extra internal rhyme of "noon" in line 2 and the fainter echo in the first syllable of "whimsical" in line 7, push the rhymes in the first two quatrains toward the kind of sound density we expect in a Petrarchan sonnet.

The poem's rhetorical organization owes even more to Petrarch, with the content of the first two quatrains run together into an octave, and a marked turn at line 9 ("O then...") The vision elaborated in lines 9-13 acts like a sestet in relation to the octave, then stops one line short. This move, plus the feminine rhyme (vision/violation), softens the impact of the closing couplet, yet the final line wraps things up with the kind of rhetorical punch we associate with Shakespeare's final couplets.






Purgatory
Maxine Kumin

And suppose the darlings get to Mantua,
suppose they cheat the crypt, what next? Begin
with him, unshaven.  Though not, I grant you, a
displeasing cockerel, there's egg yolk on his chin.
His seedy robe's aflap, he's got the rheum.
Poor dear, the cooking lard has smoked her eyes.
Another Montague is in the womb
although the first babe's bottom's not yet dry.
She scrolls a weekly letter to her Nurse
who dares to send a smock through Balthasar,
and once a month, his father posts a purse.
News from Verona? Always news of war.
  Such sour years it takes to right this wrong!
  The fifth act runs unconscionably long.

Kumin uses a Shakespearean sonnet to satirize a Shakespearean play, and realism to satirize the conventions of literary romance, be it dramatic or lyric.

From its Anglo-Saxon grandparents, English inherited a  rich selection of punchy, concrete one-syllable words. Poets using tight little forms like the sonnet have created a tradition of packing their lines with short, emotive "good old Anglo-Saxon words," -- as many as ten to a single line. Given that tradition, what is the function of the word "unconscionably" in this poem?







And suppose the darlings get to Mantua,              a
suppose they cheat the crypt, what next? Begin     b
with him, unshaven. Though not, I grant you, a     a
displeasing cockerel, there's egg yolk on his chin,  b      
His seedy robe's aflap, he's got the rheum.            c
Poor dear, the cooking lard has smoked her eyes. d
Another Montague is in the womb                        c
although the first babe's bottom's not yet dry.        d
She scrolls a weekly letter to her Nurse                e
who dares to send a smock through Balthasar,      f
and once a month, his father posts a purse.           e
News from Verona? // Always news of war.            f 
  Such sour years it takes to right this wrong!        g
  The fifth act runs unconscionably long.                g

The rhyme scheme (including the comic double rhyme in the first quatrain) conforms exactly to the English/Shakespearean tradition, but her rhetorical structure is a bit askew: five lines for Romeo, three for Juliet. And the last quatrain, while dealing exclusively with what we might call communications, is constructed as a three-line sentence followed by a single line holding two short sentences. So the poem seems to close twice, once on the 12th line, then again in the couplet.


How does this asymmetical pattern, not quite aligned with the formal pattern, relate to the poem's "realism" or the poem's satire?



Shakespeare: My Mistress' Eyes  /  Shakespeare: Let Me Not  

Millay: I Being Born a Woman and Distressed

Oakley: Watch Repair Shop Window  /  Kumin: Purgatory  


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