• About
  • How to comment
  • I Sing the Sonnet
  • Publications/Releases

gists

~ given I sing the sonnet

gists

Monthly Archives: August 2011

Remorse

26 Friday Aug 2011

Posted by duncangmaclaurin in Releases, Sonnets

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

autobiography, Bringing Sonnets Back, fictive first-person speakers, Remorse

Autobiography isn’t valued very highly in our culture. It is often dismissed a priori either as self-indulgent and frivolous, or as therapeutic, and therefore somehow of no relevance to us. Schooled as we are in the hegemony of pathological psychology, we have been taught to distrust the autobiographer’s designs and motives, and we approach an autobiography heavily armed with irony, scepticism, and cynicism. The prevalent mode of thinking seems to be: “We’re certainly not going to let this little nobody think we care what he/she feels/thinks.” Anyone who dares reveal their inner world is automatically subjected to ridicule. And anyone who dares to stand up and defend this ridiculous person is also subjected to ridicule.

Art Durkee has some interesting comments on this subject.

In discussion with him I was referred to this.

For this tribute to Maslow and his philosophy of positive thinking Art was apparently labelled a narcissist. He found the comments so offensive that he deleted them. I don’t know whether he did the right thing there. I haven’t seen the comments. But it’s a no-win situation. No doubt he followed his gut reaction. Why carry a load of invective against yourself on your blog? Even Thomas Graves at Scarriet draws the line occasionally.

Of course, some autobiographical writing is poor, but that doesn’t mean the whole genre should be tarred with the same brush. Luckily, there are those of us who sense that a one-sided account shouldn’t automatically be treated as untrustworthy. Every word could be true. Sheila O’Malley is an autobiographer, and she writes the socks off other reviewers precisely because she is bold enough to go with her own judgments. Her blog is here.

Some serious modern philosophers would seem to be set on redressing the standing of the autobiography. Stanley Cavell, for example, with his idea of philosophy as autobiography:

“This is an idea in which the acknowledgement of the partiality of the self is an essential condition for achieving the universal. In the apparently paradoxical combination of the ‘philosophical’ (which is traditionally connected with a search for the objective and the universal) and the ‘autobiographical’ (which is conventionally associated with the subjective and the personal), Cavell shows us a way of focusing on the self and yet always transcending the self.”

See the full essay.

Thomas S. Hibbs makes great claims for Cavell:

“By turning to neglected philosophers like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, attending to disciplines outside philosophy, and insisting on the link between philosophy and autobiography, Cavell has helped reshape the landscape of contemporary philosophy. No philosopher has ranged as widely in his thinking and writing.”

Cavell has said:

“The process of composing the autobiography has provided me with some distinct reassurance, I might say inspiration, in my bid for certain lines of liberation in imagining that I am an acceptable participant in the human family.”

He doesn’t say that this was a motivation for writing his autobiography. It could just as well have been a fortunate by-product. But yes, some people can sometimes improve their mental health by writing a book. Isn’t that wonderful? I can’t see how this fact alone should detract from its artistic or literary merit.

See the full article.

Like many other writers I choose to fictionalise my autobiographical accounts. This is more acceptable, it seems. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that my writing is therapeutic. I enjoy writing poems and songs, and I know it does wonders for my well-being. I also value autobiography highly, not least for the knowledge it imparts. I intuitively believe that subjective experience is the key to a deeper understanding of the world, and this is one of my main motivations for writing poetry and songs. I often write autobiographically. And in my autobiographical poetry I try to describe events as accurately as possible. It is the events themselves that are the midwives to my poetry, so why would I want to change them?

Sometimes, however, I choose to dramatise a fictive narrative using a first-person speaker, even though it is not an autobiographical account, because it is more compelling that way. And in some instances it is impossible for the reader to see when the “I” is a fictive one and when it is an autobiographical one. I don’t see this as a problem. Autobiographers have a tendency to idealize themselves. They’re selective and press their own agendas. In using a fictional first-person speaker I can allow myself a persona whose actions I would otherwise be unwilling to embrace.

