sonatina in green

I think sonatina in green is saying something totally different about chance than the others.

Sonatina in Green


One spits on the sublime.
One lies in bed alone, reading
Yesterday's newspaper. One
Has composed a beginning, say,
A phrase or two. No more!
There has been traffic enough
In the boudoir of the muse.

And still they come, demanding entrance,
Noisy, and with ecstatic cries
Catching the perfume, forcing their way—
For them, what music? Only,
Distantly, through some door ajar,
Echoes, broken strains; and the garland
Crushed at the threshold.

And we,
We few with the old instruments,
Obstinate, sounding the one string—
For us, what music? Only, at times,
The sunlight of late afternoon
That plays in the corner of a room,
Playing upon worn keys. At times,
Smells of decaying greenery, faint bouquets—
More than enough.

And our cries
Diminish behind us:
Cover
The bird cages! No more
Bargain days in the flower stalls!
There has been traffic enough
In the boudoir of the muse,
More than enough traffic. Or say
That one composed, in the end,
Another beginning, in spite of all this,
Sublime. Enough!

Closed are the grand boulevards,
And closed those mouths that made the lesser songs,
And the curtains drawn in the boudoir.


for my students

This poem is all about inspiration and, in my opinion, the writing process.

The key phrase is “There has been traffic enough/ In the boudoir of the muse.” A muse is typically thought of as a woman (goddess) who is a source of inspiration to poets, musicians, artists, etc. A Boudoir is a woman’s dressing room/bedroom-type-thing by the way. The “boudoir of the muse” line is important enough that Justice repeats the line in the second to last stanza.

He seems to describe three writers in the first stanza: one who looks to the past for inspiration (yesterday’s newspaper), another who cannot get past “a phrase or two,” and a third who just straight-up rejects inspiration (weird). They can’t find inspiration because there “has been traffic enough in the boudoir of the muse.”

Next he describes how they try to force the inspiration, “demanding entrance” and “forcing their way.” After considering the subject material, story, and the “chance method,” I think that Justice is really saying something about the writing process. A lesson for his students if you will.

He is telling us that it’s alright to stumble upon a great line through trial and error or by accident, that our poems need not come from steady contemplation and a search for inspiration. How our creative minds work is a somewhat random process. We may have a certain syntax and diction for a line in mind, but it can morph into something we totally did not imagine beforehand. I know that is how my blog analyses come to be. I generally begin typing my close-read with a basic observation in mind, and just by typing it out I start to make new connections on the fly, things I didn’t even think of while just staring at the poem. I think that’s where the chance concept comes about. Ideas that one did not preconceive can spring about within the writing process itself. You just cannot force these ideas out like our friends in the poem “forced their way.”

Without knowledge of the chance method that he used in creating this poem, it may just seem like a poem about inspiration in general. But by telling us that he used this random process, he can teach us a more specific lesson if we correctly tie in the chance method to the subject matter.

This poem is really just a terrific lecture in poetic disguise.