Early tomorrow I'm heading for Gloucester for a couple of days' walking (or not) with my walking friends. Gloucester is very high on my list of favourite cathedrals, so I'm looking forward to seeing it again after too many years. I'm travelling by train, so, knowing my luck, I'll probably end up in Tamworth again...
Meanwhile, here is another by R.S. Gwynn – a perfect Petrarchan sonnet about a woman with the most difficult job in the business.
God's Secretary
Her e-mail inbox always overflows.
Her outbox doesn’t get much use at all.
She puts on hold the umpteen-billionth call
As music oozes forth to placate those
Who wait, then disconnect. Outside, wind blows,
Scything pale leaves. She sees a sparrow fall
Fluttering to a claw-catch on a wall.
Will He be in today? God only knows.
She hasn’t seen His face—He’s so aloof.
She’s long resigned He’ll never know or love her
But still can wish there were some call, some proof
That He requires a greater service of her.
Fingers of rain now drum upon the roof,
Coming from somewhere, somewhere far above her.
While I appreciate anyone making the, in my view, noble effort to write poetry in formal forms today, I don't understand why almost everyone making the attempt seems to write in the same flat, common register, nor why every poem they write reads more like prose that just happens to line up its rhymes such that it *can* be arranged into a poem. They are presumably trying to carry on the long, great poetic tradition which modernism waylaid (or practically ended), but they must be reading a different tradition than the one I am. No grand themes, no striving, no sense the subject might really matter to the mind behind the poem... Not even a hint of elevated language, or with it the sense that there is something *special* about the means of expression and communication that is poetry -- which goes back to the works inevitably reading like prose... Furthermore, rather bland prose.
ReplyDelete... Unfair, I am sure, but I feel almost every formalist poem written anytime recently I've come across can be described in these terms. This is one of the better examples, though.
Phew.
DeleteI thought this beautiful - although ".. or love her" is a very very peculiar understanding of Christianity. ZMKC
ReplyDeleteAgreed, Zoe – but then the whole idea of God having a secretary is equally peculiar. I love the lines about the sparrow.
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