"romantic tropes" (sonnet)
Romantic tropes like darling & I love you
transcribe & assemble meaning in the mind
alike paint (the earth below the sky above you)
they compose the parts from core to seed to rind
the conceit of being in love has particular shape
it's not some vapid dab of garrulous color
the ear just so the eye discerns a nape
the flap of cloth can nake a neck nigh collar
the funnels of faces channel one's comprehension
or can close the sluice upon being's possibility
the courtesies glimpsed in love describe dimension
love's manner (for instance) shoulders keen docility
and language! O does it whisper into your ear?
if it's got a throat it conceivably could clear
[If oftentimes, as a form, the sonnet might occasion conventional expressions & familiar thoughts, yet alternatively it can seem to wave a torero flag encouraging some headlong charge into more recondite, less sure directions. Maybe (amid arrows consequent on such a gallop) this poem illustrates such a notion?
Lest the above paragraph prove more baffling than the poem, I should (remedially?) quote myself. I wrote to a friend:
transcribe & assemble meaning in the mind
alike paint (the earth below the sky above you)
they compose the parts from core to seed to rind
the conceit of being in love has particular shape
it's not some vapid dab of garrulous color
the ear just so the eye discerns a nape
the flap of cloth can nake a neck nigh collar
the funnels of faces channel one's comprehension
or can close the sluice upon being's possibility
the courtesies glimpsed in love describe dimension
love's manner (for instance) shoulders keen docility
and language! O does it whisper into your ear?
if it's got a throat it conceivably could clear
[If oftentimes, as a form, the sonnet might occasion conventional expressions & familiar thoughts, yet alternatively it can seem to wave a torero flag encouraging some headlong charge into more recondite, less sure directions. Maybe (amid arrows consequent on such a gallop) this poem illustrates such a notion?
Lest the above paragraph prove more baffling than the poem, I should (remedially?) quote myself. I wrote to a friend:
I spent the last hour [now it's 5 a.m.] mainly revising a poem ("romantic tropes")... It explores & plays with a few notions in a fairly abstract way, I daresay.Maybe this doesn't clarify very much. Anyway, there's the poem. What-all it means, is anybody's guess.]
posted by david raphael israel at 12:36 AM
2 Comments:
I don't think that apology about being "fairly abstract" is necessary. The poem creates smooth enough meanings and flows.
Yes, good.
The habit of apology is rather irksome. Am tempted to apologize for it but . . . ;-)
To point out the poem as "rather abstract" is rather unnecessary; anyone w/ a brain reading can see how abstract or otherwise a poem is. It's not anyway very fragmenty-postmodern; and in a way lacks the kind of "abstraction" that that approach can achieve. Whoever it was (Northrop Fry? - I encounter all these things 3rd hand) who wrote about "seven types of ambiguity"(?) -- I think one could similarly (& poss. interestingly) distinguish several types of abstractness / abstraction. I digress (sans apology). ;-)
cheers, d.i.
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