{"id":3873,"date":"2007-07-09T13:40:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-09T13:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=3873"},"modified":"2017-11-26T16:02:48","modified_gmt":"2017-11-26T22:02:48","slug":"a-sonnet-series-wherein-brian-puts-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/09\/a-sonnet-series-wherein-brian-puts-up\/","title":{"rendered":"A Sonnet Series: Wherein Brian Puts Up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the book review for <i><a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/09\/book-report-sonnets-of-eve-by-flora-may-mae-johnson-pierce-1973\/\" target=\"_new\">Sonnets of Eve<\/a><\/i>, I mention being a fan of the sonnet series.  Here&#8217;s one I wrote in the early 1990s when I was a laddie  who fancied himself a poet:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<h2>A Story<\/h2>\n<h3>A Prelude<\/h3>\n<p>O air, o sweetest air, why flee you so?<br \/>\nMy tightened lungs can scarcely keep with you!<br \/>\nA thief, she steals my breath and doesn&#8217;t know,<br \/>\nthis goddess sweet and yet a mortal too.<br \/>\nO words, my wondrous words, where are you now?<br \/>\nThe longing songs, the wit I hope I own?<br \/>\nWhat will I say, what voice, what face, and how?<br \/>\nI must, or find myself again alone.<br \/>\nO voice, my treacherous voice, o fail me not!<br \/>\nCommand you I to speak a flowered verse,<br \/>\nor make a jest, I could, I ought!<br \/>\nBut what were she to laugh or something worse?<br \/>\nYet I resolve with steeled heart to try,<br \/>\nI open up my mouth but walk on by.<\/p>\n<h3>A Prelude<\/h3>\n<p>My thundering youthful heart, beat not so hard,<br \/>\nfor volume&#8217;s strength can never measure love.<br \/>\nYour maddening thuds may put her on her guard,<br \/>\nand now she looks this way, o Lord above!<br \/>\nMy reddening cheeks, how dare you color so?<br \/>\nThe blood is needed somewhere else, I&#8217;m sure,<br \/>\nso cheeks to normal hue, for no winds blow,<br \/>\nand any tint is but a sign to her.<br \/>\nMy whitened hands, you tremble with no cause.<br \/>\nNo beasts with snarling fangs or bloody cries<br \/>\nare here to threaten me, to give me pause:<br \/>\nno thing to fear, except those sapphire eyes.<br \/>\nTo rest, I need to shirk or take the task;<br \/>\nthat means to flee, or worse, to simply ask.<\/p>\n<h3>A Heartening<\/h3>\n<p>But am I not a somewhat virtued man?<br \/>\nNo god, tis true, but somewhat more than beast.<br \/>\nNo Hercules, no Titan but I can,<br \/>\nwith passioned might, hold tightly her, at least.<br \/>\nNo Apollo I, but Phoebus has his chore.<br \/>\nAround the earth he daily makes his way,<br \/>\nand I, the mortal one, have less but more,<br \/>\nfor she would be the center of my day.<br \/>\nNo Zeus am I, no thunderbolts or such,<br \/>\nno power or the wish to take a life,<br \/>\nbut then, I lust for but one woman&#8217;s touch,<br \/>\nremaining true to she, my dreamed wife.<br \/>\nNo perfect god could I e&#8217;er try to be,<br \/>\nperhaps there&#8217;s good within my modesty.<\/p>\n<h3>A Resolution<\/h3>\n<p>No god, but something more than beast am I<br \/>\nand virtues must I have to make me so.<br \/>\nNot swine that roots about his muddy sty,<br \/>\nbut I exhume my heart that way, I know.<br \/>\nNo sloth who loafs about his treetop bed<br \/>\nand never ventures far from places known.<br \/>\nI am a vigored youth with love unfed,<br \/>\nI must then go the way my heart has shown.<br \/>\nNo mouse am I who fears to softly tread<br \/>\non ground too near to any human frame.<br \/>\nI am a man of couraged heart and head,<br \/>\nwho&#8217;ll call, with hopes and fears aside, her name.<br \/>\nAnd with a braced heart and hopeful eye<br \/>\nand steady voice shall speak to her, and try.