Sentence of critical appreciation for Jane Hirshfield's "The Supple Deer":
In Hirshfield's description of such elegant fluidity it is hard to understand her motives in that she envies the fence not the deer, which, in being a surprise to the reader, becomes unconventional even as the poem pretends otherwise.
Keely
I love Billy Collins’ “Sonnet”, partly because I’m already familiar with it, but mostly for the gentle return from extravagant courtly romance to everyday love in the last three lines. I love the implicit message that it’s all very well to write about love but it must also be lived. Several of the lines are used entirely are saying how many lines are left, but those last three win me over every time, with the abandonment for the moment of trying to explain it perfectly, but just to love instead. Collins uses a discussion of form within his poem to discuss the idea of trying to fit a concept like love into an exacted fourteen lines, with kindly-meant humour towards its masters and an admonishment to perhaps not take it so seriously.
Jess
2 comments:
In his sonnet “Sonnet” Billy Collins gives the reader a fascinating and intriguing juxtaposition of mundane, true to life details and uncommon poetic verses (i.e. iambic bongos) to draw them through the poem. I also appreciated his use of form to give the reader pause before entering the turn.
I really enjoyed Billy Collins' Sonnet due to how it pulls the reader into the construction of the sonnet as well as discusses sonnet-writing in general. My particular favourite though was Pablo Neruda's Sonnet 17, probably because (like Jess with Billy Collins') it's one I'm very familiar with. I also just really enjoy poems that go against the status quo (it's the same reason I enjoy Shakespeare's Sonnet 130.) My favourite lines are the ones I grew up hearing being quoted just as "O, what's in a rose?" is referenced to in English:
"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way"
due to its simplification of love. Neruda takes the idea of grand poetic love and turns it into a poem that basically says "Why do I love you? Beats me! I just love you 'cause you're you and I like you".
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