The sonnet I am showcasing today is a case in point. The speaker has mistreated someone close, presumably a girl/woman, and it has ruined his relationship to her. The episode never actually happened, and I didn’t have anyone in mind when I wrote it. But it could have happened, and there’s no way for the reader to know it didn’t happen. The narrative reflects badly on me, but I can live with that. It goes some way to redressing the imbalance caused by my omitting to write about certain real-life events that reflect badly on me.

“Remorse” appeared in the first issue of an e-zine, Bringing Sonnets Back in July 2007, whereupon the website disappeared.

Remorse

You advertised the flutes of birds
at dusk, their latest domicile
the forks of lightning in your smile,
the cracks of thunder in your words.
The notes they sang were sweet and clear,
each one a joyful piece of news.
“At last,” I thought, “the playful muse
my cheerful soul has longed to hear!”

What tiger was in me that roared?
That stormed across your unmade bed?
That picked your pocket, swiftly read
the poetry your heart had poured?
No later action could redress
that stripping of your nakedness.

Listen to a recording:

 

Now look at the vastly inferior version I would have been compelled to write if I had declined to use the first person for fear of being identified as the speaker:

Remorse (a vastly inferior version)

He advertised the flutes of birds
at dusk, their latest domicile
the forks of lightning in her smile,
the cracks of thunder in her words.
The notes they sang were sweet and clear,
each one a joyful piece of news.
“At last,” he thought, “the playful muse
my cheerful soul has longed to hear!”

What tiger was in him that roared?
That stormed across her unmade bed?
That picked her pocket, swiftly read
the poetry her heart had poured?
No later action could redress
that stripping of her nakedness.

55.526590 8.356750
Advertisements

Who Needs an Easy Love?

18 Thursday Aug 2011

Posted by duncangmaclaurin in Releases, Sonnets

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Blue Moon, chorus as an epigraph, original versions, Past, Quantum Leap, Red Moon, rhyme schemes, Who Needs an Easy Love?

Here’s another sonnet that has developed from an earlier version. I call it “Who Needs an Easy Love?” as that’s the first and last line of the chorus of the version I recite/sing. Displaying it as a sonnet, I have chosen to add the rest of the chorus as an epigraph:

Who Needs an Easy Love?

Heaven knows it’s not enough
when the going’s getting tough.

I thought we’d be stupid with bliss on our own:
you’d tumble through clover; I’d move every stone.
I thought we’d see Cupid: he’d prove to be shy;
you’d mumble “It’s over” and kiss me goodbye.

I saw you go barmy ahead on the beach;
my heart turned a somersault, bursting with speech.
I saw you go by me immersed in the street;
my Archer had come: there was lead in my feet.

I knew it was certain just yesterday; I’d
discovered you waiting to leave with the tide.
I knew it was curtains; I’d grieve for the past:
recovered too late, now it’s destined to last.

If only I knew you couldn’t be true,
I wouldn’t be lonely; I wouldn’t be blue. 

The rhyme scheme is unusual. Not with regard to the end rhymes, as the sonnet consists of seven couplets, i.e. AA BB CC etc., but with regard to the internal rhymes that come with every stress. Thus the first quatrain has a rhyme pattern of: a b c A/ d e f A/ a b f B/ d e c B. This pattern is repeated in the next two quatrains, while the final couplet has a rhyme pattern of: r G s G/ s r s G. This kind of intricate rhyming is, for me, one of the great pleasures of writing poems and songs. It’s like a meaningful crossword puzzle that can take hours, days, weeks, months, years to solve, and yet there is no given solution. The rhymes also serve as a useful memory aid.

Here’s a version performed with guitar and voice:

A slightly different, earlier version of this rewrite was published in Quantum Leap, May 2003, where it had the title “Blue Moon”. But here’s the original version from my collection, Red Moon, 1987:

Past

I thought that we would go on a tour
Take from the rich and give to the poor,
But adventures never last,
Our romance rusts in the past.

