Yoked Together The warden, cop, and vet all told me on the phone the coon must be destroyed, provided, like them, I possessed the means to do it, as for better or worse I did. He’d come up out of our woods and onto the porch and simply would not scare. He had stuff running out of his eyes and skinny, tatterdemalion hair and he probably had, therefore, rabies.
Slain by the slant (and the reach) rhyme! It's the sort of formal music I enjoy most. Finding it is part of the fun of reading. Perfect rhyme too often hurts my ears, and I get distracted by trying to guess what rhyming word comes next and how the syntax will inevitably (and awkwardly) get inverted to land on it. I don’t enjoy such distraction. Enjoyable is reading the poem through (unsuspecting) and only then discovering the more subtle music and sense of the thing. Thanks!
Syd, this is a particularly enjoyable set of poems for me. As I do, when time permits, I printed them out last night and enjoyed them this morning over coffee. “Yoked Together” has a wonderful sense of iconography, with the coon linked to Arthur. I love all the things passing through his corn cob pipe, including “leaves of grass,” which in tying to Whitman suggests a universe. I too especially like slant rhyme, which is the only way I’ll rhyme anymore given the scarcity of English rhymes not already run into the ground. Your description of Arthur makes him real. Was Frost the poet responsible for the final quote?
In the Monk poem, the fact that he took his vows late could account some for his boredom, his mind going to the things he might have missed out on by choosing the life he did. I imagine that to be one of the temptations of the monastic life, which I did not choose or never could have chosen given my own midlife conversion to Holy Orthodoxy. But it is a temptation besetting any life in God. For such requires patience and perseverance—acquired with difficulty by any human. I like the imagined visit of the no longer young woman to the garden.
In “Elegy” again I enjoy the sharp blade of your descriptions, as well the quote from the only Shakespeare sonnet (29) I have memorized, largely due to the fact my mother recorded a reading of it on an acetate record in college speech class in the late 40’s. It was lucky I copied this to a cassette, because the acetate coating disintegrated while stored in a basement. I later made a digital and CD copy. Great poems.
Thanks for all you (rightly) say, Matthew. The final line cones from a comment of ST Coleridge on the sometimes contorted connections in Donne's poetry.
Slain by the slant (and the reach) rhyme! It's the sort of formal music I enjoy most. Finding it is part of the fun of reading. Perfect rhyme too often hurts my ears, and I get distracted by trying to guess what rhyming word comes next and how the syntax will inevitably (and awkwardly) get inverted to land on it. I don’t enjoy such distraction. Enjoyable is reading the poem through (unsuspecting) and only then discovering the more subtle music and sense of the thing. Thanks!
Many thanks, Brad!
These poems hit home for me today, Syd. Thank you for sharing them.
Thanks, Michelle!
Especially related to Yoked Together as you can probably imagine. Nice poem. Well, sweet in a way, and you likely know what I mean. Very good.
Thanks as ever, friend.
I am well aware you are up in God’s country while I live in the bowels of hell. But I’m closer to you next week than normal. Ha!
Puppy sitting for our son and daughter-in-law.
Headed your direction Friday. Hopping the train for a three week trip to Charleston, Richmond, and NYC.
Well, right direction...but we are five hours north of NY. Have a blast, whatever your mission.
Syd, this is a particularly enjoyable set of poems for me. As I do, when time permits, I printed them out last night and enjoyed them this morning over coffee. “Yoked Together” has a wonderful sense of iconography, with the coon linked to Arthur. I love all the things passing through his corn cob pipe, including “leaves of grass,” which in tying to Whitman suggests a universe. I too especially like slant rhyme, which is the only way I’ll rhyme anymore given the scarcity of English rhymes not already run into the ground. Your description of Arthur makes him real. Was Frost the poet responsible for the final quote?
In the Monk poem, the fact that he took his vows late could account some for his boredom, his mind going to the things he might have missed out on by choosing the life he did. I imagine that to be one of the temptations of the monastic life, which I did not choose or never could have chosen given my own midlife conversion to Holy Orthodoxy. But it is a temptation besetting any life in God. For such requires patience and perseverance—acquired with difficulty by any human. I like the imagined visit of the no longer young woman to the garden.
In “Elegy” again I enjoy the sharp blade of your descriptions, as well the quote from the only Shakespeare sonnet (29) I have memorized, largely due to the fact my mother recorded a reading of it on an acetate record in college speech class in the late 40’s. It was lucky I copied this to a cassette, because the acetate coating disintegrated while stored in a basement. I later made a digital and CD copy. Great poems.
Thanks for all you (rightly) say, Matthew. The final line cones from a comment of ST Coleridge on the sometimes contorted connections in Donne's poetry.
So Coleridge was using the word violence figuratively, not as I think of Frost doing, literally.
Yes...