Sonnet 130

I was just listening (again) to Alan Rickman's recitation of Shakespeare's Sonnet 130, found via the Smart Bitches, and I was struck, as always, by how he can completely make me melt into a puddle for thirteen lines, and then completely lose me when he misreads the last one. Why, Alan? Why did you have to insert an invisible "whom" where no whom ought to be?

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Shall we walk through it? Yes, let's.

It's a Shakespearian sonnet (that's a formal designation, not an indication of the author), so the turn should be after the third quatrain - and there it is, at line thirteen. The first twelve lines are all inversions of standard Petrarchan similes describing the poet's lover, but even if you didn't know that, it's pretty obvious that he's rejecting common florid descriptions. Whether you want to read it as the poet acknowledging his mistress's imperfections and loving her regardless, or as a more calculating poet deciding that no woman could live up to the similes, so he may as well stick with the one he has, I don't think there's any way to read it as a celebration of the idealized woman.

So why, tell me, would anyone take the "she" in the final line as the subject of an unspoken "whom" clause, when it's quite clearly an example of synechdoche referring to all women?

Wrong
As {any} [she] belied |with false compare|
where: {direct object} [subject] verb |sub-clause|

Right
As [any she] belied \with false compare\
where: [subject] verb \agent of passive verb\

In other words, it's not the mistress doing the belying, it's the similes which set a standard no woman can possibly achieve. To say that your mistress walks like a goddess is to insult her, not only because real people just aren't like that, but because it implies that your love for her is based on a quality that she doesn't even possess.

And just for fun:

This Is Just to Say

I have written a paper
on William Carlos Williams
and Kenneth Koch

it may be crap
modernism confuses me
I prefer the nineteenth century
so wild
and so organic

Drinking the Cthulhade

Following a discussion of Cthulhu-flavored beverages over at Making Light, which spawned from some lovely Photoshop bits, I posted the following:

Drink not the liquor born of shadow fruit
If you yet value heart and soul and mind -
Those grapes were trodden by no human foot.

Too late, too late, to kill the cursed shoot
Already is the wholesome tree envined;
Drink not the liquor born of shadow fruit.

With notes of death and madness, blood and soot,
(Pray that it will only leave you blind)
Those grapes were trodden by no human foot.

A single drop sets madness in pursuit:
Dread, formless shapes loom behind.
Drink not the liquor born of shadow fruit.

And worse - within your dreams, some brute
Whispers secrets: a terrible blasphemous kind.
Those grapes were trodden by no human foot.

Though risen horrors render caution moot
--From deep R'lyeh will Dread Cthulhu climb--
Yet, drink no liquor born of shadow fruit;
Those grapes were trodden by no human foot!

Not my first foray into occasional poetry (that's poetry written for an occasion, not "sometimes I scribble"), but possibly the first I've shared. I'm rather fond of it, although I think the meter ought to devolve more in the final stanza.

Brigid in Cyberspace

Today is Bloggers' Silent Poetry Reading Day.

I first ran into this poem in an episode of The Simpsons (so cultured!) and fell in love with it. I mostly associate poetry with doom and gloom, since upbeat poetry is generally so poorly written, but this one feels hopeful without being schmaltzy.

If—
by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master;
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run--
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!