In Liverpool cathedral

[Sulpicia]

Season of rains and hopeless wistfulness:
Each year comes round again and here I am,
still sitting here, defined by restlessness,
still looking, unreconciled, qualis eram,
a ghost of my own desires, no longer on fire,
wandering Naxos on my own. No god
descends, about to land, to fly me higher,
above monotonous despair, the endless plod:
or is it Bacchus after all? I soar
above the waves of sound, with you beside,
unaware, too scared to ask for more,
until I think perhaps I might have died:
but no, still here, and living in the grey;
tomorrow must go on, another day.


[To continue the Keatsian turn: with the irony that in this case the season concerned was Spring. qualis eram is a reference to Horace Odes 4.1 in which he contemplates writing love poetry after a long gap.]

[Danté]

Helen,

A very pleasant read. I am wondering if perhaps some of the lines could be a little free'er, by manipulating the line breaks differently. Although I do appreciate you may have made it a little choppy with "plod" and "monotonous" in the subject, It just seems very heavily punctuated. But then you could fit my knowledge of punctuation in a pea, so feel free to disregard as you wish.

Enjoyed the read a lot.

thanks

Tim

[barrie]

I would have liked to seen it continue in pentameter as it began. I thought the whole thing was quite well done. I enjoyed the reference to Ariadne's desertion by Theseus on Nexus - left to wander alone, until Dionysius arrives (What, no satyrs?).

searching, unreconciled, qualis eram,
my ghost of desires, no longer on fire,

above weary despair, the endless plod:

unaware, scared of asking you for more - My sorry efforts -I just like pentameter in a sonnet.

Is that settee still there?

Good one

Barrie

[k-j]

Keats is hard to resist isn't he.

The metre stumbles a bit in lines 4 and 5 but I think it holds up OK overall. I think "about to land" and "monotonous despair" are verging on padding and you could use that space to say something more constructive. But on the whole I like it, until the last three lines - "I think perhaps I might have died" is pretty melodramatic, don't you think? And "tomorrow must go on, another day" is a five-alarm cliche.

Your poems all seem to express this unrequitedness, often in a very 'interior' way - I'd like to see more here about the cathedral and how it speaks to (of) you. Incidentally, which cathedral? Liverpool has two extraordinary ones.

[Elphin]

Helen

Its well written and I thought the ideas in the first half were the best - they drew me in. The second half, after the Bacchus line I felt were a bit flatter, as if you got bored exercising your imagination. That sounds harsher than its meant to be - hope you know what I mean.

I think barrie is right about the meter and k-j about needing more cathedral, the second half could have benefited from that.

Its not that I dont like it - I do, I just think you have more to give on this one.

elph

[David]

Again, I am slavishly agreeing with what's already been said, Helen. I think we want more Liverpool, more cathedral, and more idea how you relate to Ariadne here. Is there a maze? Is there a ball of string? Is there a Minotaur? I dunno, but I suspect there is a Minotaur.

I don't really know what Barrie means about seeing it "continue in pentameter as it began" - the whole thing reads like pentameter to me, although there seems to be a major hiccup with the rhythm in L4.

And I would change the first line. I don't think it adds anything. It's as though you've absent-mindedly picked it up and wandered off with it, forgetting that you're still holding it.

Or, I could be breaking all personal records of obtuseness. There's always that possibility.

Cheers

David

[barrie]

I don't really know what Barrie means about seeing it "continue in pentameter as it began"

- Will lines of ten syllables do?

[David]

I was thinking more about the footy thing - five thumps a line - and only above monotonous despair, the endless plod (which I missed before) doesn't work, has six, I think, although it could be a brilliant tribute to Pope's alexandrine.

[Sulpicia]

Thank you everyone.
It's a funny old world: often the poems I cringe to post go down OK, while the ones I quite like turn out to be deeply problematic.
This _was_ one of my favourites in the first lot, but I can now see it needs a great deal more work.

Barrie (and David): Metre. It's all over the place, isn't it? This was before I'd started thinking about different types of sonnets. I agree that line 4 pushes any elasticity too far (I know even Shakespeare sometimes - occasionally turns his iamb round - and I'm sure Elizabeth Barrett-Browning used two short syllables instead of one). What it all reveals is how little I know and/or remember about poetic form. I need to read more poetry... Line 6 has definitely come a cropper and needs to be re-thought.

k-j (and Elph): Thank you. Good thought about the cathedral which is there very vividly in my head (it's the Anglican one, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott) but hasn't really made it into the poem. The poems I've posted so far represent a sequence written over several years, so are inevitably all about the same thing. Maybe I'll get it out of my system and start writing about other stuff (that would be nice). I'm afraid there's still a fair bit to go... I'd like to think that in time they become a story, but perhaps like Ovid's exile poems they just become repetitive, pathetic and a bit of a pain in the arse. Hey ho: they served their purpose for me! I'm not sure that the cliche isn't the point: you feel like you're escaping from cliches but inevitably they reassert themselves. But maybe I can talk about cliches in an interesting way? Hmmm. More thinking to do.

David: the first line does rather get lost. Maybe I need to come back to it at the end.

Thanks again for the thoughts, everyone, I'll try a revision of this one.

[emuse]

Helen I can't speak much to the meter but I enjoyed the reverie. The lines most effective for me were. I realize this is a sonnet but the first line seemed superfluous.

Each year comes round again and here I am,
still sitting here, defined by restlessness,
still looking, unreconciled, qualis eram,
a ghost of my own desires, no longer on fire,
wandering Naxos on my own. No god
descends, about to land, to fly me higher,

and these

too scared to ask for more,
until I think perhaps I might have died:
but no, still here, and living in the grey;
tomorrow must go on, another day.

Cheers,

e