[Yves S L]

Version 2.40 Interesting Rhyme Scheme

In winter ringing round the icy ceiling
Is all my love, all of my love, for you;
And if you ever smile, and I ain't reeling,
Then nothing matters—O my life is through!

It's O your fault for being so darn appealing;
I'm sure that all of Nature loves you too,
And all will join me in this height of feeling
To ring a harmony more true than true.

I'm nothing but an open-throated bird
For you—O lovely you—who found his heart
Along a branch of life more than absurd,

Who sings, forgetting the much practiced art,
The moment's melodies unheard and heard
Which have no end, since O they have no start:

Version 2.30 More Like a Hymn

In winter ringing round the icy ceiling
Is all my love, all of my love, for you;
And if you ever smile, and I ain't reeling,
Then nothing matters—O my life is through!

It's O your fault for being so darn appealing.
I'm sure that all of Nature will agree
By joining me within this height of feeling
Together in this joyous harmony.

I'm nothing but an open-throated bird
For you—O lovely you—who found his heart
Along a branch of life more than absurd,

Who sings, forgetting the much practiced art,
The moment's melodies unheard and heard
Which have no end, since O they have no start:

Version 2.20

In winter ringing round the icy ceiling
Is all my love, all of my love, for you;
And if you ever smile, and I ain't reeling,
Then nothing matters—O my life is through!

The ice that chose to make a joke of you
Will gladly resonate with me instead,
And O will ring in harmony as true
As what I feel when you're stuck in my head.

I'm nothing but an open-throated bird
For you—O lovely you—who found his heart
Along a branch of life more than absurd,

Who sings, forgetting the much practiced art,
The moment's melodies unheard and heard
Which have no end, since O they have no start:

Version 2.10

In winter ringing round the icy ceiling
Is all my love, all of my love, for you;
And if you ever smile, and I ain't reeling,
Then nothing matters—O my life is through!

The ice that chose to make a fool of you,
Will choose to resonate with us—O Love!
And it will ring in harmony as true
As falling snow upon a sitting dove.

I'm nothing but an open-throated bird
For you, O lovely you, who found his heart
Along a branch of life more than absurd,

Who sings, forgetting the much practiced art,
The moment's melodies unheard and heard
Which have no end, since O they have no start:

Version 2.00 More Classical

In winter ringing round the icy ceiling
Is all my love, all of my love, for you;
If you would smile, and I would not be reeling,
Then nothing matters—O my life is through!

The ice that chose to make a fool of you,
Will choose to resonate with us—O Love!
And it will ring in harmony as true
As falling snow upon a sitting dove.

I'm nothing but an open-throated bird,
For you, O lovely you, who found his heart
Along a branch of life more than absurd,

Who sings, forgetting the much practiced art,
The moment's melodies unheard and heard
Which have no end, since O they have no start:

Version 1.10

In winter ringing round the icy ceiling
Is all my love, all of my love, for you;
If you would smile, and I would not be reeling,
Then nothing matters—O my life is through!

Come be my love and watch your dreams come true,
Even the one you dare not think out loud:
I'll make your absent daddy visit you,
And O my love, you'll even make him proud.

I'm nothing but an open-throated bird,
For you, O lovely you, who found his heart
Along a branch of life more than absurd,

Who sings, forgetting the much practiced art,
The moment's melodies unheard and heard
Which have no end, since O they have no start:


Version 1.00

In winter ringing round the icy ceiling
Is all my love, all of my love, for you;
If you would smile, and I would not be reeling,
Then nothing matters—O my life is through!
Come be my love and watch your dreams come true,
Even the one you dare not think out loud:
I'll make your absent daddy's face not blue,
And O my love, you'll even make him proud.

I'm nothing but an open-throated bird,
For you, O lovely you, who found his heart
Along a branch of life more than absurd,
Who sings, forgetting the much practiced art,
The moment's melodies unheard and heard
Which have no end, since O they have no start:

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Yves—

You offer an exuberant declaration of love, but I got a bit lost in the octet. The winter imagery you unpack in line 1 doesn’t seem to connect to anything else in the poem (except, possibly, the daddy’s blue face in line 7.). Why do you equate your love to coldness?

When you announce “Oh, my life is through!” Do you mean that you are so happy that she smiled that you are ready to die now? Or if nothing matters, are you suicidal?

The next four lines (5-8) seem to echo Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” offering an argument why she should “Come [live with me and] be my love,” but who is the “absent daddy,” and why would he be proud and not have a blue face? Is it because his daughter is hooking up with a skillful poet? There aren’t many clues in the first eight lines.

The sestet starts more clearly. The poet’s song is inspired by the beautiful beloved, who met him by chance. I got lost again in line 12. What is the antecedent of “Who?” The poet, one would expect, but the syntax seems to say it is the beloved.

Line 13 echoes Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter still. . .
You proceed in the last line to point to the eternal, Platonic world of ideal forms that Keats discusses in his ode, but introducing this in the last two lines gives you no room to develop this idea.
I need a better road map, or GPS.
Glenn

[Yves S L]

Glenn,

Super interesting comments. I suppose you are looking for more classical development? I was thinking about this more as a sequence of opening gestures. But super duper interesting comments.

There was a sonnet I wrote, before you came on the boards, that was me being as classical as can be. I think you would have enjoyed that more.

Even if you think the "you" is the beloved, the syntax would still work out in the end.

I don't really like giving meta-commentary, but I do not equate love to coldness. That is all I will say for now.

If you have several possibilities for what a line means, then choose the option that makes sense with the rest of the poem.

I have added a colon after line 6, if that adds any clarity.

Sure, you might find some classical allusion if you are looking for them, but I did not conceive this as a classical poem.

