sandlund.net: Scribbles

Portrait of the Artist as a Poet

I've always enjoyed playing around with words, and although my output is hardly extensive enough to make me a poet, I do find writing poetry interesting. Though I like modern free verse, whenever I write myself, it is usually with rhymes at least, and I enjoy the sonnet form, as I find the strict rules a nice framework to play around with. And so the one poem I'm happy enough with to put here is just that, a sonnet. As rhyme and rythm go, it is Shakespearean, but the style? Well, I don't know. It has actually been published, but as I was editor of the magazine it was published in, that is hardly too great an honour. Still, I'm rather pleased with it, so here goes.

Whoever said love was bewildering?
(Well, they were right)

The sky is shining and the sun is blue,
The stream is returning from the ocean,
I have been falling and so have been you;
We are caught in a storm without motion.
June's never been so lovely before
At this time of winter, and that is why
I think I'll stay falling forever more
Until the day I'm as high as the sky.
Just one look in your eyes, and I know this:
Eternity's just a heartbeat away;
All the time in the world is ours to miss,
So I eagerly grab this chance to say:
The stars cannot ever have been brighter,
You're here with me, nothing could be righter.

"(...) When [Jane] was only fifteen there was a gentleman at my brother Gardiner's in town so much in love with her that my sister-in-law was sure he would make her an offer before he came away. But, however, he did not. Perhaps he thought her too young. However, he wrote some verses on her, and very pretty they were"

"And so ended his affection," said Elizabeth impatiently. "There has been many a one, I fancy, overcome in the same way. I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!"

"I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love," said Darcy.

"Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away."

(From Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen)

I wonder whether Elizabeth might not be right. The sonnet above was written when I was very much out of love. And the last time I sat down to do some "serious" rhyming I wrote a reasonably pleasant vilanelle, but after finishing it, I realized that it didn't feel like that any more. Pity.

I rather think I'll leave the rest of my production in my desk drawer for the moment. However, a more whimsical sample can be found between Pooh's hums and poems on the site of one of my best friends.