Opium provides a dream, perchance, but not necessarily sleep. A place where the iniquitous dwell in dens. Yet bother not anyone. Was peaceful repose ever so unjustly defamed? So says a wanderer from days gone by.
I would ask whether the sonnet form is proper for the subject, whether the very discipline of lines militates against or undercuts the broad gauziness of experience? Symons wants to have it both ways, the subjective experience and the necessary moral framing of the sonnet form. Yet even there, while the volta certainly provides the contrast, but this seems as much a contrast of mind v body; for that, a better contrast, a more coherent take on similar themes is Milton's contrast of dream and waking in Sonnet 23, "Methought I saw my late espouséd saint..." with the move from dream to dawn to bitter truth.
I'm a maximalist about the sonnet, believing in its vast range. But maybe there are limits; you couldn't do, say, Kit Smart's cat lines in the form, I suppose. The reliance on the senses in the octave of Today's Poem suggests to me that the poem isn't mind vs. body but subjective experience vs. objective. We did the Milton here: https://poemsancientandmodern.substack.com/p/todays-poem-methought-i-saw-my-late
Opium provides a dream, perchance, but not necessarily sleep. A place where the iniquitous dwell in dens. Yet bother not anyone. Was peaceful repose ever so unjustly defamed? So says a wanderer from days gone by.
Heartbreakingly beautiful.
I would ask whether the sonnet form is proper for the subject, whether the very discipline of lines militates against or undercuts the broad gauziness of experience? Symons wants to have it both ways, the subjective experience and the necessary moral framing of the sonnet form. Yet even there, while the volta certainly provides the contrast, but this seems as much a contrast of mind v body; for that, a better contrast, a more coherent take on similar themes is Milton's contrast of dream and waking in Sonnet 23, "Methought I saw my late espouséd saint..." with the move from dream to dawn to bitter truth.
I'm a maximalist about the sonnet, believing in its vast range. But maybe there are limits; you couldn't do, say, Kit Smart's cat lines in the form, I suppose. The reliance on the senses in the octave of Today's Poem suggests to me that the poem isn't mind vs. body but subjective experience vs. objective. We did the Milton here: https://poemsancientandmodern.substack.com/p/todays-poem-methought-i-saw-my-late
It is so very important to maintain a comprehension of what is reality and what is not.
One of the most dramatic shifts I’ve ever seen in a volta. Also fitting that the sestet’s “rent” into two “part(s)”.
Thankfully in my dotage my state has legalized THC.
Marvellous! You post some great stuff on here.
Well now I want some opium. Damn.