Recently in Sonnets Category

At the end of January, at the urging of a few friends, I sent three sonnets off to Asimov's, the only science fiction magazine that accepts poetry. Unlike most of the sonnets I write, these were not "occasional" sonnets, written to mark a specific event or play off of a specific theme in a conversation.

I got the rejection letter this week, a good month after Asimov's own guidelines said to "assume the submission was lost". Poetry is a chancy thing to publish, of course, and I'm not actually disappointed or annoyed in the least that I got knocked back. I regarded the entire submission process as being like throwing spaghetti at the wall, just to see if it stuck.

So, since Asimov's doesn't want them, I thought I'd publish the three of them here. Each is structured as a 14-line SF narrative, basically a short story in iambic pentameter. I had a lot of fun writing them - even managed to recycle a story idea that never jelled into one.

Principal Damage

The cloning table holds me half-reclined
And wraps the scanning visor round my head,
Recording me. I try to clear my mind,
But grief remains. My alter self is dead.
A roadside bomb went off; his whole squad died.
Like all the other soldiers grown before
From memories and tissue I've supplied,
He died. As will the next, and many more.
I knew that he was gone before the call --
I felt the bomb explode, and tasted blood.
I can't explain, but I've died with them all,
Been burned and shot, been stabbed and drowned in mud.
Sometimes I wish that I were just a clone
So when I die, I die just once, alone.

I blame John Scalzi for this one, since he's the one that got me into the "civilians turn soldiers in SFnial wars" mindset, years after the imprint of Starship Troopers was finally ironed out of my skull. Though Ursula K LeGuin's story Nine Lives is a piece of it, too, with the notion of some mystical connection among clones that activates on death.

Some Minor Alterations

At glum fifteen, I met myself at thirty.
I was an awkward kid, and couldn't see
A future that would suit someone like me.
I wanted to be normal, not so nerdy.
She brought me pictures: husband (somewhat bland),
Cute children, pleasant house, a life in full.
The photos made it all seem possible,
And, suddenly, too dull for me to stand.
My fears of growing into her inspire
Me through the days I spend on my research,
Inventing this machine. I plan to search
Through time for the excitement I require.
And my first trip? To tell a lie, and thus
Steer my past self toward the truth of us.

The scansion on this one is iffy, but it was fun. It's an attempt to resolve the time-travel paradox on one of my favourite wishes (that I could go back in time to my teenaged self and tell her it would all be OK in the end).

Nothing in this poem should be an indictment of my current life, by the way.

Immigrant

The branching universes take me far
Beyond my devastated world, to one
Where Earth revolves around a living star.
I find my other self. She doesn't run.
I do the thing, and hide the body well,
And then go home. The keys are in her coat.
The house is nicer here -- mine's just a shell --
But on the mantelpiece, I find a note.
If you are reading this, I must be dead.
But that's OK. I hope you made it fast.
Just know you're not the first to come instead
Of staying home. Nor will you be the last.
Enjoy this respite from whatever hell
You've just escaped, and in your turn, die well.

This is recycled from a story that just never worked out about fifteen years ago. It's based a lot on Larry Niven's All the Myriad Ways, gone a bit dark. One of my readers cited The Golden Bough in reference to it as well, though if that is an influence it's filtered through the culture (I have never read it).

So my quest to become a published poet is thwarted, thwarted, I tell you! And I'm not really gutted. I hope the narrative sonnets are at least interesting.

A week or two ago, one of the commenters on a weblog I frequent quoted a line from one of her dreams: "Sometimes the petal is as effective as the flower."

And I felt the tug I feel sometimes, when there's a sonnet somewhere inside me, waiting to come out. It took about half an hour from tug to completion, but when I read it to M, he thought it was so sweet he cried.

So, for Valentine's day, a love sonnet.

He knows me well, and so his slightest glance
Conveys a sonnet's worth of loving thought.
He speaks my mind so often it's not chance
And I say what he's thinking, like as not.
I brush his shoulder as I pass his chair,
Or as he drives, reach out and tap his knee.
He leans his head back as I stroke his hair
Then turns back to his work, away from me.
We could say more, but other things intrude,
And evenings are too short to get things done.
Our common terseness might be seen as rude
But one word's wealth, when there is need for none.
A word, a touch, our deepest feeling shows:
The petal is effective as the rose.

 

This is a dark one. It came out of a conversation in mid-December, which strayed into a conflation between the three wise monkeys (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil) and the three Wise Men. Everyone else was very lighthearted, but I have never found the monkeys joyous. That kind of denial of the world around them always saddens me.

O Melchior, you brought me gifts of gold
To make a crown that you refuse to see:
You hide your eyes lest kingship make me bold,
Seduce me on the heights, corrupting me.
And Balthasar, who gave me frankincense,
Is deaf to my pronouncements. Are your fears
That I'd usurp my Father so intense
That cowering, you cover up your ears?
My Caspar, bringing myrrh, forsees such loss
And closes fast his mouth, unreconciled
To thoughts of death, the shadow of the cross:
A monstrous gift to bring a newborn child.
Dear kings, this all was planned, and you might trust
I'll do not what I choose, but what I must.

