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Eight Sonnets
24 pages, Paperback
First published July 26, 2012
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About the author
Matthew Ward
36 books2 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
This Matthew Ward has 1 space between names.
A place for works by Matthew Ward that are not known to be:
The French to English translator (2 spaces)
The CA author of Family Whipple (3 spaces)
The CT author, Sound Like a Bestseller (4 spaces)
The Christian musician (5 space)
The British fantasy Legacy author (6 spaces)
The nutrition author (7 spaces)
The photographer (8 spaces)
The law author (9 spaces)
The colonial Am historian Matthew C. Ward
The statistician Matthew O. Ward
The editor of Skive Matthew Glenn Ward
This Matthew Ward has 1 space between names.
A place for works by Matthew Ward that are not known to be:
The French to English translator (2 spaces)
The CA author of Family Whipple (3 spaces)
The CT author, Sound Like a Bestseller (4 spaces)
The Christian musician (5 space)
The British fantasy Legacy author (6 spaces)
The nutrition author (7 spaces)
The photographer (8 spaces)
The law author (9 spaces)
The colonial Am historian Matthew C. Ward
The statistician Matthew O. Ward
The editor of Skive Matthew Glenn Ward
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 8, 2014
A certain opacity. Coding. Passion embedded. What would you do, as a reader, with a first line like
Chalk mark sex we know as cathedrals. Brakes in spring-width?
I just kept on reading to see what in hell he was talking about, and came upon this
look for porcelain, a lock here. Ambered. Century-marble for
skin, a word, a common emptiness. Winter in rings outside, water
in circles, trains, the noble tenth, catch your hand in the window
passing through.
and I still didn’t know what in hell he was talking about! But the urgent rhythm (can you feel the urgent rhythm?) intrigued me, and suggested to me that though I couldn’t pin a prose meaning to the proceedings there was a compelling agency at work; and the last image with the window and hand captured an exhilaration (and a possible excruciating pain) that meant something to me. So I soldiered on and was quickly rewarded with the following lines
Slice the belly
of the sweet thing who wavers, slice the belly and give notice to, give
theory, abstraction, a bridge to cover, where all talk is heat; immobility,
The violence, which for the first time laid bare the passion present, and the continued urgent rhythm of these lines hooked me, and continues to hook me, though I still can’t exactly prose it, which is how I like my poetry anyway... Though it’s safe to say there’s some form of anguish present, along with the urge to transcend it, with violence if necessary.
This, the first of eight sonnets, ends on a quiet note
The winter
in circles, the breath on the
white-silent alphabet.
Where winter, the season most like a blanket – soothing, hiding – envelopes the anguish and hides it in the alphabet, the poem.
Matt likes to keep his poetry cold, to distance himself from it by hiding himself within it. I like coldness and distance and hiding. I also like strong language evocative of things, ideas, feelings just out of reach. It’s all here – sex; alienation; observation of the world around; memories, memories, more memories; the inherent sadness of time’s passing; the desire for transcendence. “White”, in the form of chalk, marble, porcelain, salt, Winter, ash, smoke, recurs throughout this sonnet cycle, and by its very repetition creates a space, a protective space that is apart from anguish; a space of memory free of the anguish moving forward through life itself engenders. But this desire to enter whiteness creates yet another level of anguish inherent in the poems, as it is impossible to live in this space while alive, unless one opts for death in life; and these poems by the very power of their language are alive, and so contradict one of the abiding desires coursing through them. This contradiction is one of the cycle’s greatest strengths.
Reviewing poetry is dicey, especially with poetry as “abstract” as this, where even the potent imagery –
six lines of mystery overhanging,/crowned with high walls
red lattice lowered into night in small boxes
fountain chokes in debased coinage
a sky brighter crystalline bluer than the white paper -
is difficult to sum up, however affecting and evocative; so I’ll settle for fumbling commentary and personal reaction…
The book is in two distinct sections - Circles In and White Stays. All the above examples, except for the sky brighter crystalline bluer example, are from the first section, Circles In, though I have touched obliquely on the subject matter of section two. To put it simply, Circles In presents the problem – the living anguish, the thought torture, the emotional writhing of attempted escape – while White Stays attempts to posit a solution – the escape into silence, whiteness, memory – but guess what? It’s impossible! Which doesn’t, of course, mean the poem doesn’t try:
I had given myself this task to tear off the dead skin of the present I wanted
To be weight to no longer see to keep distance to watch to be ordered to be calm become
I love how the line ends on “become”, as it somehow embodies by its sound a sense of calm, yet coded within it, by tacking on an open-endedness, the impossibility of remaining calm for long. This, in miniature, clearly exhibits the character of these poems.
I think I’ve gone on long enough, and have probably obscured as much as I’ve revealed about these poems; but then the poems themselves are as much about obscurity – the inherent obscurity of our deepest drives and emotions – as revelation – the inherent desire to penetrate and enlighten the obscurity. These poems circle in on themselves to reveal themselves, which causes another circling and so on… The only option is to keep rereading.
The cycle ends on a lovely white note. A certain calmness has been achieved, but its anguishing transitoriness is palpable, and a beautiful sadness prevails. Here is Sonnet VIII in its entirety:
Time flees time time as larva
time is the dreaming of the flaccid
earth time is glance time is being transparent
to the dead to heat to false tests lived through
by man alone by woman alone lifts the light of
absence being together is only a small square of
foam quick then the waves part company time is
turning red time is shadow is this writing that lights
upon pages on the tongues
of chance time time is insect
time that is number brings
reflections close stirs
them mingles them erases
man and woman childhoods
Chalk mark sex we know as cathedrals. Brakes in spring-width?
I just kept on reading to see what in hell he was talking about, and came upon this
look for porcelain, a lock here. Ambered. Century-marble for
skin, a word, a common emptiness. Winter in rings outside, water
in circles, trains, the noble tenth, catch your hand in the window
passing through.
and I still didn’t know what in hell he was talking about! But the urgent rhythm (can you feel the urgent rhythm?) intrigued me, and suggested to me that though I couldn’t pin a prose meaning to the proceedings there was a compelling agency at work; and the last image with the window and hand captured an exhilaration (and a possible excruciating pain) that meant something to me. So I soldiered on and was quickly rewarded with the following lines
Slice the belly
of the sweet thing who wavers, slice the belly and give notice to, give
theory, abstraction, a bridge to cover, where all talk is heat; immobility,
The violence, which for the first time laid bare the passion present, and the continued urgent rhythm of these lines hooked me, and continues to hook me, though I still can’t exactly prose it, which is how I like my poetry anyway... Though it’s safe to say there’s some form of anguish present, along with the urge to transcend it, with violence if necessary.
This, the first of eight sonnets, ends on a quiet note
The winter
in circles, the breath on the
white-silent alphabet.
Where winter, the season most like a blanket – soothing, hiding – envelopes the anguish and hides it in the alphabet, the poem.
Matt likes to keep his poetry cold, to distance himself from it by hiding himself within it. I like coldness and distance and hiding. I also like strong language evocative of things, ideas, feelings just out of reach. It’s all here – sex; alienation; observation of the world around; memories, memories, more memories; the inherent sadness of time’s passing; the desire for transcendence. “White”, in the form of chalk, marble, porcelain, salt, Winter, ash, smoke, recurs throughout this sonnet cycle, and by its very repetition creates a space, a protective space that is apart from anguish; a space of memory free of the anguish moving forward through life itself engenders. But this desire to enter whiteness creates yet another level of anguish inherent in the poems, as it is impossible to live in this space while alive, unless one opts for death in life; and these poems by the very power of their language are alive, and so contradict one of the abiding desires coursing through them. This contradiction is one of the cycle’s greatest strengths.
Reviewing poetry is dicey, especially with poetry as “abstract” as this, where even the potent imagery –
six lines of mystery overhanging,/crowned with high walls
red lattice lowered into night in small boxes
fountain chokes in debased coinage
a sky brighter crystalline bluer than the white paper -
is difficult to sum up, however affecting and evocative; so I’ll settle for fumbling commentary and personal reaction…
The book is in two distinct sections - Circles In and White Stays. All the above examples, except for the sky brighter crystalline bluer example, are from the first section, Circles In, though I have touched obliquely on the subject matter of section two. To put it simply, Circles In presents the problem – the living anguish, the thought torture, the emotional writhing of attempted escape – while White Stays attempts to posit a solution – the escape into silence, whiteness, memory – but guess what? It’s impossible! Which doesn’t, of course, mean the poem doesn’t try:
I had given myself this task to tear off the dead skin of the present I wanted
To be weight to no longer see to keep distance to watch to be ordered to be calm become
I love how the line ends on “become”, as it somehow embodies by its sound a sense of calm, yet coded within it, by tacking on an open-endedness, the impossibility of remaining calm for long. This, in miniature, clearly exhibits the character of these poems.
I think I’ve gone on long enough, and have probably obscured as much as I’ve revealed about these poems; but then the poems themselves are as much about obscurity – the inherent obscurity of our deepest drives and emotions – as revelation – the inherent desire to penetrate and enlighten the obscurity. These poems circle in on themselves to reveal themselves, which causes another circling and so on… The only option is to keep rereading.
The cycle ends on a lovely white note. A certain calmness has been achieved, but its anguishing transitoriness is palpable, and a beautiful sadness prevails. Here is Sonnet VIII in its entirety:
Time flees time time as larva
time is the dreaming of the flaccid
earth time is glance time is being transparent
to the dead to heat to false tests lived through
by man alone by woman alone lifts the light of
absence being together is only a small square of
foam quick then the waves part company time is
turning red time is shadow is this writing that lights
upon pages on the tongues
of chance time time is insect
time that is number brings
reflections close stirs
them mingles them erases
man and woman childhoods
Displaying 1 of 1 review