I saw you dancing on the shore,
My heart leapt up like never before.
I saw you striding in the street,
The pain it gave me was so sweet.

I can never forget the day
When you took yourself away.
But I live to love and learn,
I don’t regret a single burn.

You were green and I was blue,
You were eighteen, I was twenty-two.

I still know this original version by heart.

55.526590 8.356750

Lucky Charms

11 Thursday Aug 2011

Posted by duncangmaclaurin in Releases, Sonnets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

A Moonflower, Ann Bilde, Candelabrum, car crash, Lucky Charms, original versions, Oxford, posting schedule, Red Moon, Regret

I intend to post here once a week. Thursdays or Fridays as a general rule. In due course I will probably say something about each of the eight sonnets showcased last week, but if there is anyone who would like to learn something more about one in particular before I get round to it, then feel free to say so, either by commenting here or contacting me by e-mail. Otherwise, what I intend to do next is present some of the other sonnets I sing, one at a time. Unless they are part of a sequence.

I’m very much a revisionist, and although I do occasionally feel like I’m hacking at a stone that should be left, I soon get over that. Often I see it as a good way of warming up when I want to write something new and don’t have a clue what that will be. Sometimes I’m perhaps fooling myself, but then I do sometimes actually succeed in improving some old pieces. I have made significant amendments to several pieces many years after having abandoned them.

I choose to update some of my pieces so that when/if I recite them tomorrow, they will represent me where I am today in relation to those pieces, rather than where I was yesterday in relation to them. The new versions don’t mean the old ones were inadequate. But I do like to think that when I change something I’m improving it.

One of the very first sonnets I wrote was “Lucky Charms”. I wrote the first draft in Oxford on 23rd December 1985, the day after the events described at the outset of “Regret, and four days after a friend and I had been lucky to survive a wipe-out on the motorway unscathed. I sensed a guardian angel had saved me that day. As the ending of “Regret” records, I fell in love with someone in Italy. Her name is Ann Bilde. I went to Denmark with her, we got married, and in May we’ll be celebrating our silver wedding anniversary. Her birthday is on 19th December.

So this sonnet has meant a lot to me personally. It was first published under the title, “A Moonflower”, in my collection of poems from 1987 called Red Moon. This is how it looked then:

A Moonflower

The sun had folded into clouds swarming in the west,
I felt at peace and thought about the way that I would rest,
The waxing moon reminded me, her messenger by birth
That like a flower I was planted in the listening earth.

I wandered through the dusk without a single fear,
The wind brought different noises to my silver ear,
The future of a car, the sainthood of a brook,
I was a little thirsty, so I went to take a look.

The water was refreshing, and I felt very good,
I decided to enjoy the wonders of the wood,
The precious trees invited me with their smiling charms,
Exhilarated, I embraced them with my gracious arms.

Before I fell asleep, curled up beside a log,
I found a revelation in the calling of a dog.

Please excuse my very poor punctuation for a start.

I later rewrote it, smoothing out the metre and excising the worst poeticisms, and managed to get it published in Candelabrum in April 2003 looking like this:

Lucky Charms

The sun had been surrounded by a gang of clouds out west;
I felt serene and thought about the way that I would rest.
The moon appeared, invigorated by a day in bed;
I sensed I’d better find a place that I could lay my head.

The silence of the countryside was music to my ear;
I listened briefly to a blackbird singing loud and clear.
The roaring of a car nearby turned out to be a brook;
I noted I was thirsty and resolved to take a look.

The water was delicious, and the air was sweet and good;
I walked upstream and came upon the shelter of a wood.
The ground was buried under leaves, a million lucky charms;
I tumbled down and pulled them to me with my legs and arms.

The stars conspired to close my eyes, and there, beside a log,
I found myself enchanted by the calling of a dog.

