AH HA!
Well, I mentioned in the previous post that poem 6 follows the Italian sonnet form extremely closely. After re-reading the poem with Professor White’s question in mind, I realized a very important thing: the entire poem is about the speaker imprisoning and confining an angel.
Outside my door I keep an angel chained.
I never feed him, never let him loose,
And no one has accused me of abuse,
Although I wouldn’t care if they complained.
I like the way he looks as if he strained
To put his two carved wooden wings to use
And still stood still, impassive and abstruse,
Aware of all he could do and disdained.
And that is our relationship. He stands,
For now, where I have put him. His restraint
Is no more and no less than what it seems.
An angle doesn’t have to be a saint.
They fall like us, then try to make amends.
Could it be coincidence that a poem about imprisonment follows the sonnet form to a T (especially considering most of the other poems do not)? I think not. The words he chooses: chained, abuse, strained, impassive, disdained, restraint. These words all coincide with how closely the poem matches the sonnet form.
The very next poem, number 7 ( which was written out in my last post), also follows the Italian sonnet form very strictly and it is no surprise that its content is extremely somber, doubtful, and depressing.
Jarman is using the form of the poem to further convey and strengthen his message. Hence the title Unholy Sonnets. They are unholy both in religious and poetic terms. He is both questioning his religion and varying the level of strictness he follows in form.The only thing I am unsure about is whether Jarman is also speaking out against conservative views of poetic form by matching perfect sonnet forms with poems about imprisonment and car crashes.
4 comments:
I am so terribly confused. How do I have two Blogger accounts. Or a better question is: how do I keep signing into another one without knowing it exists???
Hmmm... it doesn't seem to me that he's speaking out against this conservative form. It took a lot of work to turn this sonnet into one that fits all the requirements- specific words such as relationship are difficult to fit in. Also, the flow of the work is very natural, with no awkward forced contractions or odd words that don't fit. This poem is clearly the result of a lot of effort.
Also, if this is a cry against rigid poetic forms, Jarman did a damn good job of writing a rigid poem- so why would he be against them. Anyways, this would make the purpose of the poem to communicate "strict forms of poetry are bad." They're clearly not, as the poem itself indicates, and this poem is about a lot more than that.
This is a comment that Tiffany wanted to leave on my blog but couldn't because I unknowingly had my settings set so that only registered users could comment. Here it is:
I looked up some of Mark Jarman’s “Unholy Sonnets” and this caught my eye.
There is a law outside the daily racket,
The vertigo of distracting personal woes,
And one outside of that, and beyond those,
The one that fits the cosmos like a jacket.
And when I think of that--that big abstraction--
I feel like a retiree in Palm Springs.
The serene, tearless clarity of things
Settles me down into sublime inaction.
But I am not a retiree in Palm Springs.
The girls of anxious gravity, my sin,
Tug at my heart and pockets, and I spin,
Bracing myself against a storm of things
That pelt and paw me and caress and claw--
The law inside the law inside the law.
It’s still a sonnet, but he plays with the form a little bit by breaking it into two stanzas. By doing this, he’s clearly indicating a change up. He goes from a generalized concept to how it relates to him. This poem is a study of temptation.
I think of the comment you made on how the title “Unholy Sonnets” would be atheist in nature, when in fact it turns out to be the opposite. Jarman’s poems are highly spiritual.
Looking at this poem for instance, words like “law”, “vertigo”, and “Palm Springs” all play an important part in describing the struggle to uphold personal integrity. Sin seems like the ideal vacation spot where there are no worries and only bodily pleasures at the heavy cost of personal integrity. The speaker also breaks the “law” too. I’m assuming that the law is God’s law.
I’m still trying to interpret the words “anxious gravity”. They really stood out to me because of the unusual juxtaposition. But I think it points to the direction of how sin may seem like small pleasures when in fact it sucks you in and destroys you—“That pelt and paw me and caress and claw”.
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