<\/p>\n<h3>A Proposal<\/h3>\n<p>&#8220;O sweetest light that ever graced my eyes,<br \/>\nthat made complete the painting of my world<br \/>\nas does the sun when warming bluest skies<br \/>\nor oysters when they&#8217;re found as lightly pearled,<br \/>\nwill you consent to let me warm your nights<br \/>\nwhen you are cold of chill or cold of heart<br \/>\nand let me salve with care your deepest frights<br \/>\nwith healing words which are my only art<br \/>\nand sit with me before the snapping flames<br \/>\nthroughout the harsh and snowy winter days<br \/>\nwith cider and our talk and loving names<br \/>\nto keep the tender fires within ablaze<br \/>\n&#8211;oh, I digress, my question is but this:<br \/>\nwill you be mine and share in loving bliss?&#8221;<\/p>\n<h3>A Rejection<\/h3>\n<p>&#8220;You silly boy, you talk with dumb big words<br \/>\nthat make no sense to human ears like mine<br \/>\nand tangle up your sentences like other nerds<br \/>\nwho think they&#8217;re talking smart and looking fine.<br \/>\nAre words like that supposed to win my heart?<br \/>\nAn oyster with a pearl?  A sunny sky?<br \/>\nHow strange you speak of me!  It&#8217;s hardly art.<br \/>\nI think you are a little out there, guy.<br \/>\nAnd to propose a &#8216;loving bliss&#8217; with you,<br \/>\nwell, bliss is not the word that comes to mind.<br \/>\nI&#8217;d say a dreadful hell, eternal too,<br \/>\nwere I to think of it and be unkind.<br \/>\nSo boy, you go and build your cloudy castles,<br \/>\nbut I don&#8217;t need those silly poet hassles.&#8221;<\/ul>\n<p>In my defense, I wrote that when I was 21 years old and was under the influence of Millay, Spenser, Shakespeare, and whatnot.  I got better, but not much.<\/p>\n<p>Also, note that the preceding is copyright 1993 Brian J. Noggle and cannot be reproduced without the expressed written consent of the author.  This means you, <a href=\"http:\/\/badexample.mu.nu\" target=\"_new\">Harvey<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I remember in like January 1994 performing the piece at MoKaBe&#8217;s coffee house back when it was in Kirkwood, Missouri.  I had spent the time before the poetry reading playing chess with Michael O&#8217;Brian, local poetry slam superstar, and he was falling prey to the Noggle blitz.  That is, he thought perhaps there was method in my propensity for putting pieces in danger chasing his pieces; maybe that simple harvesting of my rooks and bishops was an intentional sacrifice in my long term plan.  However, he became bored with the game when he probably suspected I didn&#8217;t know what I was doing and wandered off.  That&#8217;s right, he RESIGNED in the face of the OVERWHELMING Noggle blitz.<\/p>\n<p>At any rate, it was one of my first open mic nights, so I read the pieces from printed sheets of paper.  I did, however, enlist a young lady named Amy to perform the final piece in response to the first five sonnets, and she probably did better than I did.<\/p>\n<p>I would later write my first piece geared specifically for performance, &#8220;Visions and Revisions: A Prelude for Amy&#8221;, for the young lady.  I performed it for her while sitting in the lobby of the local theatre while we awaited <i>Dancing at Lughnasa<\/i>.  She was so impressed she used me to get the attention of my best friend at the time.  Ah, youth.<\/p>\n<p>But I digress.  That&#8217;s what I have to offer for a series of sonnets as a means of comparison to Flora May Johnson Pierce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the book review for Sonnets of Eve, I mention being a fan of the sonnet series. Here&#8217;s one I wrote in the early 1990s when I was a laddie who fancied himself a poet: A Story A Prelude O air, o sweetest air, why flee you so? My tightened lungs can scarcely keep with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3873"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17973,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3873\/revisions\/17973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}