Entry 596 — A Final Version of my Sonnet, Again
I couldn’t stay way from it. I kept running it through my mind since posting the previous version here a week or two ago, finally coming up with the version below the night of 15 December. Note, each line should be pronounced as an iambic pentameter, including the third.
Sonnet from My Forties
Much have I ranged the kingdoms Stevens forged
Of deeply penetrating inquiries
Into, and deft use of, the metaphor,
And volumes filled in vain attempts to reach
The heights that he did. Often, too, I’ve been
To where the small dirt’s awkward first grey steps
Toward high-hued sensibility begin
In Roethke’s verse, or measured the extent
Of wing-swirled, myth-electric, royal light
That Yeats achieved, or marveled down the worlds
That Pound re-morninged splashingly to life,
But failed as dismally to match their works.
Yet still, nine-tenth insane though it now seems,
I seek those ends; I hold to my huge dreams.
Diary Entry
Friday, 16 December 2011, 11:30 A.M. I have a few small exhibition-bookkeeping chores yet to do that I’m letting go for this weekend so I can concentrate on the stack of reviews for Small Press Review I have to do. One of them will be of I, a novella by Arnold Skemer that I find excellent but a very slow read, in the best sense of the description.
.