Questions 10-13

[truepenny]

(If you want to ask a question, you can do so here, but otherwise I'm going to close the polls at question 13.)

11. If you could have three wishes, what would they be?

world peace

an end to bigotry

humanity to quit fucking up the planet

12. Bach or Chopin?

Bach.

13. Three parter: What sonnet most rocks your world? What poem most rocks your world? And if those are different, why?

Um, wow. Hell of a question.

I don't actually know modern sonnets as well as I ought, so my #1 favorite sonnet is Shakespeare's #129

Th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action, and till action, lust
Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit and in possession so,
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof and proved a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
    All this the world well knows, yet none knows well
    To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

This is not, however, the poem that most rocks my world. I'm not sure what is. I ask that question and get flooded with answers: Naomi Shihab Nye, Emily Dickinson, Sharon Olds, Lisel Mueller, Mark Doty, Sylvia Plath, Lynda Hull, William Carlos Williams, Anne Sexton, Cate Marvin, Gillian Clarke. Modern poetry fills me with wonder; all these poets and others beside rock my world to its foundations. There's a thing that modern poetry does, which for me is most perfectly encapsulated in Naomi Shihab Nye's "Hello," especially the last five lines and the way they ring-comp with the first: "Some nights / the rat with pointed teeth / makes his long way back / to the bowl of peaches. / ... / The bed that was a boat is sinking. / And the shores of morning loom up / lined with little shadows, / things we never wanted to be, or meet, / and all the rats are waving hello." I can't articulate it, but I know it when I find it, and it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. That's what I read poetry for.

Comments

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I know it when I find it, and it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

Ha! That was my father's test of poetry; mine is that it makes my spine twitch.

And - to lower the tone somewhat - if you aren't that up to date on modern sonnets, are you familiar with Wendy Cope's:

The expense of spirits is a crying shame,

The rest is here (http://www.utdallas.edu/~jenelow/Cope.html), if required.

[larryhammer]

Cope rawks.

---L.