Technically, I am not very satisfied with this poem. The language is strained - I should have rewritten it a few times before posting it, but I doubt I will ever go back and do so. It's a rare example of a sonnet where I haven't used an octave and sestet structure, but rather three balanced quatrains summarised by a couplet. It fits the three-part structures of both of the stories that converge in this sonnet.

In content terms, I found it very easy to map the three kings to the three monkeys. Caspar, in particular, works well as the wise man foreshadowing the death of the infant receiving his gift, struck mute by the horror of what he has to convey. The others hide out of fear, but he does so out of pity. The point of the poem, of course, is that none of them have the full picture, which is deeper and more frightening than they can possibly imagine.

I do think, before I start doing these in my Christmas cards, that I will have to choose more cheery themes.

I wrote this in November, on a thread about what to call the war. It's actually the second -- the first was silly, and I am not minded to post silliness today.

Before I'd name the war, I'd ask to know
What I was calling "in" and calling "out",
And how this situation's like to grow.
It's clarity we've been too long without.
New York, Afghanistan, Madrid, Iraq,
Guantanamo and London, Bali too;
Iran and North Korea, from the talk,
And then Peoria? and me? and you?
We move in darkness, as it seems to me
Not of fear only, but the shades of lie
That hide the places we become less free
And trumpet out the ways that we could die.
Until we get so used to constant strife
That we don't call it war, but normal life.

This sonnet quotes quite extensively from one of my favourite poems, Mending Wall, by Robert Frost. It was one of my attempts to recast another poem into sonnet meter and rhyme. Both the octave and the sestet start off with Frost quotes, like a touchstone:

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.

and

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

I have always used Frost's poem as a metaphor for the intellectual distinctions we make to parse the world, and the need to make those distinctions intelligently and thoughtfully. It is only now, writing this entry, that I realise that he wrote it in 1915, when the First World War was already underway. Though that conflict is far from his verse, I find this interesting.

Written today, for a picture taken yesterday.

Taken 9 January 2007

Beyond the hut, the gravel path turns right
To meet a branch that leads across the bridge.
And, nestled in its curve, a pleasant sight:
The wooden bench sits sheltered by its ridge.
Like half a hundred others in this place,
The seat's a gift, and labeled with a name:
Our hostess here, whose memories still grace
This place she loved, and hoped we'd do the same.
Her unobtrusive presence here receives
Me with no ceremony, and we share
The silence as I sit and watch the leaves
Drop in the pond, and brush and braid my hair.
She is a gracious hostess, and her guest
Appreciates her gifts of peace and rest.

The only technical point I would make is that the transition between the octave and the sestet is, in this case, the transition from setting the scene to my entry onto the scene.

Some of my sonnets are not written rationally. It was not an easy autumn.

O take me where the Douglas firs don't grow
In rows, but as they please. The roads will be
Awash and muddy now, but I'd still go.
As always when I fail, I long to see
The woodsmoke drifting from the chimney pipe
Above the cabin set amongst the trees;
Across the path, a dancing golden stripe
Of lamplight beckoning with warmth and peace.
O take me from this cold, uncompromising place
Built up with stone and weighted down with years.
Perhaps at home I'd rediscover grace
And find the heart to overcome these fears.
I've lost the sense of who I want to be.
O take me home, while there is still a me.

Technically, this sonnet uses the transition from octave to sestet to move from the dream, the longed-for forest (and this is a specific forest, with a specific cabin) back to the city where I live. Thus the pessimism - swap the order and make it present first, then dream, and the poem becomes much more imaginative, less dark.

I am a bit bothered by the false rhyme of "trees/peace", but I'll live with it.

Emotionally, the content is what it is. I love Edinburgh deeply, but sometimes I do get homesick.

This was written on Bonfire Night, 2006. I watched the fireworks with the children, then came inside to warm up and read some of the history of Guy Fawkes and his plot.

History can be as comforting as it is unsettling.

In time, September the eleventh night,
The kids will watch the rockets fill the air.
They'll OOH and AAH in multicoloured light
With bioluminescents in their hair.
Our tragedies will be reduced to rhyme:
Some half-remembered, mistranslated song
And jumping dance, its meaning lost to time,
Details missing, names and places wrong.
Though self-renewing terror haunts our lives,
Our children, staring upward at the sky,
Remind us that their innocence survives
While we, and they, and generations die.
Resist with decency when terror stalks
It's stronger than Bin Laden, Marx or Fawkes.

In technical terms, this is an okay sonnet. There is very little "turn" in this one, between the octave and the sestet. The only real transition is from the scene at the start to the message in the conclusion. The couplet does sum things up nicely. But the language is never clever, or particularly powerful.

In terms of content, this is a sonnet I believe in very deeply indeed. I think we exist in a historical context, and that it is important for us to remember that in the choices we make. I think (looking backward) civilisation has faced worse challenges than we face now, and (looking forward) that we owe it to the future not to overreact, or sell out our principles.