I'm ambivalent about poetry. I've bought 10 books in the last five years, mostly anthologies. Rather than inflict my own efforts on you I thought I might start a series drawing on ones already out there on the worldwide web.
We start with a famous sonnet, often anthologised, by the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) first published in 1818 and probably his most famous short poem. Wikipedia has a nice article here. 'In addition to the power of its themes and imagery,' it says 'the poem is notable for its virtuoso diction. The rhyme scheme of the sonnet is unusual and creates a sinuous and interwoven effect (ABABACDCEDEFEF).' It was apparently written for a competition. the loser is also printed in the article.
OZYMANDIAS
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
4 comments:
Come on, Gary. Tell us more, like why this is "a sonnet" and so on. What about the metre? Why are you ambivalent about poetry? Why not inflict your own efforts on us?
Since you ask - sonnets are much favoured 14-line 'little songs' popular first in Europe then here, and quite fashionable in the 16th Century. Metre is something I confess I've never really grasped though it's clearly important to how a poem sounds. (I've an aversion to anything even slightly mathematical). My ambivalence re-poetry springs from a sneaking suspicion that there's something cissyish/pretentious or lazy about it. I only read it now and again. It's a bit like truffles. Enjoyable but you can't live on it. I prefer 'lyrics' to 'poems'. My own efforts are few and far between and I find it impossible to assess their merits. Do you have S Fry's 'Ode less travelled'? I have a signed copy. I read the first 76 pages with great enthusiasm but have never got onto the chapter about 'Ternary Feet'.
"Ode less travelled"? No. Don't forget, my background is in Biology and therefore I am officially artless and philistine. S Fry isn't that feller who was on the telly is it?
Poetry is cool because it's very Welsh. Cynghanedd and all that. So it's butch, really, because all things Welsh are butch, not cissy.
I always thought of you as a renaissance man Alan not bound by such divisions. I have in the past accused you of a passing resemblance to Mr Fry. As for the Welsh/English thing I know that in Wales poetry has quite a different status but I've mostly studied straight English poetry.
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