I have done some tweaking!

[Yves S L]

I have tried something a bit more classical just to see how I feel about it.

[Simon Hunt]

Hi Yves--I got echoes of Marlowe and Keats, too. I find the sestet here much more engaging than the octave, and I'm tempted to suggest going for a pithy 6-liner. All those Os! It's maybe a little too-too for me--but I think you get away with the two in the last 6. O my life is through and dreams come true and the Daddy business in the first two drafts are over-the-top for me, in particular. And I quite like the coherent bird metaphor at the end. (In fact, part of me hears "winging" in line 1, which--if you kept the octave--would prefigure that metaphor effectively...). Even in the sestet, I have a couple of quibbles: Is it the branch that's more than absurd or the heart? Either is possible in this syntax, I think. Also, I'm not clear what speaker has forgotten of art--when he's clearly singing. I hope something here is helpful.

[W T Clark]

I would say, revert, revert: the revision feels old (as in, old for you) tropes you have done in a more crystalline way in a more well-built place.
What I liked in the original was the modulation of high Romantic trope to a more contemporary, edgewise idiom: from icy ceiling to daddy issues. That modulation tasted fresh: intriguing: even in its knowingness true! This revision tastes stale by comparison: and I've seen you do everything in it before: weller. Version 1.0's closing sestet twists Wallace Stevens into the narrator's Oing disfunction: I like that a good deal: it is voice-work, it is a bid for believability by the narrator's slimey voice, a slippery internality meant for us to believe, to cover up. Take the positioning of l9 in both versions to l8; it seems to me that in the first version the second quatrain infects l9 by the fact of its proximity deliciously with its unorthodoxy compared to the Stevens/Keats trope that follows it: makes it into a kind of manipulative stance by the narrator: an attempt to convince. The dove doesn't do that.

Hope this helps.

[Julie Steiner]

Bonsoir, Yves ! (Cross-posted with Simon and Cameron.)

I am not sure what you mean by "more classical," but version 2.00 is certainly more cohesive, by focusing on the winter and bird imagery and eliminating distractions like the absent, blue-faced daddy, so I like it much better for that reason — even if the dove trope is a huge cliché. (Maybe that's what you mean by more classical? I don't see why classical should be clichéd, though.)

That said, the poet still seems to spend more of the poem talking about himself and his own poetry/singing aspirations than he does talking about his beloved, which surely doesn't bode well for this couple's future happiness. Any number of womanizing bards have deemed their muses disposable and replaceable when a younger version came along. As a general rule of thumb, beloveds should always give poets the cold shoulder. It's the sensible thing to do. But I digress.

"because" would be less distracting than "since O," which is something I have never heard anyone say. Then again, I'm an "O" hater, so consider the source.

There's a problem with the combination of moods/voices of the verbs in "If you would smile (present conditional), and I would not be reeling (present conditional), / then nothing matters (present indicative)." But usually the "if" clause takes a past indicative tense, and the conditional doesn't come until the main clause: "If you smiled (past indicative), and I were not reeling (past indicative), then nothing would matter (conditional)."

"The ice which" should be "The ice that." "Which" clauses are descriptive/parenthetical (adding some optional info about the noun they are modifying), and should be begun and ended with commas. "That" clauses are restrictive (defining the specific type of noun that they are modifying), and shouldn't begin and end with commas.

I seem to remember having read a poem of yours with the ice around the ceiling before. An earlier draft of this one, perhaps?

[Yves S L]

Simon,

It is funny thing, but folk get more uncomfortable with the more extreme expression of positive emotions, then they do with the negative. It says something.

Keats and Os: https://www.potw.org/archive/potw205.html

If the syntax allows both, then what is the problem?

What do I mean by practised art? I am going to leave it to Charlie Parker:

""First you learn the instrument, then you learn the music, then you forget all that s**t and just play.""

Cameron,

I wrote the more classical version to see if Glenn likes the more classical version. You, would obviously like the first version more. Yeah, it is all true what you said about the first version, but I have to work with people's reactions and the expectations they bring. I don't really keep most of my sonnets, so I am not quite sure where you think I did this better. The sonnet I was referring to when talking to Glenn was not really about style or themes, but more about thoroughgoing thematic development, where one concentrates and rides a theme to its ultimate conclusions like the classic sonnets.

I already wrote an edgy contemporary sonnet that people liked last week, so now I want to go back to ROMANTICISM. I don't think that one has to keep looking for new tropes, since the masters like Keats just kept doing the same riffs again and again and again. I think of Keats and Stevens as my favourite musicians, but singing bird tropes are older than them both, and I am not exactly writing from the literature, more my own experience of music and sounds.

I mostly use common tropes because they communicate to people. In the previous version where I talked more directly about my first hand experience of emotions, nobody understood what I was saying, and just concentrated on the common tropes.

You like edgy irony and attitudes, and lexical wordplay, and cross-referencing the literature, so that's what you look for.

Do you not find the dove line, like, soooooo utterly picturesque? Doves and snow existed before Stevens, no?

[Yves S L]

Julie,

You make a lot of good points, and I more than happy to get some help with the grammar.

I'm not sure this poem is successful in anyway. Most poems for me are an experiment, and occasionally I write something something decent.

I wrote a poem that had the ceiling thing going on, but I consider that something like a finished version. I just wanted to riff on the ceiling lines again.


I will probably come back to your comments.

[Yves S L]

Julie,

Is the following better or can be more easily transformed to something grammatical while keeping the rhyme and meter?

In winter ringing round the icy ceiling
Is all my love, all of my love, for you;
And if you ever smile, and I ain't reeling,
Then nothing matters—O my life is through!

(Going to sleep now night night)