Reading this book's title must bring a smile to the reader's face, if not a scowl. Is there an unknown poet actually possessed with the audacity to take on poetry's towering titan of the planet, acknowledged universally to be the greatest? He's got to be kidding! But he isn't. As challenger, it is Shakespeare's collection of 154 sonnets that he draws a ring around. Now pause for reflection. Whether you are yourself a poet or have never set thought to verse in your life, if you were throwing down the gauntlet to the Bard of Avon-with, let's say, your life depending on the outcome-what strategy would have any promise? Ponder the response of the poet here writing, perhaps recalling as you do so the familiar tale of David and Goliath. Think of the fourteen lines of a sonnet, traditionally rhymed in traditional meter, as a slingshot. The strategy of this "David" will be, though all told he will fire ninety-nine times, never to pick up his slingshot until he has found the perfect stone to fire-one that will penetrate the brain.
What Fool Would Challenge Shakespeare?
Going Toe to Toe with the Champion Sonneteer
By T.J. KingTrafford Publishing
Copyright © 2014 T.J. King
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4907-2913-8Contents
Dedication, ix,
Preface, xi,
A Raft of Similes Comes Into Dock, 1,
Like the Rain When It Rains, 2,
The Grist of Care, 3,
As I Strain to Hold My Course, 4,
Ah ... Nature!, 5,
The Compost Pile, 6,
Threats of Record Wetness, 7,
Impossibly I Advance, 8,
Presumption Denied, 9,
On the Wet Stuff Vast, 10,
The Inside Dope, 11,
Art Derailed, 12,
Escape by Time Machine, 13,
The Song of Longing, 14,
Beautiful Women, 15,
The Evolved Superlative, 16,
Were There No Suffering, 17,
The Door You Left Ajar, 18,
To Fly the Coop, 19,
The Gramophone's Key, 20,
Our Delicate Balance, 21,
Chris Hedges: What He Wrote, 22,
A Trackless Minefield, 23,
A Fun Invention, 24,
Moonlighted Madness, 25,
Colossal Error, 26,
It's a Wrap, 27,
What Might Ignite a Fire, 28,
How Infinite As Light, 29,
To Compliment a Lovely Woman, 30,
A Perfectly Clownish Shtick, 31,
The Turf of Esthetes, 32,
The Terrible Reckoning to Come, 33,
Keats' Ode to a Nightingale, 34,
To Read His Own Words, 35,
Death As a Gorgeous Act, 36,
Your GPS, 37,
With Faith Feeble in Zeal, 38,
That I Care So Bloody Much, 39,
Modernizing, 40,
Love Not Her Cup of Tea, 41,
Never Not, 42,
Splendor Found in Books, 43,
Reality, 44,
Sculpting What's Real, 45,
Sky-Romp, 46,
Big As All Outdoors, 47,
The Hoax, 48,
This So-Called Miracle, 49,
Woman, Kind, 50,
This Dark Passage One Would Scarcely Choose, 51,
The Task Assigned, 52,
The Source From Whence I've Sprung, 53,
Thought of the Grave, 54,
What You Already Know, 55,
In Sudden Thrall, 56,
Heart on Sleeve, 57,
Love Can Be a Judas, 58,
The Topmost Tourist Trap City, 59,
The Muse Confronted, 60,
Alchemy Transmuting Gold, 61,
Atop This Steeple, 62,
The Rescue, 63,
Eavesdroppers Welcome, 64,
Why No Other Poem in Any Book, 65,
An Authentic Lover, 66,
The Boon of Faith, 67,
His Craft Pursuing, 68,
On Hearing a Music Pure, 69,
The Carnivore's Undoing, 70,
Cachinnation, 71,
Caught Off Guard, 72,
Solace Comprehended, 73,
The Joyful Noise of the Divine, 74,
Improving on Nature, 75,
By Knowledge Unsullied, 76,
Him They Called Papa, 77,
A Tale to Rip the Veil, 78,
Scofflaws of Nature, 79,
Coming Clean, 80,
Pleasure's Perks, 81,
A Tome So Finely Writ, 82,
A Lesson Learned, 83,
Liesl Eleyn, 84,
Unemployment Check, 85,
The Shivering Sense, 86,
Righting the Perspective, 87,
The Use and Value of a Small Appliance, 88,
Elegies, 89,
Beyond Thumbscrews, 90,
My Muse Unfeeling, 91,
Limitations Human, 92,
Sarah, 93,
Eavesdroppers Welcome, 94,
The Unknown Soldier, 95,
The Tunnel Vision of Love, 96,
To Dwell Amongst the Few, 97,
By Ecstasy Undone, 98,
The Reliable Confrere, 99,
Appendix One: The Rainbow Benediction, 103,
Appendix Two: The Inexhaustible Subject, 114,
Appendix Three: The Mightiest Monosyllable, 125,
Appendix Four: Who We Are, 131,
Appendix Five: Au Contraire, Love, 149,
Appendix Six: A Lantern One Might Shine on Literature, 159,
CHAPTER 1
A Raft of Similes
Comes Into Dock
Like lilies spreading white throughout a valley,
Or redwoods in their growth first greeting sky,
Like catching on by the great Muhammad Ali
To sting like a bee, float like a butterfly!
Like Earth, whose fecund womb with life abounds
When Sun first woos and they beget her treasures,
Like Rubenstein discovering certain sounds
From certain keyboards might induce vague pleasures,
With sonnets if myself I don't deceive
I've found my fitting bower within an arbor
Or just to change the figure, by your leave,
My raft has come to rest within its harbor.
Best yet, if I be wrong and clean confused
Methinks I'll die and not be disabused.
Like the Rain
When It Rains
Niggardly muse, for shame! All that I ask
Is a clean, white page with nothing writ upon it
And then for the sake once more of my favorite task
That you whisper, sweet lisper, a hint of a thought for a sonnet.
When you launch me I fly with my rhyme double-time, unconfounded,
But without your high-five I'm a bird with a broken wing
Or much like the penguin, poor fowl forever grounded,
A pilot perplexed, a singer who can't seem to sing.
The fact that, my cap in my hand, I come entreating
Reminds this beggar those times when you answer my plea
Any skill that is shown is at best on loan and soon fleeting
And not a power to be proud of as coming from me.
So I beg to be used when the Force in its wisdom truth utters
Like the rain when it rains and sweeps clean the crud from the gutters.
The Grist of Care
What is its substance when we say we love,
When, where we dwell hill-high or in a dingle,
Like hand fit to perfection in a glove
Two well met awestruck souls profoundly mingle?
A force volcanic rushing underground
The passion plays that bonds me with my friend
But whence the source wherewith its joys abound
Springs subterranean I can't comprehend.
Whether its grasp in sorcery consist
(For such is charm's enchantment) or if may
Some graver, finer lure make up the grist
Of care by which I'm caught I cannot say.
I muse if friend be not one I admire
The spring pollutes however hot the fire.
As I Strain to
Hold My Course
Happiness runs not clear, like a snow-thawed stream,
But more like a mighty river, say the Mississippi,
Outwardly menaced always by flood extreme
And in its depths less safe than it seems to be.
At best one circumvents the deadly shoals
Evading the overspills that tempt...
