two days later

I’ve looked at the first posted draft, and made changes to lines six and seven (the second of the second rhyming couplets which generally help set up the resolution within the argument of a sonnet)

From:-

an honest globe; charted proof aligning
forg’d valour embreech’d triumph’s petty rout

to

an honest globe; charted proof maligning
forg’d valour tarnish’d triumph’s petty shout

This helps get the message across that were triumphalism an honest globe or world, its charted proof is at odds with the valour behind the triumph, whether it is forged qua a blacksmith, or forged qua a faker (again, double-meanings which lead to the same end are often used by sonneteers and poets for extra effect.)

tarnish’d is a better verb than embreech’d since it is more a process of decay rather than invasion, which more naturally leads to the question of time, which resolves the sonnet. It also fits the iam’s rhymth better (short ‘i’ sound in second syllable than long ‘ee’ ) and the alliteration with triumph helps to tag triumph with tarnish.

’shout’ instead of ‘rout’ is better – triumph’s shout is routed by the poem so doesn’t also need to be routed again – you can’t bowl out the same batsman twice in the same innings, however many times you might beat him.

So far I’ve resisted the temptation, (which any decent poetry editor would and should flag-up) to shorten the nine-line sentence from ‘Move On’ to ‘bones break’) This is because this sentence describes the clamour of instant celebration and so should be quite cacophonic in syntax as well as rhythms. (To achieve this, I’ve used a semi-colon and colon in order to prevent meaning falling away to leg.)

It also sets up “till the game’s bones break. All brave teams eat/at the same table” which nails the change in the sonnet’s argument’s disposition from the momentary supremacy of the moment to its placement and value in time – “till the game’s bones break.” is a sudden ending and break of the sentence, where ‘bones break’ is the shortest and most powerful of sentences (grammatically a clause) and into the next short and powerful sentence ‘All brave teams eat at the same table.’

Poets and critics should note

’till the game’s bones break. All brave teams eat’

is nine, not ten syllables, and thus not a classic iambic pentameter. The missing syllable is the full stop, which really is a full stop, not just a punctuation mark – you have to stop, draw breath, reckon the breaking of the game’s bones. In prose it might be a paragraph, or another chapter even.

Poets and critics may also note how ‘commemorated’ in the previous line sets up the next. One word is half a line (iambic pentameters are often so split – ‘Eyeless in Gaza, shoulder to the wheel’ the start of Milton’s Samson Agonistes) whose sounds and rhythm rise and push towards their fall pretty well musically – if you choose not to be lyrical as a poet, you better know what lyricism is.

The reader may well never notice these things. Indeed it is the intention, the making of the poem, the craft within the words should not stick out but remain hidden, ready for exploration and discovery.

This exegesis of the trade has pretty well taken as long as writing the sonnet itself – the guts of which were drafted on the northern line between Charing Cross and Camden Town – so I shall stop. Of course, I’m not thinking of these things while writing, but equally it doesn’t come ‘naturally’ – many years of craft go into the business in the vain hope that one day you might write something half-way decent.

Ciao

David