Lost in number 67

Some notes while I dip about

I wanted to inform my readers that this newsletter has not gone dark for lack of trying. My last post was two weeks before Christmas, and I have hit the second week of January without a properly polished sonnet. The purpose of this post is to say hello and outline ( briefly ) where things stand with sonnet 65.

Below is what my Scrivener editor looks like for my no. 67, which will be the 12th poem in this ongoing crown ( you can read from the beginning of the crown, here ).

I’m treating the final three sonnets ( numbers 12, 13, & 14 ) like a final tercet in the rhetoric of a sonnet. After all, a crown is a group of sonnets whose length is the length of the sonnet. So numbers 1 through 8 fixed on a particular theme and resulted in cataclysm : numbers 9 through 11 have introduced us to a resurrection; the last three should lead (a lá Giambattista Vico ) back to our first, which calls for a slow change back to the first voice.

SONNET

It curve’s no mo’, this distant snake ( the subject shakes
( when slept on linen fresh, them cole crops scrubbin’ bowels
At ease.  It is easy to be in love & low.


I take it there’s no curve to throw, the subject says,
Asleep on linen fresh, cole crops scrubbing them bowels
At ease.  It is easy to be in love & low.
Why not support existence, not the banal days?
Subject moved on.  Inked his memory on & moved.
Into houses, spouses, neatsleather loafers
& waistbands, the meet-cute of America ( chauffeurs
( dreams, market research, consumer johns ) proved.
All necessaries paid.  First-class tickets, joy.
And gin easing the bar’s edge, filling up sloe
In some unamed hotel    the evening    above
The subject says, no curves, just monies for toys,
And heretofors.  

Worse, the struck-out lines are not even the original lines of the poem. I’ve been at this sucker for weeks now. The first incomplete draft looked something like this:

SONNET

Strum — cure — strum.  And distant sank resolve.
So put it in ice, sad bastard, and drinks it
The laste of brotherly love.  He took his cord,
Says I won’t grows up, till his neck breaks.
We moved on.  Inked his memory on and moved.
Into houses, spouses, neatsleather feets
& waistbands, 

lkjgkjhdkhjgljhgdkyglkhjf!

Strum, cure, strum.  And distant sank resolve.
Well? put it in ice, sad bastard, and drinks it
The last of brotherly love.  He took his cord
Said I won’t grows up, grousing to the grave.
We moved on.  Inked his memory on & moved.
Into houses, spouses, neatsleather loafers
& waistbands, our meet-cute American dream lock
Und stock.  With gin I’d tune this memory,
Recall on the frets the purple blazes of night,
Unguarded we sang.  Love, a fractious height,
Took the ground out.  How far did we fall?
Whell, puts it een aice, my dead colonizer speaks.
Artic 

But I’ve dropped these drafts as boring. Its been difficult for me to stay focused, so why would I expect my readers to be able to do what I cannot?

Mixed up in all this is also the death of the grated-nutmeg voice, the introduction ( once again ) of the dead colonizer, and a maturing of the once-buried protagonist, who must age and fatten and prepare for the sacrifice again.

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First lines

A crown of sonnets is connected by the last line: so the last line of each sonnet becomes the first line of the next sonnet. The last line of sonnet no. 64:

Distant throws a tantrum, I takes the cure.

appears again ( modified )

It curve’s no mo’, this distant snake ( the subject shakes

cure → curve and throw → mo’, only it’s been hell to try to find the tone and cadence I want. The reason I write this brief note is that I believe yesterday’s work finally found the tone I want, and can explore that image of a snake not curving ( I picture something, again, buried, a furrow but expected, as our lives as they age seem to straighten into expectation ).

The line is also a solid iambic hexameter. I’m hoping to account for this four-syllable group of threes to set a kind of drone on the last three poems. The first poem in the sonnet is a waking-up, as it were, when the protagonist is confronted by his accuser, so the last three poems need to be a tad sleepy, without being so boring I can’t write them.

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NeXt WeEk?

Hopefully this time next week will see sonnet 67 out in the world, with 66 & 67 due to arrive shortly. In the meantime, I have a guest post I plan to publish soon, and another piece of exposition. I can’t wait to be finished with this crown, to move on to independent pieces that are not so punishing.

Until then!

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

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NOTE: a previous version of this post incorrectly called this current sonnet number 65. It is actually the 67th poem in this series. My bad.