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Leaving the Woods House (Sonnet) by zodiac We bushel-basketed the stereo, lamps,
found everything under the couches damp
from Lord-knows-what -
mouse droppings in the cupboards. I cut
the grass, she boxed rabbit-ears, stacked books
in crates. We left the couches, fucked
on the floor. And then one moment the house
was ours, and then it wasn't ours.
It's easy enough to leave a thing: you tell
yourself the thing you love is gone: the girl
bent over the sink is new, this house is new
each now to the next. You let it go, the truck
butts out into the dawning world, the boughs
waving aren't even farewells, nor tenterhooks.
Up the ladder:
A Parable Of War
Down the ladder:
Valentine
Votes: (green: user, blue: anonymous)
Arithmetic Mean: 8.818182
Posted: August 23, 2005 12:53 AM PDT; Last modified: August 23, 2005 1:01 AM PDTWeighted score: 6.909091 Overall Rank: 223 Comments:
This suggests I tried too hard on that last and only sonnet of mine. Fine by me.
I hate the restrictions of the sonnet form. But I guess if you give up the stricter Shakespearean ties, then its much easier.
I think "we" would be better in "You let it go" to keep it personal. You could drop "ours" in "and then it wasn't ours" What are tenterhooks? The colons distract. Periods would be better. I would make the sex more tender in keeping with the nostalgia of the occasion.
I'll consider your suggestions. Except that the sex be tender. I don't think it's a very tender poem at all.
I'm wondering, did the pocket-philosophy (each moment a thing is new and discrete from the thing it was a moment before, so you can leave anything,) come across? Not that I believe it, I just thought it was an interesting thing for my narrator to say.
re: "each moment, a thing is new and discrete from the thing it was a moment before, so you can leave anything." It didn't come to me that way in the poem. It was more like "one moment ends and another begins." When your narrator says, "It's easy enough to leave a thing. You tell yourself the thing you love is gone," I take it as a simple form of rationalizing that's bound to fail. Your narrator seems almost too simple-minded to be believable.
Have you read some of the comments on poemranker lately? Nothing, I'd say, is too simpleminded to be believable.
That said, since posting the poem, I'm kind of taken with the idea of something being a discrete thing every instant of its existence (ergo you have no emotional connection to the thing it is this instant now, now, now, only a series of emotional connections to the different things it was in previous instants.) Call me simpleminded, but my wife just went back to live in America for my last year of Peace Corps service, so it kind of helps to think so. Incidentally, I read my idea the same as your "one moment ends and another begins" reading. What am I missing?
You're missing her in white cotton panties if that's how you remember her. The moment is different now, lonlier, and that makes the event different. Some say it's the same event painted lonely, but I'd write it as an actual change in history.
I second what alchemy said and this is an awesome piece of writing - definitely in the top 10 I've read on here and elsewhere.
Last line should be tenderhooks
dang..I feel like moving...hehehehaha!!!:)Bethy
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Shouldn't it be "THE rabbit ears" unless you have more then one set.
"into the dawning world" is the only somewhat cliche line in an otherwise clicheless poem.
This poem reminds me of an even sadder moment in my life. I may just might write about it now. Thanks for inspiring me. -9-
Looking it up, I find a tenterhook is "A hooked nail for securing cloth on a tenter." I don't know what that means.