Sharp Words

Yes, I know, I haven’t been posting much lately. Not sure why; it’s not that I’m otherwise busy, that’s for sure. I’m sure I’ll get my groove back soon. (I hope I will.)

But I finally finished this poem, mostly to my satisfaction, so it’s time to post it. First though, a bit of background.

Last November (as blogged elsewhere with more photos), I drove down to Sligo to meet Susan – ostensibly for a NaNoWriMo meeting, but we got very little writing done! Between Donegal and Sligo towns lies the village of Drumcliff, where William Butler Yeats is buried. I’d passed it before, but this time, on my drive home, I actually stopped and paid a quick pilgrimage to his grave.

The beauty and simplicity of the spot really struck me, as did the the piece of art put there to commemorate him – I can’t call it a monument, as it’s a visual representation of one of his well-known poems, He wishes for the cloths of heaven, as shown in my photo (click to enlarge).

I started thinking about this sonnet while driving home from Belfast one dark night in early January, and I actually recorded it on my MP3 player/recorder so as to not lose the words and rhymes. I had intended to post it on the 70th anniversary of Yeats’ death earlier this year (January 28th) but the demands of the poem’s structure were a bit too much, and I ended up putting it aside until this week. (Plus I had some fact-checking to do, and I was a bit lazy.)

Writing to such a tight structure, of both metre and rhyme, is definitely more of a test of my ingenuity than writing free verse is, even if I don’t then tend to exercise/indulge my liking for varied imagery. But I’m fairly pleased with the result anyway.

However, I’m stumped for a title and will happily accept all reasonable suggestions…

(Untitled Sonnet)
It’s not the first time that I’ve passed this way,
And I remember well this bend of road
As it curves through the land of his abode
Beneath Ben Bulben high above the bay.
I stop the car and walk the paths in search
Of that one grave which calls me to this place.
His words carved in the headstone’s plain grey face,
He lies within the shadow of the church.
A solemn resting place for him, it seems;
No monument among these leafless trees.
But then I spy a figure on its knees,
There laying down its cloth of words and dreams.
A metal statue and a cloth of stones,
In this quiet spot where long lie Yeats’ bones.

© 2009 C Sharp

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I hate mornings; I hate waking up and getting out of bed, especially if I have to do it before about 8 o’clock. After that, I have a lot less of a problem, even if I do just like lying there for ages feeling warm and drowsy and full of ideas. Unfortunately, on my commuting days, I need to leave the house well before 8 (like today), so the only way I can manage it is to set my alarm at least forty minutes before I need to get up, and hit the Snooze button multiple times, to fool myself into thinking I’m having a lie-in of sorts.

Nine Minutes
My finger stabs the Snooze button
and my nine minutes begin.

These are my moments of defiance,
and telling the day that it can’t start yet.
My moments of refusal and denial,
half-waking half-baked ideas,
and the sleepy warmth of my bed.

My nine drowsy minutes end with a shriek of static
that slowly becomes a voice or a tune.
My finger stabs the Snooze button
and my nine minutes begin again.

© 2009 C Sharp

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7 out of 10

Fate, not for the first time, has taken a hand in my choice of reading material – and hence, my choice of what I review. Susan mentioned The Gargoyle in a post a couple of weeks ago, and piqued my interest. I saw it in the airport bookshop last Wednesday, dithered about buying it, but didn’t; and then when I got to my parents’, my mum had taken it out of the library on the librarian’s recommendation, and it was a brand new copy that NOBODY had read yet.

Which meant that I was the first person to break open the pages, which are dyed black on the edges and tended to a) stick together and b) shed little black bits everywhere. Looks nice, but not the best of ideas.

Anyway, The Gargoyle is Andrew Davidson’s first novel, although as some of the blurbs say, it’s rather hard to believe. It opens with the unnamed narrator describing a car crash in which he suffers horrendous burns. Everything that’s done to heal his broken body is described in sometimes grotesque detail during the first third of the book, and it’s not hard to understand why the protagonist starts to contemplate suicide as the alternative to living as a damaged monster.

However, Marianne Engel – a beautiful, mysterious, probably mentally ill sculptor – comes into his life. And slowly, through her attentions and her stories, she helps the narrator want to live again.

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“If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.”
“If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to do with a shortage of flowers.”
Doug Larson
[First quote supplied by the Quotations Page; the second one found on BrainyQuote]

No real reason for posting these, except that they amused me. And what with it being Friday the 13th, I need cheering up. (I’m not usually superstitious in the slightest, but I have had a few things go wrong today, more than usual.)

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I had six days away from home. I did have some net access, but not enough for me to be bothered to do more than check email, approve comments, and toss up a couple of posts and photos to my more personal blog.

However, that means that since I got home on Monday evening, I’ve been trying to catch-up with non-urgent emails, replying to comments, Facebook, LiveJournal friends and the couple of dozen blogs in my feed reader (I’m a Bloglines gal, if anyone’s interested).

I’ve been doing a pretty good job of avoiding most of the work, though. I’m caught up, mostly, with friends’ blogs and LJs, but I’m resolutely ignoring all the requests on Facebook. And although I’ve read the feeds which only had one or two posts, I’m daunted by those that have four or five or fifteen. Where do I start? The whole point of my feed reader is so that I don’t miss posts by those I like – and yet, when they pile up like that, I begin to wonder if there’s any point in wading through them.

Does anyone else get like this after missing a few days’ worth of blogs, as if it’s too much trouble to read them? What are good coping strategies? (Help?!)

I do like all my social networking connections, but it does take time out of my day, that’s for certain.

And in other news, I had a great few days away in the land of my mothers, and even got to watch the rugby in company. I need to get back to the grind though, as I didn’t do as much writing as I’d hoped (even if I got some poem ideas) and I obviously missed a week of blogging here.

Edited to add: I forgot Twitter in my list of social networking! I tweeted while travelling, but haven’t checked for replies, nor have I even launched Tweetdeck since I got home. I don’t even follow that many people, but I know there’ll be a whole stack of tweets waiting for me. I could just ignore them, of course…

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Although this example of salon-naming isn’t as bad as the one I previously posted, it was still enough to make my head hurt (especially at 6 o’clock this morning while on the bus into Belfast).

SCIZZOR HANZ

Why? Why all the Zs? Why the missing D? (Perhaps the hairdresser is called Hanz. Or more likely, Hans.)

Why do they do it?

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