Here’s a recording (a release, folks!):

55.526590 8.356750

I Sing the Sonnet

05 Friday Aug 2011

Posted by duncangmaclaurin in Releases, Sonnets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

14 by 14, A Slice of Lemon, Dunderhead, Esbjerg Gymnasium, Horror Vacui, I Sing the Sonnet, Just Rain, Lisa Leaving, Lucid Rhythms, No Bloody Way!, On Esperance Bay, Regret, Scarriet, The Barefoot Muse, The Chimaera, The Flea, The Shit Creek Review, Thomas Graves

Thomas Graves invited me to be his guest blogger on Scarriet, and my post appeared today

The song recording of “Regret” can be heard here as well:

To mark the opening of gists I am today releasing recordings of two sonnets:

“On Esperance Bay”

& “I Sing the Sonnet”

published here

55.526590 8.356750

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 587 other followers

RSS gists

  • Owen, Sassoon, Barker and Me
  • Vi slænger os på Palmestranden
  • Bob Dylan’s Nobel Lecture
  • Easter Treasure: Cryptic Structures in Farjeon and Stallings
  • I Sing the Sonnet 2017
  • Melancholic
  • Saeby Haiku Diary 17
  • Bio
  • Fed Up with London
  • Look! We Have Landed!
  • RSS - Posts
  • RSS - Comments

Blogroll

  • Baroque in Hackney
  • Books, Inq. — The Epilogue
  • Brevity
  • C.E. Chaffin's Blog
  • Commercial Poetry
  • Discuss
  • Dragoncave
  • First Known When Lost
  • Litrefs
  • Litrefs Articles
  • New Poetries
  • Nordic Voices
  • Our sweet old etcetera…
  • Poetry in Progress
  • Rogue Strands
  • Scarriet
  • Slow Lane Shuffle
  • Sunny Dunny
  • The Dog Days of Dumfriesshire
  • The Sheila Variations
  • The Solitary Walker
  • The StAnza Blog
  • The Truth About Lies

Archives

  • November 2018
  • June 2018
  • June 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • December 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • December 2015
  • July 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • September 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011

Recent Posts

  • Owen, Sassoon, Barker and Me
  • Vi slænger os på Palmestranden
  • Bob Dylan’s Nobel Lecture
  • Easter Treasure: Cryptic Structures in Farjeon and Stallings
  • I Sing the Sonnet 2017

Categories

  • Ditties
  • Essays
  • Haiku
  • Illustrations
  • Love songs
  • Performances
  • Publications
  • Releases
  • Reviews
  • Silly songs
  • Songs
  • Sonnets
  • Spoofs
  • Uncategorized
  • Writing verse

A.E. Stallings A Giraffe Among Jackals Angle Anglo Files Ann Bilde A Time for New Dreams autobiography Ben Okri By the Sea Caledonia Candelabrum Colm Tóibín composition habits Cousin Steve Cry Freedom! David Richards David WW Johnstone denzel washington Don Paterson Douglas Dunn Dunderhead Dunkeld Edinburgh 2012 ekphrasis Eratosphere Esbjerg Esbjerg Gymnasium Expanding Notes Fanö George Mackay Brown George Simmers Horror Vacui I Sing the Sonnet I Sing the Sonnet Collection Jayne Osborn Just Rain Kevin Gore L'Homme Révolté Leonard Cohen Lisa Leaving London Mama's Little Boy Margaret Griffiths Mark Allinson Mumford and Sons My Naked Heart No Bloody Way! On Esperance Bay On Fanö On Papsie’s 89th Birthday On the Quiet original versions Oxford Papsie perversion of justice Red Moon Regret Richard Wilbur Snakeskin Steve Biko Streets of Gold Suzanne Teun Hocks The Bard that Sang Stromness The Barefoot Muse The Chimaera The Comic Destiny The Festival of Spirituality and Peace The Flea The Real Pity The Shit Creek Review The Story So Far The Wanderer Who Needs an Easy Love? Wilfred Owen
Advertisements

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy