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Earthly: Sonnets for Carlos
64 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
About the author
Ian Wedde
53 books7 followersNew Zealand poet, fiction writer, critic, and art curator.
Ian Wedde is the author of eight novels, fifteen collections of poetry, two collections of essays, and a number of anthologies and art monographs. His most recent novel is The Reed Warbler (2020), and The Little Ache – a German notebook, written while he was in Berlin to research The Reed Warbler, was published in July 2021. His memoir, The Grass Catcher: A Digression About Home, was published in 2014, and his Selected Poems in 2017. Decentred: Selected Essays 2004–2020 will be published in late 2022.
Ian is the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships and grants. Among the most recent are the Meridian Energy Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship at Menton in France (2005), a Fulbright New Zealand Travel Award to the USA (2006), an Arts Foundation Laureate Award (2006), a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Auckland (2007), an ONZM (2010), and the Landfall Essay Prize (2010). In 2011–13 Wedde was New Zealand’s poet laureate. He was awarded the Creative New Zealand Writers’ Residency in Berlin 2013–14, and in 2014 the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement (poetry). He lives in Auckland.
Ian Wedde is the author of eight novels, fifteen collections of poetry, two collections of essays, and a number of anthologies and art monographs. His most recent novel is The Reed Warbler (2020), and The Little Ache – a German notebook, written while he was in Berlin to research The Reed Warbler, was published in July 2021. His memoir, The Grass Catcher: A Digression About Home, was published in 2014, and his Selected Poems in 2017. Decentred: Selected Essays 2004–2020 will be published in late 2022.
Ian is the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships and grants. Among the most recent are the Meridian Energy Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship at Menton in France (2005), a Fulbright New Zealand Travel Award to the USA (2006), an Arts Foundation Laureate Award (2006), a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Auckland (2007), an ONZM (2010), and the Landfall Essay Prize (2010). In 2011–13 Wedde was New Zealand’s poet laureate. He was awarded the Creative New Zealand Writers’ Residency in Berlin 2013–14, and in 2014 the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement (poetry). He lives in Auckland.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 7, 2022
As a 21 year old it was confusing whether this opening one-of-five was about The Madonna or the madonna archetype. Either way the woman in the poem was Madonna, even though 1975 is too early for that. “She has no choice.” I took this to mean in giving birth. Taking the archetype out of account, the image of a woman pregnant with no choice anymore is melancholic.
Did I fuck up reading ‘Let Us Compare Mythologies’? I feel like I scoured that book for poetic beauty, and found most of what I could. But I started reading sonnet 21 in ‘Sonnets for Carlos’ a second time, but slowly: “If I long for peace well it may never come & if I long for nothing here peace may fall like snow, a second’s tastelessness on the tongue but later tipping the world till the horizon skids closer! (Closer then the page, than the thought of love...)” A snow white horizon. Nature on the top of one’s tongue.
Here is that ‘madonna’ sonnet, but slowly: “The world stretches out, time yawns, your head, lost hours, on the pillow burns in its halo of boredom. So what are you waiting for? A birth, naturally. Forgive me, this is no light matter.” And so on. This is self explanatory.
It’s not all improved by this. #1 and #21 is improved in imagery and metaphor a lot, where others are lucky to gain some meaning more than what they gave at a glance.
The forward slash used like a smash cut in #21/2.
#22 and 23 make one poem and it is the first holy-fuck poem so far. Words can tirelessly describe the wrath of life.
Dude. Around here it gets instantly accessible. Effortlessly beautiful. ‘Leaden Echo’ or #25 is simple but good, and the following ‘power transformer’ is depraved and sexual and paternal and ‘Birdy’-like.
How was “piss & steam versus all the rubbish of the ego!” a good idea? The poem is headed “Split Pine.” Which was evocative of fractured damages, which leads into the mention of shock in the wrists and head. To end with the quote above. *tut tut,* but kind of funny though.
If I were to analyse these I’m sure I’d find more, but it would then require too much effort on my part, too much to ask as Ian Wedde.
#36 has a lovely arc and twist ending. I would like to quote it. Throughout it was a fine portrait of a cursed forest, to end with: “and creeping on the surface of the earth comes Carlos the jaunty sin & finds this black shit of eternity & stuffs it in his mouth, and thinks it’s nice.”
#37 is vivid.
Did I fuck up reading ‘Let Us Compare Mythologies’? I feel like I scoured that book for poetic beauty, and found most of what I could. But I started reading sonnet 21 in ‘Sonnets for Carlos’ a second time, but slowly: “If I long for peace well it may never come & if I long for nothing here peace may fall like snow, a second’s tastelessness on the tongue but later tipping the world till the horizon skids closer! (Closer then the page, than the thought of love...)” A snow white horizon. Nature on the top of one’s tongue.
Here is that ‘madonna’ sonnet, but slowly: “The world stretches out, time yawns, your head, lost hours, on the pillow burns in its halo of boredom. So what are you waiting for? A birth, naturally. Forgive me, this is no light matter.” And so on. This is self explanatory.
It’s not all improved by this. #1 and #21 is improved in imagery and metaphor a lot, where others are lucky to gain some meaning more than what they gave at a glance.
The forward slash used like a smash cut in #21/2.
#22 and 23 make one poem and it is the first holy-fuck poem so far. Words can tirelessly describe the wrath of life.
Dude. Around here it gets instantly accessible. Effortlessly beautiful. ‘Leaden Echo’ or #25 is simple but good, and the following ‘power transformer’ is depraved and sexual and paternal and ‘Birdy’-like.
How was “piss & steam versus all the rubbish of the ego!” a good idea? The poem is headed “Split Pine.” Which was evocative of fractured damages, which leads into the mention of shock in the wrists and head. To end with the quote above. *tut tut,* but kind of funny though.
If I were to analyse these I’m sure I’d find more, but it would then require too much effort on my part, too much to ask as Ian Wedde.
#36 has a lovely arc and twist ending. I would like to quote it. Throughout it was a fine portrait of a cursed forest, to end with: “and creeping on the surface of the earth comes Carlos the jaunty sin & finds this black shit of eternity & stuffs it in his mouth, and thinks it’s nice.”
#37 is vivid.
Displaying 1 of 1 review