With how sad steps, O mind, thou climb'st the lines

[larryhammer]

ogre_san has been eloquent in the past on the necessity of a magpie mind for writing purposes. It's all material for the muse. I do have to wonder what Fred is up to now, though. I've gotten sidetracked from Elizabethan Ovidian narratives (which I reread every so often for inspiration: witty erotic narrative poems? -- dude, I'm so there) into Elizabethan sonnet cycles.

Yes, really. I mean, my reaction to ye typical sonneteer is "Get over it already. Both her and yourself." As I get older, I lose more patience with the conventions of courtly love, and these stream squarely from that tradition, at least as refracted by Petrarch and distilled by Sidney. As a diet, it's kinda turning my brain to mush. Especially the middling poets.

I will admit, reading minor cycles does highlight the strengths of the better poets. Sidney, especially, was a master at dramatizing the story's arc (such as it is) and giving Stella a semblance of life. And Drayton may not have been a major talent, but he worked what talent he had well, and in particular gave many sonnets a unique dramatic immediacy, even otherwise mediocre ones. (As an editor comments, he never forgets his supposed purpose is to persuade the lady.)

And yet. Mush though it be, it's what my brain wants to read. I'm starting to worry, especially since I've been having disturbing dreams of repeated close readings of short poems. Maybe I should dose myself with more Venus and Adonis. Or Lord Peter and Harriet.

(Speaking of major talents, W.H. Auden writes in an introduction to Shakespeare's sonnets, "On going through the hundred and fifty-four of them, I find forty-nine which seem to me excellent throughout, and a good number of the rest have one or two memorable lines, but there are also several which I can only read out of a sense of duty." Oh, to have his list of forty-nine! For an anthology, he selected twenty-five, leaving at least twenty-four to be guessed at.)


Bibliography:
Elizabethan Minor Epics, edited by Elizabeth Story Donno
Amorous Rites: Elizabethan Erotic Verse, edited by Sandra Clarke
Elizabethan Sonnets, edited by Maurice Evans
Shakespeare's Sonnets, edited by William Burto
Portable Poets of the English Language, edited in five volumes by W.H. Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson

---L.

Comments

[debg.livejournal.com]

Dear heavens, Michael Drayton. My Main Man, yo.

I love poetry, as much as I love music. I love it in the same way, purely visceral: I ignore the form in favour of getting naked and rolling around in the language.

And unlike music, if asked to pick my favourite poem ever written - as in, the one I resonate to, echo along with, no matter what else - I pick the same one every time, without hesitation. It's Since There's No Help.

Shake hands forever, cancel all our vows...

Christ. He kills me.

[larryhammer]

Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.

He doesn't quite hit that note quite as well in any other sonnet, but it's one of the truly excellent poems of our language -- and deep in that dramatic immediacy.

Have you read any of his other works?

---L.

[debg.livejournal.com]

Have you read any of his other works?

Damned near all of them, but you're right: none of the others sing like this one.

Since I'm allergic to crit, and hate it with a stone passion, I have no idea whether it's "good" or "bad" or any of that. My reactions to poetry, just as to music, are 100% visceral. And this one does all of me.

[larryhammer]

In this case, the critters generally count it one of the best poems of the period.

---L.

[debg.livejournal.com]

Heh. Chomping on my tongue, here, because I don't believe in, or understand, the concept of "grading" or "rating" creativity. Best? I have no clue, and seriously don't care. My only question about language or music or art is, where it hits me emotionally viscerally. I go to the Louvre, there's a crowd around La Giaconda. OK, yes - I think she's lovely. But I go right past the crowd and out to where they keep the other da Vinci, the Madonna of the Rocks.

Because while the Mona Lisa makes me say, damn, Leonardo could paint, the Madonna of the Rocks sends me into deep happy tranquil zen. I could walk into that painting and never come out and be frozen there, loving being there, peaceful and calm. And it's not the subject matter - I'm no Christian and never have been.

So "best of the period" - ok, whatever makes them happy. What makes me happy is not reacting to creativity intellectually, because if I do, then the piece in question, whatever it is, is for me defined as a failure. Creativity for me is a kind of magic trick; I have no desire to know why other people think the magician has pulled it off. I want to be wowed. My intellectual curiosity, such as it is, is attuned toward history, not craetivity.

So I'll just be over here in the corner, hearing Drayton in my head, singing to it, listening to its echoes and silent stops and resignation and lies. I just love it. Don't care why.

Yes, I'm a big old freak....