"Sometimes all we do is cope / somewhere on the steepest slope / is an endless rope"

[larryhammer]

Some weeks, just getting a sonnet out feels like a victory.

As when a goldsmith draws a pliers pinch
of reddish metal through an iron plate,
but his gold's gone too cold for pulling straight
and so he strains for every wire inch;

and as a rower a length behind the leader
pulls hard with all she has, arms legs lungs head
burning with every stroke that doesn't speed her
because she hasn't enough to pull ahead;

so do I stare at this white screen, this row
of black letters as meaningless as the dead,
and for all I try to make this story go,
each word is drawn from under fingernails
as if by pincers, till I drop my head
onto the keyboard where my writing fails.

Why, yes, I have been watching Olympics coverage, why do you ask?

---L.

Comments

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

That reminds me, rather viscerally, of a very bad time some years ago. I hope this feeling is a very temporary one for you.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I got to the rower and thought, "Bet I know what Larry's been watching!"

That's a nifty sonnet--chockful of real imagery, which brings the point home stronger than wide-striding hyperbole (imo--I know jack about poetry)

[larryhammer]

Thankee. Apparently reading Petrarch has been a good influence on me.

Yes, and yes again that imagery grounded in the mundane is stronger, more visceral, than broad strokes.

---L.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

Am I allowed to love that and be jealous at the same time?

The last line killed me. Much too close to home these days.

[larryhammer]

Love and jealousy are not incompatable. Alas.

---L.

[galeni.livejournal.com]

Cool. Might I suggest "gone too hard" instead of too cold for pulling straight? I've pulled gold wire through a plate, and it doesn't need to be warm but it does need to be soft. Once it's pulled a couple of times the molecules align and it goes too hard and needs heating again in order to pull through yet another hole.

I watched the Canadians take a medal in a squeaker today in light shells, 2 person. Made third by about two inches/.04 seconds. Wow.

[larryhammer]

I thought about that and went with cold as being more likely to make sense to ye average reader, and for the mimetic hard initial consonant. But it's worth dithering over some more.

---L.

[(Anonymous)]

(Now that I'm reading this more awake) "cold" works too with the definition of reheated too long ago.

Poetics require an awake brain. Sorry.

[larryhammer]

I suppose I shouldn't admit I'm getting increasingly unsatisfied with the second stanza, especially ll.7-8. Head/ahead is not an entirely kosher rhyme, and for a couple structural reasons it would be better if the line-ends "speed her" and "ahead" were reversed so the rhyme is ABBA. Also, line breaks are a little wonky in there.

The fiddly bits of craft. Nail the details and you nail the whole.

---L.