02-27-2016, 01:13 PM
Hearty thanks to the critics thus far. Notes to each, followed by Edit1.
@ellajam - Usually I don't try to defend my choice of capitalized lines for poems in forms (chalk it up to ingrained conservatism or something) but in this case the whole affair - picture that makes the poem effectively served up with the morning bagel, no particular inspiration required - conduces to humility. So in Edit1, sentence-only capitalization.
The line which jarred is also changed - "forced" is exactly right, the problem was forcing my *particular* vision on the reader (not really an office park, more like a generic Courtyard by Marriott™ motel) who should be encouraged to hold whatever architecture the photo-illusion has conjured up for that reader. Replacement in Edit1 may be a little weak, and not the final one.
@achebe - Good eye/ear on L1. "[L]ove" was initially a filler to replace a worse one ("too"), but (as love often does) changed everything on that revision, culminating in "beloved" on L14. As I see it, the sonnet now implies a story - perhaps even a bittersweet one, else why speak of illusions? - instead of presenting a simple fata morgana. (Or cultural - I suspect readers whose cultures don't include rectilinear architecture won't see it.) It is choppy, but I hesitate to change it given the highly favorable response elsewhere. In hopes it can be improved without losing that effect, a few candidates to replace L1:
Do you, my love, see buildings through the trees?
Can you, my love, see buildings through the trees?
Do you see buildings there, love, through the trees?
@Erthona - In addition to seconding the desire for minimized capitalization (done), thanks for providing a marvelous example of divergent effects on different readers: one (pardon the expression) turned on, the other turned off by the same initial line and couplet. The romantic aspect is a bit outside my comfort zone (my sonnets tend to be philosophical and technical) even if it's well inside your discomfort zone for humdrum sonnets. Please allow me my little flutter - I'll get back to learning free verse again in due course, all duly uncapitalized and unpunctuated as custom demands
.
Edit 1
Do you, love, see those buildings through the trees,
white walls, brown-sepia verandas, tall
black windows, some with arches, by degrees
bone-white or lightly shadowed overall?
How strange to see them looming bright on dark
just past the crest of wooded winter hills,
between tall pines, brown dead-leafed boughs, black bark,
beneath a sky pale January fills.
It’s all illusion: regularly spaced
tree trunks form windows, curving limbs each arch,
floor-levels limned by branches, all enlaced
on canvas clouds make dream-skyscrapers march.
We see not what we see; instead we build,
beloved, visions not seen, only willed.
@ellajam - Usually I don't try to defend my choice of capitalized lines for poems in forms (chalk it up to ingrained conservatism or something) but in this case the whole affair - picture that makes the poem effectively served up with the morning bagel, no particular inspiration required - conduces to humility. So in Edit1, sentence-only capitalization.
The line which jarred is also changed - "forced" is exactly right, the problem was forcing my *particular* vision on the reader (not really an office park, more like a generic Courtyard by Marriott™ motel) who should be encouraged to hold whatever architecture the photo-illusion has conjured up for that reader. Replacement in Edit1 may be a little weak, and not the final one.
@achebe - Good eye/ear on L1. "[L]ove" was initially a filler to replace a worse one ("too"), but (as love often does) changed everything on that revision, culminating in "beloved" on L14. As I see it, the sonnet now implies a story - perhaps even a bittersweet one, else why speak of illusions? - instead of presenting a simple fata morgana. (Or cultural - I suspect readers whose cultures don't include rectilinear architecture won't see it.) It is choppy, but I hesitate to change it given the highly favorable response elsewhere. In hopes it can be improved without losing that effect, a few candidates to replace L1:
Do you, my love, see buildings through the trees?
Can you, my love, see buildings through the trees?
Do you see buildings there, love, through the trees?
@Erthona - In addition to seconding the desire for minimized capitalization (done), thanks for providing a marvelous example of divergent effects on different readers: one (pardon the expression) turned on, the other turned off by the same initial line and couplet. The romantic aspect is a bit outside my comfort zone (my sonnets tend to be philosophical and technical) even if it's well inside your discomfort zone for humdrum sonnets. Please allow me my little flutter - I'll get back to learning free verse again in due course, all duly uncapitalized and unpunctuated as custom demands
.Edit 1
Do you, love, see those buildings through the trees,
white walls, brown-sepia verandas, tall
black windows, some with arches, by degrees
bone-white or lightly shadowed overall?
How strange to see them looming bright on dark
just past the crest of wooded winter hills,
between tall pines, brown dead-leafed boughs, black bark,
beneath a sky pale January fills.
It’s all illusion: regularly spaced
tree trunks form windows, curving limbs each arch,
floor-levels limned by branches, all enlaced
on canvas clouds make dream-skyscrapers march.
We see not what we see; instead we build,
beloved, visions not seen, only willed.
Non-practicing atheist